Hamlet AO5

Question 1

Champion

Answer 1

Soliloquies serve two fundamental purposes: It is an expository device which anticipates the future events of the play. It is a philosophic device which sketches the inner struggles and shares it with the audience. It clarifies the developing personality of the protagonist.

Question 2

Dreher

Answer 2

Polonius is the most reprehensible father.

Question 3

Edwards

Answer 3

We can imagine Hamlet’s story without Ophelia, but Ophelia literally has no story without Hamlet.

Question 4

Hamill

Answer 4

Gertrude is not so much overborne but awakened to see her soul’s peril mirrored in images that are familiar both visually and iconographically.

Question 5

Hazlitt

Answer 5

Polonius talks very sensibly but acts very foolishly.

Question 6

Hytner

Answer 6

Theatre is a loaded and complex metaphor in the play.
Theatre becomes a weapon to discover the truth.
The play creates a court where dishonesty is at the heart of the regime.
At the centre of the play is a man desperately concerned with the nature of truth and desperately concerned with his own ability to be truthful to himself.

Question 7

Johnson

Answer 7

Hamlet is, through the whole play, rather an instrument than an agent.

Question 8

Knight

Answer 8

Hamlet is an element of evil in the state of Denmark.
Claudius can hardly be blamed for his later actions. They are forced on him.

Question 9

Mack

Answer 9

Polonius is always either behind an arras or prying into one.

Question 10

McEvoy

Answer 10

Claudius can be seen to be an effective, modern ruler.
He genuinely loves Gertrude.

Question 11

Robinson

Answer 11

The death of Polonius is a symbol of Shakespeare’s attack on patriarchy.

Question 12

Shaw

Answer 12

If Hamlet had not delayed his revenge there would have been no play.
Hamlet’s madness is feigned. Hamlet feigns madness episodically.

Question 13

Showalter

Answer 13

Ophelia is a young girl passionately and visibly driven to picturesque madness.
Shakespeare gives us very little information from which to imagine a past for Ophelia. She appears in only 5 of 20 scenes, and her tragedy is subordinated to that of Hamlet.

Question 14

Smith

Answer 14

Hamlet is stuck physically and emotionally.
Hamlet is a play preoccupied with the past.
Hamlet’s own instincts are towards undoing rather than doing. He cannot make progress.
The past and its obligations and conventions are everywhere.

Question 15

Stephenson

Answer 15

Hamlet’s action is due to the utter failure and collapse of his plan to compromise the king by the mouse-trap.

Question 16

Tubb

Answer 16

Gertrude’s sexual relationship with Claudius defines her character for both Hamlet’s and taints the audience’s perception of her as an intemperately lustful and self-indulgent individual.
Gertrude’s close relationships to the central male characters mean that she is a key figure within the narrative.
Gertrude wilfully disobeys Claudius by drinking the poisoned wine, and, in doing so, identifies Claudius as her killer, which gives Hamlet the clarity of purpose, and the means and motives for revenge.

Question 17

Wagner

Answer 17

Ophelia serves the play essentially as a useful device used by Hamlet, Polonius, and Shakespeare himself.
Shakespeare uses her sparingly and almost forgetfully.

Question 18

Wilson

Answer 18

Polonius chooses his career over his daughter’s well-being.

Question 19

Woods

Answer 19

Hamlet policies the boundaries between performance and reality.
This relationship between ‘show’ and ‘authenticity’ , ‘performance’ and ‘reality’ preoccupies Hamlet throughout the play.