Hamlet: The tragic hero of Shakespeare's play of the same name. Hamlet, prince of Denmark, is recalled from the University of Wittenburg to attend his father's funeral at Elisnore, the royal palace in Denmark. Within a month his mother, Gertrude, marries his father's brother, Claudius. Hamlet learns from his father's ghost that Claudius has murdered his father, and Hamlet is sworn to avenge his death. Why Hamlet hesitates so long in taking revenge and whether or not he truly goes mad or feigns madness after his encounter with the ghost are questions that have occupied critics for almost 400 years. In the popular imagination, Hamlet is the "meloncholy Dane" given to philosophical brooding over "To be or not to be". He is a man of too much thought and too little action to take control of events. This, some say, is his tragic flaw. Use: Mario Cuomo, former governer of New York, was called "Hamlet on the Hudson" by the media because he could not make up his mind about whether to run for president of the United States in 1992. "Something's rotten in the state of Denmark" Line from Act 1, Scene 4 of Shakespeare's HAMLET. Horatio and Marcellus are on the platform of Elsinore Castle. At the stroke of midnight the ghost of Hamlet's father, as expected, appears once again. It beckons Hamlet to a removed spot. Horatio and Marcellus try unsucessfully to prevent Hamlet from following. "My fate cries out," says Hamlet, running after the ghost. Marcellus concludes that "something is rotten in the state of Denmark" as he and Horatio prepare to follow Hamlet. What is rotten, as Hamlet is soon to hear from the ghost, is that Claudius, Hamlet's uncle, has murdered Hamlet's father, married Hamlet's mother and now rules as the king of Denmark. The quotation is often used in a bemused or joking way to express a conjecture that something, who knows what, is amiss. ~Facts on File Dictionary of Cultural and Historical Allusions |
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