Hamlet​ by William Shakespeare Dr.

Humble
Themes, Topics, and Quotations

As you read ​Hamlet​ (and as you read Hamlet), you notice that various concretions--quotations,
character traits, settings, actions, and events--point up the Abstract-Concrete Continuum to topics
(words or phrases) and, ultimately, to themes (sentences that convey quite abstract ideas, that is,
abstractions that may occur in other works of art). As you read, play up and down the A-C
Continuum: that’s called Learning to Read (LTR). What does this word or line or passage mean
or signify? What is its significance?

Reading comprehension comprises both the literal, concrete meaning of a passage and the
passage’s significance--an abstract understanding grounded in interpretation, analysis,
evaluation, and, ultimately, an application to your understanding of life. Reading is fundamental.
Reading is fun. .

Themes in ​Hamlet

Appearances can deceive.

Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. --Lord Acton

When a ruler is corrupt, the entire country is corrupted.

Poisoned language that enters the ear is as deadly to the listener as poison that enters the ear.

Love that is unhealthily affected by destructive external pressures--family, politics, imbalance, or

madness--fails.

Revenge can destroy the avenger and the avenged (the target of the vengeance).

Drama enlightens.

Reality cannot (really or ultimately) be disguised by a thin veneer of deception.

Thematic Topics

Revenge
Love
Political corruption
Poisoned relationships
Deception
Action and inaction
Cruelty
Madness (real or feigned)
Anger
The true self
Spying
Friendship (true or false [feigned])
The spiritual world
Women’s roles
Geopolitics
Poisoning
Corruption: Personal (moral) and Political
Honor
Medieval warrior
Modern thinker (ratiocinator)
Disguising reality
Life and death--and the meanings thereof
Metadrama: Life is a drama and all the world’s a stage (Where does reality lie?)
Parent-child relationships
Disillusionment
Personal internal conflicts
Detection, certainty, and uncertainty
Rhetoric: The manipulation of language
Self-consciousness: How conscious is Hamlet of his own consciousness?

Quotations
In some cases, I am quoting only the opening words of the selected lines. Of course, you should
understand the larger context of each quotation below--for example, the surrounding lines, the
audience, the place, and the significance.

1.1.1 Who’s there?

1.2.67, 69 A little more than kin

I am too much in the sun.
1.4.100 Marcellus. Something is rotten in the state of Denmark.

1.5.187f. There are more things in heaven and earth….

1.5.210-212 O cursed spite / ….

2.1.8ff. Inquire me first what Danskers are in Paris....

2.2.36 Thanks, Guildenstern and gentle Rosencrantz

2.2.65-81 Upon our first, he sent out to suppress….

2.2.97 … brevity is the soul of wit....

2.2.103 More matter with less art.

2.2.177 Be you and I behind an arras then.

2.2.315 Guildenstern. My lord, we were sent for.

2.2.427 Jephthah

2.2.566 You could, for a need, study a speech of some dozen or sixteen lines….

2.2.576ff. 586:What’s Hecuba to him, or he to Hecuba / That he should weep for her?

2.2.633f. The play’s the thing / Wherein I’ll catch the conscious of the King.

3.1.52-62 Polonius. We are oft to blame in this / … that with devotion’s visage / And pious
action we do sugar o’er / The devil himself.
King [aside] O, ’tis too true! / … The harlot’s cheek beautied with plast’ring art /
Is more ugly to the thin that helps it / Than is my deed to my most painted word. /
O heavy burden!

3.1.64-95 To be or not to be--that is the question….

3.1.131 Get thee to a nunnery.

3.1.163 O, what a noble mind is here o’erthrown!

3.1.183f. … he shall with speed to England / For the demand of our neglected tribute.

3.2.144 Dumb show follows.

3.2.261 “The Mousetrap”

3.2.295 Give me some light. Away!

3.2.429 I will speak daggers to her, but use none. [Compare 3.4.108.]

3.3.30 Behind the arras I’ll convey myself / To hear the process.

3.3.101-103 Hamlet. This physic but prolongs thy sickly days.

King [rising]. My words fly up, my thoughts remain below. / Words without
thoughts never to heaven go.

3.4.38-40 Thou wretched, rash, intruding fool, farewell. / I took thee for thy better….