Act I: The Ghost and the order of revenge
Why does Claudius insist that Hamlet not return to Wittenberg, while he lets Laertes leave for France?
What do Laertes and Polonius each seem to want to protect when they order Ophelia to keep away from Hamlet?
Hamlet promises to erase from memory everything that is not his father’s commandment: what is lost when someone decides to live by a single commandment?
Act II: Feigned madness and the theater trap
Hamlet says that Denmark is a prison, but Rosencrantz and Guildenstern do not see it that way: why does he see it that way and his friends do not?
Act III: The Mousetrap and the death of Polonius
What does the king's reaction to the play actually prove, and to whom does it prove it?
Hamlet spares Claudius because he is praying. What weight does this refusal carry in what happens next, in the same act?
Why doesn't the queen see the Ghost, which Hamlet sees so clearly in this chamber?
Act IV: Exile, madness, and the trap
Hamlet says the king is a thing made of nothing: which king is he talking about?
Why does Hamlet envy Fortinbras, who is going to fight for a piece of land of no value?
What do Ophelia's songs and flowers say to Claudius, Gertrude, and Laertes?
What, in the scene, leads Laertes to trust Claudius and accept the plan of the duel?
Act V: Graveyard and duel
What changes between what Hamlet says of himself on the plain, in Act IV, and what he says to Horatio before the duel?
The whole work
What does the text establish about the nature of the Ghost, and what does the play leave open on purpose?
If the final speech is Fortinbras's, what changes in the judgment about Hamlet's heroism?
Would Ophelia change the verdict on Hamlet? Cast off by him on her father's orders, she is rejected by him in Act III, scene 1 and loses her father, killed by the prince, and the play does not stage her death, only narrates it through Gertrude's mouth.
Horatio survives and receives the charge of telling Hamlet's story: what does the text show of him that explains this choice?