hamlet ao5

Question 1

A.D Nuttal

Answer 1

The pleasure of Tragedy
- “For moral Dr Johnson it was self evident that poetry and drama must please” - older generation
- “To despise the pleasurable and to value the disturbing” - new generation view

Contemporary audiences are fascinated by tragedy
Responses to the disturbing elements of Hamlet (between new and old gen)

Question 2

John Kerrigan (Medieval vs Renaissance)

Answer 2

“Lost and epic age in which political issues were decided by fierce, single combat” - nostalgia for the medieval age, characterised by King Hamlet

‘’an age unlike that in which kings take power by poison” - corruption and criticism of the renaissance age, renaissance is characterised by Claudius

Question 3

John Kerrigan (Emphasis on memory)

Answer 3

“Such memories divert and slow the play, giving it an eddying and onward exclusiveness”
- Grieving in Hamlet is portrayed as deathly painful but still honourable, it haunts Hamlet such as grieving does

Question 4

John Kerrigan (Hamlet and Ophelia’s relationship impacted by the Hamlet’s grieving)

Answer 4

“Attempting to replace a dead love-object with a living one”
“Ophelia’s apparent rejection is one factor in Hamlet’s distress (…) she throws his love back onto the father who has never emotionally betrayed him”

• Hamlet becomes trapped and caught in his grief

Question 5

Janet Adelman

Answer 5

“it rewrites the story of Cain and Abel as the story of Adam and Eve”
- Adelman focuses on the temptation and loss of innocence association with Eve and Gertrude

“the main psychological task (…) not to avenge his father’s death but to remake his mother (…) in the image of the Virgin Mary”

Question 6

Greenblatt