Objective
Hamlet proves to be a difficult read. Year after year, my students complain, and grapple, and stutter, and quit, and do everything in between in order to understand the plot. However, there is urgency behind teaching such a compelling text. In his article, “Teaching Hamlet”, Robert Ornstein says:
…Hamlet is the Shakespearean play which comes closest to mirroring the random
casual form of daily experience which turns on unexpected meetings,
conversations, and such accidents as the arrival of the players. And if we do
nothing else in class but convey as accurately as we can the immediate sense of life
which Hamlet offers, we will perform a valuable service because so much of recent
criticism falsifies it. 1 (Ornstein 1964)
My objective is to do as Ornstein implies and get students to understand that Hamlet and the other characters have experiences and those experiences add to or take away from their personas or character. After completing a thorough reading of the text, students spend time looking over the major characters of the play and logging the words, actions, beliefs, and thoughts that influence their sense of who the character really is. I would want all the students in the class to keep a log or a journal only on the components that make up or influence the behaviors of Prince Hamlet. This way, while we are reading, they will keep a record of his behaviors and use them later for discussions. Individually, the students would then be able to use that same method to analyze the character of Gertrude, King Claudius, Polonius, Laertes, and Ophelia. With proper questioning directed toward those characters, students will be able to answer questions such as:
- What makes a character?
- How are we shaped by our environment or experiences?
- How much influence do our parents have on who we become?
- What are character traits?
- What specific traits do Prince Hamlet and you, the student, share?
- What can we trust about Gertrude/Claudius/Polonius?
- Is Ophelia necessary to the play? Why or Why not?
- Which character is truest to him- or herself?
- How true are you to yourself?
There are many more questions that will be listed in the Strategies section of this Unit, but these are the understandings and the connections that I would like students to make while reading and to discuss and perform a task on, during the unit.
Another objective would obviously be for my students to strengthen their reading levels and to interpretation skills while reading Hamlet. Because of the rigorous unfamiliar language of Shakespeare, my students find him difficult to understand. In my classroom, if they could master the verbal complexities well enough to understand the plot and the themes located within, their ability interpret and analyze any text would be stronger. They would develop essential reading skills such as making inferences, improving reading comprehension, and having the ability to reason about textual information (probably the most difficult task for my students). All in all, I want my students to not only have an understanding of the text, but to learn from it as well.
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