1Action and Delay
Hamlet has his command by Act 1 and kills no one but Polonius by accident until Act 5. He berates himself twice for it—'O, what a rogue and peasant slave am I!' after watching a player weep for Hecuba, and 'How all occasions do inform against me' after meeting Fortinbras's captain, men who risk death for less. When he finally does act, he acts on the wrong target, stabbing through a tapestry at a hidden voice. The play keeps asking whether thought is the enemy of deed or its necessary guard, and answers with a corpse-strewn throne room: delay saved no one, and haste killed the innocent.
Characters:HamletPoloniusFortinbras
2Performance and Reality
Elsinore is a stage where everyone acts. Hamlet puts on an 'antic disposition'; Claudius performs the gracious uncle while confessing in soliloquy that his 'words fly up' and his thoughts stay below; Rosencrantz and Guildenstern perform friendship for a fee. Hamlet's countermove is theater aimed at truth: he coaches the players to 'hold, as 'twere, the mirror up to nature,' then watches Claudius watch a fictional murder that mirrors the real one. The Mousetrap works—a king flees his own crime replayed—but it also proves that a performance can force a confession no interrogation could.
Characters:HamletClaudiusRosencrantz and Guildenstern
3Death and Decay
The play is obsessed with bodies breaking down. The Ghost describes poison working through the ear like quicksilver through the gates of life; Hamlet jokes that Polonius is at supper where 'a certain convocation of politic worms are e'en at him'; the churchyard scene turns a court jester into a skull Hamlet holds at eye level. 'Alas, poor Yorick!' is grief and anatomy at once: the lips he kissed, the jokes he told, now a hole in the ground. Mortality levels everyone—Alexander, Yorick, Ophelia—and the leveling is the point.
Characters:HamletOpheliaPoloniusThe Ghost
4Madness, Real and Feigned
Hamlet announces his madness as a strategy; Ophelia's arrives uninvited. He controls his performance, choosing when to be cryptic, when to be cruel—'Get thee to a nunnery'—while she loses her words to songs and flowers. The court cannot tell the difference: Polonius reads Hamlet's act as lovesickness, Claudius concludes it is dangerous, and Gertrude, after the closet scene and a Ghost she cannot see, decides her son is truly mad. The play's cruel joke is that the feigned madness destroys more lives than the real one.
Characters:HamletClaudiusGertrudeOpheliaPoloniusThe Ghost
5Revenge and Its Contagion
Revenge in this play is a disease passed from corpse to mourner. The Ghost commands Hamlet; Hamlet's killing of Polonius creates Laertes's grievance; Laertes's grief makes him Claudius's instrument with an unbated, poisoned rapier. Each avenger insists his cause is just—Laertes vows it over his father's body, Hamlet over the Ghost's story—and each ends poisoned by the same blade. The final bloodbath is not justice delivered but contagion completed: the plot 'hath turn'd itself on me,' Laertes says, and he speaks for everyone.
Characters:HamletClaudiusPoloniusLaertesThe Ghost