A comedy of manners, a great deal of it in prose, about “noting,” i.e., taking note of. “Nothing” would have been pronounced “noting” in Shakespeare’s time. Rumors and misinformation spreading like wildfire and wreaking havoc with social life: Much Ado takes on new meaning in the age of social media. Two romances with two women: the lively, independent Beatrice and the patriarchally controlled Hero.

The mystery of Hamlet’s seeming “conversion” in Act 5. Most of the cast wiped out in the final scene. Can the complexities of Hamlet be drawn together into a unified pattern? Three types of tragedy: (1) of social order; (2) of isolated, alienated consciousness; (3) of love and gender. Hamlet as an attempt to encompass all three.

The mixed mood of the famous graveyard scene, mixing seriousness and humor in violation of the neo-Classical unities. Hamlet and the gravedigger speaking of death as leveler of social distinctions. The skull of Yorick the jester, whom Hamlet knew as a child. The funeral of Ophelia. Hamlet and Laertes struggle in her grave. Hamlet’s new sense that “There’s a divinity shapes our ends.”

Act 4, Scenes 5 and 7, form a continuous series of dramatic interruptions of the Court. Ophelia’s mad scene, which is also her suicide, in fact consists of three entrances, although the last is by messenger only, announcing her death by drowning. The psychoanalytic complexities of Ophelia’s songs and speeches. Laertes also bursts in, ranting melodramatically about revenge in a way that out-Herods Herod. The court is interrupted yet one more time as Horatio delivers Hamlet’s letter to Claudius announcing his return after having been captured by pirates (!). Meanwhile, Laertes and Claudius plot Hamlet’s death.

Gertrude feels guilt over her marriage to Claudius—but was she ignorant of the murder? The key word “nothing” begins to resonate through the play. Hamlet has hidden Polonius’s body. When confronted about it, his seemingly mad speeches revolve around the idea of metamorphosis—in the words of Ophelia, we know not what we may be. Ophelia’s mad scene.

Hamlet tells the Players not to overact, to suit the words to the action. Audience conversation before the play: Hamlet’s passive-aggressive sexual remarks to Ophelia. The Mousetrap play. Claudius leaves. His guilty soliloquy. Hamlet chooses not to kill him while he is praying. He goes instead to his mother’s bedroom to confront her.

The First Player, at Hamlet’s request, recites a passage from Virgil’s Aeneid, the death of King Priam at the hands of the son of Achilles. Why is this in an already-long play? The most famous soliloquy in all of drama, “To be or not to be.” Why not suicide? Hamlet’s furious tirade when Ophelia tries to break up with him, following her father’s orders. Is this misogyny, justified because Ophelia is indeed spying on him for his enemy, or both?

Everyone is acting. Polonius instructs his servant to act a part and spy on Laertes. Hamlet pretends to be mad to Ophelia. Polonius bursts into the Court, where Claudius has averted an attack by Fortinbras, and reads a love poem from Hamlet to Ophelia—a very bad poem. Rosenkrantz and Guildenstern, courtiers, attempt to draw Hamlet out. The arrival of the Players.

Horatio and two other friends tell Hamlet they have seen the ghost of his father. Polonius gives longwinded advice to his son Laertes, and a humiliating admonishment to his daughter Ophelia for believing Hamlet’s professions of love. Hamlet talks to the Ghost, who claims to be from Purgatory, and speaks of “murder most foul.”

The opening scene: darkness, paranoia, uncertain identity. Threats from without and within: invasion and the Ghost. Scene 2: The Court. Hamlet’s Biting One-Liners. Hamlet’s first soliloquy: rage and sexual disgust.