Hamlet (~1600)¶

Author: William Shakespeare Type: Literary Text · Play · Tragedy Source: Public domain — written ~1600–1601, published 1603 (Q1) and 1604 (Q2) Full Text: Project Gutenberg · Folger Shakespeare Library — annotated Era/Period: WH Era 2 / Era 3 — set in medieval Denmark; written in Elizabethan England (~1600) WH Standards: WH.6_12.3 · WH.6_12.2 ELA Standards: 9-10.R.8 · 9-10.R.9 · 9-10.W.4

What This Text Is About¶

Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, learns from his father's ghost that his father was murdered by his uncle Claudius, who has now married Hamlet's mother and taken the throne. Hamlet is tasked with revenge. He then spends most of the play not doing it. Hamlet is a revenge tragedy that is mostly about why a person cannot bring himself to take revenge — and what thinking too carefully about an action does to the ability to act at all. It ends with nearly everyone dead, including Hamlet, Claudius, Gertrude, Laertes, Ophelia, and Polonius — a bloodbath that results directly from Hamlet's delay.

This text is dual-use in a way that is unusually rich for a history classroom. As an ELA text, Hamlet is perhaps the most analyzed literary work in the English language. The soliloquies — there are seven — are interior arguments: Hamlet thinking out loud about action, death, the nature of existence, and the ethics of revenge. Students who read Hamlet are reading the most sophisticated dramatic interiority ever constructed in English. As a Social Studies text, the play dramatizes a specific political problem that was live for Shakespeare's audience in 1600: political succession and legitimacy. Queen Elizabeth I had no heir; England was anxiously debating who would rule next. Claudius's seizure of the Danish throne by murdering the king — and then being accepted by the court — raises the same question Elizabeth's councilors were privately arguing: What makes a ruler legitimate? What are the obligations of those who know power has been seized wrongly?

Shakespeare's Hamlet is set in medieval Denmark but written for Elizabethan England. Its questions are not historical — they were urgent political reality for its first audience.

Read It¶

Public domain. Full text at Project Gutenberg.

Act I, Scene 2 — 'O that this too too solid flesh'¶

In Hamlet's first soliloquy, he expresses his grief and suicidal thoughts following the death of his father and his mother's hasty remarriage.

O that this too too solid flesh would melt
Thaw and resolve itself into a dew!
Or that the Everlasting had not fix'd
His canon 'gainst self-slaughter!

Act II, Scene 2 — 'What a piece of work is a man'¶

Hamlet delivers a speech to Rosencrantz and Guildenstern about human greatness and his own feelings of inadequacy.

What a piece of work is a man! How noble in reason!
How infinite in faculty! In form and moving how
express and admirable! In action how like an angel,
in apprehension how like a god!

Act III, Scene 1 — 'To be, or not to be'¶

The famous soliloquy where Hamlet contemplates life and death.

To be, or not to be: that is the question:
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer

The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles
And by opposing end them.

Act V, Scene 2 — 'The readiness is all'¶

Hamlet's acceptance of death and his fate before the duel with Laertes.

Let be.
Since no man of aught he leaves knows what an'
'tis not so slaughterous bloody deed returns to hunt us

In our own mirrors; even cups, dishes, spoons,
and knives have lost their edge of murderous intent.
The readiness is all.

ELA Standards This Connects To¶

R.8 — Hamlet provides rich material for literary analysis at multiple levels. Soliloquy as interior argument: the "To be or not to be" speech and the others are not simply self-expression — they are arguments Hamlet constructs and then refuses to resolve. Students analyze: What is he actually arguing? What prevents him from concluding? Dramatic irony: the audience knows Claudius is guilty; most characters do not. Every scene between Hamlet and Claudius operates under this knowledge. Delay as character: the most revealing question in the play is not what Hamlet should do but why he doesn't. Different critics have argued he delays because of moral scruple, because of melancholy, because of Oedipal attachment to his mother, because of genuine philosophical uncertainty. Students analyze the delay through the text.
R.9 — "To be or not to be" (Act III, Scene 1) is one of the most famous speeches in English literature, and it is worth reading as an argument — because that is what it is. Hamlet is constructing a philosophical case for and against existence, for and against action, for and against endurance. Students analyze the speech's argumentative structure: What is the claim? What are the reasons? What conclusion does Hamlet reach, and why does it not lead to action?
W.4 — The central argumentative question the play poses: Is Hamlet's inaction justified? This is not a simple question. He doesn't know with certainty that the ghost is truthful; he is one person against the entire power of the Danish court; action may make things worse. Students construct a position — justified or not — and must engage with the strongest counterarguments their position faces.

WH.6_12.3 — The play's central political problem is succession and legitimacy: Claudius murdered the king and seized the throne; the court accepted him; no institution exists to challenge this. Students analyze: What does the play reveal about how political legitimacy worked (and failed) in hereditary monarchies? What are Hamlet's options within the political system — and why does none of them work? How does this connect to the actual political anxieties of Elizabethan England in 1600?
WH.6_12.2 — The play is saturated with Christian concepts of sin, redemption, and afterlife — but in ways that create rather than resolve moral problems. Hamlet cannot kill Claudius while he is praying because that would send him to heaven. The ghost claims to suffer in purgatory — a Catholic concept that Protestant England officially rejected. Hamlet's most famous speech is about the "undiscover'd country" of death and what awaits there. Students examine: How do Christian belief systems shape the ethical choices characters face in this play? How do religious concepts function as actual constraints on political and personal action?

Key Vocabulary¶

Term	Definition
Soliloquy	A speech in which a character thinks aloud alone on stage — Hamlet contains seven; they are interior arguments rather than self-expression
Revenge tragedy	A dramatic genre popular in Elizabethan England in which a protagonist is tasked with avenging a murder — the genre typically ends in a bloodbath; Hamlet is the most famous example
Legitimacy	The quality of having rightful authority to rule — Claudius's seizure of the throne by murder is the source of illegitimacy the whole play turns on
Succession	The process by which political power transfers from one ruler to the next — hereditary succession was the norm in monarchy, but it was vulnerable to manipulation, as Claudius demonstrates
Purgatory	In Catholic theology, a state after death in which souls are purified before entering heaven — the ghost claims to suffer there; this was theologically controversial in Protestant England when Shakespeare wrote the play
Foil	A character whose qualities highlight another's by contrast — Laertes is Hamlet's foil: he acts immediately on his father's death while Hamlet endlessly deliberates
Dramatic delay	Hamlet's failure to act on his knowledge — the subject of more critical analysis than any other feature of the play

Key Passages¶

Act III, Scene 1 — "To be or not to be":

To be, or not to be, that is the question: Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, Or to take arms against a sea of troubles, And by opposing end them.

Act II, Scene 2 — "The play's the thing":

I have heard That guilty creatures sitting at a play Have by the very cunning of the scene Been struck so to the soul that presently They have proclaim'd their malefactions; For murder, though it have no tongue, will speak With most miraculous organ. I'll have these players Play something like the murder of my father Before mine uncle. I'll observe his looks; I'll tent him to the quick. If he but blench, I know my course. The play's the thing Wherein I'll catch the conscience of the king.

Act V, Scene 2 — Hamlet's final accounting:

If it be now, 'tis not to come; if it be not to come, it will be now; if it be not now, yet it will come: the readiness is all.

Why these passages matter: The "To be or not to be" speech is not about suicide — it is a philosophical argument about whether action or endurance is the more noble response to injustice. The "play's the thing" speech shows Hamlet at his most decisive and most indirect: rather than act, he designs an elaborate proof. The final speech shows Hamlet having achieved something — not revenge yet, but resignation to the fact of action. "The readiness is all" is the play's philosophical conclusion: you cannot control what happens, only your preparation to meet it.

Studio Ideas¶

"Why Doesn't Hamlet Act?" — EQ: What is the relationship between thinking and doing? · Standard: R.8 + W.4 · Demo Mode: Written Assessment (identify at least three moments when Hamlet has the opportunity to act and does not. For each, explain the reason he gives or implies. Then construct your own argument: Is his delay a flaw, a virtue, or both? What does the play seem to think?)
"'To Be or Not to Be' as Argument" — EQ: What is Hamlet actually arguing in this speech, and what conclusion does he reach? · Standard: R.9 + R.8 · Demo Mode: Verbal Conversation (read the full soliloquy closely. Identify the claim, the reasons, and the apparent conclusion. Then discuss: Does Hamlet resolve the question he poses? Why does the speech not lead to action? What does it tell us about the relationship between philosophical understanding and practical decision-making?)
"The Legitimacy Problem" — EQ: What does a person owe a leader whose power was obtained wrongly? · Standard: WH.6_12.3 + W.4 · Demo Mode: Extended Writing (Claudius seized power by murder; the court accepted him; Denmark is running smoothly under him. What are Hamlet's obligations? Construct an argument that takes seriously both the case for action and the case for restraint. Then find a real historical case — a coup, a seized succession — and apply the same question.)
"Theater as Political Weapon" — EQ: Can art do what direct action cannot? · Standard: WH.6_12.2 + R.8 · Demo Mode: Visual/Creative (Hamlet uses a play to expose Claudius's guilt. Research historical examples of theater, art, or literature being used to make political arguments that could not be made directly — under censorship, under tyranny, under constraint. Create a visual map or annotated timeline: when has art done the political work that direct action could not?)

Why This Is Relevant Today?¶

Hamlet's central problem — he knows something terrible has been done, he has reason to believe who did it, but the person who did it is in power and he can't prove it without risking everything — is not a Renaissance problem. It's the situation of every person who witnesses institutional wrongdoing by someone with authority over them: the employee who sees the boss committing fraud, the soldier who witnesses a war crime by a superior officer, the student who sees a teacher abuse a peer. What do you do when the system is corrupted by the person you'd need to report to? Hamlet's paralysis is often read as weakness, but it's also an accurate description of the options available to someone in his position. The play's other thread — the performance of madness as a survival strategy, the question of whether Hamlet's behavior is calculated or genuine — is also still resonant in every context where someone navigates a dangerous environment by making themselves hard to read.