Similarities Between Hamlet And The Lion King

The phrases “to be or not to be” and “hakuna matata” are very well know phrases that are a part of two very different stories but both stories also have their similarities with each other. There are the comparable characters in both the play and the movie. The similarities in the events of the story but some of the events are different chronologically. In both the play and the movie there are the diversities between the endings and who the intended audience it was made for.

The animal characters in The Lion King resembles some of the characters in Shakespeare’s play Hamlet. In the Disney movie, The Lion King, Simba resembles Hamlet throughout the story. There are other characters that resemble other people in the Hamlet play, like Scar is

King when he kills his brother and takes the thrown. In the play Hamlet’s father is killed by his uncle, Claudius, who becomes king when he marries his late brothers’ wife. In the movie Simba’s father, Mufasa, was killed by his brother Scar, but in the movie Scar doesn’t marry Sarabi. This indicates that Sarabi is the Queen just as Mufasa is Hamlets father, Zazu is Polonius, Nala is Ophelia, and Timon and Pumbaa are Rosencratz and Guildestern. All these characters have many behaviors and traits in common that make them resemble one another throughout the story.
They way Scar becomes king is when he convinces Simba that it was his fault for the death of his father.

With Simba gone Scar is the next lion to rule the thrown. In the play after Hamlets father is killed by hands of his brother, and Claudius marries his wife and that’s how he became the new king. When the Ghost of the fathers appear they are seen in different parts of the movies, one appears in the beginning telling his son who killed him and to get revenge. The other one shows in the middle of the movie to encourage his son. There are events that happen in both stories but at different times just like when the new King tries to kill the son of the late king. Towards the end of the play the King tries to get rid of Hamlet by sending him to England to supposedly help him, but it was to actually kill him. In the beginning of the movie Scar convinces Simba to run away and never come back and then sends hyenas to attack and kill him so that he could become

king.
The ending of both the movie and the play are very different.

In the end of Hamlet everybody is in a room watching Laertes and Hamlet fence fight, but in reality Laertes is trying to kill Hamlet with a poisoned tipped sword. Claudius also has this cup with poison in it for Hamlet to drink. In the end everyone is either stabbed with the poisoned sword or drank from the poisoned cup. The ending is horrific and gruesome because the only people that would really read it were not children, whereas The Lion King was made by Disney and their audience is a group of young children. That is probably why The Lion King is has everyone live and all the animals don’t starve from the lack of vegetation. Everything isn’t gloomy anymore, instead it is colorful and full of life after Simba reclaims his

thrown.
The endings are drastically different because only one son ends up happy and alive. The events that occur, occur at various parts of the story but they are the same events. The characters resemble each other from the different stories. In each story there are similarities that stand out and difference that can easily be noticed. 
Works Cited
Hamlet. Directed by Franco Zeffirelli. Canal+, Carolco Pictures and Icon Entertainment International, 1990.
Lion King. Directed by Roger Allers and Rob Minkoff. Walt Disney Pictures, 1994.
Shakespeare, William. Hamlet. Literature, An Introduction to Fiction, Poetry, and Drama, 9th ed. Edited by X.J. Kennedy and Dana Gioia, Pearson. 2005. 1604-1721.