"A collection of thematically related essays on a variety of works by Shakespeare"--P. 11.

42 easy-to-read, ready-to-inspire sample essays on Shakespeare''s Hamlet. Inside you will find three 1,500-word essays on each of the following 14 characters, relationships and themes: #1: The Character of Hamlet Born a prince, parented by a jester, haunted by a ghost, destined to kill a king rather than become one, and remembered as the title character of a play he did not want to be in. #2: The Character of Claudius His "ambition" (3.3) for Denmark''s throne leads him to commit one murder only to find that he must plot a second to cover up the first. When this plan fails, his next scheme leads to his own death and that of the woman he loved. #3: The Character of Gertrude "Have you eyes?" (3.4), Prince Hamlet demands of his mother. Gertrude''s "o''erhasty marriage" (2.2) dooms her life and the lives of everyone around her when her wished-for, happily-ever-after fairytale ends in a bloodbath. #4: The Character of Ophelia Ophelia''s sanity is overwhelmed by Elsinore''s maddening world of deception and betrayal. Her "self-slaughter" (1.2) is her revenge against everyone who dismissed, silenced and humiliated her. #5: Relationship of Hamlet and the Ghost By surrendering Denmark to his rival''s son, Hamlet grants to the angry Ghost of his "dear father murdered" (2.2) the forgiveness his suffering soul needed more than the revenge he demanded. #6: Relationship of Hamlet and Claudius Claudius is haunted by the murder he has committed ("O heavy burden!", 3.1). Hamlet by the one he hasn''t yet ("Am I a coward?", 2.2). In the end, the prince by two means kills the "arrant knave" (1.5) whose poison claimed the lives of both his parents and who had twice plotted to murder him. #7: Relationship of Hamlet and Gertrude A haunted-by-the-past ("Must I remember?", 1.2) Hamlet seeks the truth about his father''s death. A live-in-the-moment ("All that is I see", 3.4) Gertrude seeks to protect her second husband and throne. #8: Relationship of Hamlet and Ophelia Their relationship begins in uncertainty, descends into mutual deceit and rejection, and ends with their double surrender to death: she, to the "weeping brook" (4.7); he, to Claudius'' "he shall not choose but fall" (4.7) rigged fencing duel. #9: Relationship of Hamlet and Horatio "Those friends thou hast ... Grapple them unto thy soul with hoops of steel" (1.3). Horatio is Hamlet''s trusted confidant in life and vows to remain the keeper of his memory after the prince''s death. #10: Relationship of Claudius and Gertrude A marriage of practical interest. Claudius wanted something (the kingship) he did not have; Gertrude had something (the status of queen) she wanted to hold onto. #11: The Themes of Hamlet A king murdered, an inheritance stolen, a family divided: Elsinore''s older generation destroys its younger when two brothers -- one living, one undead -- battle in a "cursed spite" (1.5) over a crown and queen. #12: The Theme of Revenge Two young men journey from revenge, through obsession and anger, to forgiveness. And the revenge sought in act one by the Ghost on his brother Claudius becomes in act five the revenge of old King Fortinbras on old King Hamlet. #13: The Theme Deception and Appearance versus Reality ''Seems'' and ''is'' are as tragically far apart as Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are comically similar in a play-long triple pun on the verb ''to act'': to take action, to behave deceitfully, and to perform in theater. #14: The Theme of Madness Is Hamlet ever really insane? If not, why is he pretending to be? Is the prince''s behavior the cause of Ophelia''s traumatic breakdown? Book website: www.essaykit.com.

In these Shakespearean essays originally published together in 1979, the distinguished literary critic L. C. Knights offers the fruits of his long-term thinking about individual plays (notably, Hamlet, Julius Caesar, Macbeth, Lear) and explores the ways in which a deep and imaginative understanding of Shakespeare's work can relate to and enrich other areas of knowledge - politics, history, social and emotional relationships, the nature of theatrical experience ... Certain critical assumptions are of course implicit here: that great works of art have a continuing life which is renewed through perception; that the vitality generated by such works is for all men and that the critic's function is to encourage all readers to see as much as they can for themselves, not to dogmatize or try to impose a particular reading. L. C. Knights admirably fulfils this function in these essays most of which have been gathered from the three volumes entitled Explorations, Further Explorations and Explorations 3.

Passion, romance, drama, humor, and tragedy intertwine in this compulsively readable Hamlet retelling, from the perspective of a strong-willed, modern-day Ophelia. Meet Ophelia, high school senior, daughter of the Danish king's most trusted adviser, and longtime girlfriend of Prince Hamlet of Denmark. She lives a glamorous life and has a royal social circle, and her beautiful face is splashed across magazines and television screens. But it comes with a price--her life is ruled not only by Hamlet's fame and his overbearing royal family but also by the paparazzi who hound them wherever they go. After the sudden and suspicious death of his father, the king, the devastatingly handsome Hamlet spirals dangerously toward madness, and Ophelia finds herself torn, with no one to turn to. All Ophelia wants is to live a normal life. But when you date a prince, you have to play your part. Ophelia rides out this crazy roller coaster life, and lives to tell her story in live television interviews.

What goes through a man's mind when he is playing Hamlet? How does Shakespeare's best-known play actually work, from the inside? Steven Berkoff is an actor, playwright, and director with an extraordinary talent for conveying powerful ideas and emotions. His production of Hamlet, in which he took the title role, began in Edinburgh in 1979, went on to the Round House in London, and toured throughout Europe for the next two years. The company completed its final performance as guests of Jean-Louis Barrault at his Rond Point Theater, where the audience gave the production a tempestuous ovation. During the tour Berkoff kept a journal and recorded the workings of the play from the director/actor's point of view. On the basis of that diary Berkoff has created an intensely personal analysis of the play with a line-by-line examination of the text and the way he approached it in his production. His detailed observations show how his imagination covers a wide range of human experience--from love and death to the nature of marriage and the messianic fervor of Hamlet. I Am Hamlet not only reveals the mind of a fascinating actor and director at work, it is also a singular encounter with a part that "touches the complete alphabet of human experience" and that every actor feels he is born to play.

For the past five decades, Arab intellectuals have seen themselves in Shakespeare's Hamlet: their times "out of joint," their political hopes frustrated by a corrupt older generation. Hamlet's Arab Journey traces the uses of Hamlet in Arabic theatre and political rhetoric, and asks how Shakespeare's play developed into a musical with a happy ending in 1901 and grew to become the most obsessively quoted literary work in Arab politics today. Explaining the Arab Hamlet tradition, Margaret Litvin also illuminates the "to be or not to be" politics that have turned Shakespeare's tragedy into the essential Arab political text, cited by Arab liberals, nationalists, and Islamists alike. On the Arab stage, Hamlet has been an operetta hero, a firebrand revolutionary, and a muzzled dissident. Analyzing productions from Egypt, Syria, Iraq, Jordan, and Kuwait, Litvin follows the distinct phases of Hamlet's naturalization as an Arab. Her fine-grained theatre history uses personal interviews as well as scripts and videos, reviews, and detailed comparisons with French and Russian Hamlets. The result shows Arab theatre in a new light. Litvin identifies the French source of the earliest Arabic Hamlet, shows the outsize influence of Soviet and East European Shakespeare, and explores the deep cultural link between Egypt's Gamal Abdel Nasser and the ghost of Hamlet's father. Documenting how global sources and models helped nurture a distinct Arab Hamlet tradition, Hamlet's Arab Journey represents a new approach to the study of international Shakespeare appropriation.