THEME: REVENGE

Question 1

What is the Revenge tragedy genre?

Answer 1

• A GENRE OF DRAMA.
• Popularised in Elizabethan England.
• Documents the progress of the ‘heroes’ revenge plot.

Question 2

What might have fuelled Shakespeare’s choice of revenge tragedy?

Answer 2

• Political instability.
• Problem of sucession.
• Corruption in politics/ Church of England

Question 3

Main Characteristics of a Revenge Drama

Answer 3

• Tragic ending: Demise of the murderer and the avenger
• Supernatural elements
• Complex, ambigious characters

Question 4

How does Shakespeare subvert the revenge drama genre?

Question 5

Briefly Name 4 ways Revenge is represented in Hamlet

Answer 5

1. Revenge as a moral dilemma.
2. Psychological toll of revenge/ consuming compulsion of revenge
3. Revenge and the cycle of corruption
4. Existential and metaphysical interrogations

Question 6

Explain how revenge is presented in Hamlet

Answer 6

1. Revenge as a moral dilemma: Interogates the corrosive, paradoxical nature of revenge.
2. Psychological effects: Revenge operates both as a personal/ psych imperative. Ultimatley unravelling the avengers mind. The burden of revenge isolates, destroys Hamlet.
3. Revenge/ cycle of corruption: Hamlets revenge serves to mirror the orginal crime.
4. Existential/metaphysical interrogation: Revenge appears to be a meaningless response to the absurdity of existence.

Question 7

Goethe- revenge

Answer 7

A poetic and morally sensitive soul crushed by the barbarous task of murder

Question 8

Ernest Jones- Revenge

Answer 8

Hamlet can’t kill Claudius without killing himself

Question 9

Belsey- Revenge

Answer 9

Revenge exists on a margin between justice and crime

revenge blurs the distinction between a righteous act of justice and an unlawful, harmful act of crim

Question 10

What causes Hamlets paralysis?

Answer 10

• Ideological tension between multiple internalised schools of thought/ value systems

Question 11

How is revenge represented as a paradox in Hamlet?

Answer 11

• Corruotion vs restoration
• Justice vs chaos
• Inaction vs action

Question 12

Christian ethics and revenge

Reveneg is a “kind of wild justice” - Francis Bacon (statesman/philospher)

Answer 12

• Venegence was God’s buissness and not man’s
• “Turn the other cheek” = high moral value in forgiveness

Question 13

Ancient Romans and Revenge

Answer 13

• Son’s duty to take revenge into his own hands.
• Law of retaliation “eye for an eye”
• Older, primal justice sytem (ghost)

Question 14

Elizabethan honor culture, Filial Duty and revenge

Answer 14

• The play examines the societal expectations of revenge
• Within the framework of Elizabethan honor culture and filial duty.