VCCS Litonline Introduction to Literature
English 112 (English Composition II)

The Hamlet Site

Links

Objective for this Page:  To provide additional texts of the play, interpretative aides, and commentaries.

Copies of the play with various summaries, glosses, or notes

1. Illustrations of Hamlet scenes (usually Ophelia or Hamlet) from artists of the 1800s are at Emory University's Shakespeare Illustrated.
    

2. The Hamlet Navigator by Philip Weller offers scene summaries, traces character appearances through the play, traces a few recurring images through the play, traces some character traits of Hamlet, and offers a word search.   All quotations are indexed to a script of the play.
    

3. Ian Delaney has assembled a classy site called "A Short Course on Shakespeare's Hamlet," which puts summaries before each printed scene; questions for each act's plot, stagecraft, and themes with sample answers, and a forum for adding ideas about the play.  Main pages also have embedded music in the manner of Shakespeare's era.
    
4. The University of Washington's OpenUW contains (as of 2008) a free short course on Hamlet with summary, thematic notes, and self-checking practice quizzes on each act, plus discussion questions for the whole play.
    

5. A high school teacher (Bruce Spielbauer) in Chicago has a somewhat irreverent Shakespeare web site that includes a copy of Hamlet, scene by scene, with a summary beside the scripted lines.  His notes page at his Hamlet site also includes a list of all 8 deaths, the cast of characters, suggested writing topics, and a list of famous quotations from the play.
    

6. Shakespeare's complete works are online at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), including Hamlet printed scene by scene.
    

7. Advanced: Editing Shakespeare: Jeffery and Charlotte Triggs have adapted Bernice Kliman's Enfolded Hamlet to the Web (click on Shakespeare's portrait to get to the table of contents from the introduction).  Search for any phrase from the play and get a display of the context with the number of lines you specify.  The 1604 or 1605 text (called Quarto 2) is printed along with variant words from the 1623 Folio 1 text with color coding and punctuation to sort out which reading is which.  This ADVANCED and close reading of Shakespeare where even the individual words and punctuation visibly change the tone of a passage.
    
8. Shakespeare resources in general are listed at Carolyn Todd's costume website, including biographies online and online notes about the plays and the Globe Theater.

Biographical data on Shakespeare

See http://www.shakespeare-online.com/biography/ for a thorough Shakespeare bio.

Productions and Movies 

• The  Shanandoah Shakespeare Express theater company in Harrisonburg, Virginia, presents modernized versions of Shakespeare's plays under conditions that echo or modernize the likely production qualities of the original plays.  This 30-page Word document includes a "map" of the characters from their production based on the 1603 First Quarto, which has somewhat different wording and names than the more familiar 1623 First Folio version usually read and produced, plus lively notes on the audiences of Shakespeare's day, and much more.

Commentary

• Shakespeare's HAMLET on the Web  offers a comprehensive listing of scripts and commentary, including some famous statements by famous people regarding Hamlet and other essays.  Also included are links to scholarly commentary, e.g. excerpts from The Undiscovered Country by Steve Roth.  Also included is a long, long scroll from Ed Friedlander that gives a scene-by-scene summary/commentary for Hamlet illustrated with stills from famous movies and art of Hamlet.

• Joel Summer Littauer offers an historical reason for Hamlet's supposed delay in killing his uncle. This link is to the third part of his essay.  The previous two parts can be accessed via the link at the bottom of his page.

• The same webber offers two guided essay assignments that suggest the steps and resources for doing two detailed essays--

  • elements of Hamlet's personality that would prompt him to immediate action vs. those that would cause him to be cautious

  • Hamlet's impact on the minor characters in the play

• Advanced: This lecture copyrighted by Ian Johnston is a resource in the Malaspina University-College Liberal Studies course of Russell McNeil (cool home page) that includes Hamlet. Skim it first; then study it for several insights into Hamlet's problem and his relation to the cosmos. Also consider the associated essay topics and seminar questions for this 300-level course.

• Two classes at Simonds High School in New Brunswick, Canada, offer illustrations and interpretations of selected characters and aspects of the play.   The Hamlet Online site includes line-by-line paraphrases of some of the soliloquys, commentary on Ophelia's songs; and commentary on the deaths of Laertes, Hamlet, and Claudius, as well as Hamlet's apparent obsession with death.

• MIT's discussion forum for Hamlet ranges from the paranoid to the creative.  Most items marked by question marks are inquiries, some of which seem prompted by a rather immediate writing assignment while others seem prompted by thoughtful--even painstaking--reflection.  Many of the statements and idea bulbs that mark the hundreds of entries in this seemingly unthreaded stack present interesting insights worth crediting and pursuing.  Email addresses of commentators are attached to their comments or questions.

• Harry Rusche's Shakespeare Illustrated  pages at Emory University includes several paintings about Hamlet, a focus on "Gertrude's guilt," several about Ophelia, and portrayals of a staging convention that he calls "Hamlet's crawl," as well as Hamlet "lying" in Ophelia's lap during the "Mousetrap."

• Vamsey Palagummi copies a plot summary and offers his analysis of Hamlet's "duplicity," as he struggles to accept the "role" that his father's ghost has cast him in.  As a counter-thesis, I suggest that Hamlet had to change from a college student into an assassin and from a suicidal mourner into someone willing to sacrifice his life for his cause.  At the same time, Hamlet hints in Act 3 when he spares Claudius that he is not out for simple vengeance but for justice--and he does kill Claudius when he is caught trying to kill Hamlet, as well as having just let his queen drink poison rather than risk revealing his plot, both sins that would assure his place in Hell.

Things to Find on or off the Net:
    Voltaire's attack on Hamlet and then George Brandes' praise of the same work

Assessment: Choose a link and summarize four facts or assertions that surprise or intrigue you.

The URL for this page is: http://vccslitonline.cc.va.us/Links.htm