Bethany's peculiar take on Hamlet.

Hamlet, by the legendary William Shakespeare, does not beat around the bush—the first scene is soldiers on the watch discussing a ghost that several of them had witnessed. The soldiers try to elicit a reaction from the ghost and fail, but recognize it as the recently deceased Dane, the king of Denmark. They alert Hamlet, the deceased King’s son, nephew of the current king. The Ghost reveals to his son that he was murdered and his wife, now wife of his brother, was complicit in the deed. Hamlet compels his men to hide all that they’ve seen there, and connives a plan to trap his uncle-father and aunt-mother in the horror of their sin.
Hamlets first tactic is to feign madness. Although he states in the dialogue of the play that his madness is indeed feigned (“Essentially I am not in madness/But mad in craft” 3.4.202-3), whether or not he truly went mad has been the source of great debate. Hamlet’s rash, accidental murder of Polonius, Lord Chamberlain, lays doubt as to whether Hamlet was so deep in the lie that it became truth.
The Prince tries several different tactics to trap his Uncle, including a play (“The play’s the thing/Wherein I’ll catch the conscience of the King” 2.2.570) but Hamlet’s motives throughout seem very fuzzy, at best. His character is conflicted, nearly driven to genuine madness by his mother’s incest, his fiancé’s suicide, and father’s murder, but struggling to maintain reason although his world has gone to hell.



The theme is best summed up in the words of Horatio, after the Queen is poisoned to death, the King slain, and the Prince both poisoned and fatally wounded from a duel. While mourning the deaths of the royal family, Horatio declares, “Give order that these bodies/ High on a stage be placed to the view/ And let me speak to [th’] unknowing world/ How these things came about. So you shall hear/ Of carnal, bloody, and unnatural acts/ Of accidental judgments, casual slaughters/ Of deaths put on by cunning and [forc’d] cause/ And in this upshot, purposes mistook/ Fall’n on th’ inventor’s heads: all this can I/ Truly deliver.” 5.2.379-88 Summed up, the theme is that one must pay the price for sin and corruption in one’s life, at whatever cost to one’s self or family.
The plot is intertwined and complex—so much so that most film adaptations fail to capture the underlying notes that the story can hold. Many productions minimize Ophelia’s importance, which is a massive mistake. Ophelia alone is onstage when Hamlet delivers his famous soliloquy. The Queen, King, and courtiers all blame Ophelia’s scorn of Hamlet’s love for his madness. She is Polonius’ daughter (scorning Hamlet on his command), Laerte’s sister, and is Hamlet’s sole love interest. Ophelia may have had the power to save Hamlet from his fate, but her suicide after Hamlet’s slaying of her father is just another aspect to why Hamlet may be mad, indeed.