Hamlet Flashcards
hamlet
features of tragedies
features of tragic heroes
Features of Tragedies:
A main character (the tragic hero) is cursed by fate.
The tragic hero possesses a fatal flaw, which exposes them to suffering and different forms of conflict.
The tragic hero redeems themselves just before they die.
Good characters are destroyed along with the bad at the resolution of the play.
The audience experiences release of their emotions (catharsis) through empathy with the characters.
One or more humorous characters provide occasional comic relief, but also add another perspective on the play’s themes.
Hubris – excessive pride and disrespect for the natural order of things
Hamartia – a fatal flaw that causes their downfall
Peripeteia – a reversal of fortune
Anagnorisis – a moment when they make an important discovery
Nemesis – a punishment they cannot avoid, usually occurring as a result of their hubris
Catharsis
Elizabethan theatre
hamlet
First Performed in the 1600s
A reason for the way in which his plays are written in, is because they didn’t have a lot of scenery to work with. Minimal set design. Audience need to rely on their imagination.
The essay was invented also in 1599 by Montagne
Written like poems because fiction was written in poetry, non-fiction in prose.
verse/prose/irregular verse
hamlet
Verse: (iambic pentameter)
High status
Sane
Noble
Good character
Prose:
Low status
Deceitful
scheming
Irregular Verse
Going mad
influences on ‘hamlet’
the succession crisis
the four humours - a certain balance of chemicals. If you were insane it was because of the imbalance of these 4 humours (emotionally stable, unstable, extraverted, introverted). Shakespeare argues that chatacteres’ emotional state is a product of their experiences - you can see the stept to their deterioration.
Divine right of Kings - God decides who leads the country
seneca: The play explores the theme of revenge, soliloquies moral ambiguity, and the psychological turmoil of the protagonist, ghosts, freewill, fate, human condition which are all hallmarks of Senecan tragedy.
thomas kyd: “The Spanish Tragedy.” play within a play, ghost
hamlet themes and motifs
Madness (Shakespeare shows us that madness is a result of trauma - Hamlet and Ophelia)
Revenge
Mortality (Immediately after Ophelia is buried they have a sword fight - they are displaced by other emotions, revenge doesn’t need any time, ‘To be or not to be’ - debate about suicide, Suicide doesn’t guarantee oblivion, The country is diseased, dying from within)
Parental Interference
Self VS Society/Duty
Thought VS Action
Existentialism
Machiavellianism/moral corruption
Appearance VS Reality
Mind-Body Duality
Art and culture (Allegory - Can a play get people to think about their own life? - The play withing the play )
Religion (Claudius prays, nobles are excluded from the law)
quotes
8 hamlet
1 laertes
laertes: “His will is not his own”
Hamlet: “I, with wings as swift as meditation or the thoughts of love, may sweep to my revenge’’
“The play’s the thing wherein I’ll catch the conscience of the King.”
“Why, this is hire and salary, not revenge!”
“In the rank sweat of an enseamed bed, Stewed in corruption, honeying and making love Over the nasty sty—”
“For use almost can change the stamp of nature.”
“Nothing but to show how a king may go a progress though the guts of a beggar”
“Rightly to be great is not to stir without argument, but greatly to find quarrel in a staw when honour’s at the stake.”
“By the image of my cause I see the portraiture of his.”
1 gertrude and 2 ophelia
Gertrude: “Oh Hamlet speak to me no more. These words are like daggers in my ears.”
Ophelia: “Before you tumbled me you promised me to wed.”
Ophelia: “I do not know, my lord, what I think”
2 laertes
Laertes: “To cut his throat i’th’ church!” (Act IV)
Laertes: “Conscience and grace to the profoundest pit!”
1 polonius
1 about him
Polonius: “To thine own self be true”
“Am i not i’ th’ right, old Jepath?
2 claudius
“That we would do, we should do when we would; for this ‘would’ changes, and hath abatements and delays as many as there are tongues, are hands, are accidents;”
“O, this poison is the poison of deep grief; it springs all from her father’s death.”
horatio
not passion’s slave
“Which might deprive your sovereignty of reason,
And draw you into madness? Think of it.”
