Reading and Literature Studies · Reading Literary Texts

Hamlet, Part 1: Context, Shakespeare's Language and Act 1

1.1 1.2 3.2 3.3About 75 minutes

Learning goals

I can explain the context of Hamlet: its date, genre (revenge tragedy) and the different early versions of the text.
I can identify the main characters and their relationships.
I can decode Shakespeare's language using glossaries, context and word knowledge, and recognize words whose meanings have changed.
I can summarize Act 1 and explain the Ghost's command and Hamlet's response.

Words to know

revenge tragedy
A type of play, popular in Elizabethan and Jacobean England, in which a wronged character seeks vengeance, usually featuring a ghost, madness (real or feigned), plotting and a bloody ending.

quarto / folio
Early printed book formats. Hamlet exists in two quartos (1603 and 1604/05) and the First Folio (1623), which differ in many lines.

soliloquy
A speech in which a character, alone on stage, speaks thoughts aloud.

aside
A short remark spoken to the audience (or to oneself) that other characters on stage do not hear.

antic disposition
Hamlet's phrase for the strange, mad-seeming behaviour he plans to put on (antic = grotesque, clownish).

semantic change
A change in a word's meaning over time (e.g. protest once meant vow).

pun
A play on words with more than one meaning or similar sounds.

Hook: the worst family dinner ever

Your father died two months ago. Your mother has just married your uncle. Everyone at court is celebrating, the new king wants you to cheer up and stop wearing black, and you are the only one who seems to remember your dad at all. Then your friends tell you that your father's ghost has been walking the castle walls at midnight.

That is where Shakespeare's Hamlet begins. It is probably the most performed, quoted and argued-over play in the English language, and in the next four lessons you will read it closely.

Remember from Grades 9 and 10

In Grade 9 you read Romeo and Juliet, and in Grade 10 Macbeth. You learned blank verse (unrhymed iambic pentameter), prose for comic or low-status speech, soliloquies, dramatic irony and a decoder for Early Modern English (thou, thee, art, 'tis). Grade 11 adds revenge tragedy as a genre, more advanced decoding of words whose meanings have changed, and a play whose hero thinks more than he acts.

Context

Date: Shakespeare wrote Hamlet around 1599 to 1601, at the height of his career, for the Globe Theatre in London.
Genre: a revenge tragedy. Audiences of the time knew the conventions: a ghost demanding revenge, a hero who feigns madness, plots and counter-plots, a play within the play and a stage full of bodies at the end. Thomas Kyd's The Spanish Tragedy (about 1587) had made the form popular. Shakespeare uses every convention, then questions it: what if the revenger is too thoughtful to simply kill?
Source: an old Scandinavian legend of a prince named Amleth, written down by the Danish historian Saxo Grammaticus around 1200.
Three early texts: Hamlet survives in a short First Quarto (1603), a long Second Quarto (1604/05) and the First Folio (1623). They differ in hundreds of places. Modern editions combine them, which is why line numbers vary between editions. Always say which edition you are using.
Setting: Elsinore, the royal castle of Denmark. Denmark's old enemy, Norway, is preparing to attack under young Prince Fortinbras.

Reading tip: the full text is long (it would run about four hours uncut). Use a free online edition with glossary notes, such as the Folger Shakespeare Library's, and watch a filmed performance of each act after reading it.

The characters of Hamlet. Notice the two families, each with a father and a son, and the dashed lines for relationships under strain. Three young men in this play (Hamlet, Laertes, Fortinbras) have a father who has been killed.

Decoding Shakespeare's language: beyond thee and thou

You know the basics (thou = you, art = are, 'tis = it is). Grade 11 decoding focuses on false friends: words that look modern but meant something else in 1600. If you read them with today's meaning, you misunderstand the line.

wherefore = why (not where).
would = wish (Would I had never seen it = I wish I had never seen it).
soft = wait, quiet (But soft!).
an = if.
anon = soon.
still = always.
fond = foolish.
nice = precise, fussy.
protest = vow, promise strongly. Gertrude's famous line The lady doth protest too much, methinks (3.2) means The lady promises too much, not objects too much.
marry as an exclamation = indeed (originally an oath, by the Virgin Mary).

Strategies: (1) read the glossary note; (2) use context (does the modern meaning make sense here?); (3) check an etymological dictionary for how the meaning has changed; (4) read the line aloud: punctuation and rhythm often show the meaning.

Word	Shakespeare's meaning	Example
wherefore	why	Wherefore do you look so? (why do you look like that?)
would	wish	Would the night were come! (I wish night had come)
fond	foolish	all trivial fond records (1.5): silly memories
protest	vow, promise	The lady doth protest too much (3.2)
antic	grotesque, clownish	To put an antic disposition on (1.5)

Some false friends in Shakespeare's English. The first two examples are made up to show the meaning; the others are from Hamlet.

Act 1 in brief

1.1: At midnight on the castle walls, guards and Hamlet's friend Horatio see a Ghost that looks like the dead King Hamlet. It will not speak to them. They decide to tell Prince Hamlet.
1.2: In a smooth public speech, the new King Claudius mourns his brother and announces his marriage to Gertrude, his brother's widow, all in one breath: With mirth in funeral and with dirge in marriage. Hamlet, still in black, answers with bitter puns. Alone, he delivers his first soliloquy: O, that this too too solid flesh would melt. He wishes he could die, is disgusted that his mother remarried within a month of his father's death, and cries Frailty, thy name is woman! Horatio tells him about the Ghost.
1.3: Laertes, son of the King's adviser Polonius, leaves for France, warning his sister Ophelia not to trust Hamlet's love. Polonius gives Laertes advice, ending This above all: to thine own self be true, then orders Ophelia to stop seeing Hamlet.
1.4: Hamlet waits for the Ghost. A guard, Marcellus, says: Something is rotten in the state of Denmark.
1.5: The Ghost speaks to Hamlet alone. It says Claudius murdered him by pouring poison into his ear as he slept in his orchard, then took his crown and his queen. It commands: Revenge his foul and most unnatural murder, but leave Gertrude to heaven. Its parting words: Remember me. Hamlet swears his friends to secrecy and warns that he may put an antic disposition on: act strangely. Just before the act ends he says: The time is out of joint. O cursed spite, / That ever I was born to set it right!

Two versions of King Hamlet's death. The Ghost turns the official story into a metaphor: the serpent was Claudius. Poison poured into an ear is an image to watch: in this play, words poured into ears do damage too.

Worked example

Let's decode and paraphrase a passage

Paraphrase Hamlet's lines at the end of Act 1: The time is out of joint. O cursed spite, / That ever I was born to set it right!

Decode the words: out of joint = dislocated, like a shoulder out of its socket; spite = bad luck, a malicious twist of fate; cursed = damned, hateful.
Literal paraphrase: The world is disordered, like a dislocated bone. What terrible luck that I was born to be the one who has to fix it!
Notice the form: the speech ends on a rhyming couplet (spite / right), a firm close, like those you saw in Macbeth.
Interpret: Hamlet does not say I can't wait for revenge. He sees the task as a burden forced on him. This is the first sign that he will hesitate.

The world is broken and disordered, and what awful luck that I'm the one born to fix it. The couplet gives the act its firm close, and Hamlet's reluctance already hints at the delay to come.

Worked example

Let's use a strategy: track puns as a clue to character

When Claudius calls him my cousin Hamlet, and my son, Hamlet says aside: A little more than kin, and less than kind. When Claudius asks, How is it that the clouds still hang on you? Hamlet replies, Not so, my lord; I am too much in the sun. Explain the puns and what they show.

First pun: kin (family) and kind (both natural, of the same kind and kindly). Claudius is now more than kin (uncle and stepfather) but less than kind (not loving, and not natural to Hamlet).
Second pun: sun sounds like son. Hamlet is too much in the sun (he's been called son too much), and perhaps too much in the spotlight of royal favour he doesn't want.
Form: the first line is an aside: Hamlet speaks to the audience, so we share his private hostility.
What it shows: Hamlet uses wordplay as a weapon. He can't openly defy the King, so he hides insults inside double meanings. Watch for this all through the play.

Hamlet's puns (kin/kind, sun/son) let him insult Claudius indirectly. They show his sharp mind, his anger, and his position: a prince who can't speak openly.

Just for fun

Funny-but-true: Hamlet has given English so many phrases that people quote it without knowing. To thine own self be true, brevity is the soul of wit, something is rotten in the state of Denmark, the lady doth protest too much and to be, or not to be all come from this one play. Ironically, brevity is the soul of wit is said by Polonius, one of the longest-winded characters in Shakespeare.

Hands-on activity

Read Act 1 aloud, two ways

You need: a free online text of Hamlet with glossary notes, a family member, and 30 minutes.

Choose 1.2, lines from Claudius's opening speech up to his turn to Hamlet. One person reads Claudius as a warm, sincere king; the other as a smooth politician hiding guilt.
Discuss which reading the words support better. Look at phrases like With mirth in funeral and with dirge in marriage.
Read the Ghost's speech in 1.5 together. Make a list of every false friend or unfamiliar word you meet, and decode each one using the notes, context or an etymological dictionary.
Write a 5-line paraphrase of the Ghost's command.

What to look for: a justified choice about Claudius (the balanced, contradictory phrases suggest he is smoothing over something awkward); at least five decoded words; a paraphrase that includes revenge, leave your mother to heaven and remember me.

Your turn

What is a revenge tragedy? Name three of its conventions.

Why do line numbers differ between editions of Hamlet?

What does wherefore mean? What about would in Would I had never seen it?

What does Gertrude's line The lady doth protest too much really mean?

Why is Hamlet so upset in his first soliloquy?

What does the Ghost tell Hamlet, and what does it command?

What is the antic disposition, and why might Hamlet plan it?

More practice: warm-up

In what country is Hamlet set?

Who is Claudius?

Who are Laertes and Ophelia's father?

What does anon mean?

Who says Something is rotten in the state of Denmark?

More practice: on your own

Explain the effect of Claudius's phrase With mirth in funeral and with dirge in marriage.

Why is Frailty, thy name is woman! a problem for modern readers, and what does it show about Hamlet?

Polonius tells Laertes to thine own self be true. Why might this sound ironic, given his own behaviour?

Why might Shakespeare have the guards and Horatio see the Ghost before Hamlet does?

Explain how the Ghost's serpent metaphor works.

Challenge

Shakespeare's audience was mostly Protestant, and Protestant teaching said the dead do not return as ghosts from Purgatory. How does this make the Ghost more troubling?

Compare the opening of Hamlet with the opening of Macbeth, which you read in Grade 10. How does each set the mood?

Write an analytical paragraph explaining how Hamlet's language in Act 1 (puns, asides, soliloquy) reveals a character who cannot speak freely in public.

Check your understanding

Quiz

Hamlet belongs to the genre of...

In Shakespeare's English, wherefore means...

According to the Ghost, Claudius killed King Hamlet by...

The lady doth protest too much means the lady...

The antic disposition is...

A little more than kin, and less than kind is spoken as an aside, which means...

Why do line numbers differ between editions of Hamlet?

For parents and teachers

What this lesson teaches: ENG3U Reading 1.1 (reading a complex text from a different period), 1.2 (strategies for complex texts) and Reading With Fluency 3.2 and 3.3 (decoding unfamiliar words with glossaries, context and etymology; noticing how word meanings change), using Act 1 of Hamlet (public domain). The sibling unit, Reading Informational and Graphic Texts, also covers fluency and vocabulary.

How to help at home:

Watch a filmed performance of Act 1 after your teen reads it; many are available through public libraries.
Read one scene aloud together, each taking a role.
Quiz each other on false friends (wherefore, would, fond, protest).

Content note: the play involves murder, grief, a ghost and a character's wish to die (1.2). Lesson 13 has a fuller content note.

Common difficulties:

Reading false friends with modern meanings. Encourage checking every word that seems odd.
Losing track of the two families. Keep the character chart handy.
Expecting quick action. The delay is the point of the play.

Facts used: Hamlet is usually dated 1599 to 1601; Q1 1603, Q2 1604/05, First Folio 1623; Saxo Grammaticus's Amleth legend; Kyd's The Spanish Tragedy (about 1587). Quotations follow standard modern editions.