Hamlet-5

Minor Characters

Ghost of King Hamlet: The unsettled spirit of Denmark’s late king. The Ghost appears at midnight, stalking the royal grounds in the armor King Hamlet wore during his battles with Fortinbras. The phantom king remains silent until Prince Hamlet urges him to speak. Revealing that Claudius murdered King Hamlet by pouring poison in his ear, the wandering spirit begs young Hamlet to avenge his father’s foul murder. The ghost appears again during Hamlet’s confrontation with Queen Gertrude. He scolds Hamlet for delaying his vengeance.
Reynaldo: Polonius’ servant who is sent to Paris to spy on Laertes. Polonius instructs Reynaldo to paint Laertes as a loose, drunken, quarrelling youth to see if the Frenchmen will confirm his base character or argue for his better reputation.
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern: Former friends of Prince Hamlet whom King Claudius employs to spy on Hamlet. Claudius hopes Rosencrantz and Guildenstern will discover the cause of Hamlet’s recent madness and despair. Prince Hamlet is suspicious of his false friends. He accuses the double-dealing Guildenstern of manipulating him as a  musician does his instrument. Hamlet compares Rosencrantz to a sponge soaked in the King’s favor, which is soon to be sucked dry. When King Claudius orders Hamlet to sail to England, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are sent as escorts. Aboard the ship, Prince Hamlet intercepts a letter from Claudius, which orders the King of England to execute Hamlet. Spoiling Claudius’ treacherous plan, Hamlet forges a new letter, naming the spies Rosencrantz and Guildenstern as those condemned to die. Ambassadors from England arrive in Denmark following the royal massacre with news for Claudius: Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are dead.
Barnardo: Marcellus’ partner on guard duty who relieves Francisco at midnight. For two nights in a row, Barnardo and Marcellus have witnessed the wandering spirit. Barnardo recognizes the ghost as the spirit of King Hamlet.
Marcellus: Barnardo’s partner on guard-duty who has witnessed the phantom king’s nightly roaming. He invites Horatio to the watch, hoping that the scholar will confirm their visions and be able to speak with the spirit.
Valtemand and Cornelius: Ambassadors whom Claudius dispatches to Norway. They deliver a letter to the sickly King of Norway, which reveals young Fortinbras’ concealed actions against Denmark. Upon their return, Valtemand informs Claudius that the King of Norway has agreed to suppress his nephew’s unauthorized challenges. Valtemand reports also that Fortinbras requests peaceful passage through Denmark in order to execute his actions against Poland.
Osric: The irksome courtier who officiates at the doomed fencing tournament. Hamlet despises Osric and tells Horatio that the courtier is a rich and flattering oaf. Claudius sends Osric to invite Hamlet to the duel. He informs the Prince that Claudius has wagered a high sum on his victory over Laertes. Osric judges the hits during the tournament and finally breaks the news that Fortinbras has arrived in Denmark from Poland.
Two Clowns: Grave-digging peasants who delight in puns and double-talk. The clowns dig Ophelia’s grave and speculate that her death was a suicide. Hamlet questions them in vain about the identity of the grave’s intended occupant. Tossing up unearthed skulls, one gravedigger hands Hamlet the skull of the old court jester, Yorrick.
Players: A troupe of actors that Hamlet admired in the city arrives in Denmark. Pushed out of the theaters by newly popular companies of boy-actors, the troupe has resorted to travelling performances. Hamlet hires the players to perform ‘The Mousetrap’ before the royal audience. Mirroring Claudius’ assassination of King Hamlet, the play depicts the murder of Duke Gonzago in Vienna by the villain Lucianus. Like Claudius, the player Lucianus pours poison into the Duke’s ear and marries his widow, Baptista. Just as Hamlet planned, the play goads Claudius’ conscience and convinces Hamlet of his uncle’s guilt.

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                                                          Major Characters 

   King Claudius: An ambitious and deceitful murderer, Claudius secretly assassinated his brother, King Hamlet, to steal his crown and his queen. While King Hamlet slumbered in his orchard, Claudius poured a deadly poison in his ear. With Hamlet’s death ruled accidental, Claudius took the throne and hastily married Queen Gertrude, his brother’s widow. Aware of young Fortinbras’ intent to forcefully reclaim land lost to Denmark, Claudius dispatches ambassadors to Norway with a letter instructing the King to suppress young Fortinbras’ (Prince of Norway) advance. Gloomy young Hamlet is a pest and a danger to Claudius. In secret letters written to the English King, Claudius unsuccessfully orders Prince Hamlet’s murder. Hamlet stages ‘The Mousetrap’ play - a close re-enactment of King Hamlet’s murder - to prod Claudius’ guilty conscience. The horrified King stops the performance and attempts to pray for forgiveness. However, because he still possesses his crown, his queen, and his ambition, the guilt-ridden murderer knows that his repentance is insincere. Prince Hamlet nearly kills Claudius as he prays, but stops himself when he realizes that death during prayer sends the confessor’s soul directly to heaven. King Claudius concocts a plan to slay Hamlet through a rigged fencing competition. The set-up turns into a royal massacre. Claudius dies from his own treachery when Hamlet slashes him with a poisoned rapier. 

Queen Gertrude: Within one month of losing her beloved King Hamlet, the widowed Queen Gertrude hastily married her dead husband’s own brother, Claudius. Gertrude’s disloyalty to King Hamlet and her incestuous lust for Claudius galls Prince Hamlet, Gertrude’s son, and spurs his need for vengeance. Hamlet scorns his mother and denounces women as frail, inconstant, and deceitful. Though he chastises Gertrude, Hamlet resolves not to harm his mother. Her own guilty conscience and heaven’s judgment are punishment enough for betraying her noble husband with his foul brother. Hamlet instructs his mother to abstain from his uncle’s incestuous bed and discloses his actual sanity to her. Queen Gertrude breaks the news that Ophelia has drowned  and offers an eerie eyewitness account. During the rigged fencing competition, the Queen toasts her son’s good fortune. Drinking from Claudius’ poisoned chalice, she falls to the floor, dead. 

Polonius: A distinguished lord who acts as the King’s principal advisor. Polonius has a habit of making long-winded speeches and his main activity is spying. Father to Laertes and Ophelia, he is concerned about the reputation of his son and the chastity of his daughter. Polonius urges his son to depart for Paris, yet he detains Laertes with an extensive list of paternal instructions. The suspicious father even instructs his servant Reynaldo to spy on Laertes in Paris and to report on his son’s behavior. Concerning Ophelia, Polonius warns his daughter that her youthful suitor Hamlet is untrustworthy and lustful. He instructs his daughter to treat Hamlet coldly, to distrust his vows of love, and to avoid his company. Polonius tries to persuade the King that an unsatisfied lust for Ophelia has caused the Prince’s madness. He plants his daughter in Hamlet’s path and hides with King Claudius to spy on their fixed encounter. When that set-up proves unconvincing, Polonius decides to spy on a private conversation between mother and son in Queen Gertrude’s chamber. Polonius hides behind an arras (curtain) and yelps when Hamlet’s rage endangers the Queen. Thinking the spy is King Claudius, Hamlet plunges his sword through the curtain and kills Polonius. Hamlet hides the lord’s body. When the corpse is finally found, it is buried in ‘hugger-mugger’ fashion without ceremony, a dishonor that greatly enrages Laertes. 

Laertes: Son of Polonius and brother to Ophelia. In town for King Claudius’ recent coronation, Laertes begs leave to return to Paris. Bound for France, Laertes advises Ophelia to maintain her chastity and to disregard Hamlet’s courtship. Polonius delays Laertes’ departure with long-winded advice and he employs a spy to investigate Laertes’ reputation in Paris. To avenge Polonius’ murder, Laertes storms back to Denmark with a mutinous rabble of supporters. King Claudius calms his vengeance by arranging a rigged fencing competition through which the expert swordsman Laertes may murder Hamlet with a poisoned blade. The fixed sport turns into a royal massacre. Both Laertes and Hamlet are mortally wounded by the poisoned sword. They make peace with one another and die. 

Ophelia: A chaste maiden who is Polonius’ daughter and Hamlet’s love interest. Acting on her father’s strict advice, Ophelia rejects Hamlet’s love poems and passionate courtship. Because Prince Hamlet is a lusty youth who is also royalty, Polonius argues that Hamlet’s love for Ophelia cannot be sincere. Both Polonius and Laertes, her brother, advise Ophelia to guard her virginity against Hamlet’s dishonorable intentions. When Prince Hamlet becomes mad, Polonius contends that his insanity is a love sickness rooted in Ophelia’s rejection. Polonius and Claudius spy on a rigged meeting between the two former sweethearts. Denouncing unchaste women, Hamlet madly advises Ophelia to become a celibate nun. The woeful maiden loses her own sanity when Hamlet murders her father and Polonius is denied a proper court burial. The deranged maiden sings wildly, plays on a lute, and distributes symbolic flowers. Gertrude delivers the shocking news that Ophelia has drowned. Hanging garlands from a willow tree, the demented girl plunged into the river below. Suicide is suspected, but she is given a Christian burial by a suspicious priest. Hamlet and Laertes both jump into her open grave, wretched at her loss but ready to fight one another. 

Prince Hamlet: The gloomy young Prince who constantly wavers between vengeance and suicide. Hamlet’s melancholy is initially the result of his mother’s hasty and disloyal marriage to Claudius, her late husband’s brother. When young Hamlet learns from his father’s ghost that Claudius murdered him, the young Prince swears vengeance. He pledges to treat his mother harshly, but to refrain from harming her. As part of his revenge plot, Hamlet pretends to have lost his sanity. The mad Prince stages ‘The Mousetrap’ play to judge Claudius’ guilt. He kills the spy, Polonius, and drives Ophelia to insanity. Escaping death, Hamlet intercepts a treacherous letter from Claudius, which orders his execution. Forging a new letter, Hamlet orders the King of England to execute Rosencrantz and Guildenstern instead. Plagued by gloominess 

and self-hatred, Hamlet often contemplates suicide and berates himself for delaying his vengeance. Compared to the fiercely active Fortinbras, Hamlet feels like an idle loser. Set-up by Claudius and Laertes, Hamlet is slain in a fencing competition by Laertes’ poisoned rapier. Before he dies, however, Hamlet slashes Claudius with the same blade and finally kills him. 

Horatio: Hamlet’s school companion from Wittenberg. Horatio is a wise scholar and a true friend in whom Prince Hamlet regularly confides. Visiting Denmark for King Hamlet’s funeral, Horatio is invited by the Elsinore guards to their night-time watch. Horatio witnesses the roaming spirit of King Hamlet and informs Prince Hamlet of his father’s unsettled soul. During ‘The Mousetrap’ play, Horatio confirms Hamlet’s perception of Claudius’ guilt. Against Horatio’s advice, Hamlet participates in the fatal fencing tournament arranged by Claudius. As Hamlet lays dying, Horatio pledges to tell the world of Hamlet’s tragic story. 

Prince Fortinbras: The hot-headed Prince of Norway who sets out to reclaim his father’s land from Denmark. In the past, old King Fortinbras challenged King Hamlet to a battle over disputed territory, with the mutual agreement that the loser’s land would be forfeited to the winner. King Hamlet slew Fortinbras and, according to their deal, Denmark justly assumed old Fortinbras’ lands. At the beginning of the play, young Fortinbras has vengefully gathered a rabble of fighters to challenge Denmark and to recover his father’s land.  Fortinbras’ sickly uncle is the new King of Norway. He mistakes Prince Fortinbras’ movements on Denmark as legitimate actions against Poland. Learning of Fortinbras’ disobedient conduct from King Claudius’ Danish ambassadors, Norway forces Fortinbras to end all ventures against Denmark.  Fortinbras agrees to peace and Claudius graciously grants Fortinbras’ army safe passage through Denmark on its way to fight Poland. Compared with the active and warring Fortinbras, Hamlet feels idle and cowardly. Fortinbras’ army returns victorious from Poland and passes through Denmark during the royal massacre. Hamlet uses his dying voice to support Fortinbras as the next elected monarch of Denmark. 

Hamlet-3

                                                                           Hamlet

                                                                        Plot Summary 

   Plagued by royal treachery, vengeful scheming, and an unsettled ghost, Denmark is ripe for destruction. Directly following King Hamlet’s recent death, the widowed Queen Gertrude has hastily remarried Claudius, King Hamlet’s own brother. Young Prince Hamlet is galled by his mother’s disloyalty and sulks darkly in Elsinore castle. At midnight, the rambling ghost of King Hamlet exposes a hidden treachery to Prince Hamlet: Claudius fatally poisoned the slumbering King Hamlet in order to steal his crown and his queen. The phantom king begs Hamlet to avenge his foul murder. Prince Hamlet agrees and feigns insanity to disguise his bloody motive.

                                                                    

   King Claudius is troubled by two pests. First, young Fortinbras of Norway has raised his army against Denmark in order to reclaim his father’s lost land. Claudius suppresses Fortinbras’ challenge but allows the hotheaded young Prince to pass peacefully through Denmark on his way to fight Poland. Claudius’ second nuisance is his deranged nephew and stepson, Prince Hamlet. Claudius employs Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, Hamlet’s former friends, to spy on the mad Prince. Polonius, the King’s principal advisor, argues that Hamlet’s insanity is nothing more than love sickness. Ever watchful of his daughter’s chastity, Polonius ordered Ophelia to reject Hamlet’s lusty admiration. To prove that this rejection has caused Hamlet’s mania, Polonius plants his daughter in Hamlet’s path and hides with King Claudius to spy on their fixed encounter. The Prince’s mania appears more sinister than expected, and Claudius is unconvinced by Polonius’ explanation. 

Prince Hamlet hires a group of traveling actors to perform “The Mousetrap” for the royal audience. Because the play closely mirrors the murder of King Hamlet, both Hamlet and his confidant, Horatio, will study the King’s reaction for signs of his guilt. Horrified by the performance, King Claudius prays for forgiveness. However, because he still possesses his crown, his queen, and his ambition, his prayers prove insincere. Hamlet nearly slaughters the kneeling King, but he halts his vengeful sword when he remembers that a soul killed in the midst of prayer flies directly up to heaven. 

In Queen Gertrude’s chamber, Hamlet chastises his mother for her lusty disloyalty. Spying behind an arras (curtain), Polonius perceives Gertrude’s danger and cries for help. Hamlet mistakes the spy for King Claudius, and plunges his sword into the curtain. Polonius is slain, and King Claudius sends Hamlet to England as punishment. Aboard the ship, Prince Hamlet intercepts a treacherous letter from Claudius, which orders the King of England to execute Hamlet. Botching Claudius’ scheme, Hamlet forges a new letter, naming the spies Rosencrantz and Guildenstern as those condemned to die. 

Polonius’ death and his dishonorable burial drive Ophelia to insanity. The maiden ultimately dies, drowned in a suspected suicide. Laertes, Polonius’ son, returns with a mob from Paris and demands retribution against Hamlet. Claudius proposes a rigged fencing competition between the Prince and Laertes: Hamlet’s sword will be blunted, to protect Laertes, while Laertes’ sword will be sharp and poisoned, to slay Hamlet. As planned, Laertes wounds Hamlet with the poisoned sword. In the scuffle, they exchange rapiers and Hamlet slices Laertes with the toxic weapon. Both are doomed to die, but the King and Queen die first. Queen Gertrude falls dead from a poisoned chalice meant for Hamlet and, after the fight with Laertes, Hamlet slashes and kills King Claudius with the poisoned rapier. With his dying breath, Hamlet supports Fortinbras’ appointment as the next King of Denmark. Surrounded by the royal massacre, Hamlet pleads with Horatio to tell his tragic story to the world. 

Hamlet-2

                                                      LIFE OF SHAKESPEARE
The exact date of Shakespeare’s birth in 1564 is unknown. However, it is customary to celebrate his birth on April 23rd, the same day of his death fifty-two years later. Growing up in Stratford-upon-Avon, ninety-six miles outside of London.
    Shakespeare’s world was one of high infant mortality, rampant disease, an average life expectancy of thirty years, an influential monarchy, and a growing popularity of the theater. Marrying Anne Hathaway in 1582, a woman eight years his senior, Shakespeare soon fathered three known children. He ventured to London in the late 1580s, competing with fellow playwrights Christopher Marlowe and Ben Jonson for theater space, reputation, and audiences.

  Shakespeare wrote an average of two plays per year for a company called Lord Chamberlain’s Men. A new playhouse named the Globe, which opened in 1599 on the banks of the Thames River, soon became the famous home stage of Shakespeare’s theatrical masterworks.
  In his popular tragedy, Hamlet, the young Prince Hamlet vows to remember his murdered father, saying, “‘Remember thee? / Ay, thou poor ghost, while memory holds a seat / In this distracted globe.’” (Act 1, Scene 5, lines 95-97) Many scholars interpret this reference as a playful nod to the Globe theater and its audience (Greenblatt, 1686).
                                                           

   Perhaps Shakespeare’s best-known tragedy, Hamlet  is a play fraught with questions. As critic Stephen Greenblatt asks, “Why does Hamlet delay avenging the murder of his father by Claudius, his father’s brother? How much guilt does Hamlet’s mother, Gertrude...bear in this crime? How trustworthy is the ghost of Hamlet’s father ...?What exactly is the ghost...? Why is the ghost, visible to everyone in the first act, visible only to Hamlet in Act 3? Is Hamlet’s madness feigned or true, a strategy masquerading as a reality or a reality masquerading as a strategy?” (Greenblatt, 1659).
  Scholars estimate that Shakespeare wrote Hamlet in 1600. The ambiguity of the composition’s history results largely from three conflicting versions of the text, all published at different times. As Greenblatt notes, the play and all its versions seem designed to breed uncertainty.
                                                         

  Hamlet is a play of unanswered questions written by a playwright whose life remains largely obscure. Shakespeare died in 1616 at the age of fifty-two. He was buried in the chancel of Holy Trinity Church. Legend has it that Shakespeare penned the very epitaph under which his coffin still rests. It reads,
“Good friend for Jesus’ sake forbear,
To dig the dust enclosed here:
Blest be the man that spares these stones,
And curst be he that moves my bones.”

Hamlet

                                   Foreword

John Keats wrote-

A thing of beauty is a joy for ever: 

Its loveliness increases; it will never

Pass into nothingness; but still will keep

A bower quiet for us………

Many art works still capture the attention and attraction of our mind centuries after centuries. Their novelty never dies. Shakespeare’s Hamlet is such one.It’s beauty lies in the intricately knit issues of major human concern like revenge, suicide, death,gender, sex, religion and finally family. It would have been better to nominate family values first in the above listing. For Hamlet’s commitment to retain family values above all; not to kill one’s step father, the new husband of his own mother; and thus destroy the meaning of family, in spite of the killed father’s insistence.

But the primitive urge lay undying within Man to revenge,  gears up the whole action of the play. Hamlet weaves together three revenge plots, all of which involve sons seeking vengeance for their fathers’ murders. Ultimately, the play calls into question the validity and usefulness of revenge

Hamlet’s musings on suicide, especially the “to be or not to be” speech, are legendary and continue to direct discussions of the value of life and the mystery of death. But Hamlet himself never commits suicide. It is Ophelia, who never mentions the possibility of taking her own life, who drowns, seemingly as a result of some combination of madness and despair.

And,  Death threads its way through the entirety of Hamlet, from the opening scene’s confrontation with a dead man’s ghost to the bloodbath of the final scene, which leaves almost every main character dead. Hamlet constantly contemplates death from many angles. He is both seduced and repelled by the idea of suicide, but, in the famous gravedigger scene, he is also fascinated by the physical reality of death. In a way, Hamlet can be viewed as extended dialogue between Hamlet and death.

Hamlet’s attitude toward women is notoriously sexist and stems from his disgust at his mother’s sexuality and seeming unfaithfulness to his dead father. This outlook eventually spills over to include all women, especially the hapless Ophelia, who has virtually no power or control, even over her own body. To some extent, the play also considers notions of masculinity (or lack thereof). Claudius warns Hamlet that his grief is “unmanly” and Hamlet notoriously refers to himself as a promiscuous woman when he finds himself unable to avenge his father’s death, which, again, circles back to Hamlet’s association between women and deception. Hamlet’s attitude toward women reveals something about him more than it reveals women’s true nature. Family is a significant theme in Hamlet. The play is notorious for the way it dwells on the issue of incest – Gertrude’s marriage to her dead husband’s brother, Hamlet’s fixation on his mother, and even Laertes’s obsession with Ophelia’s sexuality.

 It’s also important to note how the play is particularly concerned with the way politics impact the dynamics of family relationships, especially when domestic harmony is sacrificed for political gain. Also of importance is the fact that Hamlet involves three revenge plots that all hinge on sons avenging the deaths of their fathers.

My study of Hamlet started from my under graduate course and then continued again on  my post graduate course which induced me  to delve deeper and deeper in the mysterious attraction of Hamlet for many years. The result is produced in the forthcoming pages along with the original play.I am sure that the mystery and power of Hamlet will never end as  Hamlet represents the whole humanity in many senses.                                                                                                                                                                     Vaiyavan