Hamlet themes motifs handout PDF

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Hamlet’s themes and motifs. Theme of corruption/decay 

Something is rotten in the state of Denmark. (I, 4) (Central theme of the play)

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This oft-quoted line sums up the effect of King Hamlet’s murder on the country as a whole.  Images of disease and poisoning are mainly derived from the Ghost’s initial description of the murder.

Upon my secure hour thy uncle stole, With juice of cursed hebenon in a vial, And in the porches of my ears did pour The leperous distillment; (I, 5)  Shakespeare uses a metaphor to compare the king’s ear to the country as a whole when the Ghost describes the false story circulated by Claudius about his death: …so the whole ear of Denmark / Is by a forged process of my death / Rankly abused… (I, 5) 

To Hamlet, Denmark is:

 …an unweeded garden,/ that grows to seed, Things ranks and gross in nature possess it merely… (I, 2) (Garden/weed motif) 

The corruption and decay in a state ruled by the murderer of a king are reflected in the natural world.  The Elizabethan belief in the Chain of Being held that disruptions in any of the links had repercussions on other levels of the chain.  The play has many examples of the effect of Claudius’s crime on the health of Denmark as a whole.

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Hamlet describes the air in Denmark to Rosencrantz and Guildenstern:

 …this majestical roof fretted with golden fire, why, it appears no other thing to me than a foul and pestilent congregation of vapors. (II, 2) 

Images of corruption and decay are most closely associated with Claudius’s crime and his incestuous relationship with Gertrude.  When Claudius tries to pray, he admits:

O, my offence is rank, it smells to heaven (III, 3) 

When Hamlet confronts his mother after the play, he emphasizes the physical details of her relationship with Claudius:

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In the rank sweat of an enseamed bed, Stew'd in corruption, honeying and making love Over the nasty sty— (III, 4)

He advises his mother to repent and save herself with more images of decay:

 Confess yourself to heaven; Repent what's past; avoid what is to come; And do not spread the compost on the weeds, To make them ranker. (III, 4) 

Hamlet is obsessed with the physical effects of death on the human body.  When Claudius asks Hamlet about the location of Polonius’s body, Hamlet responds that he is “at supper”:

Not where he eats, but where he is eaten: a certain convocation of politic worms are e'en at him. (IV, 3)  Hamlet jokes with the gravedigger about how long it will take for a body to rot after it is buried: I' faith, if he be not rotten before he die... he will last you some eight year or nine year. (Gravedigger, V, 1)  When the gravedigger digs up Yoric’s skull (the king’s former jester and companion of the youthful Hamlet), Hamlet is fascinated with the physical effects of death: To what base uses we may return, Horatio! Why may not imagination trace the noble dust of Alexander, till he find it stopping a bung-hole? (V, 2)

Acting & Appearance vs. Reality 

Acting has two meanings in Hamlet.  Hamlet’s failure to act is often cited as the central problem of the play.  Acting in the theatrical sense is an important theme in the play.

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Many of the characters in Hamlet use a false appearance to hide their real motives.

 Claudius uses the kingship to conceal his crime.  Polonius patronizes Hamlet, while secretly plotting against him with Claudius.  Ophelia loves Hamlet but rejects him on her father’s advice, and helps Polonius and Claudius spy on him.  Hamlet puts on an “antic disposition” in order to deceive Claudius.  Rosencrantz and Guildenstern pretend to befriend Hamlet in order to spy on him for Claudius. 

Hamlet welcomes the players affectionately in II, 2, and has a high regard for their skill, instructing Polonius to see that they are well taken care of.  The first player’s speech about the death of King Priam during the siege of Troy causes Hamlet to compare his inaction to the player’s depth of emotion for a fictional character.

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His advice to the players in Act II focuses on the nature and purpose of drama.  He cautions them not to overdo their parts with wild words and exaggerated gestures.  This shows Shakespeare’s interest in acting techniques, but also Hamlet’s interest in playing roles and his expertise at doing so.

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Hamlet describes the purpose of drama as “the mirror up to nature.”

This is a particularly apt description of the play-within-the-play 

The play-within-the-play is highly effective dramatically: 

Hamlet is watching Claudius, who is watching the play.

 The audience is watching Claudius, but is also watching Hamlet watching Claudius. 

Hamlet successfully uses the play-within-the-play to expose Claudius’s guilt.  Shakespeare uses this dramatic device to show that theatre can be used to hold “a mirror up to nature.”  By transforming the actors on stage into an audience watching actors, Shakespeare reminds the real audience that they are also watching a play.  If the purpose of drama is to reflect real life, what truths is Shakespeare trying to communicate through the play Hamlet?  Shakespeare emphasizes drama as a central theme by placing the scene (III, 2) in the physical center of the play (in the middle of Act III).

Appearance vs reality (The difficulty of discovering and exposing the truth in a corrupt society.)

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Act 1 Scene 3: Polonius instructs Ophelia to disassociate herself from Hamlet who he insists does not love her regardless of what he says. Act 2 Scene 1: Ophelia, distraught, tells her father of Hamlet's recent bizarre behaviour and Polonius speculates that Hamlet is mad with love. Act 2 Scene 2: Polonius tells Gertrude and Claudius of Hamlet's strange behaviour and they agree to watch him secretly. Polonius talks with Hamlet who appears to be mad. Later in the scene Hamlet concocts his plan to trick the king with the Mousetrap scene, performed by the travelling players. Act 3 Scene 1: In the 'nunnery scene' Ophelia is bewildered by Hamlet's contradictory assertions and his anger and mourns the 'noble mind' that has been 'o'erthrown.' Act 3 Scene 2: The performance of the Mousetrap play appears to reveal Claudius's guilt. Act 3 Scene 4: Hamlet demands his mother face the truth of her disloyalty and says he will trust Rosencrantz and Guildenstern no more than he would 'adders fanged', knowing they have been dishonest in their dealings with him. Act 4 Scene 7: Claudius concocts a plot with Laertes to kill Hamlet.

Madness 

After seeing the ghost, Hamlet announces to Horatio and Marcellus that he will put on an “antic disposition.”  Although he does not explain why, it is implied that he will be able to act more freely against Claudius.

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Hamlet’s madness raises a number of questions:  If Hamlet acts mad so that he can attack the king more freely, does he use his madness to do so?  Is Hamlet on the borderline between madness and sanity during the course of the play anyway?  Does Hamlet feign madness to cover his true emotional instability?

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Hamlet uses his madness to mock Polonius, as well as Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, all of whom are stooges for Claudius.

 I am but mad north-north-west: when the wind is southerly I know a hawk from a handsaw. (II, 2) 

Do the events in the play account for Hamlet’s real emotional instability?

 Hamlet has undergone an emotional trauma when we first meet him—his father has died and his mother has remarried a man he hates.  This trauma is compounded when Hamlet discovers that his uncle is also his father’s murderer. 

When is Hamlet actually unstable, and when is he acting?  Hamlet is almost certainly performing when he acts crazy with Polonius, Claudius, and Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.  However, Ophelia’s story of Hamlet appearing to her seems to describe someone in real emotional distress (but not crazy/mad):

Pale as his shirt; his knees knocking each other; And with a look so piteous in purport As if he had been loosed out of hell To speak of horrors,--he comes before me. (II, 1) Reason vs Passion 

Hamlet is in continual conflict between the two forces of reason and passion.  He knows he must kill Claudius in revenge, but passes up opportunities because he thinks too much about the consequences.  When he does act passionately and impulsively, he kills an innocent person (Polonius).

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The Elizabethans believed that man was positioned between the angels and the beasts on the Chain of Being.  Mankind is pulled by two forces—the base passions of the beasts below and the pure rationality of the angels above.

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Shakespeare presents in the character of Hamlet a universal conflict—the struggle between reason and passion as influences on our actions.

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Hamlet criticizes his mother for giving in to passion, often dwelling on the sensual nature of her relationship with Claudius.

 O, God! a beast, that wants discourse of reason, Would have mourn'd longer. (I , 2)  …the rank sweat of an enseamed bed, Stew'd in corruption, honeying and making love Over the nasty sty… (III, 4)

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While Hamlet is sometimes impulsive and passionate, as when he kills Polonius, his thoughts often prevent him from acting.  In his “To be or not to be” soliloquy, he considers suicide, but admits that fear of life after death prevents him from ending his life.  Thus conscience doth make cowards of us all. (III, 1)

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In Hamlet’s soliloquy in IV, 4, he points out that reason is what distinguishes men from beasts:

What is a man, If his chief good and market of his time Be but to sleep and feed? a beast, no more. Sure, He that made us with such large discourse, Looking before and after, gave us not That capability and god-like reason To fust in us unused. 

He also admits that his tendency to think too much has prevented him from acting:

…thinking too precisely on the event, A thought which, quarter'd, hath but one part wisdom And ever three parts coward, I do not know Why yet I live to say "This thing's to do," Sith I have cause and will and strength and means To do't. Revenge 

In Hamlet, Shakespeare takes the revenge tragedy to a deeper level:  The characters, especially Hamlet, are more psychologically and morally complex than in traditional revenge tragedies.  Hamlet’s revenge becomes an examination of the deeper mysteries of life.  Shakespeare’s figurative language is richer and more complex than that of other revenge tragedies.

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Hamlet contains more than one revenge plot.  Hamlet must avenge his father’s murder, but he is the also the target of Laertes, who must also avenge the murder of his father by Hamlet.  The play-within-the-play shows Lucianus in the double role of avenger and target.

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Lucianus represents Claudius, the murderer who pours poison in the Player King’s ear.

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Lucianus also represents Hamlet, the avenger, who plans to kill the current king.

Spying/Eavesdropping 

There are multiple instances of spying or eavesdropping in Hamlet.  These scenes contribute to the overall atmosphere of suspicion, mistrust and uncertainty in the play.

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III, 1: Claudius and Polonius spy on Hamlet and Ophelia.  Hamlet is probably aware that they are eavesdropping and performs for their benefit, although some of his conversation with Ophelia seems sincere.

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II, 1: Polonius sends Reynaldo to spy on Laertes in order to discover information about his reputation.  Polonius even instructs him to slander Laertes in order to see if his insults are confirmed or denied by others:

See you now; Your bait of falsehood takes this carp of truth: And thus do we of wisdom and of reach, With windlasses and with assays of bias, By indirections find directions out. (II, 1) 

Claudius sends for Rosencrantz and Guildenstern to hang out with Hamlet and try to find out what “afflicts” him:

 …so by your companies To draw him on to pleasures, and to gather, So much as from occasion you may glean, Whether aught, to us unknown, afflicts him thus. (Claudius, II, 2)  Claudius is being sneaky here. He wants to find out through Rosencrantz and Guildenstern how much Hamlet knows.  Hamlet knows they are Claudius’s stooges, and mocks them viciously: ROSENCRANTZ :

Take you me for a sponge, my lord?

HAMLET : Ay, sir, that soaks up the king's countenance, his rewards, his authorities…when he needs what you have gleaned, it is but squeezing you, and, sponge, you shall be dry again. (IV, 2)

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Polonius eavesdrops on Hamlet and Gertrude while hiding behind an arras, and is killed by Hamlet.  It is ironic that Polonius, who advocates eavesdropping to Claudius and sends an agent to spy on his own son, is killed because of his own deception.

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The play-within-the-play is one of the best examples of spying on others in the play.  Hamlet devises the plan in order to observe Claudius’s behavior:

I have heard / That guilty creatures sitting at a play Have …been struck so to the soul that presently They have proclaim'd their malefactions; (II, 2)  While Hamlet and the audience watch Claudius during the play for signs of guilt, we (the audience) are also watching Hamlet watching Claudius. Death/Suicide 

Hamlet is clearly obsessed with death after his father’s unexpected passing.  At the beginning of the play, before Hamlet discovers that his father was murdered, he is despondent and grieving.  Claudius and Gertrude, both think he should moderate his grief:

Thou know'st 'tis common; all that lives must die, Passing through nature to eternity. (Gertrude, I, 2) But, you must know, your father lost a father; That father lost, lost his…but to persever In obstinate condolement is a course Of impious stubbornness; 'tis unmanly grief. (Claudius, I, 2) 

In his first soliloquy, Hamlet expresses his wish to die and regrets that there are moral laws against suicide.

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! (I, 2) 

Hamlet considers suicide again in his “To be or not to be” soliloquy.  The speech is a mediation on existence and whether it is morally right to end one’s own life in an unbearable world.

 Hamlet asks the question whether it is nobler to live and suffer, or to end an unhappy life quickly: Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, Or to take arms against a sea of troubles, And by opposing end them?  He concludes that if life were a dreamless sleep, suicide would be a more attractive option.  However, no one knows what happens after death: 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… (III, 1) 

Hamlet’s conversation with the gravedigger is another examination of death:  The physical effects of death  The inevitability of death

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Hamlet jokes with the gravedigger about how long it will take a body to rot in the ground.  The humor in this scene is ironic. Hamlet does not know the upcoming funeral is Ophelia’s.

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When the gravedigger throws up the skull of Yorick, the king’s jester, Hamlet philosophizes on the end to which all living things must come:

 To what base uses we may return, Horatio! Why may not imagination trace the noble dust of Alexander, till he find it stopping a bung-hole? (V, 2)  Imperious Caesar, dead and turn'd to clay, Might stop a hole to keep the wind away. (V, 2)  In moving to Yorick’s skull, the view of death has progressed from death as anonymous to death as personal, leading to the extreme personal connection with Ophelia’s death Ears 

Shakespeare uses ears and hearing as recurring images in Hamlet for two purposes:

1. The king’s ear represents the central crime of the play, and the king’s connection to country as a whole.  King Hamlet was killed when Claudius “in the porches of my ears did pour The leperous distillment.” (I, 5)  By murdering the king and spreading the false snakebite story, “the whole ear of Denmark is…Rankly abused.” (I.v.36–38).  When confronting his mother, Hamlet holds up pictures of the dead king and of Claudius: This was your husband. Look you now, what follows: Here is your husband; like a mildew'd ear… (III, 4) 2. Hamlet is filled with references to hearing and contains several scenes of characters overhearing or spying on others. 

Hamlet in his letter to Horatio after returning to Denmark: I have words to speak in thine ear will make thee dumb. (IV, 4)

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The ghost to Hamlet: List, Hamlet, list, O list! (I, 5)

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Gertrude to Hamlet when he confronts her about her adultery: O, speak to me no more; These words, like daggers, enter in mine ears (III, 4)

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Claudius and Polonius both hide to overhear the conversation between Hamlet and Ophelia.

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Polonius hides in Gertrude’s chamber to overhear her conversation with Hamlet....