English – Course Summary – Band 5 – Part 2
Theme/
Idea
Hamlet (Example, technique, explain)
Sympathetic
portrayal of
Hamlet
-first person/ figurative language: ‘But I have within
which passeth shows/ These but the trappings and suits
of woe’ (1,2)
-has even more grief inside him than he shows on the
surface
-his mannerisms are only a hint of what he is feeling
Grief and
suffering
-imagery: ‘O that this too too solid flesh should melt’
(1,2)
-he has no grasp on his own emotions
-wants to commit suicide but it is forbidden by God
-his life is so full of suffering that he no longer wants
any part of it
-suicide is a desirable alternative to life
-antithesis and imagery: ‘To be, or not to be, that is the
question-/ Whether ‘tis nobler in the mind to suffer/
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, / Or to
take arms against a sea of troubles,/ And by opposing
end them’ (3,2)
-antithesis: the comparison of two alternatives
powerfully expresses his inner conflict of emotions
-compares the suffering of life to a peaceful death:
shows his inward struggle
-encapsulates the hero’s fatal flaw of not being able to
make up his mind
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-imagery: adds depth and emotion to the soliloquy
-depicts a life full of troubles, uses very meaningful
words, full of uncertainty
-reveals depression and difficulties of life’
-stage directions and SFX: Hamlet is walking alone, no
sound besides the echo of his own footsteps
-depicts Hamlet as alone in the world, nothing to live
for
-film version directed by Franco Zeffirelli
-facial expression: Character of Hamlet as portrayed by
Mel Gibson
-he has no control over his emotions or his actions, has
lost track of reality
-so consumed with grief and hate that he no longer see
the implications of his actions
-shows audience that not all of his madness is feigned
Destruction
of Hamlets
actions
Deceit and
treachery
-rhetorical question: ‘Nay I know not, is it the King?’
(3,4)
-reinforces the unknowing and uncertainty of the play,
Hamlet thinks he has killed a murderer but has actually
murdered an innocent man
-descriptive language: ‘I bought an unction of a
mountebank, so mortal that but dip a knife in it’ (4, 7)
-shows the anger and thirst for blood of Laertes
towards Hamlet
-plans with Claudius to kill Hamlet with a poisoned
sword
-in what is supposed to be a fair fight to settle their
differences, Laertes has instead taken upon a deceitful
path in order to avenge the lives that he has lost
-deceitful language: ‘At such a time I’ll loose my
daughter to him. Be you and I hid behind an arras then’
(2, 2)
-using his daughter as a pawn in his deceitful act to gain
information
-the language shows how eager he is to get information
to benefit his own social status in front of the King,
without any regard to the deceitful nature of his actions
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Contempt
for society
Social
corruption
Appearance
vs Reality
-metaphor: ‘Tis an unweeded garden, that grows to
seed; things rank and gross in nature’ (1,2)
-referring to the court of Elsinore
-hamlet condemns social behaviour, is emotionally
isolated from society
-rhetorical question/ flippant dialogue: ‘A bloody deed?
Almost as bad, good mother, / As kill a King and marry
with his brother’ (3,4)
-doesn’t consider it an act of treachery
-believes that his mother’s act of disloyalty was worse
than this murder
-believes death to be a simple fate anyway
-Claudius has disrupted the chain of being, as those
below him are supposed to act as he acts
-rhetorical question: ‘Seems madam? Nay it is, I know
not seems’ (1,2)
-hamlet is truly grieving, his actions are not merely an
act, he is grief stricken, others are telling him to move
on but his heart is full of suffering
-formal language: ‘Antic disposition’ (1,5)
-telling his friends that his behaviour in the future may
seem strange
-dealing with a world where he is constantly being
watched, and he knows this
-has to appear to be mad so that he can determine
whether or not Claudius is guilty
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