Drama
65 Hamlet: Study Guide
First, browse the award-winning website maintained by the University of Victoria. It is a very useful resource for the study of Shakespeare’s plays.
Ideally, before beginning your study of Hamlet, you should view the entire Hamlet video, available in various versions at most public libraries and on the main video streaming sites.
Now let’s begin our study of Hamlet.
Background
Notice that, although the play is set in Denmark, the characters would dress in English costumes, just as they would have in a Roman play such as Julius Caesar, with no togas, just English Elizabethan costumes.
First, some necessary background. The following table shows major binaries in Hamlet. The two columns, beginning with nature vs. grace are important for an understanding of the intellectual background to all Shakespeare’s tragedies.
| Negative binary | Positive binary |
|---|---|
| Nature | Grace |
| Fallen world | Redeemed time |
| Unweeded garden | Eden |
| Time | Eternity |
| City, court | Green world: Forest of Arden |
| Money, sex, power | Unworldliness |
| Goddess Fortuna | Transcendent (this binary links to service theme) |
| Illusion | Truth |
| Cupidity | Charity |
| Disorder | Order |
| Ambition | Chain of being |
| Shadow | Substance |
| Passive virtue | Active virtue |
| Darkness | Light |
| Intemperance | Temperance |
| Euphemism | Plain language |
Shakespeare’s was a Christian society, and educated people accepted the traditional way of looking at the universe: human history began as a direct result of Adam and Eve’s sin of disobedience. Prior to that sin, they inhabited an eternal spring in Eden—the changeless utopian realm of harmony. With their sin, nature fell with them. The result was that the realm of Nature was removed from Grace, and only through the intervention of Christ on behalf of fallen humanity could people hope to return to the state of grace. Earth became a battleground between those who try to uphold virtue vs. those who practice vice.
The terms on the left-hand (Nature) side of the table represent negative binaries: Denmark, like Eden, becomes an unweeded garden. You should try to find out what changed Hamlet’s view of Denmark from a once-virtuous state into a place where something is rotten.
Typically in Shakespeare, the country was deemed to be closer to virtue than the city, the seat of power and upward mobility. The king held his court in the city, and those wishing to rise had to adopt the values of court. So the Court is the realm of money, sex, power, whereas the country suggests unworldliness. A typical symbol of this virtuous, utopian (because it is non-materialistic) green world is presented in the comedy As You Like It as the Forest of Arden.
The corrupt, fallen world pays allegiance to the Goddess Fortuna (a mythological figure, still current in our society. One thinks of the game show Wheel of Fortune). Most of the characters in Hamlet can be described as either those who serve Fortune (or tim