Death

Question 1

Key ideas of death

Answer 1

Inevitable mortality, physical decay, existential reflection.

Question 2

Key quotes for death

Answer 2

“To be, or not to be, that is the question.” (Hamlet, 3.1)

“Imperious Caesar, dead and turned to clay.” (Hamlet, 5.1)

“Alas, poor Yorick! I knew him, Horatio.” (5.1)

Question 3

Characters linked with death

Answer 3

Hamlet: Obsessed with death from the Ghost’s appearance to Ophelia’s funeral.

Ophelia: Symbolises tragic, youthful death.

Question 4

Context for death

Answer 4

Elizabethan beliefs in the afterlife and purgatory.

Memento mori culture (reminders of death).

Question 5

Interpretation of death

Answer 5

Psychoanalytic readings see Hamlet’s fixation on death as rooted in repressed trauma and the Oedipal complex.