Topic 1: The personality of Hamlet. Explain throughout your essay who you think Hamlet is, what kind of person he is, and why the kind of personality you interpret him as having motivates him to do what he does. Try to explain why Hamlet acts, or fails to act, as he does throughout the play. For instance, he is instructed by the ghost of his father to avenge his death by killing his brother, now the king, Claudius. And yet Hamlet does not rush to do so. Why doesn’t he? Is Hamlet uncertain about the apparition he has seen and the need to avenge his father? When he has the opportunity to kill Claudius, he does not. Why doesn’t he kill Claudius in Act 3, Scene 3? Hamlet informs Horatio that he will act as though he is mad. Are his actions all an act for the benefit of Claudius, or does Hamlet actually go insane over the course of the play? Many of Hamlet’s soliloquies over the course of the play address his ideas on the purpose of his life and of life in general. What is Shakespeare saying through these speeches of Hamlet? Is Hamlet suicidal or are the doubts about life that Hamlet expresses universal concepts about how we should face our own lives and whether we should try to overcome the difficulties that we encounter in our lives?
Topic 2: The love between Hamlet and Ophelia. Explain what you take the relationship between Hamlet and Ophelia to be like over the course of the play. Does Hamlet truly love Ophelia and Ophelia Hamlet? Discuss how Ophelia describes Hamlet’s attitude toward her in the early parts of the play and what her brother Laertes and her father Polonius advise her to do regarding Hamlet’s advances toward her. As Hamlet puts on his “antic disposition,” how does he change toward Ophelia? Are the contradictory emotions he expresses toward Ophelia, culminating in his repeated command to her that she should go to a nunnery, a part of his plan to act as though he is mad, or are they an expression of true love toward Ophelia? How does Ophelia respond to Hamlet? Is her insanity the result of a true love for Hamlet? In Hamlet’s scene in the graveyard, in which he expresses a greater love for Ophelia than Laertes has, is Hamlet driven to insanity by his love for Ophelia, or is this a further part of his show of madness for the benefit of Claudius?
Topic 3: Hamlet as playwright. Concentrate on the scenes involving the visiting troupe of players. How does Hamlet react to the performance given by the players when they first arrive in Elsinore? What does he think of the ability of these players to express emotion? Is Shakespeare speaking through Hamlet about the truth of life that these actors are able to capture? Consider Hamlet’s decision to compose a scene for the players to perform and his commentary on them as they perform that scene as not simply a part of his plan to uncover Claudius’s guilt but as a commentary on the part of Shakespeare on the craft of the playwright. Extend that idea further to encompass Hamlet’s actions throughout the play. As he puts on his own show of madness, Hamlet is manipulating other characters, trying to get them to feel and to act according to his intentions. Interpret Hamlet’s words and actions as being a substitute for the playwright within his own play. Is Hamlet staging the events of this play for his own benefit, and if so, does his play turn out the way that he intends?
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