After all, his friends have also seen the ghost it’s a real ghost.

This knowledge lies deep in the soul of Hamlet, and he has no doubt that it’s not a figment of his mind. Hamlet adopts the pose of having lost his mind under this grief, and from having been a scholar, he has turned into a distracted and distraught young person, blathering to himself. How could my mother have done such a thing? It is even incest to have married her brother-in-law like that.” In the next scene, the young prince Hamlet wonders: Why did his father die so mysteriously? Why would his mother marry her brother-in-law so quickly? He remarks, “ The meat that they cooked for the wake of my father could have been served the next day at their wedding feast. They have serious matters of state to ponder. This is a transcript from the video series Life Lessons from the Great Books. Fortinbras believes that the tumultuous episode at the court, in which the previous king died under mysterious circumstances and this new marriage has occurred, will weaken Denmark. They believe him to be raising an army to overthrow the power of Demark. There is a threat to the royal power of Denmark in Fortinbras, prince of Norway, whose land is now occupied by the Danes.

Speak to him in Latin see if you will get a response.” But the ghost moves on as the dawn begins to break.Įlsewhere, Claudius, Gertrude, and his most trusted adviser- Polonius-are deep in conversation. You have studied with Hamlet at Wittenberg in Germany. Speak to him, Horatio, for thou art a scholar. We’ve seen him before, and he always appears at this same time. On this cold night, the watchmen of the guard are moving back and forth, trying to stay warm. He has married the wife of his brother, his own sister-in-law, Gertrude. Hamlet begins on a cold night in Denmark in Elsinore Castle, where the new king, Claudius, is in residence-his brother having died. Without going to religion-deep beliefs in God-he asks simply: How do humans operate? One of his central themes is jealousy and vengeance, motives that drive far too many human concerns and actions. Shakespeare’s plays are profound in their simple understanding of how people really operate and what their motives are. Shakespeare was at the height of his creative talents when Hamlet was produced, probably in 1600. Hamletis the story of a youth who sets out on the path of vengeance, driven by the noblest of motives as he sees it: to avenge his father. Rufus Fears, Ph.D., University of Oklahoma One of the great questions throughout anyone’s life is a common one: Should we take revenge? How much time should you give to pondering revenge? In Shakespeare’s Hamlet, we see firsthand where the path of vengeance can tragically lead.

Hamlet theme