Hamlet William Shakespeare

William Shakespeare's Hamlet (1600-01), regarded by many scholars and critics as his finest play, is based on the story of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, which first appeared in the Historia Danica, a Latin text by the twelfth-century historian Saxo...

"Hamlet is no abstract thinker and dreamer. As his imagery betrays to us, he is rather a man gifted with greater powers of observation than the others. He is capable of scanning reality with a keener eye of penetrating... to the very core of...

Many questions surround the idea of Hamlet's inability to act through the course of Shakespeare's Hamlet. E. E. Stoll makes one of the most audacious arguments simply stating "It is both the traditional form and the natural procedure; obviously,...

Shakespeare's tragedy Hamlet is actually a conglomeration of many subtragedies. One of these smaller tragedies within the story of Hamlet is the mental evolution of Prince Hamlet, to the point where he acted king-like and would have made a great...

Both William Shakespeare, likely the greatest English playwright of all time, and Henrik Ibsen, arguably one of the most brilliant and influential modern dramatists, are known not only for the power of their tragedies but also for their memorable...

The act of revenge never fails to gather an audience, due to the simple fact that revenge raises one of the great questions in regards to human life: how does one seek justice when the law ceases to function properly? William Shakespeare tapped...

In his powerful play, "Hamlet," William Shakespeare utilizes the theme of playacting as a medium through which Hamlet can make political statements, as well as shield himself in supposed madness. Hamlet uses plays to not only inform Claudius that...

According to the conventional plot formula, the forces of good are clearly arrayed against the forces of evil. Good and evil fight; good eventually triumphs. In Hamlet, William Shakespeare created an excellent cast of distasteful characters. The...

Beginning with Hamlet's encounter with his father's ghost, Shakespeare introduces a line of "action" which his hero then follows throughout the narrative. From missed opportunities to sporadic bursts of movement and progression, Hamlet initially...

In the tragedy Hamlet and the comedy A Midsummer Night's Dream, Shakespeare presents two plays that are very different in context but quite similar in foundation. Both plays examine reality throughout the narrative structure. In Hamlet, reality is...

Women living in Elizabethan times, although more liberated than medieval women, were still expected to do their husband's will and obey at all times. In William Shakespeare's Hamlet, Queen Gertrude begins the play acting as a typical Elizabethan...

Shakespeare's Hamlet is not simply a morality play surrounding a grief-mad prince; it is a complex study of political maneuvers as described by Machiavelli. "The rules of this politics, Machiavelli's political science, then, are the choreographed...

The central conflict in Shakespeare's Hamlet is between the title character's high moral standards and his quest for the truth. Arising from this conflict is what many would agree is the quintessential problem of the play: Why does Hamlet delay in...

In Greek tragedy, inevitability plays an important role, portraying the protagonists as pawns of the fates, whose roles in the tragedy are distributed arbitrarily and without justice. The outcomes of these roles are decided before the play even...

Othello is a man of action. Hamlet is a man of inaction. If Hamlet were placed in Othello's world and vice versa one could assume that both would function well in those circumstances. Othello is a man of action in a play that demands his...

This is that Hamlet the Dane whom we read of in our youth, and whom we may be said almost to remember in our after years; he who made that famous soliloquy on life, who gavethe advice to the players, who thought "this goodly frame, the earth," a...

Hamlet is the most baffling of the great plays. It is the tragedy of a man and an action continually baffled by wisdom. The man is too wise. The dual action, pressing in both cases to complete an event, cannot get past his wisdom into the world....

T.S. Eliot's famous poem The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock shares many correlating themes with William Shakespeare's Hamlet. Despite their evident similarities in style, Eliot criticizes Shakespeare's Hamlet in his essay Hamlet and His Problems,...

"The hallmark of the psychopath is the inability to recognize others as worthy of compassion."

-Shirley Lynn Scott, What Makes Serial Killers Tick?

"They are not near my conscience."

Hamlet, after condemning childhood friends to death.

Most readers...

"This above all, to thine own self be true" (1.3.88). As Polonius offers this advice to his departing son Laertes, he also states one of the defining principles of the philosophical branch known collectively as existentialism. A paradigm firmly...

Unholy Mothers: Mothers as Negative Characters in Richard III, Cymbeline, Hamlet, Macbeth and The Tempest

by, Barret Buchholz

April 15, 2005

The mothers presented in Shakespeare's plays encompass a broad range of social positions, personalities,...

How does Stoppard's Transformation of Hamlet reveal a shift in ideology?

Stoppard's transformation of Shakespeare's Hamlet shifts in values and world-view from the original. These changes are a result of the change in context between the two texts....

"Hamlet is a tragedy without catharsis, a tragedy in which everything noble and heroic is smothered under ferocious revenge codes, treachery, spying and the consequences of weak actions by broken wills." In truth, this statement is not a...

Critic Northrup Frye has evaluated Hamlet as a play without catharsis, Ã,ÂÃÂÃÂa tragedy in which everything noble and heroic is smothered under ferocious revenge codes, treachery, spying and the consequences of weak actions by broken wills.Ã,ÂÃÂÃÂ...