Hamlet Themes and Motifs

Hamlet Themes and Motifs

1. Women and gender

   • Ophelia
     • Ophelia, in committing suicide, claims agency upon her character in a way that she was prevented from doing in the play up to that point.
     • Ophelia's resolute obedience to the male characters of the play is what eventually drives her insane.
     • Shakespeare uses Ophelia to first present the idea of the ideal Elizabethan woman to only subvert it by showing Ophelia's downfall into madness which implies that the Elizabethan 'ideal woman' is unsustainable if the ideal woman to keep her sanity.
   • Gertrude
     • Gertrude throughout the play is made out to be a contemptible figure by Shakespeare through her relationship with Claudius and the ambiguity of her involvement with the old king's death
   • Hamlet
     • Hamlet's disgust at his mother's 'incestuous' sexual relationship has led to his general misogyny and rejection of the idea of love, shown though his rejection of Ophelia.

2. Appearance vs Reality

3. Death

4. Revenge

   • Revenge Tragedies

5. Disease and decay

6. Madness

7. Corruption

8. Sex

   • Hamlet's ambiguous relationship with Ophelia makes his attitude towards sex complicated for the audience to interpret.
   • The descriptive language that Shakespeare uses to describe sex within the play varies greatly depending on the character speaking the lines.

9. Duality and duplicity

   • Hamlet recognises the female gender as almost synonymous with duplicity
     • "God hath given you one face and you make yourselves another"
   • Shakespeare uses the technique of doubles - foils, hendiadys and character couples - to emphasise the duplicity of the court of Denmark. Hamlet's own foils also throw into question his reliability as a central character as they suggest instability within his own character.

10. Family