NOTES ABOUT HAMLET

Hamlet is considered one of Shakespeare's greatest tragedies, together with Macbeth and the Tempest.

A tragedy is a narrative form of literature, where there is normally a tragic hero: he generally has values and virtues.
Shakespeare took inspiration from medieval materials.

The Kingdom where the tragedy is set creates a dark atmosphere symbol of the instability of thecountry. “Something is rotten in the state of Denmark”, this means that there are many problems. In the case of Hamlet, the full title is "The Tragedy of Hamlet Prince of Denmark". It has been written from 1595 and 1602.
Shakespeare uses blank verse and iambic pentameter. The contest is the kingdom.

The tragedy is set in Denmark: Hamlet has got a natural father whose name is Hamlet again. At the central point, his father died and Hamlet suspected the fact that his father has been murdered by his uncle, Claudius and he has now married Hamlet's mother, Gertrude; after that, Hamlet wants to take a revenge for his father.

The context is developed on different levels of meaning: political level, family level and generation level. Being an adolescent, he believes that things are right or false.

Hamlet finds himself entrapped from all these things, the situation is complicated by the presence of Ophelia, a girl who loves him. The real problem of the tragedy is her mother Gertrude who conditioned his father, his uncle and him. Hamlet does not know if Claudius killed his father, he has doubts and suspicions on everyone, but his mind thought on it for long time. Since a night, he ears the voice of his dead father’s ghost talking to him and asking him for revenge, Hamlet is scared because he is not able to control the situation. The ghost becomes the symbol of the doubts of Hamlet's mind. But the idea of his father’s ghost gives him torment. He wants to know if his uncle killed his father and so he pretend he’s mad, he acts with riddle in order to have much liberty to act and then  he calls some actors to make a representation about what he think had happened when his father was murdered. He needs this to convince himself of his uncle's guilt to put an end to all his troubles.

Shakespeare may have used Hamlet story to concerns of his own time and explain why the king could have been killed, to show what happened when the stability was broken.
Hamlet depicts a conflict over what to do when an orderly state is corrupted.