Hamlet: Essay Plan Ideas Flashcards
ESPIONAGE:
-The notion of espionage resulting in destruction - Polonius positions himself behind the arras to spy on the encounter between Gertrude and Hamlet and meets his own fate (mirrors the tight surveillance at court under Elizabeth I - seen in the David Tenant production with CCTV cameras to mirror this atmosphere).
-The ambiguity over whether Hamlet knows that he is being watched in his staged encounter with Ophelia (in which the King and Claudius are spying) - ‘I never gave you aught’ - the notion of his antic disposition (performative madness or not) - his dismissal and explicit rejection of Ophelia catalyses her downfall (tragedy mounts in Hamlet’s declaration of love for her - ‘Forty thousand brothers could not have matched my sum’).
-Shakespeare’s characters of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern - childhood friends employed to spy on Hamlet - corruption in their betrayal of H - mere pawns in Claudius’s scheming.
-Play about WATCHING and OBSERVING - ‘the plays the thing wherein I’ll catch the conscience of the King’ - sight is PROOF - Hamlet uses the Mousetrap so he can observe Claudius’ reaction to decipher his guilt - sight serves as conformation.
DEATH:
-Hamlet’s preoccupation with death and his agonising over Canon Law - seen in his soliloquies where he contemplates death and reveals his nihilism to the audience.
-Hamlet’s obsession with the immortality of his father’s death and honouring his father through murdering Claudius.
-The Graveyard scene and the skull of Yorick - the idea that death is a great leveller - Hamlet then witnesses Ophelia’s funeral and becomes distressed - death a destructive force for Shakespeare’s protagonist that prompts intense contemplation.
MADNESS:
-Hamlet’s madness and mental descent - exemplified by his soliloquies and orchestrated by the corruption of Claudius. The difference between attitudes to madness for an Elizabethan audience and today’s audience. His religious conflict perhaps symbolises the situation England faced.
-The question as to whether Hamlet’s madness is authentic or performative - instinctively kills Polonius but seems composed in his interaction with his mother.
-The exploration of female madness through Ophelia - parallel to Hamlet as her father also died which catalysed the onset of her madness and the impact of Ophelia’s death on Hamlet’s madness.
CORRUPTION:
