Hamlet
(William Shakespeare)

The Ghost

The Ghost is a fairly loaded character in terms of meaning. In Hamlet, the Ghost can represent sin which stays behind when unforgiven, the remnants that are left of a person who has died, and the need for vengeance. The Ghost can also represent guilt. Claudius is guilty because he murdered his own brother, and Hamlet is guilty because he has let Claudius get away with this.

Poison

There are many poisonous and poisoned items in Hamlet: the poisoned chalice, the poison tipped swords and the poison in King Hamlet's ear which led to his death. There are many interpretations for what the poison stands for exactly, but critics have agreed that the poison represents the poisonous nature of family. It is this which sends Hamlet mad with grief and confusion and sets this narrative rolling. It destroys each person and relationship except for the honest and loyal one Hamlet has with Horatio.

Forgiveness

Forgiveness is something many characters struggle with in Hamlet. Hamlet cannot forgive Claudius and Gertrude for what they have done, and this ostracizes him from his family. Claudius begs God for forgiveness but finds he can't feel enough remorse to pray properly. At this moment, Hamlet will not kill Claudius, even though he is unarmed because he would go straight to Heaven.

This contrasts what Hamlet discovers about his father: the late King could not pray to resolve his sins before he died because he was poisoned. He now lives in a hellish environment, imprisoned during the day and forced to march through the night.

At the end of the play, Hamlet and Laertes forgive one another for the deaths they have caused and for killing one another so that they can go to Heaven. Many characters who oversee the funerals of others, such as Ophelia's and Polonius', will put pressure on the Priest to give the dead as many final rites as they can to ensure the soul goes to Heaven.

Indecision

Hamlet can't decide if he is or isn't in love with Ophelia, so much so that it throws her off completely. One minute he tells her he doesn't want to be with her, and the next lies in her lap. He finally admits his love for her, but it's too late because she's already dead. This is a lesson to Hamlet, who extends the olive-branch to Laertes and asks him for forgiveness for what he has done.

Hamlet also can't decide when or even if he will take revenge for his father's death. He suspects the Ghost might be trying to trick him, so he needs more evidence, but even when he does have the evidence he needs, he does not kill Claudius. By the end of the play, he has debated whether or not impulsive action, like Fortinbras' army takes, might reduce the suffering self-doubt brings on, and also concludes that God and divine intervention will lead his way and create his journey for him. Hamlet will stop questioning his decisions, act on impulse and let whatever comes his way to dictate the direction his life goes in. He ignores his misgivings and doubts over the fencing match against Laertes but pushes those doubts away in favour of acting. Unfortunately, this leads to his death, suggesting that perhaps those who act on impulse only need to be tempered by some reason and thought.

Misunderstanding

Claudius, Gertrude and Polonius think Hamlet might have turned mad because of his love for Ophelia, which Hamlet disproves. Earlier, Polonius believes Hamlet is only lusting after his daughter and couldn't possibly be in love with her. No one understands Hamlet's perspective which prompts Gertrude and Claudius calling for Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. Hamlet can't understand Gertrude's love for Claudius because his father has only just died.

Much of the confusion between Hamlet and other characters is his inability to communicate how he feels and why he feels that way to other people. Of course, he can't tell everyone about Claudius' involvement in the murder of the King, but so much of what we discover about Hamlet's mental health is revealed in asides to the audience. We understand him, but everyone else struggles to do so.

Political Plots & Intrigue

There are many political plots in Hamlet that lead to characters' ends or beginnings. Claudius wins the Danish throne and Gertrude as a wife after he poisons the King. Young Fortinbras wins the Danish throne after everyone else in line to the throne is killed. Although he doesn't involve himself directly in the political plot, it is Claudius' plots that lead to this ending. His attempt to send letters with Hamlet when he goes to England to have him executed backfire when Hamlet reads and replaces those letters. Claudius' plot to poison Hamlet during a fencing match against Laertes backfires when Gertrude drinks the poisoned wine and both Laertes and Claudius are also killed by the poison tipped swords. And finally, Polonius' plot to figure out if the reason for Hamlet's madness is his love for Ophelia and his death while hiding in Gertrude's room sends Ophelia herself into madness and then death.

Madness

Ophelia's madness is brought on by male interference. Polonius and Laertes advise her how to act around Hamlet and tell her to draw away from him. To refuse him. Polonius then forces her to help uncover the reason for Hamlet's insanity by tempting him with Ophelia's interest once more. Hamlet's refusal of her and her loss of her father compound, take her innocence from her and send her into a quiet melancholy.

Hamlet's madness is caused by his indecision. It is also a complete fabrication as he pretends to be mad to avoid suspicion, but like so many people who pretend, they eventually start to take on characteristics without realising it. His constant struggle between taking revenge and doubting the time, place, conditions of this revenge and the nature of death itself leave him without the ability to deal with anything else in his life. He even turns a play meant to cheer him up into a re-enactment of his father's death. Sometimes Hamlet will appear much more aware of himself, especially around Horatio who knows everything of the plots, but he will still slip into the occasional mania. Compared to Laertes who does not want proof of Hamlet's guilt before he takes his revenge, Hamlet can seem to many like a weak and confused character. Hamlet and Ophelia's madness, however, does give them a clearer view of Gertrude and Claudius' guilt, suggesting that terrible actions can only be understood by someone out of the ordinary.

Incest

Gertrude and Claudius are in the thick of an incestuous relationship that Hamlet does not approve of. No one else in the play reveals any disgust for the quick remarriage of Gertrude to her late husband's brother, which suggests that it was in bad taste to question the royal family or that it happened more often than it does now. However, Hamlet's obsession with Gertrude's sex life can also be due to an Oedipal desire to love his mother sexually now that his father is dead. Claudius stands in the way of that. Hamlet begs her not to let Claudius sleep with her and to keep her sheets clean. That this plea comes while Hamlet is in Gertrude's bedroom, suggesting a further intimacy in their relationship, which we have not seen prior to this scene, is no accident, but what this intimacy suggests is up for debate.

Laertes also warns Ophelia away from Hamlet in a possible attempt to clear the way to keep Ophelia for himself. He jumps into her grave to embrace her again as a lover might. In fact, Hamlet copies him and expresses his anger over Laertes' passion, so much so that he felt he had to outdo him.

Decay

Many things are decaying or diseased in Hamlet. After the discovery of the late King's Ghost, Marcellus announces that there is something rotten in Denmark, and there is. Much like a piece of fruit, the nation is rotting from the inside out. Claudius, the head and centre of Denmark, has only been able to take the throne because he murdered his own brother. From Hamlet's perspective, his marriage to Gertrude can be seen as the decay of the institution of marriage and family.

Hamlet's obsession with death can also be seen as an obsession with the physical body of death. As he holds Yorik's skull in Act Five, he wonders where Yorik's laughter has gone to. When questioned by Claudius where Polonius' body is, Hamlet jokes that he is going to be eaten by worms. Hamlet also considers that a King's body is just the same as a beggars—and why wouldn't a King's body end up in a beggar's stomach. Death renders them all the same, no matter their position in life or the condition of their soul, and the decay of the body makes this especially obvious to Hamlet.

Suicide

Hamlet's consideration of suicide likens death to a long sleep. He seems weary as he contemplates the possibility of taking his own life and wonders what might happen to his soul if he did so. He thinks that if there was not a religious stigma over suicide and the fear of the unknown that many more people would kill themselves.

His contemplation links him to Ophelia, who perhaps commits suicide. We do not see her drown in the brook, and many have questioned Gertrude's story. We are told that she is dragged down to the bottom of the brook by her water logged clothes and that her death was accidental, but this could be because Gertrude wants to save her soul. The story itself might be a fabrication, and is called into question in Act Five by the Gravedigger and Priest, who are convinced that she had taken her own life.