13‐Jan‐2015
Module B
 This
module requires students to engage with and
develop an informed personal understanding of a
prescribed text. Through critical analysis and
evaluation of language, content and construction,
students will develop an appreciation of the textual
integrity of their prescribed text. They refine their
own understanding and interpretations of their
prescribed text and critically consider these in the
light of the perspectives of others. Students explore
how context influences their own and others’
responses to the text and how the text has been
received and valued. (NSW Board of Studies, 20092014 HSC Prescriptions, page 19).
Module B:
Shakespeare’s
‘Hamlet’
TSFX
David Strange
Sydney University, 2015
Questions about Module B
What constitutes a ‘personal understanding’ or
‘personal response’ in syllabus terms? Which of these
seem correct?


Q) Do I need a related text? A) No

Q) Is it permissible to cite critics? A) Yes, of course, but only has long
as you build these ideas upon your own theory or ‘personal
understanding’ and claim that the critics indeed support your
reading.



Q) Is it compulsory to cite critics? A) No, but you would still need to
refer to ‘others’ perspectives – your fellow students’, or teacher’s
perhaps. Better to cite somebody other than merely your teacher.

Q) Length of the essay? A) Approximately 1000 words.


Q) Can I use the personal pronoun ‘I’ in an essay which requires a
‘personal understanding’? A) Yes, but it wont get you any marks.


Q) How to I develop a ‘personal understanding’ of Hamlet?
Everything has been said before. What constitutes a ‘personal
response’ to the play? A) Stay tuned to the lecture.
Student sample essays


The text resonates with you for the reason that it reflects your own life
circumstances; your essay reflects a wisdom borne of making
connections between the concepts of the play and your own life
perspective.
You quote the play so much in your essay that the text has obviously
left its mark upon you.
You frequently use the personal pronoun ‘I’ in your essay,
demonstrating a personal connection to the text.
You argue original theories about the play borne out of deep
thinking.
You argue theories about the play standing on the shoulders of critics
(your arguments are partly original, but mostly derivative).
You argue the relevance of the play to the problems of the modernage.
You argue with a passionate voice in your prose style, implicitly
demonstrating your connection to the text.
Experiment with your radical ideas via
poetic prose and refine these ideas with
textual citations
“The skull stares back at Hamlet, worm-ridden and without sight. A
Palaeolithic bone held in the hands of a warrior prince to threaten
the enemy, but the enemy here is the his own fear and intellect
which prevents him from regicide. The intellect as a bone spear,
recast and ancient, the primal image of an enemy holding the
skulls of their fallen , but also has a totem to ward off evil spirits, and
yet paradoxically also an image of a post-religious age (an image
of pragmatism – a man scientifically facing his own death with cool
reason). But the bone spear is the clown’s – his father’s clown, the
rapier of wit, the foil of humour and the repository of courtly
memory and caustic word. And it is soon to be Ophelia’s skull, its
skin and tendons ravished by worms after her soul has already been
ravished by the body politic which her father occupied – the hollow
intellect and end of all man.”
© David Strange
1
13‐Jan‐2015
Fall back on subject matter and themes when in doubt
and build your essay concepts upon them
Obvious subject matter and themes: revenge, madness,
appearance versus reality, the supernatural, suicide, spying,
betrayal, imprisonment, sin and salvation, fate, corruption (the focus
of the 2013 question).
Less obvious subject matter and themes: orphans abandoned by
their parents, heliocentrism, the contradictions of Christian theology,
theatre and acting, impregnation with madness, Julius Caesar
references, Machiavellian politics, the role of the joker, the
‘marriage’ of Laertes and Hamlet, Ophelia as a clown and prophet,
sexuality leading to madness, the mousetrap as a motif, the dumb
show as prologue, incest, the sexual and the theatric, the paradox of
the ghost’s advice, King Hamlet’s words as poison in the body of
Denmark, the off-staging events of KH Ghost’s appearance and
Ophelia’s madness, Opelia surveyed even in death, celestial
metaphors as a foreshadowing of the play’s Act 5 blocking.
Language as
Backstory
Analysis

Act 1, Scene 1,
Lines 80-107
 We
learn via
Horatio’s backstory
that King Hamlet
has duelled the
King of Norway
and been
victorious.
Horatio establishes that King
Hamlet was a monarch in the
medieval tradition. Moreover his
risk-taking and heraldic duel with
Norway now has its
consequences; Denmark may
soon be invaded and Hamlet’s
ghost appears perhaps to warn of
the imminent invasion. The duel is
also an element of
foreshadowing: later Prince
Hamlet will also be “pricked on by
a most emulate pride” to duel
Laertes and risk all, ironically at
the very moment that Denmark is
invaded by young Fortinbras ,
who takes his vengeance on King
Hamlet.
Language Devices: Irony
The uselessness of
education



Marcellus: Thou art a
scholar, speak to it Horatio.
Hamlet: There are more
things in heaven and earth
than are dreamt of in your
philosophy, Horatio.
Horatio: In what particular
thought to work I know
not,/ But in the gross and
scope of my opinion / This
bodes some strange
eruption to our state.
Analysis

Education, erudition and
scepticism are entirely useless in
the new temporal realm of ghosts
and spirits. Horatio is mocked for his
lack of insight, belief and axiomatic
(true by definition) interpretation of
the ‘strange’ phenomena of the
ghost’s appearance. As soon as
the ghost appears, Horatio’s
intellectual scepticism lapses into a
confused mixture of Christian
theology and Roman superstition.
He later confesses to believing in
Marcellus’ superstitious belief about
‘the bird of dawning’ keeping
spirits, fairies, witches and planets
all at bay.
Delving deeper into the language
features and textual integrity of
Hamlet
Through critical analysis and evaluation of
language, content and construction, students
will develop an appreciation of the textual
integrity of their prescribed text.
Language as
Leit Motif
Words as poison


Barnado: ‘Sit down
awhile, / And let us
once again assail
your ears’
Ghost: ‘So the
whole ear of
Denmark / Is by a
forged process of
my death / Rankly
abused’
Analysis
The play directly references ears and
eyes throughout Act 1 on seventeen (17)
separate occasions. ‘Poison’ is poured
through the ear on several occasions in
Act 1. Horatio rejects the story of the
ghost poured through his ears until his
eyes behold the thing itself; Claudius
pours the poison of lies into the ear of
Denmark in the aftermath of his
wedding; Horatio informs Hamlet through
the ear what he has disturbingly seen
through the eye, creating deep angst
within the mourning prince; both Laertes
and Polonius urge Ophelia not to believe
Hamlet’s promises or ‘list his songs’; the
Ghost pours the poison of his death and
after-life wanderings into Hamlet’s ear
setting in train the deaths of Polonius,
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, Ophelia,
Laertes, Gertrude, Claudius and Hamlet
himself.
Language Devices:
Biblical References



A superstitious era caught
between the classical age of
the Renaissance (and its
reverence for antiquity) and
a medieval Christianity little
transformed by the
Reformation. A comment on
the play itself (a cross
between a Senecan drama
and Christian morality play).
The ghost has appeared and
is only believed by Horatio
upon its third visit, as later the
cock is heard when it
appears to Hamlet (echoing
the warning of Christ to
Peter) underlining the play’s
themes of deception, doubt,
faith and resurrection.
Resurrection
Consider the amount of resurrections in
the play: King Hamlet’s ghost will
reappear in martial stalk; Hamlet will
return from his attempted murder ala
Julius Caesar to appear at Ophelia’s
graveside ; Laertes dramatically returns
from France with an army to avenge his
father’s death; young Fortinbras
overcomes the apparent rebuke of
Norway to seize Elsinore. The
representation of resurrection in the
play is a subversion of the message of
hope and salvation in the scriptures:
resurrections are ominous and portend
death and destruction – Horatio: ‘In the
most high and palmy state of Rome, /
A little ere the mightiest Julius fell, / The
graves stood tenantless and the
sheeted dead /Did squeak and gibber
in the Roman streets.’
2
13‐Jan‐2015
Language Devices:
Synecdoche
Analysis
The range of body parts
mentioned in Act 1- in
order of their appearance
















Heart
Eyes
Ears
Hands
Stomach
Head
Throat
Mouth
Eye lids
Corpse
Flesh
Face
Body
Tongue
Mind’s eye
Cap-a-pe
(‘head to
toe’)



















Toe
Foot
Beard
Blood
Temple
Soul
Shoulder
Marrow
Mole
Bones
Jaws
Brain
Artery
Nerve
Hair
Sinews
Arms
Fingers
The use of synecdoche
emphasises the physical
nature of the play – the
unseemly death of King
Hamlet – and introduces
the difficult idea that life
itself is the strange
conjunction of the
corporeal and the
spiritual. We remember
that King Hamlet begins
the play caught
between these two
worlds: physically
tortured and spiritually
lost.
Language Devices:
Parallelism and Hendiadys
Analysis

Parallelism: ‘A little
more than kin, and
less than kind.’
 Hendiadys: ‘Without
the sensible and true
avouch of my eyes…
In the gross and
scope of my
opinion.’


Parallelism: Hamlet’s language attempts to
perceive and rectify the radical imbalance of
his world, and reconcile the dialectical
opposites of the time. Claudius likewise
employs parallelism in Act 1 to reconcile the
apparent contradiction of the death of his
brother with his hasty marriage of his brother’s
wife.
Hendiadys: A technique in which the same
idea is said twice and separated by a
conjunction – usually ‘and’. Some say the
hendiadys (over 250 in all) amplify the theme
of ‘doubling’ in the play (Rosencrantz and
Guildenstern, Cornelius and Voltemand, King
Hamlet and Claudius, Hamlet and Laertes,
etc). Others that it highlights the theme of
marriage and incest. Another possible reading
is that it highlights the absurdity of language
itself to articulate the nature of reality itself –
language as a repetitive and self-parodying
attempt to capture the ineffable.
Language Devices:
Extended Metaphor
 Francisco:
‘Not a
mouse stirring.’

Analysis

 Hamlet:
‘A little
more than kin, and
less than kind.’
Hamlet’s sardonic retorts
position his language as a
weapon – a rapier sword with
which he duels the intellect of
those who attempt to deceive
him throughout the play
(Claudius, Rosencrantz and
Guildenstern, Gertrude, and
Ophelia among them). He will
later meet his match in the
gravedigger, the first character
to match his intellect and wit. At
this point (Act 5, Scene 2) he will
abandon language as a
weapon and accept his fate in
the duel with Laertes.
Language Devices: Soliloquy
Analysis
 Hamlet
breaks into
his first soliloquy as
a type of prayer to
himself, vowing
that he will avenge
his father’s death.

Shakespeare breaks dramatic
convention to have his
protagonist verse soliloquy not
to expand upon the backstory
or plot (narrative) but rather as
a feature of characterisation.
Hamlet’s two soliloquies in Act
1 position him as a deeply
emotional and intellectual
man, but not as a man of
action.
Language Devices: Prosody
Interpretation
Act 1, Scene, Line 10
Language Devices:
Stichomythia
Hamlet is the mouse
being lured into a trap –
a trap that will deeply
confound his mind, just
as the later ‘mousetrap’
he creates for Claudius
will equally confound
and stun the king before
his royal court.
Trochaic substitutions
and spondee
 ‘Doomed
for a
certain term to
walk the earth.’
 ‘My fate cries out!’
Analysis

The iambic
pentameter is often
broken as a means
to demonstrate the
unrest of the times
and the shock of
Hamlet as he learns
his father’s fate.
3
13‐Jan‐2015
Language Devices:
Rhyming Couplets
Act 1, Scene 5,
Lines 189-190

 ‘The
time is out of
joint: O cursed
spite / That I was
ever born to set it
right.’
Language
Devices:
Celestial
Metaphors



1 ‘The morn in russet mantle clad /
Walks o’er the dew of yon high
eastward hill.’
2 ‘As stars with trains of fire, and
dews of blood, / Disasters in the sun;
and the moist star, / Upon whose
influence Neptune’s empire stands,
/ Was sick almost to doomsday with
eclipse.’
3 ‘When yond same star that’s
westward from the pole / Had
made his course t’illume that part of
heaven / Where now it burns,
Marcellus and myself, / The bell
then beating one – Enter GHOST’
Language Devices: Pun
Analysis
Hamlet expresses his dismay at
the conclusion of Act 1 that he is
born to murder the king and
thereby be the agent of divine
justice. The rhyming couplet is an
ironic language device to
capture his realisation; his fate is
at once an agent of
determination (as neatly
compressed as the couplet itself)
but also a dark epiphany (whose
poetry belies his despair) at the
duty of regicide which lies before
him and ultimately denies him his
destiny as king of Denmark.
Analysis



Echoing the later death of Hamlet (the
mourning son) in ‘russet mantle clad’
(drawing blood in his duel with Laertes)
and aligning his death to the resurrection
of Christ, who will return via Jerusalem’s
eastern gate.
2 A foreshadowing of Act 5 in Laertes (the
wandering star returning from France and
creating a riot in his wake), Hamlet
(whose madness and death is a disaster
in the King’s son) and Gertrude (who
moist with poison, crosses or ‘eclipses’
Hamlet and Claudius on the stage of her
son’s duel before drinking the wine and
falling to her death in sickness).
3 An indirect description of King Hamlet
as a journeying star ‘westward’ from the
Polacks (Denmark itself) who now ‘burns’
in purgatory on his way to t’illume
heaven. He appears immediately after,
‘The bell then beating one’ describes the
deathly ringing in his ears in his poisoning
through the ear.
1
Delving deeper into the
critical perspective of others
They refine their own understanding and
interpretations of their prescribed text and
critically consider these in the light of the
perspectives of others.
Bear in mind that this ‘other’ could be a critical
theorist (e.g. AC Bradley, Professor Harold
Bloom), a critical theory (e.g. feminism,
existentialism, nihilism) or else the ideas of your
teacher and fellow students.
Act 1, Scene 4, lines
1-2
 Hamlet:
The air
bites shrewdly, it is
very cold.
 Horatio: It is a
nipping and an
eager air.
Translation
 ‘The
heir bites
shrewdly; it is a
nipping and eager
heir who wishes to
know the Ghost’s
story.’
Language Devices:
Irony and
Foreshadowing

Barnado: Who’s
there?
 Francisco: Nay
answer me. Stand
and unfold yourself.
 Barnado: Long live
the king!

Analysis
The opening scene is literally a
changing of the guard and
dramatically an ironic reminder of the
murder of King Hamlet in his orchard,
effecting a regal changing of the
guard. The scene gives credence to
the Ghost’s story: he was snuck upon in
the garden as he slumbered. Barnado
unusually challenges the sentinel on
duty: “Who’s there?” – the world is
turned upside down. It is a time of
anxiety and paranoia in Denmark. But
moreover the question, “Who’s there?”
underscores an early theme about the
deception of appearances. Is the
Ghost real? And who snuck upon him
in the garden?
For Lena Ashwell, Hamlet reveals that: Man is no longer the miserable worm of the old Catholicism or slave of the ancient Feudalism, but freed by the Renaissance, trying the newly‐
fledged wings, both wings of Reason, the intuitive and the intellectual, the deductive and the inductive, perceiving at last both the subjective and the objective, the worlds within as well as the worlds without.
In Cefaulu (2000), p. 402. Prepared by Dr Michelle Hamadache, Macquarie University, 2014
4
13‐Jan‐2015
“But there are indications that early
audiences saw Hamlet as a ghost story.
In print, perhaps coincidentally, the
Ghost seems at first to have elicited
more respect than the hero. All three
early published texts of Hamlet
correspond closely in their depiction of
the Ghost, demonstrating a
consistency of presentation not
reproduced elsewhere in the play….
What we know of the play’s early
reception, too, indicates a prominence
for the Ghost that is eclipsed only when
the prince’s inner life begins to take
precedence.”
Hamlet has been called ‘the first
modern man’(Rossiter), by which it is
suggested that to be modern is to
value the interior world of the
individual; to question reality, the world,
and oneself. To doubt.
Francis Barker argues that ‘Hamlet is still
a “transitional”, contradictory text, for
while the play gestures towards a
private place of subjectivity, “at the
centre of Hamlet, in the interior of his
mystery, there is in short nothing.”
Paul A Cefalu, “Damnéd custom …Habits Devil”:
Shakespeare’s Hamlet, Anti-Dualism, and the
Modern Philosophy of Mind’, ELH, 67.2 (2000),
pp.399-431, p.402.
Prepared by Dr Michelle Hamadache, Macquarie
University, 2014
Catherine Belsey, “Shakespeare’s Sad Tale for Winter:
Hamlet and the Tradition of Fireside Ghost Stories”,
Shakespeare Quarterly, 61.1 (2010), pp.1-27, p. 2.
Prepared by Dr Michelle Hamadache, Macquarie
University, 2014
Context – whose context?
Shakespeare’s context and that of your
own, and your selected critics. How does
the social, political, religious and historical
context of Shakespeare’s times and our
own influence our interpretation of the
play?
Key points to begin research
about the context
 The
Renaissance / Senecan tragedy
Christianity / The Reformation
 Medieval heraldry
 Galileo/Copernicus/Kepler – Heliocentrism
and the Scientific Revolution
 Tyndale’s Bible 1526
 The legend of Amleth
 Medieval
5