“To be or not to be?”- if this quote is familiar to you, then probably your professor has given you to write a project on Hamlet. One of the most famous tragedies written by William Shakespeare “Hamlet” often becomes a topic of the Literature essay. Hamlet essay is usually easy...to start because there are many samples on the internet that can be a source of great ideas, as well as bibliography lists to examine. Papers on Hamlet can consist of the outline of the play, and its writing, the character of Denmark’s prince and its influence on the modern literature. Don’t forget to find interesting information for the introduction and conclusion of your essays on Hamlet to show the professor that you know the topic and can get good grades in Literature.
In William Shakespeare’s Hamlet, suicide is an prevalent and all-consuming theme throughout the play. Beginning with the murder of his father, Hamlet is the main character who contemplates the thought of suicide many times throughout the play. Hamlet weighs the advantages of leaving his miserable...
Throughout both Shakespeare’s Hamlet and Middleton’s The Revenger’s Tragedy, the disparity between how things seem and how they really are is a constant underlying motif; the depth in which both plays examine the concept of appearance and reality justifies the claim that they are a...
Hamlet is a tragic story where there is a hero and criminals. Everyone has an imperfection that leads to something tragic or r emotional in all of the history. The main evil in this story is Hamlet, Prince of Denmark. In Shakespeare’s Theatrical Story, Hamlet...
A statistician would balk at the idea of analyzing women in Hamlet: as there are only two members of the fairer sex in the entire cast, surely any observations drawn are unreliable. However, when approaching Hamlet, it is best to remember that numbers and statistics...
Over the past few decades, gender roles have drastically changed in our modern society, compared to the older times. Today, women are given equal rights to vote, rights to education, equal job opportunities, and equal amount of pay doing the same work their male coworkers...
The Dynamics of the relationship between Hamlet, and Horatio. Horatio is the only person in the play that Hamlet trusts. Horatio is one of the two people who know for certain that Hamlet’s madness is an act. Horatio is the only friend/family Hamlet has. Horatio...
Shakespeare’s Hamlet has often been considered one of the most intriguing and problematic plays of the English language. Among the many questions that Hamlet raises, lies the subject of whether or not Hamlet actually becomes insane. Using extensive evidence from the text and scholarly criticism,...
Beginning with Hamlet’s encounter with his father’s ghost, Shakespeare introduces a line of “action” which his hero then follows throughout the narrative. From missed opportunities to sporadic bursts of movement and progression, Hamlet initially struggles with his stagnancy in change and his reluctance to challenge...
To understand Hamlet’s insecurities, we must understand Ophelia’s point of view. It is she who makes him most uncomfortable over the course of the play, and it is her rejection of him that drives Hamlet closer to insanity. Her reasons for this rejection are as...
Hamlet challenges the conventions of revenge tragedy by deviating from them. – Sydney Bolt, 1985 The typical Elizabethan theatre-goer attending the first production of Hamlet in 1604 would have had clear expectations. The conventions of Elizabethan revenge tragedy, initially dating back to the Roman poet...
When Hamlet sees Fortinbras’ army headed for combat in Poland he is moved to deliver a striking monologue about the battle raging in his soul. Passion and anger drive Hamlet to avenge his father’s murder at any cost, while logic and reason turn him away...
A common interpretation of Shakespeare’s Hamlet, based on the widely read Folio edition of the text, is that the titular character is motivated by darkness, exhibiting depression and suicidal tendencies. The young prince often refers to suicide, and his soliloquies contain language that indicates that...
Othello is a man of action. Hamlet is a man of inaction. If Hamlet were placed in Othello’s world and vice versa one could assume that both would function well in those circumstances. Othello is a man of action in a play that demands his...
Why has Hamlet captivated actors, critics and audiences for centuries? What makes Hamlet himself so mysterious? Unlike most characters, who are defined by what can be seen on stage, Hamlet appears to be “constructed around an unseen or secret core.” Shakespeare characterizes Hamlet extensively, but...
Shakespeare has always been able to create characters richly dichotomous in nature. In “Hamlet, Prince of Denmark,” the portrayal of the ghost of Hamlet’s father vacillates through the play from Hamlet’s uncertainty of whether “it is an honest ghost” (144, l.5) or “a goblin damned”...
William Shakespeare’s Hamlet, a story grounded in worldly issues like morality, justice, and retribution, begins in a very otherworldly way: the appearance of a ghost desiring vengeance from beyond the grave. The supernatural confrontation between Hamlet and the ghost of his father is perhaps the...
Deception is a critical component of Shakespeare’s Hamlet. Its appears most significantly in Claudius concealing murder and Hamlet concealing knowledge of the same. Hamlet also feigns madness in order to misguide others and attempt to prove Claudius guilty. Others characters, including Polonius, Rosencrantz, and Guildenstern...
“Like sweet bells jangled, out of time and harsh” Hamlet’s trust is betrayed by the people who are dearest to his heart (III.i.87). The theme of betrayal takes root before Shakespeare’s tragedy begins, when Hamlet’s uncle murders his father and marries his mother. These enormous...
Women living in Elizabethan times, although more liberated than medieval women, were still expected to do their husband’s will and obey at all times. In William Shakespeare’s Hamlet, Queen Gertrude begins the play acting as a typical Elizabethan woman. She sits beside her new husband,...
In Hamlet, the philosophy and ideas of Stoicism make their appearance onstage and shape the themes and dialogue of the play. Stoicism, which praises the superiority of reason and civilization over the more base element of emotion, is the backbone of much of the conflict...
The act of revenge never fails to gather an audience, due to the simple fact that revenge raises one of the great questions in regards to human life: how does one seek justice when the law ceases to function properly? William Shakespeare tapped into the...
The author Izaak Walton noted, “The person that loses their conscience has nothing left worth keeping.” The characters in Hamlet constantly struggle with the power of their consciences, as they are tempted to satiate their innermost desires. Hamlet, the prince of Denmark, is the epitome...
Charles Forker argues that Marcus Andronicus, upon discovering the maimed, raped and mutilated Lavinia, “erects a barrier of fanciful language between himself and the object of his contemplation.” It is an interesting question: does Marcus create an elaborate metaphor comparing Lavinia to a “lopped and...
“If Hamlet from himself be ta’en away, And when he’s not himself does wrong Laertes, Then Hamlet does it not, Hamlet denies it. Who does it then? His madness. If’t be so, Hamlet is of the faction that is wrong’d; His madness is poor Hamlet’s...
Shakespeare’s tragedy Hamlet is actually a conglomeration of many subtragedies. One of these smaller tragedies within the story of Hamlet is the mental evolution of Prince Hamlet, to the point where he acted king-like and would have made a great king. Throughout the story there...
In the introduction for Hamlet in William Shakespeare: A Textual Companion, Gary Taylor writes that “of all the two-text plays, Hamlet comes closest to Lear in the scale and complexity of the textual variation apparently resulting from authorial revision” (401). Indeed, Hamlet’s three earliest texts...
In his famous speech, “I have of late, but wherefore I know not, lost all my mirth[…]” (II.ii.280), Hamlet illustrates an Elizabethan fusion of medieval and humanist ideas, perhaps lost on Rosencrantz and Guildenstern but not on E.M.W. Tillyard. Tillyard, in The Elizabethan World Picture,...
“The hallmark of the psychopath is the inability to recognize others as worthy of compassion.” -Shirley Lynn Scott, What Makes Serial Killers Tick? “They are not near my conscience.” Hamlet, after condemning childhood friends to death. Most readers regard Shakespeare’s Prince Hamlet as the archetypal...
In the plays of Shakespeare, readers can find several issues of human nature addressed. In Othello, Shakespeare addresses jealously and racism. In King Lear, he addresses pride and love. In Romeo and Juliet, he examines fate. In The Tempest and Hamlet in particular, he seems...
Introduction Past critics have deemed Ophelia an insignificant and marginal character in Shakespeare’s Hamlet, functioning only to further define Hamlet. One such critic, Jacques Lacan, interprets Ophelia as a mere object of Hamlet’s sexual desire: she is essential only because she is inextricably linked to...
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.
Quotes
"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."
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