Hamlet AO5

Question 1

Adelman (sex, morality, women)

Answer 1

“Hamlet is more motivated by his mother than his father”

Question 2

O’Connor (morality, fate, duty)

Answer 2

“[King Hamlet] is the catalyst that sets the play in motion”

Question 3

O’Connor (religion, fate, morality)

Answer 3

“[King Hamlet] serves as a symbol for the religious ambivalence present in England”

Question 4

O’Connor (morality, religion)

Answer 4

“To the protestant, all ghosts are apparitions of the Devil”

Question 5

Brucher (morality, duty, justice, power)

Answer 5

“Revengers create their own justice, often in ways that imitate or even mock divine justice and that compromise their own moral impulses”

Question 6

Doran (women, sex, morality)

Answer 6

“[presentation of women] Often in the background or blurred out - indicative of how they are useless/inferior”

Question 7

Dusinberre (women, sex)

Answer 7

“placing chastity and reputation for chastity above even the virtue of truthfulness”

Question 8

Dusinberre (morality, women, sex)

Answer 8

“no chance to develop an individual conscience of her own”

Question 9

Edwards (women, sex)

Answer 9

“We can imagine Hamlet’s story without Ophelia, but Ophelia literally has no story without Hamlet.”

Question 10

Glasgow

Answer 10

“Horatio is a harbinger of truth”

Question 11

Hall (power, duty, action)

Answer 11

“Laertes and Fortinbras are representatives of action”

Question 12

Heilburn (women, sex, power)

Answer 12

“Ophelia is surrounded by three power males: Hamlet, Laertes and Polonius. Without these men to make decisions for her she goes mad”

Question 13

Ryan (duty, morality)

Answer 13

“spends almost entirety of the play spectacularly failing to keep his oath”

Question 14

Lacan (women, sex)

Answer 14

“[Ophelia] obviously essential. she is linked forever, for centuries, to the figure of Hamlet”

Question 15

Leclerc (women, sex)

Answer 15

“Woman is valuable in so far as she permits man to fulfil his being as man”

Question 16

Magnus (power, justice, action, duty)

Answer 16

“Laertes is a crucial and explicit dramatic foil to Hamlet”

Question 17

Mack (madness, morality, fate)

Answer 17

“Cassandra’s madness… she is doomed to know… she is doomed never to be believed”

Question 18

Rubenfeld (power, morality, action)

Answer 18

“Claudius is the embodiment of Hamlet’s own secret wishes; he is a mirror of Hamlet himself”

Question 19

Showalter

Answer 19

“A potent and obsessive figure in our cultural mythology” [Ophelia]

Question 20

Von Goethe (morality, duty, justice, power, fate)

Answer 20

“Impossibilities have been required of Hamlet; not in themselves impossibilities, but such for him.”

Question 21

Von Goethe (religion, duty, justice, fate)

Answer 21

“All duties seem holy to Hamlet”

Question 22

Wagner (madness, women, sex)

Answer 22

“perhaps the frailty of women has embittered him to callousness”

Question 23

Knight (morality, fate, religion)

Answer 23

“he [Hamlet] is in fact the poison in the vines of the community.”

Question 24

Knight (morality, duty)

Answer 24

“Claudius is a good and gentle king, enmeshed by the chain of causality linking him to his crime.”

Question 25

Campbell (madness, morality)

Answer 25

“Hamlet is the malcontent, he’s emotionally unstable, not insane”

Question 26

Kirsch (women, sex, morality, duty, justice)

Answer 26

“Oedipal echoes cannot be disentangled from Hamlet’s grief”

Question 27

Bradley (religion, morality, duty, action)

Answer 27

“Hamlet is unable to carry out the sacred duty, imposed by divine authority, of punishing an evil man by death.”

Question 28

Alexander (morality, duty, action)

Answer 28

“The play does not offer any conclusions about what is the right response to the questions it poses about human aggression not because it is confused but because Hamlet is aware that more than one single set of answers exists.”

Question 29

Belsey (justice, morality)

Answer 29

“Revenge is not justice. It is rather an act of injustice on behalf of justice”

Question 30

Hazlitt

Answer 30

“It is we who are Hamlet,” most of all in the way in which his “powers have been eaten up by thought.”

Question 31

L.C Knights (morality, justice, action)

Answer 31

“sterile concentration on death and evil.” [Hamlet]

Question 32

Bernhardt (women, sex)

Answer 32

“It is not male parts but the male brain I prefer…Ophelia brought nothing to me”