HAMLET

THEMES, MOTIFS AND

SYMBOLS
 ACTION VERSUS INACTION
• Hamlet is asked to take action (kill King Claudius) by
the ghost
• His tendency to overthink things delays action again
and again
• When he does act, he prefers to do it blindly, recklessly
and violently
• The others characters do not think of “action” in such
abstract terms as Hamlet
• BUT: their actions miscarry – Claudius is tormented by
his conscience and suffers the constant threat to his
authority. Leartes is quick to seek revenge for his
father’s murder but is just as easily manipulated into
serving Claudius’ ends

Some blame Hamlet’s inaction on his youth and others blame the
indecisiveness of his personality and his strong sense of morality
 MADNESS
• Hamlet to fool people into thinking he is harmless whilst
probing his father’s death and Claudius’ involvement
• He puts on ‘an antic disposition’ after hearing the ghost’s
story – a ruse to elude the suspicious king and his spies
• However, as the play develops, Hamlet remains stuck in his
own confusion and inaction.
• At times he seems to have strayed into genuine madness
• The pressure of feeling obliged to kill Claudius combined with
the fact that he knows he is surrounded by people he cannot
trust, is enough to test the psychological stability of any
character
• Ophelia is overwhelmed by her grief after her father’s death
• She appears to lose her grip on reality and wanders about,
singing songs and handing out flowers
• Her madness ends, tragically, in suicide when she drowns in
the river
• Her madness becomes the foil to Hamlet’s – hers being
genuine and without ambiguity
 DISEASE AND DECAY
• The Chain of being has been broken and as a result, the
nation suffers rot and decay
• The welfare of the royal family and the health of the state is
connected
• The early scenes explore the sense of anxiety and dread
that surrounds the transfer of power
• Clear connection between the moral legitimacy of a ruler
and the health of a nation
• Denmark is often described as a physical body made ill by
the corruption of Claudius and Gertrude
• The presence of the ghost can also be interpreted as a
supernatural omen indicating that “something is rotten in the
state of Denmark”
• King Hamlet is contrasted with Claudius as a forthright ruler
under whose guard the state was in good health

Denmark has become, “…an unweeded garden/That grows to seed; things rank and gross in nature”
 APPEARANCE AND REALITY
• Theme is closely linked to “madness”
• Introduced in Act I when Gertrude asks Hamlet why he is still
mourning two months after his father’s death. “Why seems it so
particular with thee?”, she asks. Hamlet responds, “Seems
madam? Nay, it is, I know not ‘seems’”. – highlights the idea that
things are not always how they appear to be
• Theme is also reflected in all the plotting of the characters
• All the schemes are attempts to uncover what the other
characters are really thinking and doing

Hamlet’s obsession with what’s real has 3 main effects:

1. He becomes so caught up in the search for reality that he
ceases to be able to act
2. In order to prove what’s real and what isn’t, Hamlet must
hide his “reality” behind an “appearance” of madness
3. The more closely Hamlet looks, the less real and coherent
everything seems to be
 HONOUR AND REVENGE
• Hamlet is a revenge tragedy – one of the central themes
is vengeance
• Hamlet’s duty to avenge his father is tied to his honour as
a “good son”.
• “So art thou to revenge, when thou shalt hear” (Ghost) –
highlights relationship between revenge and honour
• Elizabethan society accepted (to a large degree)
‘blood revenge’ and often considered it a duty
• However, religion/the church prohibited such behaviour
and considered it as blasphemy that could condemn a
person to hell
• Theme is emphasised through inclusion of Leartes and
Fortinbras

The fact that religion opposes revenge, would mean that Hamlet might endanger his soul by taking revenge. In other
words, the codes of conduct on which society is founded are contradictory. In such a world, the reasons for revenge
become muddy, and the idea of justice confused
 THE SUPERNATURAL
• The opening scene takes place at midnight, “the
witching hour” and time when supernatural appear
• The appearance of a ghost sets the tone of the play
• Invokes a sense of foreboding and fear
• Tells us that all is not well – catalyst for the action of the
play – revealing the murder of the previous king and
inciting Hamlet to take revenge

In Elizabethan times ghosts could be good

or evil spirits and so the audience would
have been intrigued to find out this one’s
intentions….
 INCEST AND INCESTUOUS DESIRE
• Hamlet frequently alludes to this motif when he
refers to Getrude and Claudius

• Subtle motif of incest can be found in the

relationship of Leartes and Ophelia – he sometimes
speaks to his sister in suggestively sexual terms and
leaps into her grave

• Strongest overtones of incestuous desire arise in the

relationship of Hamlet and Gertrude – Hamlet is
fixated with Gertrude’s sex life with Claudius and
seems preoccupied with her in general
 MISOGYNY
• Hamlet becomes cynical of
women in general after
discovering the fact that his
mother married Claudius so soon
after his father’s death
• He seems to have an obsession
with a perceived connection
between female sexuality and
moral corruption
• Motif of misogyny (hatred of For Hamlet,
women) occurs sporadically in the women are the
play but is an important inhibiting
factor in Hamlet’s relationships
embodiment of
with Ophelia and Gertrude appearance’s
• He urges Ophelia to go to a corrupt effort to
nunnery rather than experience
the corruptions of sexuality
eclipse reality.
• Exclaims of Gertrude, “Frailty, they
name is women”
 EARS AND HEARING
• Words are used to communicate ideas, but
they can also be used to distort the truth
• Words can serve as tools in corrupt quests for
power as people can be manipulated by them
• Claudius (shrewd politician) prime example of
someone who knows how to manipulate words
to enhance his power
• Sinister use of words is represented by the
images of ears and hearing
• Claudius murdered the king by pouring poison
into his ear
• Hamlet tells Horatio, “I have words to speak in
thine ear will make thee dumb”
• The poison poured in the kings ear is used by
the ghost to symbolise the corrosive effect of
Claudius’ dishonesty on the health of Denmark
 YORICK’S SKULL
• Hamlet discovers it in the graveyard in the first
scene of Act V
• As he speaks to the skull and about the skull of
the king’s former jester, he fixates on death’s
inevitability and the disintegration of the body
• He urges the skull to, “get you to my lady’s
chamber, and tell her, let her paint an inch
thick, to this favour she must come” – no one
can avoid death
• He traces the skulls mouth and says, “here
hung those lips that I have kissed I know not
how oft” – indicates his fascination with the
physical consequences of death
• Hamlet frequently makes comments referring
to every human body’s eventual decay,
noting that Polonius will be eaten by worms,
that even kings are eaten by worms
 OPHELIA’S FLOWERS
• Rosemary she gives to Leartes represents
remembrance
• She also gives him pansies which symbolise grief
• The fennel and columbines given to Claudius
represent deceit, flattery and ingratitude
• She says to the queen, “There’s a daisy: I would give
you/some violets, but they withered all, when my
father died”
• Daisies represent false appearances and violets
symbolise faithfulness – making it quite apt that these
had withered
• Flowers become a way of emphasising the qualities
different characters are expressing at that particular
moment in the play
• Take on extra meaning shortly after this scene as she
dies whilst trying to hang her flowers on a tree and
will then be the one “receiving flowers” when they
are strewn across her grave