The Folger Guide to Teaching Hamlet

Created by experts from the world’s largest and most well-respected Shakespeare archive, The Folger Guide to Teaching Hamlet provides an innovative approach to teaching and understanding one of Shakespeare’s most well-known plays. Hamlet follows the form of a revenge tragedy, in which the hero, Hamlet, seeks vengeance against the man he learns is his father’s murderer—his uncle Claudius, now the king of Denmark. Much of its fascination, however, lies in its mysteries. Among them: Should Hamlet believe a ghost? What roles do Ophelia and her family play in Hamlet’s attempts to know the truth? Was his mother, Gertrude, unfaithful to her husband or complicit in his murder, or both? How do the visiting actors cause the truth to begin to reveal itself? The Folger Guides to Teaching Shakespeare series is created by the experts at the Folger Shakespeare Library, the nation’s largest archive of Shakespeare material and a leading center for both the latest scholarship and education on all