Fathers and Sons

No more like my father

than I to Hercules

Hamlet,

Act 1 Scene 2

My father’s spirit — in arms! All is not

well. I doubt some foul play.

Hamlet

Act 1 Scene 2

Hamlet: Speak. I am bound to hear. Ghost:

So art thou to revenge, when thou shalt hear

Act 1 Scene 5

Haste me to know’t, that I, with wings as swift

as meditation or the thoughts of love, may sweep to my revenge

Hamlet,

Act 1, Scene 5

Remember thee? Ay, thou poor ghost, whiles

memory holds a seat in this distracted globe

Hamlet,

Act 1 Scene 5

I, a dull and muddy-mettled rascal, peak like John-a-dreams,

unpregnant of my cause

Hamlet,

Act 2 Scene 2

What an ass

am I!

Hamlet, Act 2 Scene 2

A villain kills my father, and for that, I, his sole

son, do this same villain send to heaven. Why, this is hire and salary, not revenge.

Hamlet, Act 3 Scene 3

See what a grace was seated on this brow,

Hyperion’s curls, the front of Jove himself, an eye like Mars’ to threaten and command

Hamlet, Act 3 Scene 4

Do you not come your tardy son to chide, that,

lapsed in time and passion, lets go by th’ important acting of your dread command?

Hamlet, Act 3 Scene 4

How stand I, then, that have a father killed, a

mother stained, excitements of my reason and my blood, and let all sleep.

Hamlet, Act 4 Scene 4

Claudius: But now my cousin Hamlet and my

son— Hamlet [aside]: A little more than kin and less than kind

Act 1 Scene 2

But you must know your father lost a father,

that father lost, lost his

Claudius, Act 1 Scene 2

A fault to nature, to reason most absurd,

whose common theme is death of fathers

Claudius, Act 1 Scene 2

Think of us as of a father; for let the world

take note, you are the most immediate to our throne

Claudius, Act 1 Scene 2

So excellent a king, that was to this

Hyperion to a satyr

Act 1 Scene 2

He hath, my lord, wrung from me

my slow leave, by laboursome petition

Polonius, Act 1 Scene 2

Give every man thy ear, but few thy voice. Take

each man’s censure, but reserve thy judgment

Polonius,

Act 1 Scene 3

And there put on him what forgeries you please

— marry, none so rank as to dishonour him

Polonius, Act 2 Scene 1

With windlasses and assays of bias, by

indirections find directions out.

Polonius, Act 2, Scene 1

Feeds on his wonder, keeps himself in clouds,

and wants not buzzers to infect his ear with pestilent speeches of his father’s death

Claudius, Act 4 Scene 5

That drop of blood

that’s calm proclaims me bastard

Laertes, Act 4 Scene 5

I dare

damnation

Laertes, Act 4 Scene 5

To this point I stand, that both worlds I give to

negligence, let come what comes, only I’ll revenged most thoroughly for my father

Laertes, Act 4 Scene 5

His means of death, his obscure funeral […]

cry to be heard, as ‘twere from heaven

Laertes, Act 4 Scene 5

It warms the very sickness in my heart that I

shall live and tell him to his teeth “thus didst thou”

Laertes, Act 4 Scene 7

Laertes, was your father dear to you? Or are

you like the painting of a sorrow, a face without a heart?

Claudius, Act 4 Scene 7

Claudius: What would you undertake to show yourself [..]your father’s son more than in words?

Laertes: To cut his throat i’th’ church

Act 4 Scene 7

I am satisfied in nature […] but in my terms of

honour I will stand aloof and have no reconcilement

Laertes, Act 5 Scene 2

Mine and my father’s death come not upon

thee, nor thine upon me

Laertes, Act 5 Scene 2

But to recover of us, by strong hand and terms

compulsatory, those foresaid lands so by his father lost

Horatio, Act 1 Scene 1

This army of such mass and charge, led by a

delicate and tender prince, whose spirit with divine ambition puffed.

Hamlet, Act 4 Scene 4

To all that fortune, death and danger dare,

even for an eggshell

Hamlet, Act 4 Scene 4

I have some rights of memory in this kingdom,

which now to claim my vantage doth invite me.

Fortinbras, Act 5 Scene 2

I, the son of a dear father murdered, prompted to my

revenge by heaven and by hell, must, like a whore, unpack my heart with words

Hamlet,

Act 2 Scene 2

I […] can say nothing — no, not for a king

upon whose property and most dear life a damned defeat was made.

Hamlet, Act 2 Scene 2

The overlap of names is not seen in any

other version of the play. This shows the concern with succession. — E. Smith

The play could be named after Old Hamlet,

who is so beloved by his son that he can’t succeed — E. Smith

Old Hamlet’s Denmark is “from a different era altogether”

shown by the “dusty chivalric language” Horatio uses in reference (McEvoy)

Some productions show Hamlet being played

by the same actor to show the overlap. — E. Smith

Hamlet agrees to stay in Denmark, keeping

himself forever a child. — E. Smith

When was Hamlet written?

Soon after the death of Shakespeare’s father, as well as after the death of Shakespeare’s son Hamnet

“Protestant son haunted by the

ghost of a Catholic father” — S. Greenblatt

“The Aristotelian tradition holds that the violence of tragedy should ideally take place between people who know

and are close to each other. This holds true in the claustrophobically tight courts and families of Renaissance revenge tragedies.” T. Pollard

“Admonishing and dominating his son, the Ghost is ‘mighty yet’; and young Hamlet,

going through a series of admissions and submissions, acknowledges his kingly mentor.” - Berry

“The call of duty to kill his stepfather cannot be obeyed

because it links itself with the unconscious call of nature to kill his mother’s husband. - E. Jones

“Laertes and Fortinbras are evidently

designed to throw the character of the hero into relief.” - A C Bradley

“There is a strong contrast in character; for both

Fortinbras and Laertes possess in abundance the very quality which the hero seems to lack.” - A C Bradley

“The conventional moral ideals of his time, which he shared with the

Ghost, told him plainly that he ought to avenge his father; but a deeper conscience, in advance of his time, contended with these conventional ideas.” - A C Bradley

The words melt into music

whenever he speaks of him” - A C Bradley

Hamlet’s adoration

of his father

A.C. Bradley

“Laertes cares nothing for the doctrines of obedience to the king

in comparison with his need to avenge his father’s murder.” McEvoy

“His grief for his dead father seems to be more nostalgia than

true loss; he could never have emulated Old Hamlet’s style of kingship” — Worrall

“Hamlet is ‘today’ but the forces that shape his world

are ‘yesterday’; he does not belong. This is the generational tension of all times” — Worrall

“Polonius is such a political animal

that he can no longer distinguish between politicking and paternity” — Worrall

The Ghost’s words “take over his thoughts and infect him with

the violence” of his “discontent and distrustfulness” (Pollard