Hamlet Navigator: Hamlet Index

This page indexes six aspects of Hamlet's character:

• His Introspection. It's not only in his famous soliloquies that Hamlet speaks about who and what he is.
• His "Madness." Most of the characters in the play have something to say about Hamlet's presumed or pretended madness.
• His Puns and Paradoxes. These are his weapons of choice for use against the fools in his life.
• His Thoughts of Death. Hamlet meditates on the possiblity of his own death, and on the significance of death.
• His Delay. In the first act, Hamlet says he will "sweep" to his revenge, but in the last act he says he has plenty of time. In between, he blames himself repeatedly for his delay and calls himself a coward.
• His Thoughts about Women. "Frailty thy name is woman!" is only one of the things that Hamlet has to say about women.
• His Oedipus Complex: Because there is no direct textual evidence for the idea that Hamlet suffers from a neurotic Oedipus Complex, there is no Hamlet Navigator page for the topic. The following link will take you to the essay that popularized the idea: Ernest Jones' "The Oedipus-Complex as an Explanation of Hamlet's Mystery."