thesis in hamlet

151 Hamlet Essay Topics & Thesis Ideas

We know how long students search for interesting Hamlet essay topics. In this post, you will find a list of the most debating Hamlet essay titles and thesis ideas. We’ve also developed a guide on how to write a Hamlet paper and included some helpful Hamlet essay examples.

👍 Hamlet Essay Writing – Tips & Ideas

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Here, at IvyPanda, we know how daunting can be the task of writing a Hamlet Essay. In this post, you will find out how to write a paper that would get top marks.

Tip #1. Read critically before starting hamlet essay outline

Critical reading will help you to prepare for writing your paper. There are a lot of techniques that can increase your reading speed. You may try some of them, described below:

Highlighting

Grab a few highlighters and use them to underline things that might suit for various topics. For example, use green when you see something pertaining to a tragic hero character analysis; pink for a particular symbol, etc. Don’t forget to make a key, so you know what each color means.

This method helps you to organize your evidence and allows you to see if you have enough support to write your essay.

Note-taking

Take notes and record your ideas and critical aspects while reading the plot. This approach will help you to avoid multiple re-readings. However, be sure to remark what part of the essay your notes pertain to.

Making annotations in the margins of the book, you will ensure that you understand what is happening in a text after you’ve read it. Note the author’s key points, central areas of focus, and your thoughts.

Annotating will help you to summarize, highlight crucial pieces of information, and prepare yourself for writing Hamlet essay prompts that your professor may give you

You can use the methods mentioned above or try any other, or even come up with your own technique. This simple exercise will help you to recall which points to write about in your paper.

Tip #2. Write a detailed outline

Now, when you’ve done the prewriting work, it’s time to focus on what you’re going to write in and create your Hamlet essay outline.

Here’s the trick: the more detailed your outline will be, the less time you will spend on the writing process. If you put a lot of detail in the outline, all you will have to do is connect arguments and make it readable.

If you have to turn in a formal outline, as part of your essay, check that each level has at least two parts.

Tip #3. Write your Hamlet essay thesis statement

A thesis statement is among the crucial parts of your entire essay. It tells your readers what you will write in the rest of the paper. It should correspond with the essay title and act as a short preview of the assignment.

You will bring up may points in the paper, although the thesis should tie all of them together.

Write your Hamlet essay thesis statement during outlining and refine it when you start writing. It is possible to revise it when the essay is already finished, and you see ways to improve the thesis.

Tip #4. Start writing your Hamlet essay

When you begin to write an essay, you can check available samples and titles to get inspiration. However, make it personal. Ask yourself questions.

Here are some question examples: What interests me about the play? Is it Hamlet’s monologues? Is it the figure of the Ghost of Hamlet’s father? Or is it something even more obscure?

If you are still struggling to find your Hamlet essay topics or ideas to add to the paper, check these free samples of high-quality papers!

Hamlet’s Relationship with His Mother (Gertrude) – Attitude Towards Her The conversation between Hamlet and his mother brings back Gertrude to her senses where she feels guilty and ashamed of her actions.
A Critical Analysis of Hamlet’s Constant Procrastination in Shakespeare’s Hamlet Claudius is successful in his ambition and Hamlet is left with the decision on whether or not to kill his uncle so as to avenge his father’s death.
Hamlet, Laertes, Fortinbras: Revenge for the Deaths of Their Fathers He thinks about the fact that revenge is not a good action to make his soul get to heavens. His is a prince of Norway, but likewise Hamlet did not receive the crown, he was […]
Gertrude’s Character in “Hamlet” by William Shakespeare However, in the second part of the play, when Gertrude faces the truth of her first husband’s dead, she immediately stands a reformed character, sympathetic to Hamlet’s cause.
Shakespeare’s “Hamlet”: The Use of Allusion and Metaphors Shakespeare’s use of allusion and metaphors in Hamlet is vital to creating the dramatic imagery surrounding the play and foreshadowing the extent of the growing conflict.
Shakespeare: Hamlet The scene that is the subject of this report refers to a scene in the play that takes place at the graveyard following the death of Ophelia.
Psychoanalytic Study of Hamlet by Ernest Jones (Critical Writing) I agree with the author regarding the dialogues, the flow of the play, and the sequence of the events in it.
William Shakespeare: Hamlet and Macbeth It is important to examine the role that the setting plays in Hamlet and Macbeth in relation to the tragic flaw and developments of the plot.
Hamlet’s Attitude Toward Women in Shakespear’s “Hamlet” The event that gives birth to his hatred is Gertrude’s marriage to her brother-in-law Claudius very soon after the untimely death of her husband, King Hamlet.
Why Is Hamlet a Complex Character: Critical Analysis When Hamlet’s father requests him to avenge his death against King Claudius, he is unable to carry out his revenge. In addition, Shakespeare mission to delay Hamlet’s plan to avenge his father’s death highlights the […]
Hamlet Analysis Essay: Shakespeare’s Play Analysis Example The writer used the name of the play as the name of the main actor while other characters in the play helped in development of the predominant theme in the main character.
Blindness in Oedipus Rex & Hamlet Therefore, in this play, the sighted like Oedipus and Jocasta are ‘blind’ to the truth whilst the blind like Teiresias can see the truth.
Hamlet & Laertes: Fathers’ Death Reactions King Hamlet’s ghost then informs prince Hamlet of the person who killed him; consequently, Hamlet accepts the ghost’s demands, swears his accomplices to secrecy and reveals to them his intention of killing the king to […]
Father-Son Relationships in Hamlet – Hamlet’s Opinion In the case of Hamlet, he surrenders his own life and future to the will of his father, albeit following significant hesitation, not to mention the passage of an entire play.
Minor Characters in Shakespeare’s “Hamlet” Some of the stories that the reader comes to know, about some people or events in the play, come inform of narrations from the minor characters. The minor characters give most of the information known […]
Hamlet vs. Oedipus Compare and Contrast Essay In his speech to his brother-in-law Creon, the proud king voices the desire to find the murderer to secure not only the wellbeing of his state but his safety as a ruler as well.
Literary Analysis of “Hamlet” by William Shakespeare They are the symbolic image of Hamlet’s father the ghost of the King, the flowers and Ophelia, the skull, and the grave of Yorick.
“The Lion King” Movie as Adaptation of Shakespeare’s “Hamlet” The film parallels Hamlet as the main characters in the play and the film are both princes, and the antagonists are uncles who murder their brothers to gain power.
Lying, Acting, Hypocrisy in Shakespeare’s “Hamlet” This paper will argue that, although the concepts of hypocrisy, lying, and acting are brought up directly only a few times in Hamlet, the manifestations thereof can be found throughout the poem, the Dutch prince […]
Hamlet’s Choice of Fortinbras as His Successor Choice of Fortinbras is an act to usurp his place as the rightful king and avenge for the injustice done to Fortinbras, as well as him. Another reason could be an act to reconcile with […]
Resilience of Hamlet and Oedipus The plot of the tragedy of Sophocles is built on a chain of accidents, which are in fact the fatal will of the powerful gods.
Role of Women in Twelfth Night and Hamlet by Shakespeare Purpose of the research The purpose of this study is to compare specific women characters in Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night and Hamlet and to explore their similarities in terms of their passivity, relationships with other characters […]
Elements of Literature Used in Shakespeare’s “Hamlet” The audience may be able to show a degree of empathy with Hamlet as the play was written in a slightly satirical manner and shows that he is very much human in his qualities and […]
Comparison of “Hamlet”, “King Lear” and “Othello” by Shakespeare Iago’s reports and the loss of the handkerchief appear to Othello reliable proofs of Desdemona’s unfaithfulness, and under the effect of anger the protagonist is both unable and unwilling to do further investigation.
Characterization of Hamlet When Hamlet learns in a dream that he is supposed to revenge the death of his father, he promises to do so “with wings as swift as meditation or the thoughts of love, may sweep […]
Shakespeare versus Olivier: A Depiction of ‘Hamlet’ The presentation of the Ghost in the film builds the main theme of revenge and tragedy. Olivier shows that the Oedipus complex is a crucial aspect in understanding the play especially the character of Hamlet […]
“Hamlet and His Problems” by Thomas Stearns Eliot Hamlet assumes the role of both the father and the son and the need to detect his identity about his idea of the father becomes problematic in the presence of his mother.
Hamlet And Laertes: A Comparison Hamlet, shocked by the revelation and shaken to the core by the knowledge of his mother’s role in the act, immediately makes his intention clear in the presence of the ghost.
Hamlet’s Renaissance Culture Conflict The death of Hamlet as the play ends indicates that though he was the definite answer to all the questions before him as he faced death, he was not in any position to give any […]
Hamlet’s Hesitation in Revenge: Four Separate Theories The play within a play is one of many tactics Hamlet employs over the course of the play to delay the revenge and therefore avoid his own death.
Horatio (Hamlet): Character Analysis Hamlet does not follow his friend’s caution and goes with the ghost, where he learns of his father’s murder and swears to avenge him.
Ophelia from Shakespeare’s ”Hamlet” Shakespeare employs the traditional view of the woman as a means of illustrating its more dangerous elements through his portrayal of Ophelia in her innocence, the ease with which others use her, and the suspicion […]
Hamlet in the Film and the Play: Comparing and Contrasting There is a certain discrepancy in the way Shakespeare’s Hamlet and Gibson’s hero unveil the tragic style of the play. This assumption is justified by the scenes from the movie because many of the dialogues […]
Hamlet’s Mental State and Issues That Affected Him To begin with, it is evident to the reader that the main character is overwhelmed by the grief and mourning of his father.
Creative Process in William Shakespeare Works Creativity in his works, Merchant of Venice and Hamlet, is portrayed by the manner he makes choice of characters, the way themes are tied up with stylistic language to reflect hidden meanings reflective of the […]
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern in the “Hamlet” Hamlet is a son to the former King and a nephew to the current King Claudius These two characters seem indispensable throughout and serve as informants of Claudius. In the play, they fit in as […]
The Theme of Revenge in Shakespeare’s Hamlet The latter, after seeing his father’s ghost and learning the truth, feels that he is taken over by revenge and sets up a performance that copies Claudius’s, the murderer’s, plan and results in a tragic […]
Comparing Dr. Faustus and Hamlet Hamlet kills numerous characters in the play and this goes to show his excessive pride or in other words his sin of pride.
Education and Knowledge in “Hamlet” by Shakespeare Shakespeare portrays that in a world of complexity, instability, and unpredictability, people are struggling to make sense of the changes and to situate themselves within the new milieu.
The Use of Revenge in William Shakespeare`s “Hamlet” The only character in the play to claim to have first-hand knowledge of the murder of Hamlet’s father and who speaks aloud about them to another character is the ghost of Hamlet’s father.
Hamlet and King Oedipus Literature Comparison This essay compares the characters and roles of both Hamlet and King Oedipus as the sons who have to deliver justice to their fathers’ killers.
“The Prince” by Machiavelli and “Hamlet” by Shakespeare The author tries to bring to light the concepts of life when he uses the different aspects of death in the piece of work.
William Shakespeare: Hamlet’s Actions and Inactions This paper is an attempt to analyze Hamlet’s actions and inactions to prove the authenticity of the application of these maxims to the protagonist.
Deceiving Appearances in “Hamlet” and “The Lion King” In particular, Claudius and Scar represent villains under the guise of well-wishers, while Rosencrantz and Guildenstern from Hamlet and hyenas from The Lion King appear worse than they seem.
The Idea of Insanity in “Hamlet” He is maybe a bit spoiled and used to getting his own way, but he knows he has a duty to the state and to his family and he knows he is destined to someday […]
Macbeth and Hamlet Characters Comparison The queens in Hamlet and Macbeth play a pivotal role in the life of the heroes of the play. She is portrayed as a mother who, in her awareness of Hamlet’s crisis, feels guilty and […]
Consideration of the Ghost in “Hamlet” by Shakespeare The Ghost in the play is charitable because it helps Hamlet to know the truth about the way his father died and to begin finding clues for the murder.
“Hamlet” by William Shakespeare: To Be or Not to Be It begins with supernatural such as the presence of the ghost and Hamlet attempting to glance into Claudius’ soul, to the mystery of the crime and the need for revenge. The masterful use of style, […]
“Hamlet” and “Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead” The link of “Hamlet” and “Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead” to the present days can be seen in the lost characters.
The Importance of Paintings in Hamlet The play revolves around the two opposing forces: truth and deceit, and we see a contrast between the importance of being true to one’s self and the importance of being truthful with others.
Anti-Heroism in Shakespeare’s Hamlet and Cervantes’ Don Quixote This ghost will only talk to Hamlet, and when the time is right, he will share his side of the account with the prince.
Appearance vs. Reality in Shakespeare’s “Hamlet” and Sophocles’ “Oedipus Rex” In preparing for the performance, Hamlet provides the players with specific lines and actions to include within the overall play they are about to perform and gives them lengthy instructions as to the acting of […]
Key Themes in “Hamlet” by William Shakespeare Among the characters in this play include Claudius, hamlet, Gertrude, Polonius, Ophelia, Horatio, Laertes, Voltimand, Rosencrantz, Osric, ghost of Hamlet’s father, Barnardo to mention but a few Mystery of death is one theme that clearly […]
The Hamlet’s Emotional Feelings in the Shakespearean Tragedy The grief that Hamlet feels at the death of his father is tempered by a Claudius’s statement to him that grief is ‘unmanly.’ He also associates women with deception beginning with his mother with whom […]
Hamlet: Gertrude’s Complicit Character However, Queen Gertrude seems to be more on the inside of the plotting and scheming occurring within the castle than an innocent woman should have.
Hesitation and Indeterminacy of Hamlet There is no denying the importance of the fact that the whole fabric of Shakespeare’s tragedy unfolds in Hamlet subjective perception and interpretation of his uncle and mother’ treason.
Human Nature and Morality in “Hamlet” and “Dr. Faustus” These are the problems we are going to discuss in the current essay, and we are going to address for help with it such masterpieces of literature as the play “Hamlet, the Prince of Denmark” […]
Depression and Melancholia Expressed by Hamlet The paper will not attempt and sketch the way the signs or symptoms of depression/melancholia play a part in the way Shakespeare’s period or culture concerning depression/melancholia, but in its place portrays the way particular […]
The Role of Queen Gertrude in Play “Hamlet” Whether or not Queen Gertrude, Prince Hamlet’s mother, was guilty of being part of the conspiracy that led to the murder of her husband, King Hamlet is debatable.
The Function of the Soliloquies in Hamlet This happens when it influences the plot, the characterization in the play, and the play’s mood, on top of expressing themes that could be termed to be the main themes.
Shakespeare’s Hamlet’s Behavior in Act III In the end, he comes to the conclusion that this obscurity is the reason people do not want to die and prefer to lead the lives full of suffering.
Aeschylus’ Oresteia and Shakespeare’s Hamlet One such device in Hamlet is Shakespeare’s placing of the Danish prince in the context of Fortinbras and Laertes as the characters that, like Hamlet, find themselves in the role of having to avenge their […]
“The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark” and “A Raisin in the Sun” In this regard, the decisions of Hamlet, Claudius, Walter, and Lena illustrate the character’s commitment to family despite differences of opinion and disagreements.
Shakespeare Authorship Question: Thorough Analysis of Style, Context, and Violence in the Plays Hamlet, Julius Caesar, Twelfth Night It should be stated that even though most of the scholars point to the fact that Shakespeare was not the author of the plays, I would like to contradict this opinion and prove that Shakespeare’s […]
“Hamlet the Prince of Denmark” by William Shakespeare The first one is the plot of the play that lasts from the beginning till the scene when Hamlet meets the ghost of his father.
Protagonist in Shakespeare’s “Hamlet” The Protagonist plays a major part to achieve the goals of the story while the antagonist is an adversary who struggles against the efforts of the protagonist.
The Issue of Human Manipulation in ‘Hamlet’ by W. Shakespeare It seems the love he contains in his heart is not enough for him to forgive and forget what has happened.
A Play Within a Play: Hamlet and Second Shepherd’s Play In contrast to Hamlet, the role of ‘a play within a play’ is to underline onstage and offstage characters and their qualities.
Hamlet and Forgiveness: A Personal Reflection Some of the most prominent themes in the story are the ideas of mutual forgiveness, people’s motivation to be proactive and take risks, and their willingness to forgive and ask for forgiveness.
Resiliency in Sophocles’ Oedipus and Shakespeare’s Hamlet According to the information provided the reader rises with the question dealing with the resiliency of both Hamlet and Oedipus and what does it mean to them.
Hamlet: A New Type of Independent Thinker Hamlet considers the plan to disturb Claudius and convince the audience of his guilt distracting attention from prayer and confession. Such innovations permeate the entire text, which allows the reader to assert that Hamlet did […]
Hamlet’s Descent Into Darkness: A Tale of Revenge, Death, and Uncertainty Hamlet was thinking about the afterlife and suicide to achieve peace, and during this speech, a reader might feel the pain and despair of the main character.
Hamlet vs. Oedipus Rex: Who Is More Resilient? In Sophocles’ Oedipus the King, Oedipus is a protagonist; he is seeking the truth and is unconcerned about the harm it may pose.
Reality and Illusion in Shakespeare’s Hamlet The last and the greatest deceiving character is Claudius, who is far from being the brave brother of the monarch who ascended to the throne in order to protect the kingdom. It is evident that […]
Shakespeare’s “Hamlet”: Hamlet as a Masculine Character Initially, the themes and scenes of the play were designed for staging at the Shakespeare theatre, and the costumes and the actors’ play were supposed to evoke awe for the rich life of medieval nobles.
Coping With Changes in Shakespeare’s “Hamlet” and O’Connor’s “A Good Man…” Tragedies in “Hamlet” and “A Good Man Is Hard to Find” lead characters to rely on the change as a coping mechanism.”Hamlet” narrates the story of an individual dealing with a loss which leads him […]
Shakespeare’s “Hamlet” and the Modern World The tragedy of Hamlet addresses eternal problems: the incompatibility of lofty ideals and dreams with reality, the mismatch between the goals and the means of achieving them, and the role of the individual in history.
Shakespeare’s “Hamlet” Play: Then and Now Hamlet’s cynicism, as well as his sense of meaning, distinguish him as a uniquely contemporary figure and a watershed moment in the theatrical past.
Does Shakespearean Hamlet Love Ophelia? The love that Hamlet has for Ophelia is demonstrated in letters that he wrote to her. Hamlet reminds Ophelia that he is in love with her in the later stages of Act 3 of the […]
Hamlet and Gertrude Relationships in Shakespeare’s Play However, even though Hamlet threatens to murder Gertrude to “wring” her heart, the audience can understand that he loves his mother and wants her to repent of her sins and end the relationship with Hamlet’s […]
Power and Importance of Hamlet’s Role in Shakespeare’s Play The first striking problem of Hamlet is the one of choice, which may be considered a reflection of the main conflict of the tragedy.
Gender Roles and Representation of Women in “Hamlet” Specifically, the author refers to the problem of being confined in the prison of gender stereotypes that can be experienced when reading Shakespeare’s works.
Is Shakespeare’s Hamlet Really Crazy? According to the first one, Hamlet pretends to be mad, so that he is not taken seriously and is not considered as dangerous, under the guise of a madman, he can say anything.
Oedipus and Hamlet Characters’ Contrast and Comparison The purpose of this essay is to compare and contrast one of the main characters of literature – Oedipus and Hamlet, as well as to determine the qualities and skills of people which make them […]
“Oedipus King” by Sophocles and “Hamlet” by Shakespeare The protagonist is on the verge of madness: an intelligent and unexcelled humanist in the world, which is an enemy to his ideas. However, Oedipus later comes to terms with his fate and takes responsibility […]
Hamlet: Analyzing Various Scenes On top of this, Hamlet hopes that seeing a replay of the murder of his father would move the king’s conscience to a point where he would be forced to admit his crime.
Human Nature in Shakespearean Tragedy “Hamlet” Soliloquies maintain significant place in the play Hamlet, which start with the beginning of the play, and chase the protagonist almost near the close of the end of the play.
Shakespearean Hamlet’s Character Interpretation For example, Hamlet believed that his mother was loyal to his father and to the kingdom, but he felt unhappy with how events unfolded when grieving.
Hamlet’s Relationship With His Mother and Uncle Hamlet’s assessment of his issues is accurate in the sense that he already associates Claudius with problems, but the prince is too quick to judge his mother.
Supporting Characters in “The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark” Shakespeare utilizes secondary characters to depict the theme of friendship and loyalty, as these aspects are influential on the main character.
“Hamlet” by William Shakespeare: Overview In the play Hamlet is a noble soldier with admirable qualities but he avenges the death of his father using his free will.
Genji, Hamlet, Oedipus and Jesus Christ Character Analysis This paper will attempt to asses the characters in the following set of books and plays: The New Testament, Oedipus the King, Shakespeare Hamlet and Shikibu the tale of the Genji.
Shakespeare’s “Hamlet” as the Central Tragedy for Revenge Understanding The core concept of revenge in Hamlet, Shakespeare’s play, is the hesitation of the main character and his doubt moral and philosophical maxims in the whole world; the main idea of the play may be […]
The Vision of the Main Character in Shakespeare’s “Hamlet” The main character of the tragedy is Hamlet, a young man who comes to know about the real reasons of his father’s death from the ghost that claims to be the spirit of his father. […]
Hamlet’s Parental Relationships The death of his father, the actions of his mother and his existing relationship with his uncle all have Hamlet confused regarding the true nature of the world.
The Character of Gertrude in ‘Hamlet’ The character of Ophelia is responsible for projecting an aura of guilt and deception to the role of women in ‘Hamlet.’ She is not treacherous or complicated, but instead weak and insensibly dependent on the […]
Themes in “Hamlet” by William Shakespeare With consideration of critical responses, use of language and structure, and through a close analysis of Hamlet’s soliloquies, the role of Shakespeare’s characterization of Hamlet in shaping the enduring power of the text is appreciated […]
“Hamlet” Scene Comparison: Hawke’s and Gibson’s Films In both Hawke’s and Gibson’s versions of Hamlet, the original text is used for dialogue between Hamlet and Ophelia as she is sent to trap the reasons for Hamlet’s insanity out of him.
William Shakespeare’s “Hamlet” Drama Play These soliloquies are dramatic and ironical, Harold Wilson submits, with an irony that is implicit and eloquent in the extravagances of Hamlet’s rhetoric.
Hamlet: The Circumstances That Lead Hamlet to Soliloquy Out of his anger, he worries about the death of his father and the hasty marriage of his mother to his uncle.
The Reflection of Time in “Hamlet” by Shakespeare Thesis Human existence and purpose of life were considered unimportant because the human soul had a divine nature, thus, they were afraid of death as an unknown state of human existence.
Hamlet, Ophelia and Insanity in Shakespear’s “Hamlet” The knowledge the Queen has as to the specific nature of Ophelia’s death calls into question her sincerity in her lament.
Gender Equality Question: “Hamlet” by William Shakespeare For the past few centuries, the rise of various movements have marked a certain change in the ideas and philosophies of man regarding the true nature of his existence, the pronounced inequalities of not only […]
Hamlet by William Shakespeare: A Filmic Event In bringing Shakespeare’s classic story of Hamlet to the big screen and reset into a modern context, director Michael Almereyda is forced to reinterpret the role of Ophelia due to significant changes in modern women’s […]
Roles of Poison in Shakespeari’s “Hamlet” It is obvious that Hamlet is the representative of the new world. I think that the answer to this riddle is that his ways of revenge are not good.
Characters in “The Scarlet Letter” and “Hamlet” Film Hester returns to Boston just before her death, in order to be buried in the same grave as Dimmesdale, with ‘A’ inscribed on their tombstone. Much to her son’s anger and disgust, she marries Claudius […]
Comparison of Shakespeare’s “Hamlet” and Perrault’s “Cinderella” The paper also includes the analysis of the narratives in accordance with the epic laws introduced by Axel Olrik. In Cinderella’s story, the presence of royalty is only limited to the prince.
Freud and Hamlet’s Relationship with His Mother When analyzing the relationship between Hamlet and his mother, one can note that even at a young age, the Oedipus complex manifests in the boy, which reflects a number of his conflicting experiences about his […]
Ghost in Shakespeare’s “Hamlet” Play In Shakespeare’s play Hamlet, the titular character begins plotting his revenge after he encounters the ghost of his father, who informs him of the murder as well as the culprits.
Act 1 Scene 2 of the “Hamlet” Play by Shakespeare The use of honorifics, stichomythia, and imagery is discussed, as well as the aside, the motif of spying, and the overall mood of the scene will be discussed and evaluated. The overall mood of the […]
Ophelia and Hamlet’s Dialogue in Shakespeare’s Play In some ways, this scene represents the conflict between Hamlet and the society he lives in, as no one is capable of understanding his concerns.
The Masks of William Shakespeare’s Play “Hamlet” The first thing that has to be determined is the truth behind the claim that Hamlet saw the ghost of his departed father.
Ghosts and Revenge in Shakespeare’s Hamlet Despite the common beliefs concerning the existence of ghosts, it seems that the ghost’s presence is still supported by the testimonies of all characters in the story, including Horatio, Francisco, and the protagonist himself.
Act II of Hamlet by William Shakespeare The King is worried about Hamlet’s madness and starts to suspect that he might have found out the real reasons for his father’s death.
Meditative and Passionate Responses in the Play “Hamlet” This is seen in his soliloquy “to be, or not to be: that is the question; /Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer?
Portrayal of Hamlet in Shakespeare’s Play and Zaffirelli’s Film In fact, Mel Gisbon’s power as an act does not provide a sufficient understanding of his ability to penetrate to Shakespeare’s world and reach the ideas in the play.
Psychiatric Analysis of Hamlet Literature Analysis However, he tells the doctor that he is not actually aware of the reasons that are taking him to his death.
The Value of Source Study of Hamlet by Shakespeare In regards to the intended significance, Stopes, Belleforest, and Shakespeare report that Shakespeare designed the role of the ghost to appear to Hamlet relentlessly to enhance the melancholy motif of the play.
William Shakespeare’s Hamlet, Prince of Denmark Generally, the main idea of the play is considered to be the impact of people’s actions on their future.”The ghost of Hamlet’s father does urge him to action”.
Relationships Among Individuals in Shakespeare’s Plays The events that take place in Athens are symbolic in the sense that they represent the sequence of events during the day whereas the events in the forest represent the dream like circumstances.
Canonical Status of Hamlet by William Shakespeare However, the technique has been defended by some of the scholars who argue that Shakespeare’s skill is to develop and emphasize the purpose of duality and dislocation in the play.
The Play “Hamlet Prince of Denmark” by W.Shakespeare Hamlet, a Denmark Prince, is the main character in the play. In the climax of the play, Claudius appears to be responsible for the death of King Hamlet.
Oedipus the King and Hamlet However, the fact is both Oedipus and Claudius managed to get the post of kingship after killing the former kings leaving the seats vacant. In conclusion, both Oedipus and King Claudius attained their crown after […]
How a Film Interprets Hamlet Laurence Olivier’s need to focus on less traditional approaches, his need to shorten the production, and the need to perform a psychological analysis of the characters determine his interpretation of the play ‘Hamlet’.
A Play “Hamlet” by William Shakespear Hamlet decides to prove whether Claudius really killed his father and in act three, he uses the play “The Murder of Gonzago” to get the truth.
Recurring Theme of Revenge in Hamlet On top of this, Laertes wants to revenge the insanity and subsequent death of his sister, which he blames on Hamlet.
How Effectively Does Shakespeare Introduce the Characters and Themes of “Hamlet”?
How Does Shakespeare Present Women and Sex in “Hamlet”?
Is Shakespeare’s “Hamlet” Based on a True Story?
What Are the Symbols in “Hamlet”?
Where Did Shakespeare Get His Inspiration for “Hamlet”?
How Does Shakespeare Use Conflict in “Hamlet” as a Way of Exploring Ideas?
What Is the Language Style in “Hamlet” Play?
How “Hamlet” Was Inspired by an Obscure Tale From Finland’s Kalavala?
How Does Shakespeare Introduce the Theme of Madness in “Hamlet”?
What Does “Hamlet” Teach Us About Humanity?
Did William Shakespeare Really Write “Hamlet”?
How Strange Behavior and Ghosts Are Depicted in “Hamlet”?
What Is the Most Important Theme in “Hamlet”?
What Is the Contrast Between Hamlet and Claudius in “Hamlet”?
What Is the the Meaning of Soliloquy in “Hamlet”?
How Perennial Issues of the Human Condition Are Imaged in “Hamlet”?
What Are the Similar Motifs Between “Wuthering Heights” and “Hamlet”?
Why Did Shakespeare Choose Loyalty and Betrayal as Lead Themes in “Hamlet”?
What Are the Inward and Outward Conflicts in “Hamlet”?
How Does Shakespeare Use Language in “Hamlet” to Teach the Reader?
What Is the Significance of “Hamlet’s” Creating?
How Do “Hamlet” Characters Solve Their Mental Problems?
How Crime Fiction and Shakespeare’s “Hamlet” Are Connected?
What Is Corruption and How Its Rampant Impact Is Depicted in “Hamlet”?
Why Is the Ending of “Hamlet” Ironic?
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Home › Drama Criticism › Analysis of William Shakespeare’s Hamlet

Analysis of William Shakespeare’s Hamlet

By NASRULLAH MAMBROL on July 25, 2020 • ( 2 )

With Shakespeare the dramatic resolution conveys us, beyond the man-made sphere of poetic justice, toward the ever-receding horizons of cosmic irony. This is peculiarly the case with Hamlet , for the same reasons that it excites such intensive empathy from actors and readers, critics and writers alike. There may be other Shakespearean characters who are just as memorable, and other plots which are no less impressive; but nowhere else has the outlook of the individual in a dilemma been so profoundly realized; and a dilemma, by definition, is an all but unresolvable choice between evils. Rather than with calculation or casuistry, it should be met with virtue or readiness; sooner or later it will have to be grasped by one or the other of its horns. These, in their broadest terms, have been—for Hamlet, as we interpret him—the problem of what to believe and the problem of how to act.

—Harry Levin, The Question of Hamlet

Hamlet is almost certainly the world’s most famous play, featuring drama’s and literature’s most fascinating and complex character. The many-sided Hamlet—son, lover, intellectual, prince, warrior, and avenger—is the consummate test for each generation’s leading actors, and to be an era’s defining Hamlet is perhaps the greatest accolade one can earn in the theater. The play is no less a proving ground for the critic and scholar, as successive generations have refashioned Hamlet in their own image, while finding in it new resonances and entry points to plumb its depths, perplexities, and possibilities. No other play has been analyzed so extensively, nor has any play had a comparable impact on our culture. The brooding young man in black, skull in hand, has moved out of the theater and into our collective consciousness and cultural myths, joining only a handful of comparable literary archetypes—Oedipus, Faust, and Don Quixote—who embody core aspects of human nature and experience. “It is we ,” the romantic critic William Hazlitt observed, “who are Hamlet.”

Hamlet also commands a crucial, central place in William Shakespeare’s dramatic career. First performed around 1600, the play stands near the midpoint of the playwright’s two-decade career as a culmination and new departure. As the first of his great tragedies, Hamlet signals a decisive shift from the comedies and history plays that launched Shakespeare’s career to the tragedies of his maturity. Although unquestionably linked both to the plays that came before and followed, Hamlet is also markedly exceptional. At nearly 4,000 lines, almost twice the length of Macbeth , Hamlet is Shakespeare’s longest and, arguably, his most ambitious play with an enormous range of characters—from royals to gravediggers—and incidents, including court, bedroom, and graveyard scenes and a play within a play. Hamlet also bristles with a seemingly inexhaustible array of ideas and themes, as well as a radically new strategy for presenting them, most notably, in transforming soliloquies from expositional and motivational asides to the audience into the verbalization of consciousness itself. As Shakespearean scholar Stephen Greenblatt has asserted, “In its moral complexity, psychological depth, and philosophical power, Hamlet seems to mark an epochal shift not only in Shakespeare’s own career but in Western drama; it is as if the play were giving birth to a whole new kind of literary subjectivity.” Hamlet, more than any other play that preceded it, turns its action inward to dramatize an isolated, conflicted psyche struggling to cope with a world that has lost all certainty and consolation. Struggling to reconcile two contradictory identities—the heroic man of action and duty and the Christian man of conscience—Prince Hamlet becomes the modern archetype of the self-divided, alienated individual, desperately searching for self-understanding and meaning. Hamlet must contend with crushing doubt without the support of traditional beliefs that dictate and justify his actions. In describing the arrival of the fragmentation and chaos of the modern world, Victorian poet and critic Matthew Arnold declared that “the calm, cheerfulness, the disinterested objectivity have disappeared, the dialogue of the mind with itself has commenced.” Hamlet anticipates that dialogue by more than two centuries.

Like all of Shakespeare’s plays, Hamlet makes strikingly original uses of borrowed material. The Scandinavian folk tale of Amleth, a prince called upon to avenge his father’s murder by his uncle, was first given literary form by the Danish writer Saxo the Grammarian in his late 12th century Danish History and later adapted in French in François de Belleforest’s Histoires tragiques (1570). This early version of the Hamlet story provided Shakespeare with the basic characters and relationships but without the ghost or the revenger’s uncertainty. In the story of Amleth there is neither doubt about the usurper’s guilt nor any moral qualms in the fulfillment of the avenger’s mission. In preChristian Denmark blood vengeance was a sanctioned filial obligation, not a potentially damnable moral or religious violation, and Amleth successfully accomplishes his duty by setting fire to the royal hall, killing his uncle, and proclaiming himself king of Denmark. Shakespeare’s more immediate source may have been a nowlost English play (c. 1589) that scholars call the Ur – Hamlet. All that has survived concerning this play are a printed reference to a ghost who cried “Hamlet, revenge!” and criticism of the play’s stale bombast. Scholars have attributed the Ur-Hamle t to playwright Thomas Kyd, whose greatest success was The Spanish Tragedy (1592), one of the earliest extant English tragedies. The Spanish Tragedy popularized the genre of the revenge tragedy, derived from Aeschylus’s Oresteia and the Latin plays of Seneca, to which Hamlet belongs. Kyd’s play also features elements that Shakespeare echoes in Hamlet, including a secret crime, an impatient ghost demanding revenge, a protagonist tormented by uncertainty who feigns madness, a woman who actually goes mad, a play within a play, and a final bloodbath that includes the death of the avenger himself. An even more immediate possible source for Hamlet is John Marston’s Antonio’s Revenge (1599), another story of vengeance on a usurper by a sensitive protagonist.

Whether comparing Hamlet to its earliest source or the handling of the revenge plot by Kyd, Marston, or other Elizabethan or Jacobean playwrights, what stands out is the originality and complexity of Shakespeare’s treatment, in his making radically new and profound uses of established stage conventions. Hamlet converts its sensational material—a vengeful ghost, a murder mystery, madness, a heartbroken maiden, a fistfight at her burial, and a climactic duel that results in four deaths—into a daring exploration of mortality, morality, perception, and core existential truths. Shakespeare put mystery, intrigue, and sensation to the service of a complex, profound epistemological drama. The critic Maynard Mack in an influential essay, “The World of Hamlet ,” has usefully identified the play’s “interrogative mode.” From the play’s opening words—“Who’s there?”—to “What is this quintessence of dust?” through drama’s most famous soliloquy—“To be, or not to be, that is the question.”— Hamlet “reverberates with questions, anguished, meditative, alarmed.” The problematic nature of reality and the gap between truth and appearance stand behind the play’s conflicts, complicating Hamlet’s search for answers and his fulfillment of his role as avenger.

Hamlet opens with startling evidence that “something is rotten in the state of Denmark.” The ghost of Hamlet’s father, King Hamlet, has been seen in Elsinore, now ruled by his brother, Claudius, who has quickly married his widowed queen, Gertrude. When first seen, Hamlet is aloof and skeptical of Claudius’s justifications for his actions on behalf of restoring order in the state. Hamlet is morbidly and suicidally disillusioned by the realization of mortality and the baseness of human nature prompted by the sudden death of his father and his mother’s hasty, and in Hamlet’s view, incestuous remarriage to her brother-in-law:

O that this too too solid flesh would melt, Thaw, and resolve itself into a dew! Or that the Everlasting had not fix’d His canon ’gainst self-slaughter! O God! God! How weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable Seem to me all the uses of this world! Fie on’t! ah, fie! ’Tis an unweeded garden That grows to seed; things rank and gross in nature Possess it merely. That it should come to this!

A recent student at the University of Wittenberg, whose alumni included Martin Luther and the fictional Doctor Faustus, Hamlet is an intellectual of the Protestant Reformation, who, like Luther and Faustus, tests orthodoxy while struggling to formulate a core philosophy. Brought to encounter the apparent ghost of his father, Hamlet alone hears the ghost’s words that he was murdered by Claudius and is compelled out of his suicidal despair by his pledge of revenge. However, despite the riveting presence of the ghost, Hamlet is tormented by doubts. Is the ghost truly his father’s spirit or a devilish apparition tempting Hamlet to his damnation? Is Claudius truly his father’s murderer? By taking revenge does Hamlet do right or wrong? Despite swearing vengeance, Hamlet delays for two months before taking any action, feigning madness better to learn for himself the truth about Claudius’s guilt. Hamlet’s strange behavior causes Claudius’s counter-investigation to assess Hamlet’s mental state. School friends—Rosencrantz and Guildenstern—are summoned to learn what they can; Polonius, convinced that Hamlet’s is a madness of love for his daughter Ophelia, stages an encounter between the lovers that can be observed by Claudius. The court world at Elsinore, is, therefore, ruled by trickery, deception, role playing, and disguise, and the so-called problem of Hamlet, of his delay in acting, is directly related to his uncertainty in knowing the truth. Moreover, the suspicion of his father’s murder and his mother’s sexual betrayal shatter Hamlet’s conception of the world and his responsibility in it. Pushed back to the suicidal despair of the play’s opening, Hamlet is paralyzed by indecision and ambiguity in which even death is problematic, as he explains in the famous “To be or not to be” soliloquy in the third act:

For who would bear the whips and scorns of time, Th’ oppressor’s wrong, the proud man’s contumely, The pangs of despis’d love, the law’s delay, The insolence of office, and the spurns That patient merit of th’ unworthy takes, When he himself might his quietus make With a bare bodkin? Who would these fardels bear, To grunt and sweat under a weary life, But that the dread of something after death— The undiscover’d country, from whose bourn No traveller returns—puzzles the will, And makes us rather bear those ills we have Than fly to others that we know not of? Thus conscience does make cowards of us all, And thus the native hue of resolution Is sicklied o’er with the pale cast of thought, And enterprises of great pith and moment With this regard their currents turn awry And lose the name of action.

The arrival of a traveling theatrical group provides Hamlet with the empirical means to resolve his doubts about the authenticity of the ghost and Claudius’s guilt. By having the troupe perform the Mousetrap play that duplicates Claudius’s crime, Hamlet hopes “to catch the conscience of the King” by observing Claudius’s reaction. The king’s breakdown during the performance seems to confirm the ghost’s accusation, but again Hamlet delays taking action when he accidentally comes upon the guilt-ridden Claudius alone at his prayers. Rationalizing that killing the apparently penitent Claudius will send him to heaven and not to hell, Hamlet decides to await an opportunity “That has no relish of salvation in’t.” He goes instead to his mother’s room where Polonius is hidden in another attempt to learn Hamlet’s mind and intentions. This scene between mother and son, one of the most powerful and intense in all of Shakespeare, has supported the Freudian interpretation of Hamlet’s dilemma in which he is stricken not by moral qualms but by Oedipal guilt. Gertrude’s cries of protest over her son’s accusations cause Polonius to stir, and Hamlet finally, instinctively strikes the figure he assumes is Claudius. In killing the wrong man Hamlet sets in motion the play’s catastrophes, including the madness and suicide of Ophelia, overwhelmed by the realization that her lover has killed her father, and the fatal encounter with Laertes who is now similarly driven to avenge a murdered father. Convinced of her son’s madness, Gertrude informs Claudius of Polonius’s murder, prompting Claudius to alter his order for Hamlet’s exile to England to his execution there.

Hamlet’s mental shift from reluctant to willing avenger takes place offstage during his voyage to England in which he accidentally discovers the execution order and then after a pirate attack on his ship makes his way back to Denmark. He returns to confront the inescapable human condition of mortality in the graveyard scene of act 5 in which he realizes that even Alexander the Great must return to earth that might be used to “stop a beer-barrel” and Julius Caesar’s clay to “stop a hole to keep the wind away.” This sobering realization that levels all earthly distinctions of nobility and acclaim is compounded by the shock of Ophelia’s funeral procession. Hamlet sustains his balance and purpose by confessing to Horatio his acceptance of a providential will revealed to him in the series of accidents on his voyage to England: “There’s a divinity that shapes our ends, / Roughhew them how we will.” Finally accepting his inability to control his life, Hamlet resigns himself to accept whatever comes. Agreeing to a duel with Laertes that Claudius has devised to eliminate his nephew, Hamlet asserts that “There’s a special providence in the fall of a sparrow. If it be now, ’tis not to come. If it be not to come, it will be now. If it be not now, yet it will come. The readiness is all.”

In the carnage of the play’s final scene, Hamlet ironically manages to achieve his revenge while still preserving his nobility and moral stature. It is the murderer Claudius who is directly or indirectly responsible for all the deaths. Armed with a poisonedtip sword, Laertes strikes Hamlet who in turn manages to slay Laertes with the lethal weapon. Meanwhile, Gertrude drinks from the poisoned cup Claudius intended to insure Hamlet’s death, and, after the remorseful Laertes blames Claudius for the plot, Hamlet, hesitating no longer, fatally stabs the king. Dying in the arms of Horatio, Hamlet orders his friend to “report me and my cause aright / To the unsatisfied” and transfers the reign of Denmark to the last royal left standing, the Norwegian prince Fortinbras. King Hamlet’s death has been avenged but at a cost of eight lives: Polonius, Ophelia, Rosencranz, Guildenstern, Laertes, Gertrude, Claudius, and Prince Hamlet. Order is reestablished but only by Denmark’s sworn enemy. Shakespeare’s point seems unmistakable: Honor and duty that command revenge consume the guilty and the innocent alike. Heroism must face the reality of the graveyard.

Fortinbras closes the play by ordering that Hamlet be carried off “like a soldier” to be given a military funeral underscoring the point that Hamlet has fallen as a warrior on a battlefield of both the duplicitous court at Elsinore and his own mind. The greatness of Hamlet rests in the extraordinary perplexities Shakespeare has discovered both in his title character and in the events of the play. Few other dramas have posed so many or such knotty problems of human existence. Is there a special providence in the fall of a sparrow? What is this quintessence of dust? To be or not to be?

Hamlet Oxford Lecture by Emma Smith

Analysis of William Shakespeare’s Plays

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Acknowledgement.

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‘To be or not to be’: Hamlet’s Humanistic Quaestio

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Vanessa Lim, ‘To be or not to be’: Hamlet’s Humanistic Quaestio , The Review of English Studies , Volume 70, Issue 296, September 2019, Pages 640–658, https://doi.org/10.1093/res/hgz005

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Hamlet’s ‘To be or not to be’ speech has long been the subject of intense scholarly attention. By situating the speech against the backdrop of classical and Renaissance rhetorical theory, this essay demonstrates that there is still much more to be said about it. The speech ostensibly examines a quaestio infinita or a thesis , and follows the rhetorical rule that the right way to do so is by the invocation of commonplaces. This reading of Hamlet’s speech is not only consistent with Shakespeare’s characterization of the university-educated prince, who frequently invokes commonplaces, but also has significant implications for our understanding of the play and Shakespeare’s own practice as a writer. The book that Hamlet is reading could well be his own commonplace collection, and it is perhaps in looking up his entries under the heading of ‘Death’ that Hamlet finds what he needs in order to examine his quaestio .

Hamlet’s ‘To be or not to be’ soliloquy, commentators often observe, is strikingly generalized. It has been suggested that Hamlet is not only considering whether to kill himself, but rather the broader question of ‘whether all men ought not to do so’. 1 The speech is said to be ‘ generic rather than reflexive ’, since there are ‘no deictics fastening the content to [Hamlet’s] experience’. 2 It is also composed in such broad terms that it could easily be detached from its position in the play: 3 regardless of one’s position on the textual history of Hamlet , the speech (and the context in which it occurs) appears to be so sufficiently generalized as to survive a re-plotting of the entire work and a compression of its dramatic time. In the 1603 (Q1) edition, the speech immediately follows on from the eavesdropping plan, whereas in the 1604 (Q2) and Folio editions, the fishmonger episode, Hamlet’s encounter with Rosencrans and Guyldensterne, their meeting with the players, and Hamlet’s ‘rogue and pesant slave’ speech occur between the eavesdropping plan and ‘To be or not to be’. 4

Paying attention to the ars rhetorica can help at once to illuminate the kind of rhetorical structure that is at work in Hamlet’s speech, as well as to account for its striking generality. 5 Specifically, I shall argue, Hamlet’s speech is an example of a thesis , and follows the rule that the method of conducting such an argument is by the invocation of commonplaces, the collection of which was central to the intellectual culture of Renaissance humanism. 6 Reading Hamlet’s speech in this way has several significant implications for our understanding of the play as well as of how Shakespeare used his reading. In what follows, I draw attention to the intellectual foundations of Hamlet’s speech by first reconstructing its rhetorical context, and then situating both its res and verba against a number of commonplace books and contemporaneous texts such as works of moral philosophy. In doing so, I challenge the plausibility of attempts to identify ‘sources’ for the speech, and demonstrate how this rhetorical reading is consistent with Shakespeare’s characterization of Hamlet.

By Act 3 Scene 1, Hamlet has been set on his task of revenge by the Ghost, and must thus find a way to oppose his uncle, the King. Alone on stage, he begins to speak:

To be, or not to be, that is the question, Whether tis nobler in the minde to suffer The slings and arrowes of outragious fortune, Or to take Armes against a sea of troubles, And by opposing, end them, to die to sleepe No more, and by a sleepe, to say we end The hart-ake, and the thousand naturall shocks That flesh is heire to; tis a consumation Deuoutly to be wisht to die to sleepe, To sleepe, perchance to dreame, I there’s the rub, For in that sleepe of death what dreames may come When we haue shuffled off this mortall coyle Must giue vs pause, there’s the respect That makes calamitie of so long life: For who would beare the whips and scornes of time, Th’oppressors wrong, the proude mans contumely, The pangs of despiz’d loue, the lawes delay, The insolence of office, and the spurnes That patient merrit of th’vnworthy takes, When he himselfe might his quietas make With a bare bodkin; who would fardels beare, To grunt and sweat vnder a wearie life, But that the dread of something after death, The vndiscouer’d country, from whose borne No trauiler returnes, puzzels the will, And makes vs rather beare those ills we haue, Then flie to others that we know not of. Thus conscience dooes make cowards, And thus the natiue hiew of resolution Is sickled ore with the pale cast of thought, And enterprises of great pitch and moment, With this regard theyr currents turne awry, And loose the name of action. 7

As Colin Burrow puts it, this is ‘more or less a textbook piece of […] classically inspired debate, in which [Hamlet] sets out both sides of the question’, with Shakespeare expecting his audience to hear the Latin quaestio beneath the English equivalent. 8 While the rhetoricians are interested in a variety of quaestiones , the most relevant of these for our present discussion is the distinction between quaestiones finitae and infinitae , or particular and universal questions, known in Greek respectively as hypothesis and thesis. To borrow Quintilian’s example, the question ‘Should Cato marry’ is a quaestio finita , while the question ‘Should one marry’ is a quaestio infinita . 9 For Quintilian, the latter is also prior to the former, since Cato cannot deliberate on the question of whether to marry unless it is first agreed that men should marry. 10 What is proved of the whole will necessarily be proved of the part, and the general case must be established before we can speak of the particular instance. 11 This distinction is reiterated in a number of other classical rhetorical works, such as Cicero’s De partitione oratoria . 12

Renaissance rhetoricians took up the discussion with enthusiasm. One instance may be found in the work of Philipp Melanchthon, who lectured at Hamlet’s own university, Wittenberg. 13 In his Elementa rhetorices , which first appeared in 1531, Melanchthon notes that the hypothesis is circumscribed by circumstances, such as in the question ‘Should war be waged against the Turks?’, while the general question ‘Should a Christian wage war?’ constitutes a thesis . 14 In his De inventione dialectica of 1539, Rudolph Agricola similarly reminds us that while a thesis is not restricted by circumstances of time, place, and person, all or most of these are considered in a hypothesis. 15 He further adds that the distinction between the thesis and the hypothesis corresponds to the dialectical distinction between predicative (or categorical) and conditional (or hypothetical) questions, and illustrates this point with the classic Cato example. 16 A work possibly closer to Shakespeare is Agricola’s 1575 translation of Aphthonius’s Progymnasmata , a key text in the Elizabethan grammar school syllabus. 17 The thesis , as Aphthonius defines it, may also be called a consultatio or a disquistio , and is the contemplation of some res we are investigating through speech. 18 The thesis may be further subdivided into civic and contemplative categories. While the former is concerned with acts that affect all citizens (such as the quaestio of whether or not one ought to marry, or go on a voyage, or build a wall), the latter category consists of quaestiones that may only be contemplated in the mind (such as whether the sky is spherical, or if there are many worlds). 19

The distinction between the thesis and hypothesis is also taken up in the vernacular rhetorical handbooks. In his Art of rhetorique of 1553, Thomas Wilson repeats the familiar suggestion that infinite questions are propounded without circumstances such ‘tyme, place, and person’, while definite questions ‘set furthe a matter with the appoynctment, and namying of place, time, and person’. 20 Although Wilson notes that indefinite questions are ‘more proper vnto the Logicia[n], who talketh of thynges vniuersally’, he reminds us that ‘whosoeuer will talke of a particuler matter must reme[m]ber that within the same also, is comprehended a generall’. 21 Richard Rainolde’s Foundacion of rhetorike of 1563 similarly includes a discussion drawn from the Aphthonian account. Rainolde defines the thesis as a ‘reasonyng by question, vpon a matter vncertaine’, and divides it into ‘Questions Ciuill […] that dooe pertaine to the state of a common wealth’ and ‘question[s] contemplatiue’, which are ‘comprehended in the minde, and in the intelligence of man’. 22 To this Rainolde adds that making an oration in the style of a thesis is very much like making a locus communis oration, although he refrains from commenting any further. 23 The relationship between the thesis and the locus communis oration is taken up more extensively in Reinhard Lorich’s scholia on Aphthonius, which was published alongside Agricola’s translation of the Progymnasmata . Like Rainolde, Lorich points out that the thesis and the locus communis share a great similarity, 24 but he neglects to elaborate, concentrating instead on a discussion of their differences. While the locus communis oration amplifies and augments the causa that is taken up, 25 Lorich tells us, the thesis plainly unfolds the res at hand and demonstrates it through the process of reasoning. 26 The former is also to be declaimed as if the res is certus , while the latter is to be debated and disputed. 27

This way of thinking about quaestiones is regarded as an exceptionally helpful one in the process of inventio . As Wilson puts it, deliberating on an infinite question ‘agreeth well to an Orators profession, and ought well to be knowen’. 28 Considering quaestiones in their infinite form produces res that may be stored for the later application of circumstances: ruminating on the quaestio ‘Should one marry’ provides us with ample material we can use in our discussion of the quaestio ‘Should Cato marry’. Once we have some idea of who our audience is and the circumstances they find themselves in, the quaestio infinita turns into a quaestio finita , and we shall be able to use the matter we have previously generated to advise them on their precise predicaments. Although Rainolde and Lorich do not elaborate on the similarity between the thesis and the locus communis oration, the connection between the two is quite clear in this light. If quaestiones infinitae are deliberations conducted without reference to circumstances, then commonplaces will be particularly helpful since they (to borrow Rainolde’s words) ‘agree vniversally to all menne’. 29

The thesis is also particularly generative in its shifts pro and contra . Aphthonius tells us that the thesis is the first preliminary exercise in which a counter-thesis is included, as well as a rebuttal to that which is questioned. 30 Rainolde echoes this in his suggestion that one ‘maie putte in certaine obiections’. 31 In response to the question ‘Is it good to marie a wife’, one may bring up counterarguments such as the ‘greate care, and pensiuenesse of mind’ brought about ‘by losse of children, or wife’, or the ‘greate sorowe if thy children proue wicked and dissolute’. 32 The answer to these, Rainolde points out, ‘minister[s] matter to declaime vpon’. 33 In other words, the thesis may also be viewed as an exercise in generating res on both sides of the quaestio as the orator switches between pro and contra positions, and in repeatedly offering a contradictio and solutio to their own arguments. 34 As Joel Altman has suggested, this method of inquiry structures various Renaissance works across different forms and genres, and Shakespeare’s first 17 sonnets may even be thought of as an instance in which the classic quaestio ‘Should one marry’ is explored in different forms. 35

Hamlet’s speech, I suggest, is a thesis of the kind I have just described. Its opening quaestio and subsequent reformulation as a choice between suffering ‘the slings and arrowes of outragious fortune’ or taking ‘Armes against a sea of troubles, / And by opposing, end them’ is phrased in an ‘infinite’ style without specific reference to any circumstances of time, place, person, and so on. Perhaps more significantly, as Erasmus puts it in his De copia , stock comparisons such as:

Is the married or unmarried state happier? private or public life? Is monarchy preferable to democracy? Is the life of the student better than that of the uneducated?

may also be considered commonplaces, 36 and the quaestio that Hamlet poses may be thought of as such a commonplace comparison. 37

Furthermore, the rest of Hamlet’s speech can be shown to comprise a number of loci communes , which, as we know, are used to substantiate a thesis . The comparison of death and sleep in its opening lines is a ubiquitous Renaissance topos extensively used in a number of Shakespeare’s poems and plays. 38 It can be invoked, for instance, in a consolatory vein as Robert Cawdry does in his Store-house of similes . We do not grieve when we see our ‘parents and friends’ lay themselves to rest, Cawdry observes, since those who are ‘a sleepe, do soone awake and rise againe’. 39 In Wits theatre of the little world , Robert Allott notes that death is ‘ feigned of the Poets, to be the sister of Sleepe ’, and that sleep has the power to deliver one to ‘ his brother Death ’. 40 William Baldwin posits another familial relationship in his Treatice of moral philosophy : ‘Death and slepe’, Baldwin suggests, are ‘cousins germaine’. 41 Another instance may be found in John Marbeck’s Booke of notes and common places , where he notes that death is both ‘an eternall sleepe’ and a ‘kinde of sleeping’. 42 More evocatively, he adds that death is also ‘a dissolution of the body, a terror of the rich, a desire of [the] poor, a thing inheritable, a pilgrimage vncertaine, a theefe of man, […] a separation of the liuing, a companie of the dead, a resolution of all, a rest of trauails, an end of all idle desires’. 43 Like Hamlet’s speech, Marbeck’s entry copiously describes death in a multitude of ways, and it would not be a stretch to think that Shakespeare found almost all the inspiration he needed here.

A ‘sea of troubles’ is also a Renaissance metaphor that recurs frequently in commonplace books, 44 almost invariably to illustrate the unpredictability and miseries of life. Baldwin’s Treatice , for instance, notes that life is a ‘perillous passage’ in which we are ‘troubled with stormes and tempests farre more miserablye than suche as make shipwracke’. 45 We sail ‘as it were in the sea’, Baldwin writes, ‘alwayes in doubt, hauing fortune our liues gouernour, some hauing prosperous windes, other some contrary’. 46 It is ‘well woorth the marking’, Anthonie Fletcher also suggests in his Certaine very proper, and most profitable similies , that ‘the prophet doth cal men fishes, which are tossed and tumbled, in the troublesome waters, and waues of the world’. 47 ‘For what els is this world’, Fletcher asks, ‘but a sea, continually disquieted with fearce flouds, of infinite temptations, & tossed with stormes of innumerable troubles, and shaken with windes of al maner of vanities?’ 48 This is precisely the sea of troubles that Hamlet has in mind—one that is endlessly subject to the winds of Fortune, making for a difficult and unpleasant voyage. Although ‘slings and arrows’ are not usually specifically singled out as her accoutrements, an armed and dangerous Fortune is also a classic topos that may be found in Erasmus, Dante, and others. 49

The metaphor of death as an undiscovered country is also far from unique to Hamlet’s speech. One instance of its use can be found in Pierre de La Primaudaye’s The second part of the French academie . Seeking to rebut those who doubt the immortality of the soul, Primaudaye writes disparagingly of individuals who ‘delight’ in the ‘beastly opinion’ that ‘no man knoweth what becommeth of the soules of men after the death of their bodies, nor into what countrey they goe’. 50 In his commonplace book, Marbeck similarly notes that in the same way travellers ‘chaunce to come into some vnknowne country’ and ‘cannot tell whither to goe except they haue a guide’, a departed soul enters a territory that is ‘altogether new vnto her’, and she is ‘vncerteine and ignorant whither she may goe, except shee gette a guide’. 51 The ‘vndiscouer’d country, from whose borne / No trauiler returnes’ is, in other words, a further commonplace sentiment. 52

Notably, this idea recurs in Measure for Measure , where Claudio frets about dying and going ‘we know not where’. 53 Ignorance about the afterlife does indeed puzzle the will—Claudio allows his imagination to run to the extremes of ‘fierie floods’, a ‘thrilling Region of thicke-ribbed Ice’ and imprisonment in ‘the viewless windes’ where one is ‘blowne with restlesse violence’. Given these possible tribulations, it is little wonder that Claudio shares Hamlet’s unexceptional sentiment about bearing even the ‘weariest, and most loathed worldly life’, for it is ‘a Paradise’ compared to ‘what we fear of death’. Hamlet’s invocation of this commonplace thought about death as an undiscovered country is also particularly striking in the light of his recent encounter with the Ghost, a traveller who appears to have returned from such a place. 54 Hamlet, it seems, is not drawing on his own experiences and thinking in terms of the specific or the particular, but rather the universal and the general.

Approaching Hamlet’s speech in terms of the commonplaces it invokes has significant implications for the way we think about Shakespeare’s reading and how he used it. It has long been suggested that Shakespeare could have read John Florio’s translation of Montaigne’s Essais before its publication in 1603 due to the ‘apparent instances of verbal reminiscences’ in Hamlet , 55 the most notable of which is the word ‘consumation’ in this speech. 56 Quoting Socrates’ defence before his judges in the essay ‘ Of Phisiognomy ’, Florio’s Montaigne writes evocatively of the prospect of death, drawing together vocabulary and images that echo Hamlet’s own:

I know I have neither frequented nor knowne death, nor have I seene any body, that hath either felt or tried her qualities, to instruct me in them. Those who feare her, presuppose to know her: As for me, I neither know who or what she is, nor what they doe in any other worlde. Death may peradventure be a thing indifferent, happily a thing desirable. Yet is it to be beleeved, that if it be a transmigration from one place to an other, there is some amendement in going to live with so many worthie famous persons, that are deceased; and be exempted from having any more to doe with wicked and corrupted Iudges. If it be a consummation of ones being, it is also an amendement and entrance into a long and quiet night. Wee finde nothing so sweete in life, as a quiet rest and gentle sleepe, and without dreames . 57

As Brian Cummings has suggested, Montaigne’s quotation of Socrates from Plato’s Apology ‘makes sense as a source’ for Hamlet’s speech not only because of this reminiscence, but also because of the ‘structure of his thinking’: like Hamlet, Socrates points out that he is ignorant about what comes after we have shuffled off this mortal coil. 58

However, it is unwarranted to assume that Shakespeare had access to a pre-publication copy of Florio’s Montaigne during the composition of Hamlet . To begin with, such professions of ignorance about the afterlife were fairly common, as evinced by earlier examples. More importantly, Socrates’s speech is as commonplace as can be. It is relayed in Plato’s Apology and then elaborated by Cicero in his Tusculanae disputationes , and the whole ‘death of Socrates’ episode is even used by Erasmus in De copia to suggest sententiae that can be used to praise as well as censure Socrates, illustrating how material for our commonplace books can ‘serve not only diverse but contrary uses’. 59 There is also an important distinction to be made between Montaigne’s quotation of Socrates’s speech and the movement of thought in Hamlet’s speech. Unlike Hamlet, who fears what dreams may come after we have shuffled off this mortal coil, Socrates finds death to be a ‘ quiet rest and gentle sleepe, without dreames ’, and has no aversion to such a ‘ consummation ’. Crucially, the specific vocabulary of Florio’s translation is also far from unique: the phrase consummatum est , in particular, has an extremely strong Biblical resonance. 60

The basic sentiment behind Socrates’s speech can also be found in a large number of Renaissance texts, most notably in the literature of comfort, a subgenre of consolatory writing characterized by descriptions of a corrupt, decaying world very much like Hamlet’s view of Denmark, as well as the concomitant desirability of death in such a situation. Boethius’s De consolatione philosophiae , an early sixth-century work and one of the classic texts of this genre, was undoubtedly known to Shakespeare and his contemporaries. 61 Chaucer’s translation was first published in 1478 by William Caxton, while George Colvile’s rendering was printed in a facing-page edition in 1556. Elizabeth I even attempted a partial translation while at Windsor Castle in the autumn of 1593. In addition to these renderings of Boethius, Thomas Bedingfeld published a translation of Girolamo Cardano’s De consolatione , an Italian book of comfort in 1543, which went through two further editions in 1573 and 1576. Although these texts have been linked to this speech and Hamlet as a whole, 62 their shared intellectual heritage discourages us from decisively identifying them as the sole source for Hamlet’s speech. 63

The same applies to Montaigne’s Essais . While ‘Shakespeare’s Montaigne’ has been and will continue to be the subject of intense discussion, 64 the nature of both texts discourages any attempt to establish a direct link between them. As I have been trying to show, Hamlet’s speech draws on commonplaces which Shakespeare could have gleaned from a wide variety of sources. As Francis Bacon puts it, texts may sometimes be ‘Read by Deputy’, and we may choose to consult the ‘Extracts made of them by Others’. 65 The same strategy is at work in Montaigne’s construction of his Essais , 66 and indeed, in ‘ Of Phisiognomy ’, he explicitly refers to his own practice of commonplace gathering and use. Aware that he may be accused of merely ‘[gathering] a nosegay of strange floures’ without adding anything of his own ‘but the thred to binde them’, Montaigne is keen to point out that his ‘borrowed ornaments’ do not ‘cover or hide’ him, nor is he one who makes their books out of ‘things neither studied nor ever vnderstood’. 67 Instead, he transforms his ‘many borrowings’ into his own by ‘disguising and altering’ them to ‘some new service’. 68

Similarly, if Shakespeare read Florio’s Montaigne in the process of writing Hamlet , then he treated it as a store-house of material to be mined for his own use, 69 as Montaigne claims to have done in his writing. This applies to any number of texts that various commentators have linked with this speech. Be it Florio’s Montaigne, Montaigne in his native French, 70 Boethius, or the commonplace books and works of moral philosophy I have been citing to contextualize this speech, Shakespeare is transforming borrowed ideas into his own. While this borrowed res may most straightforwardly be thought of as verba like ‘consumation’, it could also be a reflection about the nature of the afterlife, or even ideas that frequently recur in a dramatic set-piece. 71 Like Montaigne, who presses borrowed ‘floures’ into new service, Shakespeare is engaging in a characteristically Renaissance practice. As we shall see later, the play also depicts Hamlet’s familiarity with the gathering and use of commonplaces, thus further drawing attention to the speech’s argumentative method and composition, as well as the intellectual resources Shakespeare employed in its construction.

With this in mind, we can now return to the rest of Hamlet’s speech. To end one’s life with a bodkin as a means of escaping the vicissitudes of Fortune is another widely expressed sentiment. One of Seneca’s epistles to Lucilius, for instance, considers how death ought to be preferred by those who are battered by Fortune, and does so in a manner echoed in Hamlet’s thoughts: 72

Shall I expulse the crueltie of a sickenesse, or the tyrannie of a man, when as I may escape euen through the middest of torments, and driue all aduersities farre from me? […] To heale thy head-ach thou hast oft-times let bloud, to extenuate thy bodie thou hast opened thy veine: Thou needest not to open thy breast with a deepe and vast wound; a lancet will giue way to that great libertie, and in a pricke consisteth securitie. What is it then that maketh vs fearfull and slacke to dislodge? 73

Although Thomas Lodge translates Seneca’s scapellum here as ‘lancet’, the bodkin is specifically used as the weapon of choice in many other discussions of self-murder. Richard Robinson writes in A golden mirrour that Cleopatra’s ‘heart did bleyd’ by ‘a bodkin’ she used ‘to curle her golden haire’. 74 Similarly, in a translation of Pedro de la Sierra’s The second part of the myrror of knighthood , the giant Bramarunt contemplates self-murder, and addresses a ‘poor poynado’ in his hand, calling it a ‘silly bodkin’ that he hopes will assist him in ‘bereauing [him] of [his] wearie & lingering lyfe’. 75

Editors of Hamlet have pointed out that a commonplace financial metaphor is also at work in these lines: the words quietus est were standardly written against an account to indicate that payment had been made. 76 In turn, this expression is related to the oft-repeated thought that life is merely borrowed time. Cawdry’s Store-house captures this sentiment in an entry under the heading ‘Death of the body not to be feared’. Just as ‘money borrowed is to bee paide againe with thankes, and good will’, Cawdry writes, so ‘the life that wee haue borrowed of God, is to bee yeelded vp with cheerfull countenance and thankes’. 77 Similarly, an entry in Francis Meres’s Palladis tamia under the heading ‘Death’ suggests that just as ‘borrowed money is willingly to be paide againe’, so our life, ‘which God hath lent vs, is without repining to be rendered to him againe, when he cals for it’. 78 This metaphor can also be traced to classical sources. Cicero’s Tusculanae disputationes , for instance, attempts to disabuse us of the notion that it is ‘wretched to die before our time’ by arguing that it is nature who has ‘granted the use of life like a loan, without fixing any day for repayment’. 79 We cannot complain if the loan is called in since these were the terms on which we accepted the loan. 80

Shakespeare’s use of ‘quietas’, however, is considerably more complex than this pecuniary metaphor. The English noun ‘quietas’ (or ‘quietus’) is derived from the Latin quiescere , a verb which possessed a copia of meanings when translated from Latin to English. A glance at Thomas’s Dictionarium reveals just how rich this term could be:

To rest, sleepe, or take rest: to be at quiet: to cease or end: to be void of labour, care and busines: to be caulme, to hold ones peace and make no more a doe: to suffer or permit: to pause and take breath, to stand still and not to moue: also to appeare or cause to be quiet. 81

As this evocative definition reveals, Shakespeare is also playing on the notion of ‘quiet’ as the state devoutly to be wished for, an end to a life of ‘labour, care and busines’ such as the ones extensively listed in Hamlet’s speech.

The associated noun quies also recurs frequently in Seneca’s tragedies to signify rest from political and emotional perturbation. 82 The Chorus at the end of the first act of Hercules , for instance, contrasts those who have ‘ tranquilla quies ’ in a ‘home that delights in its own small means’, and those who live in cities, where ‘[f]ew are familiar with untroubled peace’. 83 Similarly, the Chorus that closes the second act of Thyestes invokes the classical preference for otium over the dangers of public life: ‘Who wishes may stand in power / on a palace’s slippery peak: let dulcis quies sate me’. 84 The perilous estate of kings is also bemoaned by the Chorus at the end of the first act of Agamemnon . Here, Seneca is keen to stress how those in power are endlessly tossed in a sea of troubles thanks to the unpredictability of Fortune, and are thus denied the quies they long for:

O Fortune, beguiler / by means of the great blessings of thrones, / you set the exalted / in a sheer unstable place. / Never do scepters attain placidam quietem / or a day that is certain of itself. / They are wearied by care upon care, / Their spirits tossed by some new storm. 85

As commentators have noted, there was a considerable vogue for Seneca at the time when Hamlet was written. 86 The extent to which Senecan tragedy permeated Shakespeare’s milieu would have lent the desirability of quies in all its rich forms much intellectual and cultural currency. In musing on the act of making one’s quietas with a bare bodkin, Hamlet is echoing another conventional sentiment.

Last but not least, the thought that conscience makes cowards of us all constitutes a further commonplace. 87 The end of the sixteenth century saw the publication of numerous works of Protestant casuistry in the British Isles, the best known of which are by William Perkins and John Woolton. 88 These casuists agreed that the conscience is a rational faculty that provides moral guidance on correct action. As Perkins puts it, the conscience is ‘part of the vnderstanding in all reasonable creatures’ which helps to determine whether ‘their particular actions’ are ‘either with them or against them’. 89 The standard metaphor for describing this process is a forensic one, 90 and one evocative example may be found in Thomas Newton’s translation of the Flemish theologian Andreas Hyperius’s The true tryall and examination of a mans owne selfe . To examine one’s self in this way, Hyperius writes, is ‘nothing else, than for him to trie, narrowly to searche, and diligent to proue, who and what maner of person he is’. 91 This is as though one is ‘strictly endite[d] and iudically arraigne[d] at the Barre, as he before a most severe Iudge’. 92

This metaphor is undoubtedly what Shakespeare had in mind in his earlier reference to ‘conscience’ and ‘coward’ in his Tragedy of King Richard the Third . Lying in bed alone at night, Richard is visited by the ghost of Buckingham in a dream, and meditates fearfully on how his conscience arraigns him with ‘a thousand seuerall tongues’, each bringing ‘a seueral tale’ which ‘condemns [him] for a villaine’ as they ‘[t]hrong to the barre, crying all guiltie, guiltie’. 93 This is the same sense in which Hamlet observes that ‘conscience dooes make cowards’—the prospect of being called to account by one’s conscience (as Richard vividly experiences) is what causes ‘enterprises of great pitch and moment’ to have ‘theyr currents turne awry’ and ‘loose the name of action’. 94 As Perkins tells us, ‘the effect of the accusing and condemning conscience’ is none other than to ‘stir vp sundry passions and motions in the heart’ such as shame, sadness, fear, desperation and finally ‘a perturbation or disquietnes of the whole man’. 95 One who fears being tried by their own conscience may therefore allow the ‘pale cast of thought’ to prevent them from acting (even if Shakespeare does not ultimately show us an instance of Hamlet being assailed by his conscience). With this final consideration, Hamlet concludes his self-deliberation. The generality of the whole speech, which has been so striking for critics of the play, can thus be explained if we think of it as a thesis .

This reading of Hamlet’s speech is consistent with Shakespeare’s characterization of the prince as a university student with a fondness for collecting and using commonplaces. Hamlet, who is probably still attending the university of Wittenberg, 96 is undoubtedly familiar with the recommendation that students ought to keep on their person a set of tabulae for the purposes of recording interesting and useful sententiae under the appropriate headings for future use. 97 As Melanchthon suggests in his Elementa rhetorices , this practice is particularly useful during adolescence, and diligence in the collection of sententiae not only enriches our vocabulary but also contributes to our understanding of things. 98 Hamlet appears to have absorbed this habit thoroughly. Although he promises to keep ‘the table of [his] memory’ free from ‘[a]ll sawes of books, all forms, all pressures past’ after his encounter with the Ghost, he fails to abandon the practice entirely, and can even be said to assimilate it into his quest for vengeance as he makes a note of Claudius’s hypocritical behavior before the court earlier in the scene:

O villaine, villaine, smiling damned villaine, My tables, meet it is I set it downe That one may smile, and smile, and be a villaine, At least I am sure it may be so in Denmarke. So Vncle, there you are, now to my word, It is adew, adew, remember me. 99

While this is the play’s only explicit instance of commonplace-gathering, we may imagine that this process is not at all unfamiliar to the humanistically educated prince, who frequently invokes commonplace ideas in different situations for a variety of purposes. One such instance occurs when he notes Rosencrans and Guyldensterne’s attempt to play upon him like a pipe. 100 The piper is, of course, commonly associated with the flatterer, thanks in large part to Plutarch’s influential discussion of this character. 101 In accusing his erstwhile companions of playing upon him like a pipe, Hamlet musters commonplace knowledge of the piper-flatterer analogue to demonstrate his awareness of their machinations. 102 This is immediately followed by a seemingly nonsensical conversation between Hamlet and Polonius about the shape of a cloud, with the latter constantly changing his mind to agree with the prince. 103 This is yet another commonplace indicator of flattery: the flatterer’s variability of opinion is widely acknowledged to be one of his distinguishing characteristics. 104 This exchange also embodies another allusion to commonplaces. To dispute about something as inconsequential as the shape of a cloud relates to a proverbial saying collected in Erasmus’s Adagia . We are told that de fumo disceptare is a ‘dig at philosophers, who discuss with great earnestness about smoke, that is, things of no importance’. 105 The implication here, then, is that Hamlet’s utterances are far from inane or insane: he is drawing on his tabulae to make a layered jibe at both Polonius’s attempted flattery and his empty loquaciousness. 106

A similar occurrence takes place earlier in the play, where Hamlet appears to misidentify Polonius as a ‘Fishmonger’. 107 This apparent misidentification is simply a commonplace pejorative borrowed from Erasmus’s De copia : Polonius, Hamlet implies, is the sort of person who blows his nose on his elbow. 108 When Polonius wishes to know ‘the matter’ that the madly attired Hamlet is reading in his book moments later, he is given yet another seemingly strange answer about a ‘satericall rogue’ and an unflattering description of old men that appears to have been lifted from Juvenal’s tenth satire (or some other intermediary source), another borrowing that serves to ridicule the elderly counsellor. 109 Elsewhere, Hamlet refers to Polonius as a ‘great baby’ who is ‘not yet out of his swadling clouts’, invoking the expression bis pueri senes , or (as Rosencras has it) ‘an old man is twice a child’. 110 This, Erasmus notes in his Adagia , is suited for describing those who ‘in advanced age cling to some childish preoccupations, unseemly and inopportune though they may be’, or ‘old men doddering with senility, turning back again as it were to childhood’. 111 Hamlet even sends Polonius to his death with the use of a commonplace in the so-called closet scene. Hearing Gertrard’s cry for help, Polonius, who is concealed behind an arras, gives away his location by calling out. In turn, Hamlet kills Polonius while remarking ‘How now, a Rat, dead for a Duckat, dead’, 112 thus dramatizing another commonplace about a rat which perishes by giving itself away ( suo ipsius indicio periit sorex ).

These instances of commonplace usage in Hamlet’s interactions with Rosencrans, Guyldensterne, and particularly Polonius suggest that Hamlet may be referring to his tabulae more often than we think, either by consulting them in physical form or running through them in his mind. 113 His exasperation at the succession of consolatory commonplaces offered by Claudius and Gertrard earlier in the play also comes into focus in this reading. 114 Hamlet already knows that the loss of a father is ‘common’, and he has perhaps already tried (and failed) to find anything in his entry on ‘Death’ that will assuage his inner turmoil. As a young man who is still at university, Hamlet is undoubtedly never far from his tabulae , and the book that Hamlet is reading in his encounter with Polonius may simply be his commonplace book, where he has ‘set down’ the passage from Juvenal from his own studies. 115 Similarly, Hamlet could very well have consulted his tabulae before making his exclamatory remarks on ‘What a piece of work is man’, a thoroughly commonplace thought often discussed in the Renaissance. 116

Thinking about Hamlet as someone in the habit of consulting his tabulae (whether physically or mentally) also helps to explain the formal qualities of his ‘To be or not to be’ speech, and accounts for what has been described as the ‘universality, self-containment, rhetorical polish [and] philosophical eclecticism’ of his meditation. 117 It also lends further support to my basic argument that Hamlet’s quaestio is a quaestio infinita or a thesis . 118 The speech is consists of commonplaces simply because this is the way such quaestiones are tackled, and Hamlet may in turn be using his tabulae to help him with this task. The ebb and flow of Hamlet’s argument is also appropriate to the pursuit of a thesis . He first thinks about the desirability of death, before realising that the fact that ‘dreames may come’ after we ‘haue shuffled off this mortall coyle’ ought to give us ‘pause’. He then returns to seeing long life as a ‘calamitie’, and copiously invokes a list of troubles in unfolding this point, before returning to the thought of ‘the dread of something after death’, and surmising that this is what makes us ‘rather beare those ills we haue’ than ‘flie to others that we know not of’. This follows the precise pattern of a thesis , in which a position is repeatedly proposed in different forms, contradicted, and then resolved.

It remains to consider why Hamlet engages in the construction of a thesis at all. Hamlet, as we know, has been instructed by the Ghost to remember and presumably also to avenge him. This is tantamount to resisting and perhaps murdering his uncle, the established sovereign of Denmark, whose legitimacy in Hamlet’s eyes is far from certain. An individual in Hamlet’s position faced an ‘intensely disturbing and problematic’ range of choices in the early modern period. 119 One could adopt an attitude of patient forbearance as the neo-Stoics did, which in turn entailed obedience to authority in all circumstances. 120 At the same time, resistance was advocated by a wide range of religious groups, introducing a dizzying number of possible justifications for someone wishing to oppose a king like Claudius. 121 The Huguenots, for instance, held the distinctive view that ‘a prince of the blood was obligated to act against a tyrant, but only he could initiate such action when certain of his ground and of his conscience’. 122 To compound the problematic nature of this choice, the consequence of resistance was most likely death. As Catherine Belsey puts it, the ‘hopelessness of taking arms against the sea perhaps suggests something of the nature of Hamlet’s predicament’: ‘opposing Claudius is treason, while in plotting against him, Hamlet risks his death, as the rest of the play makes clear’. 123 Even in this broad and simplified account, Hamlet’s mortality seems inextricably linked to revenge.

Audiences may also have expected a character like Hamlet either to die by his own hand or in some accompanying act of violence. This was, after all, the progression of events in some contemporaneous plays characterized by the same themes and concerns. In Thomas Kyd’s The Spanish Tragedie , for instance, Hieronimo kills himself after avenging his son Horatio. A whole host of characters also suffer the same fate in their quest for vengeance in plays including, but not limited to, Shakespeare’s Titus Andronicus , Thomas Middleton’s The Revenger’s Tragedy , and Henry Chettle’s The Tragedy of Hoffman. 124 Death, in other words, is a possibility should Hamlet choose to fulfil his promise to the Ghost. In debating the infinite quaestio ‘To be or not to be’, Hamlet may therefore be deliberating on the more specific quaestio of whether or not he ought to die in the process of dealing out this promised vengeance. 125 As we have seen, debating a thesis is an especially useful means of finding general arguments that can be moulded to apply in one’s specific circumstances, and doing so allows Hamlet to consider his inextricable and overlapping quaestiones at the same time. It is perhaps for this reason that he concludes twice in almost as many lines (‘Thus conscience dooes make cowards, / And thus the natiue hiew of resolution / Is sickled ore with the pale cast of thought’). In offering himself reasons for and against the act of self-slaughter, he may therefore also be simultaneously contemplating the act of vengeance, an enterprise of great ‘pitch and moment’ that is prone to losing ‘the name of action’. Hamlet is a thinker of many failings: he is by no means the ideal humanist and may well represent this intellectual movement in its final decline. 126 But he is a humanist nonetheless, and cannot escape its characteristically rhetorical mode of thought.

I am grateful to Quentin Skinner, David Colclough, and Rhodri Lewis for commenting on various drafts of this article. I am also indebted to the journal’s two anonymous readers and the period editor Colin Burrow for their helpful suggestions. This article was prepared during my tenure as a Research Fellow of the International Society for the History of Rhetoric, and I thank the Society for supporting my research.

H. B. Charlton, Shakespearian Tragedy (Cambridge, 1948), 97 (emphasis mine). See also Harold Skulsky, ‘Revenge, Honor and Conscience in Hamlet ’, PMLA , 85 (1979), 77–87.

Margreta de Grazia, ‘Soliloquies and Wages in the Age of Emergent Consciousness’, Textual Practice , 9 (1995), 69–70 (emphasis hers). See Margreta de Grazia, Hamlet without Hamlet (Cambridge, 2007) more generally for why this speech should not be read as an instance of reflexive introspection that is characteristic of ‘modernity’.

Indeed, N. B. Allen, ‘Hamlet’s “To be or not to be” Soliloquy’, The Shakespeare Association Bulletin , 13 (1938), 195–207 argues that the speech is a ‘separate lyrical unit’.

For a relatively recent summary, see Ann Thompson and Neil Taylor, ‘The composition of Hamlet ’, The Arden Shakespeare: Hamlet (London, 2016), 76–96, and for Q1 specifically, see Zachary Lesser, “Hamlet” after Q1: An Uncanny History of the Shakespearean Text (Pennsylvania, 2014).

See Leon Howard, The Logic of Hamlet’s Soliloquies (Lone Pine, CA, 1964), especially 19–20, for an alternative attempt to contextualize the speech against the backdrop of Ramist logic and rhetoric of Abraham Fraunce, who wrote in The Lawier’s Logike of a ‘disposition of one argument with another, whereby we judge a thing to be or not to be’. Rhetorical readings of the play are too extensive to list, but some classic studies include T. W. Baldwin, William Shakspere’s Small Latine and Lesse Greeke (Urbana, IL, 1944) and Marion Trousdale, Shakespeare and the Rhetoricians (Chapel Hill, NC, 1982).

For a recent study, see Eric M. MacPhail, Dancing Around the Well: The Circulation of Commonplaces in Renaissance Humanism (Leiden, 2014).

William Shakespeare, The tragicall historie of Hamlet, Prince of Denmarke (1604), G2 r – v ; III. i, 1594–628. While I use the Q2 text of the play, my argument would apply to other versions of Hamlet’s speech. Quotations from Hamlet are referenced first by the folio number in the 1604 edition, followed by act, scene, and through-line numbers (where applicable) from The Oxford Shakespeare: The Complete Works: Original-Spelling Edition , eds Stanley Wells, Gary Taylor, John Jowett and William Montgomery (Oxford, 1987). For quotations from other Shakespearean works, I provide only the latter.

Colin Burrow, Shakespeare and Classical Antiquity (Oxford, 2013), 42. See also J. K. Harmer, ‘Hamlet’s Introspection’, Essays in Criticism , 61 (2011), 45: ‘Such interplaying frustrations inculcate a form of self-debate which is entirely consonant with the kinds of rhetorical framework one would expect Renaissance dramatists to work with when representing a character in a revenge tragedy: generally speaking, the psychomachic conflict between reason and passion; more specifically, argumentation in utramque partem ; at a still more local level, the dialectical quaestio ’.

Quintilian, Institutio oratoria , trans. D. Russell (Cambridge, MA, 2001), 3. 5. 8: ‘Quod ut exemplo pateat, infinita est “an uxor ducenda”, finita “an Catoni ducenda”’.

Quintilian, Institutio , 3. 5. 13: ‘Nam quo modo an sibi uxor ducenda sit deliberabit Cato nisi constiterit uxores esse ducendas?’.

Quintilian, Institutio , 3. 5. 14–5: ‘quod in universa probatum sit in parte probatum esse necesse sit’. See also 3. 5. 13: ‘Quin etiam in iis quae ad personam referuntur, ut non est satis generalem tractasse quaestionem, ita perveniri ad speciem nisi illa prius excusa non potest’.

Cicero, De partitione oratoria , trans. H. Rackham (Cambridge, MA, 1942), XVIII. 61–7. See also M. L. Clarke, ‘The Thesis in the Roman Rhetorical Schools of the Republic’, Classical Quarterly , 1 (1951), 159–66.

For Hamlet and humanism in Wittenberg, see Suzanne H. Stein, ‘Hamlet in Melanchthon’s Wittenberg’, Notes and Queries , 56 (2009), 55–7.

Melanchthon, of course, is taking ‘Christian’ as a general referent. Philipp Melanchthon, Elementa rhetorices in Opera omnia Vol. 2: Principal Writings in Rhetoric , ed. V. Wels (Göttingen, 2017), 317: ‘Vocant autem hypothesin negotium de quo controversia est, circumscriptum circumstantiis, ut sit ne bellum movendum adversus Turcas. Thesin vocant generalem quaestionem, ut liceat ne Christiano bella gerere’. Note that Melanchthon seems to reverse Quintilian’s move from the general case to the particular instance, pointing instead to the benefits of moving from species to genus : ‘omnia pleniora atque uberiora fore, si a specie ad genus oratio transferatur’ (317). The edition I am quoting from is based on the 1531 edition of the text. I use Thomas Cooper, Thesaurus linguæ Romanæ & Britannicæ (1578) and Thomas Thomas, Dictionarium linguae Latinae et Anglicanae (1587) to help me translate Renaissance rhetorical handbooks written in Latin. In the case of Melanchthon, I also rely on Mary Joan La Fontaine, ‘A Critical Translation of Philip Melanchthon’s Elementorum Rhetorices Libri Duo’, PhD thesis, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI, 1968.

Rudolph Agricola, De inventione dialectica libri tres , ed. and trans. L. Mundt (Tübingen, 1992), 262: ‘Et esse propositum, quod nullis certis finibus temporum, locorum, personarum concluditur. Controversiam vero, quae definite sit vel omnibus vel pluribus horum quae attributa vocantur personarum et negociorum, quae cuiusmodi sint, pòst dicemus’. The terms propositum and controversia , Agricola notes, are alternative names for the thesis and hypothesis given by Cicero . The edition I am quoting from is based on the 1539 Cologne edition of the text with Alardus’s commentary.

Agricola, De inventione dialectica , 262.

Peter Mack, Elizabethan Rhetoric: Theory and Practice (Cambridge, 2002), 11–47.

Aphthonius, Aphthonii sophistae progymnasmata (1575), 2C6 v : ‘Thesis, id est, consultatio, est rei alicuius inuestigandae per orationem consideratiom, vel disquisitio’.

Aphthonius, Progymnasmata , 2C6 v : ‘Ciuiles sunt, quae actionem habent ciuitati accommodatam, velut: An ducenda sit vxor, an nauigandu[m], an muri faciendi: His enim omnibus ciuitatis status continetur. Contemplatiuae vero, quae ad solam animi considerationem pertinent, vide[l]icet: An globosum coelum? an multi sint mundi?’.

Thomas Wilson, Arte of rhetorique (1553), a v .

Wilson, Rhetorique , a2 r .

Richard Rainolde, Foundacion of rhetorike (1563), D2 r .

Rainolde, Foundacion , D2 r .

Aphthonius, Progymnasmata , 2D2 r : ‘MAGNAM autem habent θέσεις cum loco communi similitudinem’.

Aphthonius, Progymnasmata , 2D2 r : ‘ad amplificandam & auge[n]dam causam assumitur’.

Aphthonius, Progymnasmata , 2D2 r : ‘ad explica[n]dam & probandam’.

Aphthonius, Progymnasmata , 2D2 r : ‘Et ille quasi certa re declamitatur: Haec disputatur & disseritur’.

Rainolde , Foundacion , D2 v . Melanchthon, Elementa , 317: ‘This we are instructed by Antony and Crassus in Cicero, that we ought to consider which commonplaces are inherent in a cause; of these, some may apply to the entire matter that is the object of the thesis, while others refer to it incidentally’. (Hoc praecipiunt apud Ciceronem Antonius et Crassus, ut consideremus, qui loci communes haereant in causa, quorum alii totam causam continent, in quibus thesis versatur, alii incidunt obiter).

Aphthonius, Progymnasmata , 2C6 v –2C7 r : ‘Prima autem omnium praeexercitamentorum consultation contradictionem, & solutionem, secundum quaestionem admittit’.

Rainolde, Foundacion , D2 v .

These are the subheadings used in Aphthonius, Progymnasmata , 2C7 r –2D v , which is a thesis of the ‘Should one take a wife?’ question.

Joel B. Altman, The Tudor Play of Mind: Rhetorical Inquiry and the Development of Elizabethan Drama (Berkeley, CA, 1978), especially 64–106.

Desiderius Erasmus, De copia in Collected Works of Erasmus: Literary and Educational Writings Volume 2 , trans. B. Knott (Toronto, 1978), 637. See also Desiderius Erasmus, De duplici copia verborum, et rerum, Commentarii duo (1573), Z r : ‘Ad hunc gregem pertinent & illa comparatiua: Coelibatus ne felicior, an coniugium? Vita priuata, an secus? Potior monarchia, an democratia? Vita studiosorum, an idiotarum?’.

S. E. Sprott, The English Debate on Suicide: From Donne to Hume (LaSalle, IL, 1961), 9–10 notes that ‘Hamlet’s question […] was itself close to a regular topic in discussions of suicide’. It was, for instance, given to students at the University of Edinburgh in the form of a thesis : Melius est esse, & miserum esse, quam non esse simpliciter. Shakespeare’s Lucrece also considers a version of this quaestio : ‘To liue or die which of the twaine were better’ (1154). See Rhodri Lewis, Hamlet and the Vision of Darkness (New Jersey, 2017), 268–9 for esse aut non esse in Aristotle’s On Interpretation , and 59n for this formulation in Cicero’s Tusculanae disputationes .

See S. Viswanathan, ‘Sleep and Death: The Twins in Shakespeare’, Comparative Drama , 13 (1979), 49–64 for Shakespeare’s use of sleep-death imagery.

Robert Cawdry, A treasurie or store-house of similes (1600), 2H4 v .

Robert Allott, Wits theater of the little world (1599), 2H5 r .

William Baldwin, A treatice of moral philosophy (1571), S7 v .

John Marbeck, A booke of notes and common places (1581), U2 v .

Marbeck, Booke , U2 v . This is found under the heading ‘ What Death is by the minde of Secundus the Philosopher ’. This exact quotation may also be found in Bartholomaeus, Batman vppon Bartholome (1582), N6 r . In turn, these collections may have excerpted this from the Thomas North translation of Antonio de Guevara, The Dial of Princes (1557). This quotation forms a significant basis of the evidence presented in Dennis McCarthy, ‘“A Sea of Troubles” and a “Pilgrimage Uncertain” / Dial of Princes as the Source for Hamlet’s Soliloquy’, Notes and Queries , 56 (2009), 57–60 that this text is the source for the speech. As we shall see later, such definitive ‘source’ identifications (of which McCarthy’s attempt is one of many) should be seriously interrogated. In the meantime, see Peter Milward, ‘Hamlet’s Biblical Soliloquy’, Notes and Queries , 57 (2010), 377–8 for a response to McCarthy.

As Erasmus exclaims excitedly in De copia : ‘What a wealth of parallels can be derived from ships and sailing!’ See Erasmus , De copia , 641 for the extensive list of comparisons he generates to demonstrate this.

Baldwin, Treatice , sig. K5 v .

Anthonie Fletcher, Certaine very proper, and most profitable similes (1595), T r .

Fletcher, Certaine , sig. T r .

See Frederick Kiefer, Fortune and Elizabethan Tragedy (San Marino, CA, 1983), 267, 47n and Lewis, Vision , 49, 21n. Sprott, Suicide , 6 also points out that Franciso Piccolomini, who taught at the University of Padua, had also discussed the tela & ictus adversae fortunae in his discussion of suicide in Vniversa Philosophia de moribvs.

Pierre de La Primaudaye, The second part of the French academie (1594), 2H6 r .

Marbeck, Booke , 3V7 r .

See Lewis, Vision , 128, 25n for more instances.

Measure for Measure , III. iv, 1224–38.

See Stephen Greenblatt, Hamlet in Purgatory (Princeton, NJ, 2013) for medieval and early modern discussions of Purgatory, where the Ghost appears to have come from. See also Eleanor Prosser, Hamlet and Revenge (Stanford, CA, 1971), 97–143.

As Harold Jenkins puts it in his Arden edition of Hamlet (London, 1982), 110.

Florio uses this word to translate Montaigne’s aneantissement in the quotation. Similarly, in the essay ‘An Apologie of Raymond Sebond ’, Florio’s Montaigne notes that we are ‘built of two principall essentiall partes, the separation of which, is the death and consummation of our being’. See Michel de Montaigne, The essayes or morall, politike and militarie discourses of Lo: Michaell de Montaigne (1603), 2C6 v . In this context, the word is a translation of Montaigne’s ruyne .

Montaigne, The essayes , 3G4 r .

Brian Cummings, Mortal Thoughts: Religion, Secularity & Identity in Shakespeare and Early Modern Culture (Oxford, 2013), 202. For another example, see Harry Levin, The Question of Hamlet (Oxford, 1959), 72: ‘in introspection, [Hamlet’s] mentor is Montaigne; the soliloquies are like the essays in balancing arguments with counter-arguments, in pursuing wayward ideas and unmasking stubborn illusions, in scholarly illustrations and homely afterthoughts which range from the soul of Nero to John-a-dreams’.

Erasmus, De copia , 639–40. The presence of this in Cicero’s Tusculanae disputationes has also led Baldwin, Shakspere , vol. 2, 604 to suggest that Shakespeare’s own passage is ‘at least descended eventually through that of Cicero’. See Marcus Tullius Cicero, Tusculanae disputationes , trans. J. E. King (Cambridge, MA, 1927), XLI. 97–9. Book 1 of Cicero’s work also contains a discussion of the evils of death. In attempting to prove the (Stoic) point that the dead are not wretched, one of Cicero’s speakers invokes the elementary logical principle that ‘anything stated in a proposition of such a kind must not necessarily either be or not be’ ( Quasi non necesse sit, quiduid isto modo pronunties, id aut esse aut non esse ). See Cicero, Tusculanae , I. VI. 14.

As David Scott Kastan, A Will To Believe: Oxford Wells Shakespeare Lecture (Oxford, 2014), 137 points out, Christ’s consummatum est (John 19:30) marks the end of his life. Lewis, Vision , 263 further notes that this vocabulary is taken up by the eponymous character in Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus.

Lewis, Vision , 241–303 goes so far as to argue that De consolatione philosophiae is ‘crucial to an appreciation of the dramatic and philosophical dynamics of Hamlet as a whole’.

See L. C. Knights, An Approach to Hamlet (London, 1960), 77–84 for Boethius and Hardin Craig, ‘Hamlet’s Book’, Huntington Library Bulletin , 6 (1934), 17–37 for Bedingfeld’s Cardano.

As Lewis, Knights, and Craig acknowledge in their discussions.

See William Hamlin, ‘Montaigne and Shakespeare’, The Oxford Handbook of Montaigne , ed. Philippe Desan (Oxford, 2016), 328–46 for a critical survey of the scholarship on this theme. See also William Hamlin, Montaigne’s English Journey: Reading the Essays in Shakespeare’s Day (Oxford, 2013), 242–3 for unpublished English translations of Montaigne that circulated at this time, and how they may have been translated with ‘an eye toward aphoristic brevity’. For a different approach to this theme, see Peter Mack, Reading and Rhetoric in Montaigne and Shakespeare (London, 2010) on how both writers applied similar techniques in their use of shared classical and Renaissance sources.

Francis Bacon, The essayes or counsels, ciuill and morall (1625), 2P3 r .

See Terence Cave, ‘Problems of reading in the Essais ’, Montaigne: Essays in Memory of Richard Sayce , eds I. D. MacFarlane and Ian Maclean (Oxford, 1982), 133–66 for Montaigne’s practice of reading.

Montaigne, The essayes , 3G5 r .

Elizabeth Robbins Hooker, ‘The Relation of Shakespeare to Montaigne’, PMLA , 17 (1902), 312–66.

Argued in Travis Williams, ‘The Bourn Identity: Hamlet and the French of Montaigne’s Essais ’, Notes and Queries , 58 (2011), 254–8.

See Robert S. Miola, Shakespeare and Classical Tragedy (Oxford, 1992), 39 for the argument that Shakespeare transformed the Senecan choral meditation into the soliloquies of Hamlet .

The possible connection between this speech and Seneca’s epistle is made in E. A. J. Honigmann and D. A. West, ‘With A Bare Bodkin’, Notes and Queries , 28 (1981), 129–30, who also point out that if Shakespeare did indeed draw on this epistle, then he likely consulted Seneca in the Latin given that Lodge’s translation post-dates Hamlet .

Lucius Annaeus Seneca, The workes of Lucius Annaeus Seneca, both morrall and natural (London, 1614), 2B6 v .

Richard Robinson, A golden mirror (1589), H v . See Andrew Hadfield, ‘A Bare Bodkin’, Notes and Queries , 62 (2015), 111–2 for the bodkin as a hairpin.

Pedro de la Sierra, The second part of the myrror of knighthood (1583), B4 v . The more general idea that death serves as an escape from the travails of life may also be found in the commonplace books. For two examples, see Allott, Wits , E2 v and Cawdry, Store-house , 3S4 r .

See, for instance, the second (London, 1982), 279 and third (London, 2006), 314 Arden editions of the play. Here, the word ‘consummation’ may once again be relevant. As Thomas, Dictionarium , 3L7 r suggests, the Latin noun summa can not only be translated as ‘the conclusion or end of a thing’, but also as ‘consummation’, and ‘accomplishing the end of an account’. Given that these expressions overlap in meaning, Shakespeare did not necessarily have to draw on Florio’s Montaigne to describe death as ‘consummation’.

Cawdry, Store-house , 2F r .

Francis Meres, Palladis tamia (1598), 2T8 r .

Cicero, Tusculanae , XXXIX, 93: ‘Pellantur ergo istae ineptiae paene aniles, ante tempus mori miserum esse. Quod tandem tempus? Naturaene? At ea quidem dedit usuram vitae tamquam pecuniae nulla praestituta die’.

Cicero, Tusculanae , XXXIX, 93: ‘Quid est igitur quod querare, si repetit, cum vult? Ea enim condicione acceperas’.

Thomas, Dictionarium , 3C5 v . See also Cooper 5O1 r .

Miola, Classical , 38, 40n. See Burrow, Classical , 162–201 for uses of Seneca in the Shakespearean corpus and also Catherine Belsey, ‘Senecan Vacillation and Elizabethan Deliberation: Influence or Confluence?’, Renaissance Drama , 6 (1973), 65–88.

Lucius Annaeus Seneca, Hercules. Trojan Women. Phoenician Women. Medea. Phaedra , trans. J. G. Fitch (Cambridge, MA, 2002), lines 159–60 and line 175. Thomas Newton’s notable collection of Seneca his tenne tragedies (1581) is considerably freer in its translation, but nevertheless captures Seneca’s vocabulary. See Seneca, Tragedies , B3 v .

Lucius Annaeus Seneca, Oedipus. Agamemnon. Thyestes , trans. J. G. Fitch (Cambridge, MA, 2004), lines 391–3; Seneca, Tragedies , E3 r .

Seneca, Agamemnon , lines 57–63; Seneca, Tragedies , T8 r .

See Jessica Winston, ‘Early ‘English Seneca’: From ‘Coterie’ Translations to the Popular Stage’, in Eric Dodson-Robinson (ed.), Brill’s Companion to the Reception of Senecan Tragedy: Scholarly, Theatrical and Literary Receptions (Leiden, 2016), 174–202.

As Catherine Belsey, ‘The Case of Hamlet’s Conscience’, Studies in Philology , 76 (1979), 127–48 points out, Shakespeare specifically means ‘conscience’ as the faculty that distinguishes between good and evil.

For a history of casuistry, see Albert R. Jonsen and Stephen Toulmin, The Abuse of Casuistry: A History of Moral Reasoning (Berkeley, CA, 1988).

William Perkins, A discourse of conscience (1596), A1 r .

As Ceri Sullivan, The Rhetoric of the Conscience in Donne, Herbert and Vaughan (Oxford, 2008), 25, notes, the use of classical rhetoric to prove a case is an innovation from early Christian casuistry.

Andreas Hyperius, The true tryall and examination of a mans owne selfe (1587), A v .

Hyperius, Tryall , A v .

Richard III , V. v, 3224–48.

For ‘name of action’ as a reference to rhetorical actio , see Manabu Tsurata, ‘Hamlet’s ‘Name of Action’—A Ciceronian Legacy’, Notes and Queries , 62 (2015), 559–60. Actio is also embedded in Cicero’s discussion of the thesis in De partitione oratoria . See 12n.

Perkins, Discourse , F3 v –F4 r .

See Lewis, Vision , 315–24 for Hamlet’s age.

See Quentin Skinner, Forensic Shakespeare (Oxford, 2015), 299–300, Rhodri Lewis, ‘Hamlet, Metaphor and Memory’, Studies in Philology , 109 (2012), 609–41 and Peter Stallybrass, Roger Chartier, J. Franklin Mowery and Heather Wolfe, ‘Hamlet’s Tables and the Technologies of Writing in Renaissance England’, Shakespeare Quarterly , 55 (2004), 379–419.

Melanchthon, Elementa , 319: ‘Interim tamen hoc stadium colligendi dicta scriptorium, habet aliquam utilitatem, praesertim in adolescentia […] Quare haec diligentia colligendi sententias, non solum verborum copiam alit, sed nonnihil etiam ad rerum cognitionem conducit’.

Shakespeare, Hamlet , D3 v ; I. v, 715–23. See Skinner, Forensic , 300–2.

Shakespeare, Hamlet , H4 r ; III. ii, 2076–88.

Joanne Paul, ‘The Best Counsellors Are the Dead: Counsel and Shakespeare’s Hamlet ’, Renaissance Studies , 30 (2015), 646–65.

See Lewis, Vision , 62 for a further Plutarchan connection.

Shakespeare, Hamlet , H4 r ; III. ii, 2247–53.

Paul, ‘Counsellors’, 58. See, for instance, the entries listed in Meres, Palladis , 2S3 v – r for some examples.

Desiderius Erasmus, Adagia in Collected Works of Erasmus: Literary and Educational Writings Volume 31 , trans. M. M. Philipps (Toronto, 1982), 281. See Vanessa Lim and Joanne Paul, ‘Commonplaces, Aristophanes, and Clouds in Hamlet ’, Notes and Queries , 65 (2018), 535–6.

Perhaps we are to think of this as a parody of Polonius’s own sententious style. Doris Falk, ‘Proverbs and the Polonius Destiny’, Shakespeare Quarterly , 18 (1967), 23–36 points out that the name Polonius is given in the 1603 edition of Hamlet (‘Corambis’) may also be derived from a proverb about the unpleasantness of twice-cooked cabbage ( Crambe bis posita mors est ), which (according to Erasmus, Adagia , 417–8) refers to ‘an utterly boring speech which has to be listened to over and over again’.

Shakespeare, Hamlet , F4 r ; II. ii, 1103–4.

Skinner, Forensic , 233. In addition to the Renaissance entries Skinner highlights, this may also be found in the Rhetorica ad Herennium , trans. H. Caplan (Cambridge, MA, 1954), IV. LIV. 67: ‘ut si salsamentarii filio dicas: “Quiesce tu, cuius pater se emungere solebat”’.

Shakespeare, Hamlet , F4 r ; II. ii, 1127–35. For Juvenal as the source of this passage, see Beatrice White, ‘Two Notes on Hamlet ’, Neuphilologische Mitteilungen , 65 (1964), 92–6 and Baldwin, Shakspere , vol. 2, 525–9. Hamlet’s reference to a ‘Crab’ going ‘backward’ in this passage may also be a commonplace jibe: just as the ‘Sea-crab swimmeth always agaynst the streame’, Meres ( Palladis , 2L7 r ) notes, so ‘witte always striueth against wisdome’. See also Nicholas Ling, Politeuphia (London, 1598), F5 v .

Shakespeare, Hamlet , F2 v ; II. ii, 1313–4.

Erasmus, Adagia , 414.

Shakespeare, Hamlet , I2 r ; III. iv, 2237. See Falk, ‘Polonius’, 30.

According to Robert Weimann, Shakespeare and the Popular Tradition in the Theater: Studies in the Social Dimension of Dramatic Form and Function (Baltimore, MD, 1978), 130, 140 proverbs appear in the play, and no less than 71 of these are spoken by Hamlet. See Morris Palmer Tilley, A Dictionary of Proverbs in England in the 16th and 17th Centuries (Michigan, 1950) and R. W. Dent, Shakespeare’s Proverbial Language: An Index (California, 1981) more generally.

Hamlet I. ii, 243–73.

de Grazia, ‘Soliloquies’, 71.

Frank M. Caldiero, ‘The Source of Hamlet’s “What a piece of work is a man!”’, Notes and Queries , 196 (1951), 421–4; Rolf Soellner, Shakespeare’s Patterns of Self-Knowledge (Columbus, OH, 1972), 399–404.

de Grazia, ‘Soliloquies’, 71. Marjorie Donker, Shakespeare’s Proverbial Themes: A Rhetorical Context for the Sententia as Res (Westport, CT, 1992), 133–48 has even gone so far as to argue that the commonplace ‘all lives must die’ underlies much of Hamlet.

The reading I have offered links up with two other Aphthonian echoes in the play. The first occurs when Hamlet invites the Player to recite a speech about the fall of Troy. See Aphthonius, Progymnasmata , Y8 v –2A7 v and Rainolde, Foundacion , N r . Many discussions of this scene are sensitive to this rhetorical dimension. Two examples include Burrow, Classical , 42–3 and Heinrich Plett, Rhetoric and Renaissance Culture (New York, NY, 2004), 436–44. In the so-called ‘closet-scene’, Hamlet attempts to dissuade his mother from her relationship with Claudius through a comparative description of the former in laudatory terms and the latter in vituperative ones. This is an exercise known as comparatio , which combines a laudatio and a vituperatio to juxtapose two things, and usually demonstrate that one is greater. See Aphthonius, Progymnasmata , X8 v –Y8 r .

Roland Frye, The Renaissance Hamlet: Issues and Responses in 1600 (Princeton, NJ, 1984), 168, see also 188–9.

Quentin Skinner, The Foundations of Modern Political Thought: Volume 2 The Age of Reformation (Cambridge, 1978), 275–84.

See Skinner, Foundations , 77–81 for the Anabaptists, 189–238 for the Calvinists, as well as 121–3, 177–8 and 345–8 for the Catholics.

Frye, Renaissance , 168. See Skinner, Foundations , 239–301 for the context of the Huguenot revolution.

Belsey, ‘Conscience’, 128.

The revenger’s death is, of course, not a given: he survives, for instance, in John Marston’s Antonio’s Revenge .

This, I think, helps to clarify the debates over the precise nature of Hamlet’s choice: suicide, revenge, or both. For a summary of these positions, see Vincent F. Petronella, ‘Hamlet’s “To Be or Not To Be” Soliloquy: Once More into the Breach’, Studies in Philology , 71 (1974), 72–88.

As suggested in Lewis, Vision .

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Home — Essay Samples — Literature — Plays — Hamlet

Essays on Hamlet

Hamlet essay topics and outline examples, essay title 1: the tragic hero in "hamlet": analyzing the complex character of prince hamlet.

Thesis Statement: This essay delves into the character of Prince Hamlet in Shakespeare's "Hamlet," examining his tragic flaws, internal conflicts, and the intricate web of relationships that contribute to his downfall, ultimately highlighting his status as a classic tragic hero.

Introduction
Defining Tragic Heroes: Characteristics and Literary Tradition
The Complex Psychology of Prince Hamlet: Ambiguity, Doubt, and Melancholy
The Ghost's Revelation: Hamlet's Quest for Justice and Revenge
The Theme of Madness: Feigned or Real?
Hamlet's Relationships: Ophelia, Gertrude, Claudius, and Horatio
The Tragic Climax: The Duel, Poisoned Foils, and Fatal Consequences

Essay Title 2: "Hamlet" as a Reflection of Political Intrigue: Power, Corruption, and the Tragedy of Denmark

Thesis Statement: This essay explores the political dimensions of Shakespeare's "Hamlet," analyzing the themes of power, corruption, and political manipulation as portrayed in the play, and their impact on the fate of the characters and the kingdom of Denmark.

The Political Landscape of Denmark: Claudius's Ascension to the Throne
The Machiavellian Villainy of Claudius: Murder, Deception, and Ambition
Hamlet's Struggle for Justice: The Role of Political Morality
The Foils of Polonius and Laertes: Pawns in Political Games
The Fate of Denmark: Chaos, Rebellion, and the Climactic Tragedy
Shakespeare's Political Commentary: Lessons for Society

Essay Title 3: "Hamlet" in a Contemporary Context: Adaptations, Interpretations, and the Play's Enduring Relevance

Thesis Statement: This essay examines modern adaptations and interpretations of "Hamlet," exploring how the themes, characters, and dilemmas presented in the play continue to resonate with audiences today, making "Hamlet" a timeless and relevant work of literature.

From Stage to Screen: Iconic Film and Theater Productions of "Hamlet"
Contemporary Readings: Gender, Race, and Identity in "Hamlet" Interpretations
Psychological and Existential Interpretations: Hamlet's Inner Turmoil in the Modern World
Relevance in the 21st Century: Themes of Revenge, Justice, and Moral Dilemma
Adapting "Hamlet" for New Audiences: Outreach, Education, and Cultural Engagement
Conclusion: The Timelessness of "Hamlet" and Its Place in Literature

Monologue of Ophelia

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Theme of Soliloquies in Shakespeares Hamlet

Review of hamlet by william shakespeare, how hamlet is faking insanity: appearance vs reality in shakespeare's play, the representation of madness in shakespeare's text, hamlet, let us write you an essay from scratch.

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The Tragic Story of Hamlet

Reality and appearance: a comparison of hamlet and the revenger"s tragedy, the patriarchal power and female norms in hamlet, misogyny and female representation in hamlet, get a personalized essay in under 3 hours.

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"Act": The Theme of "Acting" in Hamlet

The question of hamlet's madness, analysis of ophelia's story through the context of gender and madness, death and revenge in hamlet, a play by william shakespeare, existentialism as a part of hamlet, revenge and its consequences in hamlet, claudius as the master of manipulation in hamlet, the important theme of madness in hamlet by william shakespeare, trickery and deception in hamlet by william shakespeare, the role of grief in shakespeare’s hamlet, reflection on the act 2 of shakespeare’s hamlet, hamlet by william shakespeare: the impact of parents on their children, the relationship between hamlet and horatio, revenge and justice in william shakespeare’s hamlet, justice and revenge in shakespeare's hamlet, hamlet's intelligence is the factor of his procrastination nature, the dishonesty of the ghost in hamlet, king lear and hamlet: freudian interpretation of the two plays, hamlet's procrastination: a study on his unwillingness to act, shakespeare's use of machiavellian politics in hamlet.

1603, William Shakespeare

Play; Shakespearean tragedy

Hamlet, Claudius, Gertrude, Polonius

The play Hamlet is the most cited work in the English language and is often included in the lists of the world's greatest literature.

"Frailty, thy name is woman!" "Brevity' is the soul of wit" "To be, or not to be, that is the question" "I must be cruel to be kind" "Why, then, ’tis none to you, for there is nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so. To me, it is a prison."

1. Wright, G. T. (1981). Hendiadys and Hamlet. PMLA, 96(2), 168-193. (https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/pmla/article/abs/hendiadys-and-hamlet/B61A80FAB6569984AB68096FE483D4FB) 2. Leverenz, D. (1978). The woman in Hamlet: An interpersonal view. Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, 4(2), 291-308. (https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/493608?journalCode=signs) 3. Lesser, Z., & Stallybrass, P. (2008). The first literary Hamlet and the commonplacing of professional plays. Shakespeare Quarterly, 59(4), 371-420. (https://academic.oup.com/sq/article-abstract/59/4/371/5064575) 4. De Grazia, M. (2001). Hamlet before its Time. MLQ: Modern Language Quarterly, 62(4), 355-375. (https://muse.jhu.edu/article/22909) 5. Calderwood, J. L. (1983). To be and not to be. Negation and Metadrama in Hamlet. In To Be and Not to Be. Negation and Metadrama in Hamlet. Columbia University Press. (https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.7312/cald94400/html) 6. Kastan, D. S. (1987). " His semblable is his mirror":" Hamlet" and the Imitation of Revenge. Shakespeare Studies, 19, 111. (https://www.proquest.com/openview/394df477873b27246b71f83d3939c672/1?pq-origsite=gscholar&cbl=1819311) 7. Neill, M. (1983). Remembrance and Revenge: Hamlet, Macbeth and The Tempest. Jonson and Shakespeare, 35-56. (https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-1-349-06183-9_3) 8. Gates, S. (2008). Assembling the Ophelia fragments: gender, genre, and revenge in Hamlet. Explorations in Renaissance Culture, 34(2), 229-248. (https://go.gale.com/ps/i.do?id=GALE%7CA208534875&sid=googleScholar&v=2.1&it=r&linkaccess=abs&issn=00982474&p=AONE&sw=w&userGroupName=anon%7Eebb234db)

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Themes, Motifs, and Symbols in Hamlet

The Albert Team
Last Updated On: March 1, 2022

What We Review

Major Themes in Hamlet

Even though Shakespeare wrote this great drama for Elizabethan audiences over 400 years ago, the themes presented in this tragedy are still relevant for 21st-century audiences today. The usual themes of deception and vengeance are clearly portrayed throughout Hamlet and many of Shakespeare’s tragedies (think Othello , Romeo and Juliet, or Titus Andronicus ).

However, Hamlet stands out among the rest of Shakespeare’s tragedies in its depiction of mental illness throughout the play, even portraying the lead character as overcome with “madness” as the events of the play progress.

The Complexity of Mental Illness

The American Psychiatry Association defines mental illnesses as “ health conditions involving changes in emotion, thinking or behavior (or a combination of these). Mental illnesses are associated with distress and/or problems functioning in social, work or family activities. ”

Both Hamlet and Ophelia suffer from some form of mental illness, and their conditions are only exacerbated by the trauma that they experience before and during the play.

At the start of the play, Hamlet is crippled by the trauma of suddenly losing his father, and instead of comforting him, his uncle rebukes him and calls his grief “unmanly” (Shakespeare 14). Because he is under emotional distress, Hamlet reacts to his uncle’s words drastically but still in private, seeing life as pointless and wishing for death (Shakespeare 15). Even though Hamlet feigns “madness” to manipulate those around him, the reality of his mental illness becomes clearly apparent, especially as the tragedy progresses.

On the other hand, Ophelia is traumatized by two separate events; first, Hamlet’s rejection of her love, and secondly, the murder of her father by Hamlet’s careless hand. Ophelia’s mental illness, likely depression, is clearly visible to all in her unkempt hair and inability to hold meaningful conversation.

It is unusual that Shakespeare would include both male and female characters in his depiction of mental illness, especially since women were perceived as primarily prone to this type of illness. Additionally, mental illness in women was typically misdiagnosed and mistreated. For example, a woman who disobeyed her husband was quickly labeled as mad and sometimes even sent away for harsh and ineffective “treatment.” Shakespeare treads carefully by first introducing Hamlet’s “madness” as an act, but as the play progresses, the reader can clearly see the reality of his affliction.

In her essay, “Shakespeare’s Madwomen: How Elizabethan Theatre Challenged the Perception of Mental Afflictions,” Hannah Dhue explains that Shakespeare “ endeavors to prove that madness in women can be a perfectly legitimate, logically explained affliction that is not specific to gender ” (2). In his play, Shakespeare radically redefined mental illness for both men and women through his portrayal of both Hamlet and Ophelia.

The Danger of Deception and Manipulation

Deception and manipulation run rampant in Shakespeare’s Hamlet , beginning with the murder of the late king by his brother. Hamlet and his mother have both been deceived as to the actual cause of the king’s death. Even when Hamlet learns the true reason from his father’s ghost, Horatio and Marcellus still warn him against so quickly believing the ghost’s words, as they fear some demon is manipulating him.

Hamlet’s closest friends, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, arrive in Denmark and appear to be concerned with Hamlet’s well-being; however, Hamlet quickly determines that these friends are merely spying on him at the request of his uncle.

However, Hamlet is not just a victim but also a perpetrator of deception. Hamlet also puts on a play that reenacts his father’s murder as a means to catch his uncle as soon as he shows any signs of guilt. Additionally, Hamlet plays with Ophelia’s emotions and leads her to believe that he is genuinely interested in her, but he also manipulates her and others by pretending to be mad.

In a weak attempt to be a helpful father, Polonius decides that the best way to confront Hamlet is by concealing himself behind a tapestry, using his own daughter to attempt to entrap him. This is not the first time Polonius is deceptive; earlier in the play, he snuck around behind his son Laertes’ back and sent Reynaldo to spy on him in Paris.

Every instance of deception in this play causes lasting damage: Polonius is mistaken for the king and murdered by Hamlet. Ophelia takes her own life, while Hamlet has his best friends murdered, and Laertes dies after becoming entangled in Hamlet and Claudius’ dispute.

The Futility of Revenge

Hamlet is a prime candidate for manipulation after his father’s sudden death. He knows something is wrong, but he cannot quite place a finger on it. Upon seeing the ghost and recognizing his father, he abandons his fears that the ghost is a demon and never questions whether the ghost is real or whether the ghost’s words are true.

Even Horatio describes his friend as “ desperate with imagination ” (Shakespeare 32). When the ghost confirms Hamlet’s fears that his uncle murdered his father, Hamlet is more than willing to swear to avenge his father.

However, Hamlet is so much in his own head that he fails to put action to his promise until the play’s very end. When he has a prime opportunity to murder Claudius while he is praying, Hamlet hesitates, fearful that Claudius might go to heaven. His father’s ghost even appears midway through the play to remind Hamlet of his oath to avenge his murder.

However, throughout the course of the play, one by one, the people around Hamlet serve as casualties to his plan. Hamlet impulsively kills Polonius behind a tapestry, and Hamlet’s rejection of Ophelia leads her to die. Laertes becomes involved because both his father and sister are dead, but he too ends up dying at Hamlet’s hand, as well as Hamlet’s mother and Hamlet himself. Even though vengeance is served by the end of the play, it is futile, and no one wins.

Motifs and Symbols in Hamlet

Death is a regular motif in Shakespeare’s Hamlet . A murder occurs even before the play begins, and many more follow as the play progresses. However, death appears as a motif in several different instances, primarily on the topic of suicide. Overcome with grief at his father’s sudden death, Hamlet wishes he could die, saying, “O, that this too too solid flesh would melt, thaw, and resolve itself into a dew!” (Shakespeare 15). He sees life as pointless but refuses to take his own life because he fears eternal repercussions (the church preached that those who took their own lives could not enter heaven).

When Hamlet is given the order to avenge his father’s death, his life has a new purpose; however, those heavy thoughts still remain. In Act 3, Hamlet gives his famous soliloquy, asking whether it is better “to be” (to live) or “not to be” (to die) (Shakespeare 77). However, once Hamlet is assured of Claudius’ guilt, his will to live is renewed, and his ideas about death are disguised as irreverent jokes.

When he murders Polonius, he has no compassion and feels no remorse for his actions. Instead, he jokes about Polonius being “ at supper; not where he eats, but where he is eaten ” (Shakespeare 119). Later, when Ophelia dies, whether by suicide or by accident, the grave diggers argue back and forth whether or not Ophelia deserves a “Christian burial” since it is possible that she killed herself. Hamlet makes light of the grave scene, picking up skulls and talking to them. However, his mood quickly changes when Ophelia is brought to be buried. Hamlet seems to snap out of his feigned madness by expressing his love for Ophelia; however, her death clearly has exacerbated his mental illness, as shown by his fighting with Laertes in Ophelia’s grave.

The play both begins and ends with death; even though Hamlet’s father is avenged and Claudius dies, so does Hamlet’s mother, Polonius, Laertes, Ophelia, Rosencrantz, Guildenstern, and Hamlet. Fortinbras overtake Denmark, and even though Fortinbras honors Hamlet as a hero, he is also astounded at the scene before him, likening it to a battlefield.

Ears and Hearing

When Claudius kills Hamlet’s father by pouring poison into his ear, this act incites the play’s action and is also highly symbolic. The ghost enforces that the spread of the lie that a snake killed him “rankly abus[es} the whole ear of Denmark” (Shakespeare 34). Later in the play, when Hamlet attacks his mother for marrying his uncle, his mother cries out that “these words, like daggers, enter in mine ears,” symbolizing the judgment and hurt she feels (Shakespeare 109).

However, hearing is also a common motif throughout the play, specifically overhearing and eavesdropping. Multiple characters spy on one another: Polonius spies on both Laertes and Hamlet, Hamlet spies on the king, and Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are commanded to spy on Hamlet. None of these situations end well, as they all enforce distrust within the kingdom.

It is more than a little strange that Hamlet is obsessed with his mother’s, ahem, love life. He is disgusted that his mother married and was intimate so quickly with Claudius after her husband’s death. He even dares to command his mother not to sleep with Claudius anymore. In Act 3, scene 4, Hamlet goes directly against the ghost’s words and attacks his mother, likening her marriage bed to a pigsty.

In a previous scene, Laertes tells his sister Ophelia not to sleep with Hamlet because he fears Hamlet is not genuine. He is correct, but Ophelia sleeps with him anyway. When Ophelia realizes that Hamlet does not care about her, she is devastated. She sings, “before you tumbled me, you promised me to wed” (Shakespeare 128). Ophelia feels heartbreak but also shame, especially considering Laertes’ previous warnings about retaining her honor.

Hamlet carries with it both heavy themes and symbols. It is not a light read by any means! However, with a mature group of students, there are plenty of opportunities for meaningful discussion on any of these themes or motifs.

Works Cited

American Psychiatric Association. What Is Mental Illness? , www.psychiatry.org/patients-families/what-is-mental-illness. Dhue, Hannah, and Dani Snyder. “Shakespeare’s Madwomen: How Elizabethan Theatre Challenged the Perception of Mental Afflictions.” Digital Commons @ IWU , digitalcommons.iwu.edu/jwprc/2014/oralpres9/1/. Shakespeare, William. The Tragedy of Hamlet: with Connections . Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 2000.

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Though there are only two traditionally female characters in Hamlet — Ophelia and Gertrude —the play itself speaks volumes about the uniquely painful, difficult struggles and unfair fates women have suffered throughout history. Written in the first years of the 17th century, when women were forbidden even from appearing onstage, and set in the Middle Ages, Hamlet exposes the prejudices and disadvantages which narrowed or blocked off the choices available to women–even women of noble birth. Hamlet is obsessive about the women in his life, but at the same time expresses contempt and ridicule for their actions—actions which are, Shakespeare ultimately argues, things they’re forced to do just to survive in a cruel, hostile, misogynistic world.

Gertrude and Ophelia are two of Hamlet ’s most misunderstood—and underdeveloped—characters. Hamlet himself rails against each of them separately, for very different reasons, in misogynistic rants which accuse women of being sly seductresses, pretenders, and lustful schemers. What Hamlet does not see—and what men of his social standing and his time period perhaps could not see if they tried—is that Gertrude and Ophelia are products of their environment, forced to make difficult and even lethal decisions in an attempt to survive and stay afloat in a politically dangerous world built for men, not for women. When Gertrude’s husband, King Hamlet, dies, she quickly remarries his brother, Claudius —who actually murdered him. There are two possibilities: the first is that Gertrude knew about the murder, and the second is that she didn’t. The text suggests that while Gertrude was likely not directly involved in the murder, she was aware of the truth about Claudius all along—and chose to marry him anyway. While Hamlet accuses his mother of lusting after her own brother-in-law, killing her husband, and reveling in her corrupted marriage bed with her new spouse, he fails to see that perhaps Gertrude married Claudius out of fear of what would happen to her if she didn’t. Gertrude, as a woman, holds no political power of her own—with her husband dead, she might have lost her position at court, been killed by a power-hungry new or foreign king, or forced into another, less appealing marital arrangement. Marrying Claudius was perhaps, for Gertrude, the lesser of several evils—and an effort just to survive.

Ophelia’s trajectory is similar to Gertrude’s, in that she is forced into several decisions and situations which don’t seem to be of her own making, but rather things she must do simply to appease the men around her and retain her social position at court. When Ophelia is drawn into her father Polonius and Claudius’s plot to spy on Hamlet and try to tease the reason behind his madness out of him, she’s essentially used as a pawn in a game between men. Polonius wants to see if Hamlet’s madness is tied to Ophelia, and so asks Ophelia to spurn Hamlet’s advances, return gifts and letters he’s given her in the past, and refuse to see or speak with him anymore to see test his hypothesis. Ophelia does these things—and incurs Hamlet’s wrath and derision. Again, as with his mother, he is unable to see the larger sociopolitical forces steering Ophelia through her own life, and has no sympathy for her uncharacteristic behavior. After the death of her father—at Hamlet’s hands—Ophelia loses her sanity. Spurned by Hamlet, left alone by Laertes (who is off studying in France, pursuing his future while his sister sits at court by herself) and forced to reckon with the death of her father—after Hamlet, her last bastion of sociopolitical protection—she goes mad. Even in the depths of her insanity, she continues singing nursery songs and passing out invisible flowers to those around her, performing the sweet niceties of womanhood that are hardwired into her after years of knowing how she must look and behave in order to win the favor of others—specifically men. Indeed, when Ophelia kills herself, it is perhaps out of a desire to take her fate into her own hands. A woman at court is in a perilous position already—but a madwoman at court, divorced from all agency and seen as an outsider and a liability, is even further endangered. Though Ophelia kills herself, she is perhaps attempting to keep her dignity—and whatever shreds of agency she has left at the end of her life—intact.

Gertrude and Ophelia are subject to paternalistic condescension, sexual objectification, and abuse. They are also subject to the constant psychological and emotional weight of knowing that no matter how dehumanizing and cruel the treatment they must face at court may be, things are even worse for women of lower social standings—and if the two of them don’t keep in line, lose their positions at court and face far worse fates. Gertrude and Ophelia make the decisions they make out of a drive simply to survive—and yet Hamlet never stops to imagine the weighty considerations which lie behind both women’s actions.

Women ThemeTracker

Women Quotes in Hamlet

Seems, madam! Nay, it is; I know not “seems.”

Frailty, thy name is woman!

Thrift, thrift, Horatio! The funeral baked meats Did coldly furnish forth the marriage tables.

Get thee to a nunnery. Why wouldst thou be a breeder of sinners? I am myself indifferent honest, but yet I could accuse me of such things that it were better my mother had not borne me…

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Want to Fix Social Security? The Well-Off Must Accept Smaller Checks.

By Peter Coy

Opinion Writer

Eleven years. That’s all that’s left until the combined Social Security accounts — the Old-Age and Survivors Insurance Trust Fund and the Disability Insurance Trust Fund — are likely to run out of money and can no longer pay full scheduled benefits, according to the latest report of the Social Security trustees.

I don’t worry too much that the checks won’t go out after the projected 2035 exhaustion of the funds, which though legally separate are often regarded as a single pool of money. Current beneficiaries wouldn’t stand for it, and neither would their children. (Even with no fix at all — highly unlikely — incoming payroll taxes would cover 83 percent of scheduled benefits.)

What I do worry about is what Washington’s patch for Social Security will look like. Flimsy, I’m afraid.

The cold math shows that fixing Social Security in a lasting way will require a combination of tax increases and benefit cuts. Both. Yet Republicans have been loath to discuss higher taxes. And both parties’ leaders — President Biden and former President Donald Trump — have ruled benefit cuts off the table.

I support benefit cuts, although not for everyone. Lower-income Americans should be spared. If anything, their benefits need to go up. People 55 and older should also be spared, since they’re either retired or close to it, so they can’t offset any reductions by working and saving more.

But upper-income Americans of working age are going to have to get used to the idea that Social Security will be less generous than they expected. They will need to stuff more money into their 401(k)s and maybe delay their retirement by a few years.

Social Security’s maximum benefit is about $48,000 this year for someone retiring at the normal retirement age, rising to around $65,000 (in today’s dollars) by 2050. Double those maximums for two-earner couples.

Democrats who otherwise don’t have any problem with taking a bite out of the rich have historically resisted big changes in the benefit formula for Social Security. The program is already a better deal for the poor than for the rich (although that’s partly offset by rich people’s longer life spans ). They fear that Social Security will lose political support if it comes to be seen even more as a form of redistribution from the rich to the poor rather than a kind of self-insurance.

But that longstanding fear may be unfounded. Means-tested programs, including Medicaid, college aid and nutrition assistance, have grown rapidly over the past half century and for the most part aren’t perceived as unjustified giveaways.

One reason that Social Security didn’t provide more of a safety net to lower-income people when it was enacted in 1935 is that many Southern Democrats thought Black people wouldn’t work if they had a good retirement benefit from the government, Christopher Pope, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, wrote last year in an article on the RealClearPolicy website. The Jackson Daily News wrote at the time , “The average Mississippian can’t imagine himself chipping in to pay pensions for able-bodied Negroes to sit around in idleness on front galleries, supporting all their kinfolks on pensions, while cotton and corn crops are crying for workers to get them out of the grass.” That racist rationale shouldn’t continue to affect the design of the program.

If fixes for Social Security come down to a choice between A: cutting projected benefits for upper-income Americans and B: drastically raising taxes to help keep those benefits high, voters are highly likely to choose A, argues Andrew Biggs, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.

Biggs argues that the United States should follow the lead of nations such as Australia, Canada, New Zealand and Britain, which have lower maximum benefits than Social Security provides. “You don’t see Canadians wandering the tundra without any retirement savings,” he told me.

Social Security requires a steady flow of new contributors to make it work. Payroll taxes from young workers go to pay benefits to old recipients. For its first half-century, Social Security was an amazing deal. Retirees received much more in benefits than they paid, even figuring in interest. That’s what made it so popular. But now there are fewer workers per beneficiary, and the trust funds that were built up in a flusher time are running dry. That’s why something needs to change.

Biggs co-wrote a brief in January that called for reducing or eliminating tax preferences for retirement plans, including 401(k)s, and using the savings to shore up Social Security. He and Alicia Munnell, the director of Boston College’s Center for Retirement Research, argued that the tax preferences “seem a bad deal for taxpayers, primarily benefiting high earners while failing to significantly boost national saving.” (The study was cited in a recent article in The New York Times Magazine.)

Biggs is actually optimistic. He argued in a recent essay for The Wall Street Journal that a vast majority of retirees are doing OK and it wouldn’t be expensive to put a safety net under those who aren’t. A Census Bureau report that drew on data about pension plans and other records found that the share of older people in poverty fell to 6.9 percent in 2012 from 9.7 percent in 1990, lower than the official poverty figures.

Only 3 percent of respondents who were 65 to 74 between 2019 and 2022 said they were “finding it difficult to get by,” and an additional 12 percent said they were “just getting by,” according to the Federal Reserve’s Survey of Household Economics and Decision Making. The problem is concentrated, naturally, among those with the least savings. Among people of that age with less than $10,000 in savings, 12 percent said it was difficult to get by, and 30 percent said they were just getting by, Biggs calculated.

That starts to look like a contained problem. People with low incomes clearly need help in their not-so-golden years. They don’t save for retirement mostly because they have no money to spare and partly because they don’t get good advice. “If you cut their benefits, you’re just cutting their incomes,” Biggs said.

Other retirement experts aren’t as confident as Biggs about the financial condition of most older people and the readiness of workers for retirement. “Based on their current account balances, income, saving and investment behavior, three in four workers in our sample are not saving enough for retirement,” a 2022 study published by the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago found. Laurence Kotlikoff, a Boston University economist, said retirees who told surveyors that they were getting by might have actually been living in uncomfortably straitened circumstances.

Still, to the degree that there’s a problem, it’s mostly among the people who earned the least during their working years. Social Security needs a fix, soon. Transforming it gradually into a safety net for the least advantaged is the obvious choice.

Ukraine’s Refinery Attacks Are Working

Ukraine has launched at least 20 strikes on Russian oil refineries since October, destroying about 14 percent of Russia’s oil-refining capacity and forcing the government to impose a six-month ban on gasoline exports, according to a May 8 article in Foreign Affairs magazine. Vice President Kamala Harris and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin have expressed concern that the attacks could drive up global energy prices.

But “with less domestic refining capacity, Russia will be forced to export more of its crude oil, not less, pushing global prices down rather than up,” says the article, by Michael Liebreich of Bloomberg New Energy Finance, Lauri Myllyvirta of the Center for Research on Energy and Clean Air and Sam Winter-Levy of Princeton. They present data showing that that’s already happening and conclude, “Ukraine’s campaign is working.”

Quote of the Day

“The time is out of joint.”

— William Shakespeare, “Hamlet” (1604)

Peter Coy is a writer for the Opinion section of The Times, covering economics and business. Email him at [email protected] . @ petercoy

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— William Shakespeare, "Hamlet" (1604) Peter Coy is a writer for the Opinion section of The Times, covering economics and business. Email him at [email protected] .