What type of play is Hamlet?

Hamlet is a revenge tragedy, but one that supplies every convention of the form, the ghost, the delay, the feigned madness, the play-within-a-play, and turns each into a question.

What are the main themes of Hamlet?

The play explores delay and the thinking mind, seeming versus being in a watched court, conscience and corruption in the state, the treatment of women, and the movement from will to acceptance.

Why does Hamlet delay his revenge?

Hamlet cannot verify the Ghost's nature, since "The spirit that I have seen / May be a devil", so he substitutes proof for action by staging the play-within-a-play, and his self-questioning inwardness suspends the deed until the final catastrophe.

BTA Online Resources

Hamlet

by William ShakespearePrescribed for HSC English 2024–2027 (NESA) · Last reviewed September 2026Hamlet is a revenge tragedy by William Shakespeare, written around 1600 for the Globe playhouse. It follows the Prince of Denmark's delayed revenge on his uncle Claudius, who murdered his father and married his mother, and is studied in HSC English Advanced Module B: Critical Study of Literature.

Book a Free Consultation More free resources

Summary

Hamlet is a revenge tragedy by William Shakespeare, written around 1600 for the Globe playhouse. It follows the Prince of Denmark's delayed revenge on his uncle Claudius, who murdered his father and married his mother, and is studied in HSC English Advanced Module B: Critical Study of Literature.

Written around 1600 at the hinge between the Elizabethan and Jacobean ages, Hamlet takes an old revenge story and rebuilds it into something the revenge tradition had never carried: a tragedy whose action is repeatedly suspended so that a mind can be heard thinking.

The Ghost of the dead King appears on the battlements of Elsinore and reveals to Hamlet that he was murdered by his brother Claudius, who has taken the throne and married the widowed Queen, Gertrude. Hamlet swears revenge and feigns madness, "To put an antic disposition on", but he cannot verify the Ghost's nature, so he has a troupe of players stage a murder like his father's and watches the King. The play works: Claudius rises in guilt. Yet finding Claudius alone at prayer, Hamlet declines to kill him, and minutes later stabs a hidden eavesdropper in his mother's chamber, killing the counsellor Polonius instead. Claudius ships Hamlet to England with a sealed order for his death; Ophelia, broken by her father's murder and Hamlet's cruelty, goes truly mad and drowns; and her brother Laertes is bent by Claudius into a plot built on a rigged fencing match and a poisoned blade.

Hamlet returns changed. In the graveyard he holds Yorick's skull and meditates on the levelling of all flesh, accepting the duel with a new fatalism: "the readiness is all". In the final catastrophe Gertrude drinks the poisoned cup, Laertes and Hamlet are both cut by the envenomed blade, and Hamlet, dying, at last kills Claudius, leaving Horatio to tell his story.

Context

Shakespeare wrote Hamlet around 1600, at the hinge between the Elizabethan and Jacobean ages, for the open-air Globe playhouse and its socially mixed audience. He took an old revenge story, already staged in an earlier lost play, and rebuilt it so that delay itself became the subject. The play belongs to a culture in transition: it inherits the medieval revenge code, in which a son is bound to avenge a murdered father, and sets it against a Christian prohibition on murder and a new, sceptical, humanist inwardness that weighs every certainty before acting.

The uncertainty is also textual. Hamlet survives in three early versions: the short First Quarto (1603), the long Second Quarto (1604-5) and the First Folio (1623), which differ in hundreds of readings, so the play we study is an editor's reconstruction. That the text resists a single settled form suits a play about the impossibility of certain knowledge, and it is one reason the work has proved inexhaustible to four centuries of readers.

Themes and Techniques

Where the popular revenge play drove the avenger straight toward blood, Shakespeare makes delay itself the subject. Hamlet's seven soliloquies admit the audience to a consciousness turning its task over and over, and he judges his own inaction as harshly as any critic: "O, what a rogue and peasant slave am I!". Even his test of the King substitutes proof for action - "The play's the thing / Wherein I'll catch the conscience of the king" - a scientific rather than impulsive response to an impossible demand, since "The spirit that I have seen / May be a devil".

The court of Elsinore is a watched, ceremonious world in which almost every character is playing a part, and the gap between seeming and being is the play's constant subject. Hamlet's verdict on his uncle, "That one may smile, and smile, and be a villain", names the split exactly, and the disease metaphor "Something is rotten in the state of Denmark" converts Claudius's rule into a sickness in the body politic. Yet Shakespeare grants the murderer a genuine conscience: alone, Claudius confesses "O, my offence is rank, it smells to heaven" and fails to pray, "My words fly up, my thoughts remain below", an interior that complicates any simple judgement.

The play's treatment of women is carried by contrast. Hamlet converts his mother's hasty remarriage into a verdict on her whole sex, "Frailty, thy name is woman!", while Ophelia, who answers her father's commands with "I shall obey, my lord", is given only one brief soliloquy and no independent will; her genuine madness, unlike Hamlet's feigned kind, speaks in fragments of song the truths the court has suppressed.

By Act 5 the drama of will gives way to acceptance. "The readiness is all" describes a man who has stopped trying to author his revenge and lets it come to him, trusting that "There's a divinity that shapes our ends", and the deferred deed arrives only inside the general catastrophe, sealed with "The rest is silence".

Key Quotes

"To put an antic disposition on"
Technique
Motif of feigned madness
Idea
Hamlet converts his own instability into a strategy he can almost control
"The play's the thing / Wherein I'll catch the conscience of the king"
Technique
Metatheatre, rhyming couplet
Idea
Proof substituted for action - Hamlet tests the evidence rather than trusting the Ghost
"That one may smile, and smile, and be a villain"
Technique
Antithesis of surface and depth
Idea
Names the gap between Claudius's plausible manner and his murder
"O, my offence is rank, it smells to heaven"
Technique
Soliloquy, the villain's conscience
Idea
Shakespeare grants the murderer a genuine interior that complicates our judgement
"The readiness is all"
Technique
Aphorism
Idea
Resolve gives way to acceptance - Hamlet stops trying to author the moment

Quote	Technique	Idea
"To put an antic disposition on"	Motif of feigned madness	Hamlet converts his own instability into a strategy he can almost control
"The play's the thing / Wherein I'll catch the conscience of the king"	Metatheatre, rhyming couplet	Proof substituted for action - Hamlet tests the evidence rather than trusting the Ghost
"That one may smile, and smile, and be a villain"	Antithesis of surface and depth	Names the gap between Claudius's plausible manner and his murder
"O, my offence is rank, it smells to heaven"	Soliloquy, the villain's conscience	Shakespeare grants the murderer a genuine interior that complicates our judgement
"The readiness is all"	Aphorism	Resolve gives way to acceptance - Hamlet stops trying to author the moment

Studied together

Hamlet and Emily Dickinson

Frequently Asked Questions

Which module is Hamlet studied in for the HSC?: Hamlet is set for HSC English Advanced Module B: Critical Study of Literature, which asks for an argued, personal judgement about the play's meaning, value and construction.
When did Shakespeare write Hamlet?: Shakespeare wrote Hamlet around 1600, at the hinge between the Elizabethan and Jacobean ages, for the open-air Globe playhouse and its socially mixed audience.
What type of play is Hamlet?: Hamlet is a revenge tragedy, but one that supplies every convention of the form, the ghost, the delay, the feigned madness, the play-within-a-play, and turns each into a question.
What are the main themes of Hamlet?: The play explores delay and the thinking mind, seeming versus being in a watched court, conscience and corruption in the state, the treatment of women, and the movement from will to acceptance.
Why does Hamlet delay his revenge?: Hamlet cannot verify the Ghost's nature, since "The spirit that I have seen / May be a devil", so he substitutes proof for action by staging the play-within-a-play, and his self-questioning inwardness suspends the deed until the final catastrophe.

Studying Hamlet for the HSC?

Hamlet is studied in HSC English Advanced Module B: Critical Study of Literature, which asks for an argued, personal judgement about the play's meaning, value and construction, sustained through close analysis of how Shakespeare writes. BTA's expert English tutors work with students one-on-one on exactly that skill - find out more about English tutoring at BTA or explore our HSC English resources.

Contact Us

Ready to get started, or have a question about tutoring?

Reach our team on 1800 002 085 (free to call) or send us an enquiry through our contact page.

Hamlet

More Module B texts

Contact Us