Critical terminology

Question 1

Blank verse

Answer 1

verse written in lines of unrhymed iambic pentameter.

Question 2

caesurae

Answer 2

pauses within a line. You often find these within Hamlet’s soliloquies and they help to create a disjointed rhythm that reflects his disrupted thought process and disturbed state of mind.

Question 3

cadence

Answer 3

a sense of closure. often shakespeare will bring a scene crisply to an end with a rhyming couplet

Question 4

denouement

Answer 4

outcome or solution; the unravelling of a plot. In hamlet, this happens when H duels Laertes, kills L and Claudius and F enters to take the castle.

Question 5

Horatio’s dramatic function

Answer 5

to provide a touchstone of what the audience should think. H establishes the reality of the ghost and provides reliable description of its appearance and behaviour.

Question 6

dramaturgic

Answer 6

another word for “dramatic” when talking about plays

Question 7

endstopped

Answer 7

line ends with some form of punctuation, meant to be a pause

Question 8

farce

Answer 8

comic action pushed to ludicrous extremes. Consider the play scene and gravedigger scene examples of this

Question 9

figurative

Answer 9

the imaginative, as opposed to the literal use of language. Claudius is literally a murderer, figuratively an illness blighting Denmark

Question 10

interlude

Answer 10

an episode which momentarily lowers the dramatic tension, lightens the mood and serves to make the resumption of the tragedy seem all the more intense. for example act 5.2 with osric

Question 11

interrupted cadence

Answer 11

when a scene appears to be coming to an end but is unexpectedly extended e.g. 3.4

Question 12

Machiavellian

Answer 12

in Jacobean drama, the term simply meant “cunning villain”. Claudius fits this description

Question 13

melodrama

Answer 13

a play in which people behave in an intensely emotional way which we feel to be excessive, sensational and unconvincing. characters are often stereotypes and sharply polarised, they are either good/bad and do not have a rich inner life.

consider how Laertes and Ophelia are presented in this way

Question 14

mimetic rhythm

Answer 14

when the movement of the verse imitates the movement being described.
e.g. 3.3 “heavy-headed revel” suggests swaggering, clumsy dancing

Question 15

morality plays

Answer 15

in the 14th/15th century, many plays were composed and performed which presented the struggle between good and evil in christian terms

Question 16

psychodrama

Answer 16

a battle for the soul between good and evil forces.

3.4 can be seen as a psychodrama in which H fights to save G from damnation by forcing her to admit her sins and repent.

Question 17

rhetoric

Answer 17

patterned, persuasive speech which often uses anaphora and antithesis.

consider claudius’s speech

Question 18

romantic hero

Answer 18

hamlet is like many romantic heroes - an outsider, alienated from a hostile, wicked and uncomprehending world

Question 19

senecan

Answer 19

influenced by the tragedies of the Roman poet seneca.

he was known for his bloody and rhetorical revenge tragedies.

Question 20

tautology

Answer 20

saying the same thing twice, unnecessarily and tediously.
consider the pompous polonius and how he tries to create the impression that what he is saying is important by simply repeating it

Question 21

peripeteia

Answer 21

moment in which the protagonist’s fortunes change irrecoverably for the worse

Question 22

anagnorsis

Answer 22

moment of tragic recognition for the protagonist
“let be”