It would appear, however, that Shakespeare is using this military subplot as a distraction to keep the audience from guessing why a spectral figure who appears to be the ghost of Hamlet’s dead father is appearing on the battlements dressed in his old armor. The Ghost is not concerned about the possible war.

Terms in this set (41) The mood is dark, creepy, and sinister. Shakespeare establishes this mood by setting the opening scene of this tragic play just after midnight. There are three scared watchmen and a skeptical friend of Hamlet’s out on the watch, participating in a ghost-hunt.

In the stage directions he is referred to as “Ghost”. His name is also Hamlet, and he is referred to as King Hamlet to distinguish him from the Prince. He is loosely based on a legendary Jutish chieftain, named Horwendill, who appears in Chronicon Lethrense and in Saxo Grammaticus’ Gesta Danorum.

The guards have heard that young Fortinbras of Norway is planning an attack on Elsinore. The guards are working to protect the royals of Denmark from the feared attack as Fortinbras launches a scheme to win back the lands that were lost by his father.

Polonius

Exploring the character of Gertrude Gertrude is Hamlet’s mother and Queen of Denmark. She was married to the murdered King Hamlet (represented by the Ghost in the play) and has subsequently wed Claudius, his brother.

arras

Polonius is the Lord Chamberlain of Claudius’ court. He is also the father of Ophelia and Laertes. He spies on both his children and Hamlet. Polonius also misjudges many situations throughout the play and is eventually killed by Hamlet while hiding behind an arras, or screen.

Her relationship with Hamlet is somewhat turbulent, since he resents her marrying her husband’s brother Claudius after he murdered the king (young Hamlet’s father, King Hamlet). According to Hamlet, she scarcely mourned her husband’s death before marrying Claudius.

Revenge tragedy, drama in which the dominant motive is revenge for a real or imagined injury; it was a favourite form of English tragedy in the Elizabethan and Jacobean eras and found its highest expression in William Shakespeare’s Hamlet.

Though the gods rarely appear in these plays, ghosts and witches abound. Senecan tragedy is also evident in Shakespeare’s Hamlet; the revenge theme, the corpse-strewn climax, and such points of stage machinery as the ghost can all be traced back to the Senecan model.

He was Rome’s leading intellectual figure in the mid-1st century CE and was virtual ruler with his friends of the Roman world between 54 and 62, during the first phase of the emperor Nero’s reign. Seneca’s tragedies influenced William Shakespeare and John Webster.

Seneca (c. 4 BC–AD 65) was a Roman statesman, philosopher and playwright. His highly popular and widely influential bloodthirsty tragedies were written in Latin and based on Greek mythology.

Seneca is a major philosophical figure of the Roman Imperial Period. As a Stoic philosopher writing in Latin, Seneca makes a lasting contribution to Stoicism. He occupies a central place in the literature on Stoicism at the time, and shapes the understanding of Stoic thought that later generations were to have.