We are living in an age of pastiche, to paraphrase Frederic Jameson’s argument in ‘Postmodernism, or the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism’. In our Postmodern era, the death of the author has been followed rapidly by the death of the subject. Pastiche is our means of attempting to resurrect the dead and reinvigorate a past that is beyond aesthetic revival. There is, therefore, no new literature being written, only old literature being redone. Pastiche, then, is our means of transposing and translating the past into the present by borrowing, or more accurately, stealing someone else’s style.

This article is about Hamlet and The Lion King. The coordinating conjunction ‘and’ sits rather uncomfortably between these two titles—the former is one of Shakespeare’s greatest, if not the greatest, plays, while the latter is the well-known Disney classic that most of us grew up watching. Perhaps I should even render my ‘and’ obsolete, for I am going to argue that The Lion King is Hamlet.

Their plots are essentially the same. An evil uncle kills his brother in order to usurp the throne, while the central protagonist wanders around not quite knowing how to react to this. The only minor difference is that one is a tragedy and the other is not. (I’m sure you can work out which is which.) We can also draw obvious parallels between the main characters: quite simply, Simba is Hamlet; Scar is Claudius; Sarabi is Gertrude; Mufasa is the ghost of Hamlet’s father; and Timon and Pumbaa are Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.

The point of greatest likeness between the film and the play is the apparition of the dead father—Mufasa and the Ghost respectively. This visitation serves the same function in both, that is, to prompt the lazy sons into action. In The Lion King, the apparition is preceded with the following conversation between Rafiki and Simba—

Simba: You knew my father?
Rafiki: Correction, I know your father.

Here, the wise monkey corrects not only Simba but also the Bard himself, for in Hamlet, the scholar Horatio introduces himself to Hamlet with the assurance that ‘I knew your father’ (I.ii.210). This line gives both of them sufficient authority to announce that they have seen the ghost, and substantiates their identification of the ghost as the protagonist’s father. But Horatio is less confident than Rafiki. A few lines earlier Horatio claimed uncertainly: ‘I think I saw him yesternight’ (I.ii.187). He recognises a similitude between the ghost and the dead King, but he is unwilling to assert that the old Hamlet still exists.

Another instance of the animation directly referencing the play is found in Disney’s use of the collocation: ‘Long live the king’. This statement, found in the third line of Hamlet, where it acts as a kind of code or password for Barnardo to join the watch. In a play in which the king does not live out his full life, this statement is somewhat ironic. Disney, moreover, heightens the irony of this line by having the usurping and murderous Scar say these words as he throws Mufasa down to his death.

The ghosts of the respective fathers return at night in order to compel their sons into action, and both leave at dawn. Notably, neither specifically incites their sons to murder but rather leave the precise course of action up to their sons. However, they do use the same words to achieve this. The dead Hamlet commands Hamlet with the words ‘Remember me’ (I.v.91), while this verb is the final reverberating word Mufasa utters to Simba: ‘Remember’. Mufasa voices his thoughts more clearly as he tells the scarred Simba: ‘Remember who you are. You are my son and the one true king.’ The repeated imperative of ‘remember’ causes Simba and Hamlet to commemorate their fathers, as well as to recollect their duty as heir. By this time, Simba has gotten his procrastinating days out of the way so he is able to plan and take decisive and successful action. Hamlet, on the other hand, procrastinates before he decides and acts on his father’s instructions.

Simba’s procrastination in The Lion King reaps more results than the feeble attempts Hamlet makes. The meerkat-warthog duo Timon and Pumbaa provides the light relief and distraction that Rosencrantz and Guildenstern fail to provide for Hamlet. Drafted in by the King and Queen, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are supposed to keep an eye on Hamlet to prevent him from going mad. When this fails, Hamlet is sent away to England in their custody. In The Lion King, Timon and Pumbaa first encounter Simba alone, desolate and forlorn. But they teach him their motto ‘Hakuna matata’ and accompany Simba on holiday.

Further evidence for the association between the comic pairings of Timon and Pumbaa and Rosencrantz and Guildenstern can be found if we briefly consider Tom Stoppard’s play Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are dead. This is a play set in the wings of a performance of Hamlet, thus achieving the layered effect of a play within a play. Not to be outdone by either Shakespeare or Stoppard, Disney released The Lion King 1½ in 2004. This version retells the original story of The Lion King from the perspective of Timon and Pumbaa, and so we get the same effect of a film taking place just off-screen to the main film. What The Lion King is to Hamlet, The Lion King 1 ½ is to Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead.

You should by now have been persuaded by irrefutable evidence that Hamlet and The Lion King are a little more than kin. Now the burning question is was this intentional on Disney’s part? On wikipediaing The Lion King we find that the filmmakers themselves admit that Hamlet was a source of inspiration. To quote wikipedia: ‘Christopher Vogler, in his book The Writer’s Journey: Mythic Structures for Writers, described Disney’s request that he suggest how to improve the plot of The Lion King by incorporating ideas from Hamlet.’ More than simply throwing Hamlet into the lion’s den by incorporating ideas, The Lion King references Hamlet.

One cannot really say that The Lion King is based on Hamlet. It just is Hamlet. It is a retelling of Hamlet in a different medium, a translation of the play from the stage to the screen. It is a kind of young person’s guide to Hamlet, albeit one in which the central protagonist is able to live happily ever after at the end. Ultimately in both, order is reasserted and the Circle of Life resumes.