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Hamlet | Does Hamlet really hate his mother?
Plainly, Hamlet is disturbed by Gertrude’s welcoming Claudius into her "incestuous sheets,’’ and he is even more upset when he learns that his mother was having an affair with his uncle before his father, ur-Hamlet, is murdered. Hamlet berates his mother in Act III, scene iv, but no worse than he maligns Polonius and inexplicably denigrates Ophelia. Although the Ghost explicitly instructs Hamlet not to seek revenge upon Gertrude, but to ‘‘leave her to heaven’’ instead, we do not gain the sense that Hamlet wants to kill his mother. His sole focus is on exacting vengeance...
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- Hamlet: Introduction
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- Hamlet: William Shakespeare Biography
- Hamlet: Reading Shakespeare
- Hamlet: List of Characters
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Hamlet: Summary and Analysis
- Act I, Scene 1 Summary and Analysis
- Act I, Scene 2 Summary and Analysis
- Act I, Scene 3 Summary and Analysis
- Act I, Scene 4 Summary and Analysis
- Act I, Scene 5 Summary and Analysis
- Act II, Scene 1 Summary and Analysis
- Act II, Scene 2 Summary and Analysis
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- Act IV, Scene 1 Summary and Analysis
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- Act IV, Scene 3 Summary and Analysis
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- Act V, Scene 1 Summary and Analysis
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Hamlet: Essays
- Hamlet's Delay
- Exploring Hamlet's Hesitation
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- The Ghost: Is He Really Hamlet's Father?
- The Character of Ophelia: Why Does She Go Mad?
- To Thine Own Self Be True: An Analysis
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- Minor Characters and the Number Three
- To See or Not to See: Fortinbras in Two Film Productions of Hamlet
- Hamlet and Macbeth: A Comparison
- The Theme of Pretense in Shakespeare's Hamlet
- Analysis of Act Five of Shakespeare's Hamlet
- Character Analysis of Horatio
- Comment on Hamlet's "To Be or Not to Be" Soliloquy
- Staging for Shakespeare's Hamlet: Act II, Scene ii, Lines 85-221
- The Nature of Hamlet's Character
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- Analysis of Three Critical Works on Hamlet
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