Why is Hamlet the most famous English artwork of the past millennium? Is it a sexist text? Why does Hamlet speak in prose? Why must he die? Does Hamlet depict revenge, or justice? How did the death of Shakespeare’s son, Hamnet, transform into a story about a son dealing with the death of a father? Did Shakespeare know Aristotle’s theory of tragedy? How did our literary icon, Shakespeare, see his literary icons, Homer and Virgil? Why is there so much comedy in Shakespeare’s greatest tragedy? Why is love a force of evil in the play? Did Shakespeare believe there’s a divinity that shapes our ends? How did he define virtue? What did he think about psychology? politics? philosophy? What was Shakespeare’s image of himself as an author? What can he, arguably the greatest writer of all time, teach us about our own writing? What was his theory of literature? Why do people like Hamlet ? How do the Hamlet haters of today compare to those of yesteryears? Is it dangerous for our children to read a play that’s all about suicide?
These are some of the questions asked in this book, a collection of essays on Shakespeare’s Hamlet stemming from my time teaching the play every semester in my Why Shakespeare? course at Harvard University. During this time, I saw a series of bright young minds from wildly diverse backgrounds find their footing in Hamlet, and it taught me a lot about how Shakespeare’s tragedy works, and why it remains with us in the modern world. Beyond ghosts, revenge, and tragedy, Hamlet is a play about being in college, being in love, gender, misogyny, friendship, theater, philosophy, theology, injustice, loss, comedy, depression, death, self-doubt, mental illness, white privilege, overbearing parents, existential angst, international politics, the classics, the afterlife, and the meaning of it all.
These essays grow from the central paradox of the play: it helps us understand the world we live in, yet we don't really understand the text itself very well. For all the attention given to Hamlet , there’s no consensus on the big questions—how it works, why it grips people so fiercely, what it’s about. These essays pose first-order questions about what happens in Hamlet and why, mobilizing answers for reflections on life, making the essays both highly textual and highly theoretical.
Each semester that I taught the play, I would write a new essay about Hamlet . They were meant to be models for students, the sort of essay that undergrads read and write – more rigorous than the puff pieces in the popular press, but riskier than the scholarship in most academic journals. While I later added scholarly outerwear, these pieces all began just like the essays I was assigning to students – as short close readings with a reader and a text and a desire to determine meaning when faced with a puzzling question or problem.
The turn from text to context in recent scholarly books about Hamlet is quizzical since we still don’t have a strong sense of, to quote the title of John Dover Wilson’s 1935 book, What Happens in Hamlet. Is the ghost real? Is Hamlet mad, or just faking? Why does he delay? These are the kinds of questions students love to ask, but they haven’t been – can’t be – answered by reading the play in the context of its sources (recently addressed in Laurie Johnson’s The Tain of Hamlet [2013]), its multiple texts (analyzed by Paul Menzer in The Hamlets [2008] and Zachary Lesser in Hamlet after Q1 [2015]), the Protestant reformation (the focus of Stephen Greenblatt’s Hamlet in Purgatory [2001] and John E. Curran, Jr.’s Hamlet, Protestantism, and the Mourning of Contingency [2006]), Renaissance humanism (see Rhodri Lewis, Hamlet and the Vision of Darkness [2017]), Elizabethan political theory (see Margreta de Grazia, Hamlet without Hamlet [2007]), the play’s reception history (see David Bevington, Murder Most Foul: Hamlet through the Ages [2011]), its appropriation by modern philosophers (covered in Simon Critchley and Jamieson Webster’s The Hamlet Doctrine [2013] and Andrew Cutrofello’s All for Nothing: Hamlet’s Negativity [2014]), or its recent global travels (addressed, for example, in Margaret Latvian’s Hamlet’s Arab Journey [2011] and Dominic Dromgoole’s Hamlet Globe to Globe [2017]).
Considering the context and afterlives of Hamlet is a worthy pursuit. I certainly consulted the above books for my essays, yet the confidence that comes from introducing context obscures the sharp panic we feel when confronting Shakespeare’s text itself. Even as the excellent recent book from Sonya Freeman Loftis, Allison Kellar, and Lisa Ulevich announces Hamlet has entered “an age of textual exhaustion,” there’s an odd tendency to avoid the text of Hamlet —to grasp for something more firm—when writing about it. There is a need to return to the text in a more immediate way to understand how Hamlet operates as a literary work, and how it can help us understand the world in which we live.
That latter goal, yes, clings nostalgically to the notion that literature can help us understand life. Questions about life send us to literature in search of answers. Those of us who love literature learn to ask and answer questions about it as we become professional literary scholars. But often our answers to the questions scholars ask of literature do not connect back up with the questions about life that sent us to literature in the first place—which are often philosophical, ethical, social, and political. Those first-order questions are diluted and avoided in the minutia of much scholarship, left unanswered. Thus, my goal was to pose questions about Hamlet with the urgency of a Shakespeare lover and to answer them with the rigor of a Shakespeare scholar.
In doing so, these essays challenge the conventional relationship between literature and theory. They pursue a kind of criticism where literature is not merely the recipient of philosophical ideas in the service of exegesis. Instead, the creative risks of literature provide exemplars to be theorized outward to help us understand on-going issues in life today. Beyond an occasion for the demonstration of existing theory, literature is a source for the creation of new theory.
Chapter One How Hamlet Works
Whether you love or hate Hamlet , you can acknowledge its massive popularity. So how does Hamlet work? How does it create audience enjoyment? Why is it so appealing, and to whom? Of all the available options, why Hamlet ? This chapter entertains three possible explanations for why the play is so popular in the modern world: the literary answer (as the English language’s best artwork about death—one of the very few universal human experiences in a modern world increasingly marked by cultural differences— Hamlet is timeless); the theatrical answer (with its mixture of tragedy and comedy, the role of Hamlet requires the best actor of each age, and the play’s popularity derives from the celebrity of its stars); and the philosophical answer (the play invites, encourages, facilitates, and sustains philosophical introspection and conversation from people who do not usually do such things, who find themselves doing those things with Hamlet , who sometimes feel embarrassed about doing those things, but who ultimately find the experience of having done them rewarding).
Chapter Two “It Started Like a Guilty Thing”: The Beginning of Hamlet and the Beginning of Modern Politics
King Hamlet is a tyrant and King Claudius a traitor but, because Shakespeare asked us to experience the events in Hamlet from the perspective of the young Prince Hamlet, we are much more inclined to detect and detest King Claudius’s political failings than King Hamlet’s. If so, then Shakespeare’s play Hamlet , so often seen as the birth of modern psychology, might also tell us a little bit about the beginnings of modern politics as well.
Chapter Three Horatio as Author: Storytelling and Stoic Tragedy
This chapter addresses Horatio’s emotionlessness in light of his role as a narrator, using this discussion to think about Shakespeare’s motives for writing tragedy in the wake of his son’s death. By rationalizing pain and suffering as tragedy, both Horatio and Shakespeare were able to avoid the self-destruction entailed in Hamlet’s emotional response to life’s hardships and injustices. Thus, the stoic Horatio, rather than the passionate Hamlet who repeatedly interrupts ‘The Mousetrap’, is the best authorial avatar for a Shakespeare who strategically wrote himself and his own voice out of his works. This argument then expands into a theory of ‘authorial catharsis’ and the suggestion that we can conceive of Shakespeare as a ‘poet of reason’ in contrast to a ‘poet of emotion’.
Chapter Four “To thine own self be true”: What Shakespeare Says about Sending Our Children Off to College
What does “To thine own self be true” actually mean? Be yourself? Don’t change who you are? Follow your own convictions? Don’t lie to yourself? This chapter argues that, if we understand meaning as intent, then “To thine own self be true” means, paradoxically, that “the self” does not exist. Or, more accurately, Shakespeare’s Hamlet implies that “the self” exists only as a rhetorical, philosophical, and psychological construct that we use to make sense of our experiences and actions in the world, not as anything real. If this is so, then this passage may offer us a way of thinking about Shakespeare as not just a playwright but also a moral philosopher, one who did his ethics in drama.
Chapter Five In Defense of Polonius
Your wife dies. You raise two children by yourself. You build a great career to provide for your family. You send your son off to college in another country, though you know he’s not ready. Now the prince wants to marry your daughter—that’s not easy to navigate. Then—get this—while you’re trying to save the queen’s life, the prince murders you. Your death destroys your kids. They die tragically. And what do you get for your efforts? Centuries of Shakespeare scholars dumping on you. If we see Polonius not through the eyes of his enemy, Prince Hamlet—the point of view Shakespeare’s play asks audiences to adopt—but in analogy to the common challenges of twenty-first-century parenting, Polonius is a single father struggling with work-life balance who sadly choses his career over his daughter’s well-being.
Chapter Six Sigma Alpha Elsinore: The Culture of Drunkenness in Shakespeare’s Hamlet
Claudius likes to party—a bit too much. He frequently binge drinks, is arguably an alcoholic, but not an aberration. Hamlet says Denmark is internationally known for heavy drinking. That’s what Shakespeare would have heard in the sixteenth century. By the seventeenth, English writers feared Denmark had taught their nation its drinking habits. Synthesizing criticism on alcoholism as an individual problem in Shakespeare’s texts and times with scholarship on national drinking habits in the early-modern age, this essay asks what the tragedy of alcoholism looks like when located not on the level of the individual, but on the level of a culture, as Shakespeare depicted in Hamlet. One window into these early-modern cultures of drunkenness is sociological studies of American college fraternities, especially the social-learning theories that explain how one person—one culture—teaches another its habits. For Claudius’s alcoholism is both culturally learned and culturally significant. And, as in fraternities, alcoholism in Hamlet is bound up with wealth, privilege, toxic masculinity, and tragedy. Thus, alcohol imagistically reappears in the vial of “cursed hebona,” Ophelia’s liquid death, and the poisoned cup in the final scene—moments that stand out in recent performances and adaptations with alcoholic Claudiuses and Gertrudes.
Chapter Seven Tragic Foundationalism
This chapter puts the modern philosopher Alain Badiou’s theory of foundationalism into dialogue with the early-modern playwright William Shakespeare’s play Hamlet . Doing so allows us to identify a new candidate for Hamlet’s traditionally hard-to-define hamartia – i.e., his “tragic mistake” – but it also allows us to consider the possibility of foundationalism as hamartia. Tragic foundationalism is the notion that fidelity to a single and substantive truth at the expense of an openness to evidence, reason, and change is an acute mistake which can lead to miscalculations of fact and virtue that create conflict and can end up in catastrophic destruction and the downfall of otherwise strong and noble people.
Chapter Eight “As a stranger give it welcome”: Shakespeare’s Advice for First-Year College Students
Encountering a new idea can be like meeting a strange person for the first time. Similarly, we dismiss new ideas before we get to know them. There is an answer to the problem of the human antipathy to strangeness in a somewhat strange place: a single line usually overlooked in William Shakespeare’s play Hamlet . If the ghost is “wondrous strange,” Hamlet says, invoking the ancient ethics of hospitality, “Therefore as a stranger give it welcome.” In this word, strange, and the social conventions attached to it, is both the instinctual, animalistic fear and aggression toward what is new and different (the problem) and a cultivated, humane response in hospitality and curiosity (the solution). Intellectual xenia is the answer to intellectual xenophobia.
Chapter Nine Parallels in Hamlet
Hamlet is more parallely than other texts. Fortinbras, Hamlet, and Laertes have their fathers murdered, then seek revenge. Brothers King Hamlet and King Claudius mirror brothers Old Norway and Old Fortinbras. Hamlet and Ophelia both lose their fathers, go mad, but there’s a method in their madness, and become suicidal. King Hamlet and Polonius are both domineering fathers. Hamlet and Polonius are both scholars, actors, verbose, pedantic, detectives using indirection, spying upon others, “by indirections find directions out." King Hamlet and King Claudius are both kings who are killed. Claudius using Rosencrantz and Guildenstern to spy on Hamlet mirrors Polonius using Reynaldo to spy on Laertes. Reynaldo and Hamlet both pretend to be something other than what they are in order to spy on and detect foes. Young Fortinbras and Prince Hamlet both have their forward momentum “arrest[ed].” Pyrrhus and Hamlet are son seeking revenge but paused a “neutral to his will.” The main plot of Hamlet reappears in the play-within-the-play. The Act I duel between King Hamlet and Old Fortinbras echoes in the Act V duel between Hamlet and Laertes. Claudius and Hamlet are both king killers. Sheesh—why are there so many dang parallels in Hamlet ? Is there some detectable reason why the story of Hamlet would call for the literary device of parallelism?
Chapter Ten Rosencrantz and Guildenstern: Why Hamlet Has Two Childhood Friends, Not Just One
Why have two of Hamlet’s childhood friends rather than just one? Do Rosencrantz and Guildenstern have individuated personalities? First of all, by increasing the number of friends who visit Hamlet, Shakespeare creates an atmosphere of being outnumbered, of multiple enemies encroaching upon Hamlet, of Hamlet feeling that the world is against him. Second, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are not interchangeable, as commonly thought. Shakespeare gave each an individuated personality. Guildenstern is friendlier with Hamlet, and their friendship collapses, while Rosencrantz is more distant and devious—a frenemy.
Chapter Eleven Shakespeare on the Classics, Shakespeare as a Classic: A Reading of Aeneas’s Tale to Dido
Of all the stories Shakespeare might have chosen, why have Hamlet ask the players to recite Aeneas’ tale to Dido of Pyrrhus’s slaughter of Priam? In this story, which comes not from Homer’s Iliad but from Virgil’s Aeneid and had already been adapted for the Elizabethan stage in Christopher Marlowe’s The Tragedy of Dido, Pyrrhus – more commonly known as Neoptolemus, the son of the famous Greek warrior Achilles – savagely slays Priam, the king of the Trojans and the father of Paris, who killed Pyrrhus’s father, Achilles, who killed Paris’s brother, Hector, who killed Achilles’s comrade, Patroclus. Clearly, the theme of revenge at work in this story would have appealed to Shakespeare as he was writing what would become the greatest revenge tragedy of all time. Moreover, Aeneas’s tale to Dido supplied Shakespeare with all of the connections he sought to make at this crucial point in his play and his career – connections between himself and Marlowe, between the start of Hamlet and the end, between Prince Hamlet and King Claudius, between epic poetry and tragic drama, and between the classical literature Shakespeare was still reading hundreds of years later and his own potential as a classic who might (and would) be read hundreds of years into the future.
Chapter Twelve How Theater Works, according to Hamlet
According to Hamlet, people who are guilty of a crime will, when seeing that crime represented on stage, “proclaim [their] malefactions”—but that simply isn’t how theater works. Guilty people sit though shows that depict their crimes all the time without being prompted to public confession. Why did Shakespeare—a remarkably observant student of theater—write this demonstrably false theory of drama into his protagonist? And why did Shakespeare then write the plot of the play to affirm that obviously inaccurate vision of theater? For Claudius is indeed stirred to confession by the play-within-the-play. Perhaps Hamlet’s theory of people proclaiming malefactions upon seeing their crimes represented onstage is not as outlandish as it first appears. Perhaps four centuries of obsession with Hamlet is the English-speaking world proclaiming its malefactions upon seeing them represented dramatically.
Chapter Thirteen “To be, or not to be”: Shakespeare Against Philosophy
This chapter hazards a new reading of the most famous passage in Western literature: “To be, or not to be” from William Shakespeare’s Hamlet . With this line, Hamlet poses his personal struggle, a question of life and death, as a metaphysical problem, as a question of existence and nothingness. However, “To be, or not to be” is not what it seems to be. It seems to be a representation of tragic angst, yet a consideration of the context of the speech reveals that “To be, or not to be” is actually a satire of philosophy and Shakespeare’s representation of the theatricality of everyday life. In this chapter, a close reading of the context and meaning of this passage leads into an attempt to formulate a Shakespearean image of philosophy.
Chapter Fourteen Contagious Suicide in and Around Hamlet
As in society today, suicide is contagious in Hamlet , at least in the example of Ophelia, the only death by suicide in the play, because she only becomes suicidal after hearing Hamlet talk about his own suicidal thoughts in “To be, or not to be.” Just as there are media guidelines for reporting on suicide, there are better and worse ways of handling Hamlet . Careful suicide coverage can change public misperceptions and reduce suicide contagion. Is the same true for careful literary criticism and classroom discussion of suicide texts? How can teachers and literary critics reduce suicide contagion and increase help-seeking behavior?
Chapter Fifteen Is Hamlet a Sexist Text? Overt Misogyny vs. Unconscious Bias
Students and fans of Shakespeare’s Hamlet persistently ask a question scholars and critics of the play have not yet definitively answered: is it a sexist text? The author of this text has been described as everything from a male chauvinist pig to a trailblazing proto-feminist, but recent work on the science behind discrimination and prejudice offers a new, better vocabulary in the notion of unconscious bias. More pervasive and slippery than explicit bigotry, unconscious bias involves the subtle, often unintentional words and actions which indicate the presence of biases we may not be aware of, ones we may even fight against. The Shakespeare who wrote Hamlet exhibited an unconscious bias against women, I argue, even as he sought to critique the mistreatment of women in a patriarchal society. The evidence for this unconscious bias is not to be found in the misogynistic statements made by the characters in the play. It exists, instead, in the demonstrable preference Shakespeare showed for men over women when deciding where to deploy his literary talents. Thus, Shakespeare's Hamlet is a powerful literary example – one which speaks to, say, the modern corporation – showing that deliberate efforts for egalitarianism do not insulate one from the effects of structural inequalities that both stem from and create unconscious bias.
Chapter Sixteen Style and Purpose in Acting and Writing
Purpose and style are connected in academic writing. To answer the question of style ( How should we write academic papers? ) we must first answer the question of purpose ( Why do we write academic papers? ). We can answer these questions, I suggest, by turning to an unexpected style guide that’s more than 400 years old: the famous passage on “the purpose of playing” in William Shakespeare’s Hamlet . In both acting and writing, a high style often accompanies an expressive purpose attempting to impress an elite audience yet actually alienating intellectual people, while a low style and mimetic purpose effectively engage an intellectual audience.
Chapter Seventeen 13 Ways of Looking at a Ghost
Why doesn’t Gertrude see the Ghost of King Hamlet in Act III, even though Horatio, Bernardo, Francisco, Marcellus, and Prince Hamlet all saw it in Act I? It’s a bit embarrassing that Shakespeare scholars don’t have a widely agreed-upon consensus that explains this really basic question that puzzles a lot of people who read or see Hamlet .
Chapter Eighteen The Tragedy of Love in Hamlet
The word “love” appears 84 times in Shakespeare’s Hamlet . “Father” only appears 73 times, “play” 60, “think” 55, “mother” 46, “mad” 44, “soul” 40, “God" 39, “death” 38, “life” 34, “nothing” 28, “son” 26, “honor” 21, “spirit” 19, “kill” 18, “revenge” 14, and “action” 12. Love isn’t the first theme that comes to mind when we think of Hamlet , but is surprisingly prominent. But love is tragic in Hamlet . The bloody catastrophe at the end of that play is principally driven not by hatred or a longing for revenge, but by love.
Chapter Nineteen Ophelia’s Songs: Moral Agency, Manipulation, and the Metaphor of Music in Hamlet
This chapter reads Ophelia’s songs in Act IV of Shakespeare’s Hamlet in the context of the meaning of music established elsewhere in the play. While the songs are usually seen as a marker of Ophelia’s madness (as a result of the death of her father) or freedom (from the constraints of patriarchy), they come – when read in light of the metaphor of music as manipulation – to symbolize her role as a pawn in Hamlet’s efforts to deceive his family. Thus, music was Shakespeare’s platform for connecting Ophelia’s story to one of the central questions in Hamlet : Do we have control over our own actions (like the musician), or are we controlled by others (like the instrument)?
Chapter Twenty A Quantitative Study of Prose and Verse in Hamlet
Why does Hamlet have so much prose? Did Shakespeare deliberately shift from verse to prose to signal something to his audiences? How would actors have handled the shifts from verse to prose? Would audiences have detected shifts from verse to prose? Is there an overarching principle that governs Shakespeare’s decision to use prose—a coherent principle that says, “If X, then use prose?”
Chapter Twenty-One The Fortunes of Fate in Hamlet : Divine Providence and Social Determinism
In Hamlet , fate is attacked from both sides: “fortune” presents a world of random happenstance, “will” a theory of efficacious human action. On this backdrop, this essay considers—irrespective of what the characters say and believe—what the structure and imagery Shakespeare wrote into Hamlet say about the possibility that some version of fate is at work in the play. I contend the world of Hamlet is governed by neither fate nor fortune, nor even the Christianized version of fate called “providence.” Yet there is a modern, secular, disenchanted form of fate at work in Hamlet—what is sometimes called “social determinism”—which calls into question the freedom of the individual will. As such, Shakespeare’s Hamlet both commented on the transformation of pagan fate into Christian providence that happened in the centuries leading up to the play, and anticipated the further transformation of fate from a theological to a sociological idea, which occurred in the centuries following Hamlet .
Chapter Twenty-Two The Working Class in Hamlet
There’s a lot for working-class folks to hate about Hamlet —not just because it’s old, dusty, difficult to understand, crammed down our throats in school, and filled with frills, tights, and those weird lace neck thingies that are just socially awkward to think about. Peak Renaissance weirdness. Claustrophobicly cloistered inside the castle of Elsinore, quaintly angsty over royal family problems, Hamlet feels like the literary epitome of elitism. “Lawless resolutes” is how the Wittenberg scholar Horatio describes the soldiers who join Fortinbras’s army in exchange “for food.” The Prince Hamlet who has never worked a day in his life denigrates Polonius as a “fishmonger”: quite the insult for a royal advisor to be called a working man. And King Claudius complains of the simplicity of "the distracted multitude.” But, in Hamlet , Shakespeare juxtaposed the nobles’ denigrations of the working class as readily available metaphors for all-things-awful with the rather valuable behavior of working-class characters themselves. When allowed to represent themselves, the working class in Hamlet are characterized as makers of things—of material goods and services like ships, graves, and plays, but also of ethical and political virtues like security, education, justice, and democracy. Meanwhile, Elsinore has a bad case of affluenza, the make-believe disease invented by an American lawyer who argued that his client's social privilege was so great that it created an obliviousness to law. While social elites rot society through the twin corrosives of political corruption and scholarly detachment, the working class keeps the machine running. They build the ships, plays, and graves society needs to function, and monitor the nuts-and-bolts of the ideals—like education and justice—that we aspire to uphold.
Chapter Twenty-Three The Honor Code at Harvard and in Hamlet
Students at Harvard College are asked, when they first join the school and several times during their years there, to affirm their awareness of and commitment to the school’s honor code. But instead of “the foundation of our community” that it is at Harvard, honor is tragic in Hamlet —a source of anxiety, blunder, and catastrophe. As this chapter shows, looking at Hamlet from our place at Harvard can bring us to see what a tangled knot honor can be, and we can start to theorize the difference between heroic and tragic honor.
Chapter Twenty-Four The Meaning of Death in Shakespeare’s Hamlet
By connecting the ways characters live their lives in Hamlet to the ways they die – on-stage or off, poisoned or stabbed, etc. – Shakespeare symbolized hamartia in catastrophe. In advancing this argument, this chapter develops two supporting ideas. First, the dissemination of tragic necessity: Shakespeare distributed the Aristotelian notion of tragic necessity – a causal relationship between a character’s hamartia (fault or error) and the catastrophe at the end of the play – from the protagonist to the other characters, such that, in Hamlet , those who are guilty must die, and those who die are guilty. Second, the spectacularity of death: there exists in Hamlet a positive correlation between the severity of a character’s hamartia (error or flaw) and the “spectacularity” of his or her death – that is, the extent to which it is presented as a visible and visceral spectacle on-stage.
Chapter Twenty-Five Tragic Excess in Hamlet
In Hamlet , Shakespeare paralleled the situations of Hamlet, Laertes, and Fortinbras (the father of each is killed, and each then seeks revenge) to promote the virtue of moderation: Hamlet moves too slowly, Laertes too swiftly – and they both die at the end of the play – but Fortinbras represents a golden mean which marries the slowness of Hamlet with the swiftness of Laertes. As argued in this essay, Shakespeare endorsed the virtue of balance by allowing Fortinbras to be one of the very few survivors of the play. In other words, excess is tragic in Hamlet .
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Hunt, Marvin W. Looking for Hamlet . New York and Basingstoke: Palgrave MacMillan, 2007.
Iyengar, Sujata. "Gertrude/Ophelia: Feminist Intermediality, Ekphrasis, and Tenderness in Hamlet," in Loomba, Rethinking Feminism In Early Modern Studies: Race, Gender, and Sexuality (2016), 165-84.
Iyengar, Sujata; Feracho, Lesley. “Hamlet (RSC, 2016) and Representations of Diasporic Blackness,” Cahiers Élisabéthains 99, no. 1 (2019): 147-60.
Johnson, Laurie. The Tain of Hamlet . Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars, 2013.
Jolly, Margrethe. The First Two Quartos of Hamlet: A New View of the Origins and Relationship of the Texts . Jefferson: McFarland, 2014.
Jones, Ernest. Hamlet and Oedipus . Garden City: Doubleday, 1949.
Keegan, Daniel L. “Indigested in the Scenes: Hamlet's Dramatic Theory and Ours.” PMLA 133.1 (2018): 71-87.
Kinney, Arthur F., ed. Hamlet: Critical Essays . New York: Routledge, 2002.
Kiséry, András. Hamlet's Moment: Drama and Political Knowledge in Early Modern England . Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016.
Kottman, Paul A. “Why Think About Shakespearean Tragedy Today?” The Cambridge Companion to Shakespearean Tragedy , ed. Claire McEachern (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013): 240-61.
Langis, Unhae. “Virtue, Justice and Moral Action in Shakespeare’s Hamlet .” Literature and Ethics: From the Green Knight to the Dark Knight , ed. Steve Brie and William T. Rossiter (Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars, 2010): 53-74.
Lawrence, Sean. "'As a stranger, bid it welcome': Alterity and Ethics in Hamlet and the New Historicism," European Journal of English Studies 4 (2000): 155-69.
Lesser, Zachary. Hamlet after Q1: An Uncanny History of the Shakespearean Text . Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2015.
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Lewis, Rhodri. Hamlet and the Vision of Darkness . Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2017.
Litvin, Margaret. Hamlet's Arab Journey: Shakespeare's Prince and Nasser's Ghost . Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2011.
Loftis, Sonya Freeman, and Lisa Ulevich. “Obsession/Rationality/Agency: Autistic Shakespeare.” Disability, Health, and Happiness in the Shakespearean Body , edited by Sujata Iyengar. Routledge, 2015, pp. 58-75.
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Massai, Sonia, and Lucy Munro. Hamlet: The State of Play . London: Bloomsbury, 2021.
McGee, Arthur. The Elizabethan Hamlet . New Haven: Yale UP, 1987.
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Menzer, Paul. The Hamlets: Cues, Qs, and Remembered Texts . Newark: University of Delaware Press, 2008.
Mercer, Peter. Hamlet and the Acting of Revenge . Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1987.
Oldham, Thomas A. “Unhouseled, Disappointed, Unaneled”: Catholicism, Transubstantiation, and Hamlet .” Ecumenica 8.1 (Spring 2015): 39-51.
Owen, Ruth J. The Hamlet Zone: Reworking Hamlet for European Cultures . Newcastle-Upon-Tyne: Cambridge Scholars, 2012.
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Prosser, Eleanor. Hamlet and Revenge . 2nd ed. Stanford: Stanford UP, 1971.
Rosenberg, Marvin. The Masks of Hamlet . Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1992.
Row-Heyveld, Lindsey. “Antic Dispositions: Mental and Intellectual Disabilities in Early Modern Revenge Tragedy.” Recovering Disability in Early Modern England , ed. Allison P. Hobgood and David Houston Wood. Ohio State University Press, 2013, pp. 73-87.
Shakespeare, William. Hamlet . Ed. Neil Taylor and Ann Thompson. Revised Ed. London: Arden Third Series, 2006.
Shakespeare, William. Hamlet . Ed. Robert S. Miola. New York: Norton, 2010.
Stritmatter, Roger. "Two More Censored Passages from Q2 Hamlet." Cahiers Élisabéthains 91.1 (2016): 88-95.
Thompson, Ann. “Hamlet 3.1: 'To be or not to be’.” The Cambridge Guide to the Worlds of Shakespeare: The World's Shakespeare, 1660-Present, ed. Bruce R. Smith (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016): 1144-50.
Seibers, Tobin. “Shakespeare Differently Disabled.” The Oxford Handbook of Shakespeare and Embodiement: Gender, Sexuality, and Race , ed. Valerie Traub (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016): 435-54.
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Slater, Michael. “The Ghost in the Machine: Emotion and Mind–Body Union in Hamlet and Descartes," Criticism 58 (2016).
Thompson, Ann, and Neil Taylor, eds. Hamlet: A Critical Reader . London: Bloomsbury, 2016.
Weiss, Larry. “The Branches of an Act: Shakespeare's Hamlet Explains his Inaction.” Shakespeare 16.2 (2020): 117-27.
Wells, Stanley, ed. Hamlet and Its Afterlife . Special edition of Shakespeare Survey 45 (1992).
Williams, Deanne. “Enter Ofelia playing on a Lute.” Shakespeare and the Performance of Girlhood (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014): 73-91
Williamson, Claude C.H., ed. Readings on the Character of Hamlet: Compiled from Over Three Hundred Sources .
White, R.S. Avant-Garde Hamlet: Text, Stage, Screen . Lanham: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2015.
Wiles, David. “Hamlet’s Advice to the Players.” The Players’ Advice to Hamlet: The Rhetorical Acting Method from the Renaissance to the Enlightenment (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020): 10-38
Wilson, J. Dover. What Happens in Hamlet . 3rd ed. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1951.
Zamir, Tzachi, ed. Shakespeare's Hamlet: Philosophical Perspectives . Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018.
Hamlet, one of William Shakespeare’s most celebrated tragedies, delves into themes of madness, revenge, mortality, and existential despair. Essays could delve into the complex character of Hamlet, his internal struggles, and the philosophical dialogues that pervade the play. They might also explore the political intrigue, the family dynamics, and the elements of tragedy and supernatural in the narrative. Discussions could extend to the play’s enduring appeal, the various interpretations and adaptations over centuries, and its influence on later literature and drama. The discourse may also touch on the larger social and psychological themes explored in “Hamlet” and how they resonate with contemporary audiences. A substantial compilation of free essay instances related to Hamlet you can find at Papersowl. You can use our samples for inspiration to write your own essay, research paper, or just to explore a new topic for yourself.
Hamlet stands out as the most popular William Shakespeare's tragedies. The play is categorized as drama, literature, and philosophy and the world admits its artistic stature. Besides the poetic language used in the play, the appeal of the play lies in Hamlet's character. He is obliged to avenge the death of his father and in the process; Hamlet has to face duty, ethics and morality problems. Hamlet has to deal with issues that have been daunting human beings for centuries. […]
Revenge is a strange idea. It has been around since the dawn of time. An Eye for an eye, right? If someone hits you, you hit them back harder. In the play, Hamlet, William Shakespeare, Revenge is the overarching theme of the play. It shows what revenge can do to a person. Hamlet views revenge as a good deed: something that he must complete to avenge his dad. Revenge is binary, meaning it isn't only the act of revenge, there […]
William Shakespeare writes during a time when patriarchy was prevalent. Shakespeare includes these personas and attitudes within his plays to illustrate how these ideals played out. He works also to create female characters that hold their male counterparts accountable. In this paper, there will be a review of patriarchal patterns within A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Hamlet, Henry IV, Macbeth, and King Lear but additionally how the female characters counteract the hegemonic masculinity. Because patriarchal patterns were prevalent in the time […]
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The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, is a play written by the English writer William Shakespeare who was known for writing plays that specifically demonstrates the complete range of human emotions and conflict. The tragedy of Hamlet explores the themes of vengeance and human emotion, making it one of the most famous tragedies written in history. The tragedy was written in the early modern period around the years 1600 and 1602. This period in time represented an era of […]
Lucius Annaeus Seneca once said, Death is the wish of some, the relief of many, and the end of all. In Hamlet, Prince Hamlet struggles to cope with his father's death and his mother's rash decision to marry his uncle, King's Hamlet brother, Claudius, less than a month after his father's death. After an unexpected visit from his father's ghost, Hamlet discovers that his uncle murdered his father. This new information sets Hamlet on a path of revenge that is […]
"Destructive love is an emotional process of tearing down the love and affection between 2 people in a relationship. The idea of knowing the difference between having a disagreement that is trying to clear up something in comparison to a disagreement that is destructive toxicity can come. The theme of destructive love between different relationships in Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights and Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre, Shakespeare's Hamlet Robert Browning's My Last Duchess results in the characters having […]
The past can hurt. But the way I see it, you can either run from it, or learn from it. Hamlet, is a tragedy written by William Shakespeare. Set in Denmark, the play dramatises the revenge Prince Hamlet is called to wreak upon his uncle, Claudius, by the ghost of Hamlet's father, King Hamlet. The Lion King is a Disney feature based on a young lion Simba the heir of his father the king Mufasa. Simba's wicked uncle, Scar, plots […]
The well known play, Hamlet written by William Shakespeare truly centers on the hardship of Hamlet being pressured to kill his uncle by plead of his dead father. It all began when Hamlet discovers a ghost which embodies the exact features of his recently dead father. The Ghost begs Hamlet to seek revenge for him since he was unfairly killed by his own brother named Claudius. Hamlet’s uncle not only killed his father, but he also had the audacity to […]
Introduction Why is the fate of women taken carelessly by some actors and actresses? During the Shakespearean era, the role of women in most works was played by men and boys. This was because in the mediaeval world stage acting by women was considered disgraceful. William Shakespeare era considered acting to be a masculine profession rather than feminine. Most acting groups' recruited boys and men often compared to women. This take of women was mostly during the British time which […]
Hamlet is Shakespeare’s most extended and probably the most famous English language play ever written. In the script, the character Hamlet is the protagonist. Hamlet’s mother, Gertrude, is the queen of Denmark. His uncle, Claudius recently killed his father, King Hamlet and married Gertrude. Hamlet’s actions depict him to have a lot of contradictions, reckless but cautious. Shakespeare captures the human characteristics perfectly with the character of Hamlet with an inconsistency of emotions such that no one knows what he […]
When Hamlet is asking questions, he is not asking questions for himself but for man in general. How does Hamlet depict the world through his own problems? What kind of light does it cast on the world/society at large? The Tragedy of Prince Hamlet, a play by William Shakespeare, tells the tale of the youthful Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, who seeks retribution for his dad's murder by his uncle, Claudius, the newly appointed King of Denmark. In this play, it's […]
In Hamlet and Othello, Shakespeare criticizes the feminine issues that were present in his time, bringing awareness to the standard roles and ideal expectations of women by characterizing them in a space of being obedient and powerless. As women are portrayed as having ideal feminine values such as chastity and passiveness, the frailty of women is also brought to the surface. On the other hand, Shakespeare also seems to be suggesting that internal destruction is generated in the sense that […]
William Shakespeare is one of the world’s most renowned writers still to date. He is the writer of 37 plays and 154 sonnets. One his most well-known plays is Hamlet, a tragedy filled with drama, revenge, madness, and death. The main character of the play, Hamlet, is the subject of whether he is actually mad or not. His indeed madness can be traced back to the tragic events that have occurred to him such as the death of his father […]
Though it may seem that Hamlet looks insane sometimes but in reality Hamlet is not insane. Hamlet is trying to seek the revenge that his father wants him to get. The insanity the people think they see in Hamlet, is what Hamlet sees himself as quandaring on what to do. Seeking revenge is hard for Hamlet to do, in the since he is going to end up killing his mother's lover, but on the other hand his father's killer. Hamlet […]
To say that Hamlet bears no resemblance nor relevance to everyday people's lives would be an uninformed statement. When further examined, the intuition into our current society that Hamlet provides becomes abundantly clear. For example, the many themes and motifs present in Shakespeare's Hamlet parallel issues that are relevant in our current society. Themes such as revenge, deception, mental health, etc. Firstly, the theme of revenge appears to be the most notable theme that reflects heavily in both Hamlet and […]
Gender discrimination is based on human prejudice or discrimination against the sexes. This kind of discrimination has been going on for many centuries, and Shakespeare's era is no exception. Sex discrimination may affect anyone, but it mainly affects women and girls, such as Gertrude and Ophelia in Shakespeare's Hamlet. Sexism is fully embodied in this play. In this play, Women are inferior to men in their statements, and women's voices are easily ignored. This shows that Shakespeare is anti-female. In […]
"In two of William Shakespeare’s plays: Hamlet and King Lear, the two characters who are considered villainous with great political ambitions are Claudius, King of Denmark and Edmund, the bastard son of Earl of Gloucester. These two men are resentful, manipulative, and want to ensure they obtain power; nevertheless, Shakespeare provides the audience with an understanding yet unsympathetic perception of their plot to pursue the title and land. Even though these characters are a part of two different tragedies, Shakespeare […]
The country is in the political disturbance. The King who everyone loved is dead. The political system is currently headed by Claudius. The country is in the hands of a man who is untrustworthy, unfair and a murderer. Claudius has killed his own brother. How can he be trusted? There's no balance in the political system. There is no balance in the political system. In Act 1, Scene 2 this is obvious. Even Claudius concedes that the country is disorganized […]
In the play, Hamlet, by William Shakespeare, the author uses various literary devices to convey many themes and sentiments to the reader, via his characters’ actions. The play’s focal character - Hamlet - is one that transforms throughout the play quite drastically, yet it can be argued that it was all part of a greater plan. As Hamlet returns to the castle to hear news that his father is dead, it brings a grand amount of grief and sadness to […]
How do you know if a person has gone mad? How do you know if a person is telling the truth? What about intention? Nowadays, we have psychologists, therapists and all kinds of doctors that help to diagnose mental illness. We are now aware of the different types of “craziness” that a person can be. What about hundreds of years ago? Just like today, some people were truly madmen, but of course, anyone has the ability to pretend to be […]
In the revenge tragedy, Hamlet, Shakespeare characterizes Hamlet as a man with a heightened power of observation, while exploring the unique ways in which his keen eye can interpret the events that occur throughout the play. Hamlet is not an abstract thinker, but he is merely gifted with a greater sense of reality due to his ability to observe and articulate his thoughts and observances. Hamlet's ability to penetrate to the very core of things through his greater power of […]
Introduction Maggie MillsBeckerLiterature and composition12 March 2018 "Quintessence of dust" The weight of one's mortality and the complexities of life lead people to question and ponder what their fate will be in the afterlife. In William Shakespeare's play Hamlet, Hamlet questions the meaning of life and grapples to accept his own existence. The motif of death and decay develops throughout the play, starting figuratively and evolving into a more literal interpretation, leading to the conclusion that death is the great […]
Hamlet is one of Shakespeare's' most famous plays, for it revolves around external and internal conflicts or struggles within the main character, Hamlet, which makes it unique from a typical revenge story. Although the genre of the play is a tragedy it contains various elements of comedy throughout the darkest moments of the play. At the start of the play guardsmen at the royal palace have seen a ghost which seems to be former King Hamlet, and convinces noblemen Horatio […]
Ophelia agrees to take Laertes’s advice. She agrees to take his advice because she knows nothing else than to listen a man. She is dependent on men and continues to do whatever they tell her. She saids “this is a good lesson keep, As a watchman to my heart.” (1.3.51) She sees it as he is looking out for her, which he is but it reality he is demanding her to stay away from Hamlet to keep her purity. Laertes […]
Archetypes are characters, situations, and symbols that can transcend different cultures. Undoubtedly, The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, one of the most influential works written by William Shakespeare”, is a classic dramatic story filled with deceit, trickery, self-doubt, revenge, and death” (J., Clayton.) In this piece, Shakespeare masterfully employs Jung’s archetypes to give personality traits to his characters, such as the hero and the outcast for Prince Hamlet, the villain and the ambitious for Claudius, and the battle between […]
Mental or psychological influence in any literary work can heighten and alter the mood and tone. Some literary works can alter the course of the storyline as is done in Shakespeare's The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark. Hamlet's mental state, along with major character influence, has the ability to allow a wide range of unexpected plot twists and a touch of suspense. In Shakespeare's play, Hamlet's revenge demonstrates the extent of one's mental capacity can be found amusing and […]
Maya Angelou- I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings One of the major ideas we discussed around this book was the idea of displacement. In this passage, Maya and her peers are listening to a white man speak to their class. In this scenario, Maya is feeling displaced in a place where she normally feels at home. When the white man comes into the school, he speaks to them in a condescending way, talking down to not only the students […]
Hamlet is the Prince of Denmark, the son of Queen Gertrude and late King Hamlet and nephew of King Claudius. In the story Hamlet many people are stuck between if he is actually insane or if he is faking his insanity. Some people really do believe he is and some people believe he is absolutely not. The story is very dramatic and a lot goes on. Hamlet has had to deal with a lot throughout the play. The main problems […]
Jake Bourdages Michael Krause AP Literature November 26th, 2018 Hamlet Extract Analysis Introduction: It is the very beginning of the play at act 1, scene 2, and Claudius, with Gertrude by his side, has just been crowned the new king of Denmark. Claudius's first action as the king is to give his inaugural speech, in which he tells the kingdom that rather than mourning the old king everyone should be celebrating the new marriage between himself and Gertrude. After his […]
In Oedipus Rex by Sophocles, when Thebes is struck with the aid of a plague, the human beings ask King Oedipus to supply them from its horrors. Creon, the brother of Jocasta, Oedipus's queen, returns from the oracle of Apollo and discloses that the plague is punishment for the homicide of King Laius, Oedipus's instant predecessor, to whom Jocasta was once married. Creon further discloses that the residents of Thebes need to find out and punish the murderer before the […]
Originally published : | 1603 |
Setting : | Denmark |
Playwright : | William Shakespeare |
Genre : | Shakespearean tragedy |
Original language : | Early Modern English |
Characters : | Ophelia, Claudius, Polonius, Hamlet, Laertes, Horatio |
Additional example essays.
Introduction to shakespeare's hamlet.
William Shakespeare's "Hamlet" is a timeless work of literature that delves into themes of revenge, tragedy, morality, and the human condition. In the introduction of your essay, briefly summarize the plot of "Hamlet," focusing on the young Prince of Denmark who is the play's central character. Outline the key themes you intend to explore, such as the complexity of action, the mystery of death, and the struggle with moral corruption. This initial section should offer a concise overview of the play’s background and set the stage for a deeper analytical exploration of its characters, themes, and Shakespeare's use of language.
The body of your essay should focus on a detailed analysis of the major themes in "Hamlet." Examine the theme of revenge and its implications on the characters’ actions and the play’s outcome. Discuss the existential questions raised by Hamlet’s famous soliloquy, "To be, or not to be," and how these reflect his internal conflict. Furthermore, analyze the play’s exploration of madness, both feigned and real, particularly in the characters of Hamlet and Ophelia. In addition to thematic analysis, delve into character studies. Examine Hamlet’s complex personality, his relationship with other characters like Claudius, Gertrude, and Ophelia, and how these relationships drive the plot forward. Use specific examples and quotations from the text to support your analysis, ensuring each paragraph delves into different aspects of Shakespeare’s work.
An essay on "Hamlet" should also pay attention to Shakespeare's use of language and dramatic techniques. Discuss the play's structure, its use of soliloquies, and the significance of its metaphors and imagery. Examine how these elements contribute to the play's thematic depth and emotional impact. This analysis can include how Shakespeare builds tension and conveys themes through dialogue, setting, and symbolism. By focusing on these elements, you can provide insight into Shakespeare’s craftsmanship and the ways in which "Hamlet" operates both as a piece of literature and a theatrical performance.
Conclude your essay by summarizing the key points of your analysis, tying them back to your initial thesis about the play’s themes and significance. Reflect on the enduring relevance of "Hamlet" in modern times, considering why it continues to be a vital part of literary and theatrical discourse. You might also explore the play's influence on later literature and culture. A strong conclusion will not only provide closure to your essay but also extend its relevance, encouraging readers to continue contemplating the complexities of Shakespeare’s masterpiece.
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Download free-response questions from past AP English Literature and Culture exams, along with scoring guidelines, sample responses, and scoring distributions.
AP English Literature Practice Free Response Prompts for the Midterm. These are sample questions to inspire you to think through potential discussions of Anna Karenina and Hamlet. On the test, you will need to use one of those texts to answer the question given. These are actual questions from past AP tests. The question I give you will not be ...
Assessment: Students will write a micro essay to analyze Hamlet's self-perception through diction, imagery and syntax. Do Now: Journal writing- From the first two acts we have read, what is your impression of Hamlet's character?
Th e following unit plan on Hamlet is based upon four important traits of successful AP® English Literature and Composition curriculum that can, I believe, be applied to any work of literature.
The best study guide to Hamlet on the planet, from the creators of SparkNotes. Get the summaries, analysis, and quotes you need.
Time-saving lesson video on How to Use Hamlet For Everything with clear explanations and tons of step-by-step examples. Start learning today!
AP® English Literature and Composition Sample Essays (the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly) The free response section of the beloved AP® Lit exam requires three written responses from students: We're focusing on the third here, which scores students on a scale of 1-9 (and fingers crossed, not 0). The essays below represent the range of scores, and ...
Looking for an outstanding Hamlet essay topic? 🥇 Check our list! ☝ Discover the best ideas for your writing. With Hamlet essay prompts & research topics!
AP Lit Mr. Hart Hamlet - Essay Topics Choose one of the following topics to write a thoughtful and supported 2-3 page essay. Use examples from the play to support your ideas. Your essay should contain a thesis statement and examples from the text to support that statement. It should be typed, double-spaced, and excellent.
An essay examining the importance of the Ghost as a character the ghost of denmark hamlet is story full of conflict and revenge which would never take place
The character Hamlet from Shakespeare's tragedy Hamlet explores these existential questions, seeking truth and understanding as he tries to come to grips with his father's death. In the end, Hamlet proves to be an exceedingly existential character. Prince Hamlet is a university student who enjoys contemplating difficult philosophical questions.
Question 3. (Suggested time—40 minutes. This question counts as one-third of the total essay section score.) Many works of literature contain a character who intentionally deceives others. The character's dishonesty may be intended either to help or to hurt.
Hamlet: AP Exam Prompts To prepare for the essay exam, for each of the realAP exam prompts below (for which Hamlet was a recommended text), create a thesis statement that would be the starting place for an essay answer. 1.
Teachers: Explore timing and format for the AP English Literature and Composition Exam. Review sample questions, responses, and scoring guidelines.
This is an AP Literature essay prompt for Hamlet's soliloquy at the end of Act 2 where he bemoans his inaction and then comes up with his plan to catch Claudius. Contains the prompt, the soliloquy with some vocabulary help off to the side, an AP essay rubric, and four lined sheets for the essay. W Subjects: English Language Arts, Literature, Writing-Essays Grades: 11th - 12th, Higher Education ...
HAMLET: AP Literature Essay Prompts Below are five prompts which appeared in past AP Lit Exams. Your assignment is to choose two prompts and write an analytical essay for each.
Description Composed of approximately 90 multiple choice questions covering 12 passages, 6 free response questions, detailed answer explanations, teaching strategies, vocabulary and literary term lists, and essay scoring guides, this resource can provide concentrated instructional support for any Pre-AP and AP English course.
Essays on Hamlet. Written as the author taught Hamlet every semester for a decade, these lightning essays ask big conceptual questions about the play with the urgency of a Shakespeare lover, and answer them with the rigor of a Shakespeare scholar. In doing so, Hamlet becomes a lens for life today, generating insights on everything from ...
This is an AP Literature essay prompt for Act Three of Hamlet, focusing on the relationship between Claudius and the audience, and Shakespeare's use of allusions, rhetorical devices, and figurative language. Contains the prompt, a selection from the play, an AP essay rubric, and four lined sheets f...
Jake Bourdages Michael Krause AP Literature November 26th, 2018 Hamlet Extract Analysis Introduction: It is the very beginning of the play at act 1, scene 2, and Claudius, with Gertrude by his side, has just been crowned the new king of Denmark.
Welcome to the AP Lit and Comp page. On this page you will find documents, assignments, links, and models that are relevant to the curriculum of this course.
2016 Lit Ques 3 Intentional Deception Student Sample Essays. 2016 Lit Ques 3 (Intentional Deception) Student Samples/Anchors. Essays are typed as written by students. Sample C Score 1. "The Great Gatsby" is an excellent example of a novel with a deceptive character. Gatsby deceives other characters in many situations throughout the novel.