Hamlet AO5

Question 1

Kerrigan

Answer 1

Hamlet only promised to remember.
This can be used to challenge his procrastination.

Question 2

Kastan

Answer 2

There are no clear-cut answers to the human condition.
Ambiguity.
Shakespeare’s tragedy is the genre of uncompensated suffering.

Question 3

Bradley

Answer 3

Characters of high rankings and exceptional qualities suffer the reversal of fortunes leading to death.
The omnipotence of fate and powerlessness of man.

Question 4

Hazlitt

Answer 4

Hamlet embodies the whole range of human experience. The audience can relate to him.
Remarkable for his originality and nuance of feeling.
Other writers paraphrase nature.
Hamlet has the refinement of feeling.
A prince of philosophical speculation.

Question 5

Melvin Bragg

Answer 5

Soliloquies are ‘thinking machines’

Question 6

Mack

Answer 6

Madness is a literary motif that enables characters to speak a truth that is otherwise dangerous or political.
It is dramatically useful.
Madness is both punishment and insight.

Question 7

Nuttall

Answer 7

Enjoying tragedy. ‘Proper pleasure’ - Aristotle
Poetry and drama must please.
Most modern audiences seek the uncomfortable over the easy and sweet.
Enjoying discomfort his uncomfortable to admit.

Question 8

Adelman

Answer 8

Hamlet’s chief task is to purify his mother.
Gertrude’s power lies in her importance to Hamlet.