Hamlet

• Part A - Hamlet
• AO1 - 25%
• AO2 - 75%
• INTRO - State what part of the play it is, and what popular scene eg. - what themes is shakespeare exploring through this extract
• Prose


  25% of the play
• Blank Verse


  75% of the play
• Register of the scene shifts

  • Prose = informality, lower class characters - gravediggers etc.
  • Blank Verse = Iambic pentameter (five beats), signifies higher social class and education
• The use of verse helps differentiate characters in terms of social class and education - signifies lower rank in social hierarchy and their lack of eloquence compared to characters like hamlet
• Prose is used for humorous exchanges and witty banter → creates a light hearted and earthy quality to the scene - creating a contrast with more serious themes in the play
• Soliloquies

  Take the audience into a character's private world
• Literary techniques used


  • Simple sentences
  • Humour
  • Hyperbole
  • Colloquialisms
  • Adverbs
  • Dynamic verbs
  • Abstract nouns
  • Common nouns
  • Proper nouns
  • Religious lexis
  • Sophisticated
  • Nature imagery
  • Interrogatives
  • Imperatives
  • Exclamatives
  • Declaratives
  • Complex syntax structure
  • Derogatory language
  • Taboo
  • Pragmatics (laughing)
  • Premodifiers
  • Adjectives
  • Alliteration
• Comedic, relaxed atmosphere, tension, drama, bleak, carefree ambience, difference between contemporary (16th 17th century) - modern audience (now), entertainment, sadness, emotions, sympathy, sadness
• Part B - Hamlet
• AO1 - 50%
• AO5 - 50%
• Key Scenes


  • A1S2
  • A1S5
  • A2S2
  • A3S1
  • A3S2
  • A3S3
  • A3S4
  • A4S2
  • A4S6
  • A5S2
• Themes


  • Surveillance/Theatre/Act/spying
  • Madness
  • Deception & Decay
  • Doubt
  • Misogyny
• Hamlet: List of quotes

  • "And how, and who, what means, and where they keep"
  • "I know his father and his friends"
  • "I'll have these players play something like the murder of my father"
  • "Do bench"
  • "The purpose of playing[...] is to hold as 'twere mirror up to nature"
  • "What's Hecuba to him, or he to her, That he should weep for her"
  • "Doublet all unbraced' → 'no hat upon his head'"
  • "Took me by my wrist and held me hard"
  • "The need we have to use you did provoke"
  • "These tedious old fools"
  • "To put an antic disposition on"
  • "wild and whirling"
  • "I know a hawk from a handsaw" - proverbial expression
  • "Young men will do't if they come 'to't' By Cock they are to blame"
  • "O, my offence is rank; it smells to heaven"
  • "black and grieved spots"
  • "Alas, poor Yorick. I knew him, Horatio "'
  • "I'll have grounds more relative than this"
  • "I'll have these players play something like the murder of my father"
  • "You should not have believed me" → 'Love you once" "Loved you not"
  • "The rest is silence"
  • "Frailty, thy name is Woman"
  • "Honeying and making love/Over the nasty sty"
  • "I have heard of your paintings well enough. God Hath gave you one face and made yourselves another[...] it hath me mad"
  • "Get Thee to a nunnery"
  • "Aroused Vengeance"
• Critics: AO5


  • Freud - Hamlet's antic disposition allows him to express his repressed thoughts about his feelings more freely (sexual desire of Gertrude) - Psychoanalytic interpretation
  • T.S. Elliot - the play "most certainly an artistic failure" → Characters lack the motivations and characteristics of a tragic hero
  • A.C. Swinburne - "The single characteristic of Hamlet's inner most nature is by no means irresolution or hesitation, but a strong influx of contending forces"
  • Samuel Johnson "Hamlet is rather an instrument than an agent"
  • Knight - "Hamlet is an element of evil in the state of Denmark"
  • Siddall- 'the Players who in common Elizabethan metaphor could be described as the shadows of real people'
  • Siddall - "there is some relief in escaping from the problems of his 'real life' role and into the work of classical fiction"
• Film Adaptations


  • Lawrence Olivier (1948) - Hamlet is marked by melancholy, 'To be or not to be' soliloquy places emphasis on Hamlet's angst, Incorporates more humour, Hamlet's interactions, Gertude is a maternal and innocent figure, Ophelia is presented as a fragile and innocent victim
  • Franco Zeffirellis (1990) - Useful, emotionally intense & physically active hamlet, Strong emphasis on family dynamics → romantic relationship between Claudius and Gertude, Gertrude's involvement is more deeply implied, During the play within a play → Claudius is implied as paranoid → reveals his growing unease and fear of exposure
  • Kenneth Brannagh (1996) - Polonius → controlling & threatening, Polonius and ophelia → Polonius is pushed into a confessional → Ophelia is forced to share → public vs private - surveillance, Nunnery scene' - first line was delivered to her, then he gets very aggressive
  • Gregogary Doran (2008) - The theme of observation continues as the action is occasionally viewed as images on a CCTV monitor, and Hamlet films the players' performance with a Super-8 camera, David Tennant uses a real skull of Mr Tchaikowsky during the Yorick scene, Hamlet's tie is undone and hung around his neck, crown wonky, Hamlet goes to stab Claudius but runs off, Patrick Stewart plays Claudius and the ghost
  • Rupert Goold (2010) - Bedroom setting → bed as focal point, Physical contact lots between mother and hamlet- Maternal, sexual, violent
  • Robert Icke (2017) - "It has extraordinary conversational ease", "Cladius and Gerturde are intoxicated with each other", Modern, technological touches - ghosts are seen through surveillance cameras, Claudius gets angry about 'the mousetrap' → abruptly walks away