Check out one of my favorite life-size Hamlet character activities. Keep reading to find out how my students (almost literally) brought the Hamlet characters to life.
Before Starting Your Hamlet Character Activities
Hamlet is one of the most beloved of the Shakespearean plays. Well, at least if you ask me, it is. So I always set a very high standard for myself to create the most engaging Hamlet character activities. Emphasis on: characters.
In order to fully understand and appreciate the brilliance of this Shakespearean tragedy, you have to be willing to embrace how important the characters are.
In my British Literature elective course, we always begin the play with characters in mind. That definitely paves the way for Hamlet character activities yet to come. Plus, I find it helps “distract” my students from some of the more obvious plot details. (Like, “No way. I can’t believe Claudius killed his brother.” Make sure you read that last line with ample doses of sarcasm.)
One of my favorite activators — it’s quick and easy — is to have students take a little personality quiz on which Hamlet character they most resemble. This is one of the quicker and sillier of my Hamlet character activities, but I find it makes the characters more personal. It’s cool to see kids talk about themselves in relation to the characters.
But one of my most prized Hamlet character activities has to be the life-size character silhouettes we make.
Step-by-Step Procedural of the Life-Size Characters Project
To begin, I always start with the end in mind. For this project, I knew I wanted students to trace an actual person and creatively represent the Hamlet character using both text and art.
I first put my students into “random” groups. I used a random sorter to start. But I used my teacher oversight to make sure each group had at least one strong artist.
Then I assigned each group a character. For me, those included:
- Prince Hamlet
- Queen Gertrude
- King Claudius
- Polonius
- Laertes
- Ophelia
If I had chosen these Hamlet character activities later in the unit, I also would have included Rosencrantz and Guildenstern as “one” character.
Once they knew their character, groups completed a rough draft or planning page. They submitted this to me for formal review. I graded it as easy points. But it also allowed me to gauge which groups were on the money and which needed a little more direction.
After groups had my official approval, they were given a 7-foot piece of white butcher paper. They had to choose someone to trace (peep Queen Getrude – that’s my outline!). I challenged groups to find a careful balance of the following:
- Textual Evidence: Use varying handwriting styles, fonts, colors, etc. to fill the inside of their silhouettes with character traits, inferences, and textual evidence
- Artistic Flair: Use creativity and artistry to make your person look real. Consider adding facial features, clothing, jewelry, accessories, etc.
The results were absolutely amazing!
Final Results of One of My Favorite Hamlet Character Activities
Here’s a gallery of this year’s final results.
Ophelia
I absolutely love how beautiful she is. The artists really captured how elegant and dainty Shakespeare intends for her to be. But even better than that: look how specific and on-the-mark her traits are. This group really captured Ophelia’s fierce nature that rivals her outward delicateness.
Prince Hamlet
Here’s another silhouette that came out great. My favorite aspect of this silhouette? Look at the ghost – made out of tissues – looming over Hamlet’s shoulder. Ingenious!
Polonius
My favorite aspect of this silhouette is definitely the dual nature of Polonius’ character. This group achieved that in several ways. First, they used different colors to show his opposing characteristics. They also “split” him down the middle to help seal the deal with their intentions. Polonius was such a fun character to explore in my many Hamlet character activities. We loved having hearty debates about Polonius. For example, was he obsessively overprotective of his daughter or just a doting dad?
Queen Gertrude
Not only does this project make me smile because the group traced me. But this group also did such a great job adding accessories to Gertrude. How perfect, right? She was another character we loved to debate in class. I don’t know for sure if my students were enthralled by her incestuous tendencies or really creeped out by them.
Laertes
If you can’t tell yet, my students are so artistic. And so creative! Laertes is another character who looks so real thanks to all his features. My favorite aspect of this creation is his eyes. Why? This group really debated what color to make his eyes. I challenged them to look deeper (ha, pun intended) and consider the archetypes colors can present. Ultimately, they settled on the striking green hue because Laertes may or may not be jealous of Hamlet when it comes to Ophelia’s affection. So clever!
King Claudius
And to round out our characters, we have King Claudius. As you can tell, this group really focused on the text and character traits. There are so many rich characteristics here! But an artistic element I really love with this is the subtle blood dripping. It so cleverly captures Claudius subdued but violent nature.
Getting Others Involved with Your Hamlet Character Activities
Though not exactly what I intended, this project took us a good, solid three classes. To put it into perspective, we have block scheduling; each class is 84 minutes long. But it was totally worth it based on how magnificent these silhouettes turned out.
I had the irreplaceable ladies in our library help me with lamination. The characters were too wide to fit through our laminator, so, like expert surgeons, they cut up and pieced back together our characters.
I made the choice to display our characters in the hallway outside my classroom. If you’re wondering, how do kids get into those lockers? Well, they don’t, per say. Students rarely – if ever – use lockers at our school. So these lovely beige-ish lockers were just sitting there empty. They made the perfect backdrop for our characters.
I can’t tell you how many compliments I’ve gotten in the weeks the characters have been posted. They’re quite the conversation piece! And, at the strong encouragement of the creators, I set up a digital poll so students could vote on their favorite.
Concluding Thoughts for One of my Favorite Hamlet Character Activities
In all, this has to be one of the all-time Hamlet character activities I’ve ever done in my class. Like what you saw here? You can bring this activity – and others! – to life by checking out the links below.
