The Main Themes of Hamlet
FREE SAMPLE CRITICAL ESSAY
Elsinore’s older generation destroys its younger when two brothers—one living, one undead—battle in a “cursed spite” (1.5) over a crown and a queen.
CHECK OUT YOUR FREE
SAMPLE ESSAY BELOW
Check out your free
sample essay below
Essay introduction /
Thesis statement
“Purposes mistook / Fallen on th’inventors”
Shakespeare’s Hamlet is fundamentally a story about story-telling: the stories we tell others (the murderously deceitful Claudius: “a little shuffling”, 4.7); the stories we tell ourselves (the opportunistically delusional Gertrude: “All that is I see”, 3.4); and also about seeking guidance and motivation for proper action in stories (Prince Hamlet: “The play's the thing”, 2.2).
Hamlet also offers a poignant portrayal of the limits of human choice. Prince Hamlet can neither return to the university life he loved nor move forward to claim his expected kingship. His “fair Ophelia” (3.1) too is trapped in a situation over which she has no control.
But even the “dread lord” (1.2) Claudius and his “seeming-virtuous queen” (1.5) must, in the end, submit to a power greater than that of earthly monarchs. For as the play’s tragic prince declares: “Foul deeds will rise, / Though all the earth o’erwhelm them, to men's eyes” (1.2).
SHARE THE SHAKESPEARE
#Hamlet - to both on-stage characters and audience it can seem more baffling mystery than tragedy.
1
Hamlet: Appearance versus reality
“Who’s there?”
“He that plays the king shall be welcome”, Prince Hamlet remarks in 2.2 on hearing of the Players’ arrival. But Hamlet the play reveals what tragic consequences follow for people and country when the throne is seized by a man driven only by amoral ambition concealed with “a little shuffling” (4.7). The self-deluding “hoodman-blind” (3.4) Queen Gertrude is forced to confront the true character of her second husband only when it is too late for her and her son.
Bernardo and the other castle lookouts of the first act were watching in the wrong direction. In the end, Denmark was not conquered by an invading foreign army; it collapsed under a domestic web of deception.
SHARE THE SHAKESPEARE
#Hamlet: "My lord, you once did love me... what is your cause of distemper?"
2
Hamlet: Revenge and remembrance
“Where is thy father?”
Revenge and remembrance are present in legacies of three fathers to their sons: a reckless lust for territorial conquest (Young Fortinbras); an overvaluing of social rank and reputation (Laertes); and a soul-damning “dread command” (3.4) for vengeful murder (Prince Hamlet).
Hamlet’s through-a-curtain stabbing of Polonius sets in motion a second revenge plot which recasts the prince as a target rather than an agent of revenge. Always quick to see theatrical parallels, the prince later says to Laertes: “I’ll be your foil” (5.2).
The interwoven revenge stories end with the son of Norway’s old King Fortinbras, who had been killed by Old King Hamlet on the day the prince was born, succeeding to the throne of Denmark.
SHARE THE SHAKESPEARE
"Where is thy father?" - Would #Hamlet have answered his question to Ophelia any more honestly?
3
Hamlet: Madness and insanity
“Taint not thy mind”
Hamlet claims to Laertes that he was by “madness … from himself be ta’en away” (5.2). But was the ever-theatrical prince ever really insane? Or is what the king calls his “turbulent and dangerous lunacy” (3.1) merely a means to help him cling to his sanity—and avoid immediate execution for Polonius’ murder?
Hamlet’s acting out of his antic disposition—and the very real rage it both conceals and reveals—is the cause of actual madness in Polonius’ daughter: “Poor Ophelia / Divided from herself and her fair judgment” (4.5). When “driven to desperate terms” (4.7) by Elsinore’s false world, Ophelia too finds a way to speak her truth: in songs of lost love and the symbolic language of flowers.
SHARE THE SHAKESPEARE
"How came he mad?" - #Hamlet asks about himself to the grave-digger.
4
Hamlet: Corruption, decay, and death
“An unweeded garden”
At a time when a country’s health and security were seen as linked with the moral legitimacy of its monarch, Hamlet’s description in 1.2 of Denmark as “an unweeded garden” reflects his opinion of Claudius as a bestial “satyr.”
Hamlet and Claudius speak of each other in the language of sickness, disease and death that is all-present throughout Hamlet. To Claudius, his nephew is “like the hectic in my blood” (2.4). Hamlet calls his uncle a “canker of our nature” (5.2). In a play where the only scene set outside the castle is in a graveyard, the prince’s obsessive speaking of decay and rottenness—“we fat ourselves for maggots” (4.3)—reflects his disgust at the corruption he sees around him.
SHARE THE SHAKESPEARE
#Hamlet - because of Yorick, the prince is drama's only tragic hero with a sense of humor.
5
Essay conclusion / Summary
“The fall of a sparrow”
Deception unmasked, comeuppance for all, and death everywhere. In the final scene of 5.2 Laertes achieves redemption by exposing Claudius’ plot (“the king’s to blame”), and by seeking and receiving Hamlet’s pardon (“Exchange forgiveness with me, noble Hamlet”).
The prince does kill Claudius, who had “Thrown out his angle for my proper life”—but is it in revenge for his father’s murder or his own? The prince is in death as he was in life: a puzzle.
With control of Denmark passing to Norway, the assembled nobles too receive their comeuppance—for choosing brother to succeed brother rather than son to succeed father.
SHARE THE SHAKESPEARE
#Hamlet: deception unmasked, comeuppance for all and death everywhere. The grave-diggers will be busy.
6
The most helpful book ever for students and teachers of Shakespeare’s Hamlet.
42 x 1,500-word model essays
Chapter-by-chapter guide to Hamlet Model Essays
IN THIS BOOK ARE THREE 1,500-WORD SAMPLE ESSAYS ON EACH ONE OF THE FOLLOWING 14 CHARACTERS, RELATIONSHIPS, AND THEMES. THAT’S 42 SAMPLE ESSAYS IN TOTAL.
#1: The Character of Hamlet
Born a prince, parented by a jester, haunted by a ghost, destined to be killed for killing a king, and remembered as the title character of a play he did not want to be in. If at the cost of his life, Hamlet does in the end “win at the odds.”
#2: The Character of Claudius
His “ambition” for Denmark’s crown leads him to commit one murder only to find that he must plot a second to cover up the first. When this plan fails, his next scheme leads to the death of the woman he loves followed by his own.
#3: The Character of Gertrude
“Have you eyes?”, Prince Hamlet demands of his mother. Gertrude‘s “o’erhasty marriage” dooms her life and the lives of everyone around her when her wished-for, happy-ever-after fairytale ends in a bloodbath.
#4: The Character of Ophelia
As she struggles to respond to the self-serving purposes of others, Ophelia’s sanity collapses in Elsinore’s “unweeded garden” of falsity and betrayal. Her “self-slaughter” is her revenge for her silencing and humiliation.
#5: Relationship of Hamlet and the Ghost
Hamlet grants the Ghost the atonement his suffering soul needed more than the revenge he demanded: he surrenders Denmark to the son of the man murdered by his father on the day of the prince’s birth.
#6: Relationship of Hamlet and Claudius
Uncle and nephew are two men at war with each other—and themselves. Claudius is haunted by the murder he has committed (“O heavy burden!”); Hamlet by the one he hasn’t yet (“Am I a coward?”).
#7: Relationship of Hamlet and Gertrude
A haunted-by-the-past Hamlet seeks the truth about his father’s death (“Do you see nothing there?”). A live-in-the-present Gertrude seeks to protect her second husband and crown (“No, nothing but ourselves”).
#8: Relationship of Hamlet and Ophelia
Their relationship begins in uncertainty, descends into mutual deceit and rejection, and ends with their double surrender to death: Ophelia, to the water; Hamlet, to Claudius’ rigged fencing duel.
#9: Relationship of Hamlet and Horatio
“Those friends thou hast … Grapple them unto thy soul with hoops of steel.” Horatio is Hamlet’s trusted confidant in life and vows to remain the keeper of his memory after the prince’s death.
#10: Relationship of Claudius and Gertrude
A marriage of mutual self-interest: Claudius wanted to become king; Gertrude wanted to remain queen. In the end, both die by the same poison her second husband used to murder her first.
#11: Main Themes of Hamlet
A king murdered, an inheritance stolen, a family divided: Elsinore’s older generation destroys its younger when two brothers—one living, one undead—battle in a “cursed spite” over a crown and a queen.
#12: The Theme of Revenge
Hamlet and Laertes journey from revenge, through obsession and anger, to forgiveness. And the revenge sought by the Ghost on King Claudius becomes the revenge of Old King Fortinbras on Old King Hamlet.
#13: Deception and Appearance versus Reality
“Who’s there?” The characters struggle to distinguish between truth and falsehood in a play-long triple pun on the verb ‘to act’: to take action, to behave deceitfully, and to perform in theater.
#14: The Theme of Madness
“Your noble son is mad”, Polonius tells Denmark’s king and queen. But is Hamlet ever really insane? If not, why is he pretending to be? And is the prince’s “antic disposition” the cause of Ophelia’s traumatic breakdown?