Hamlet Essay Plans

Question 1

Duty / Honour

Answer 1

• Hamlet’s filial duty
• Ophelia’s filial duty
• Duty to State / Monarch

Question 2

Hamlet’s filial duty

Answer 2

“I am too much in the sun”

‘A villain kills my father, and for that / I, his sole son, do this same villain send / To heaven’

‘Do you not come your tardy son to chide, / That, laps’d in time and passion’

Question 3

Ophelia’s filial duty

Answer 3

‘I do not know, my lord, what I should think’

‘I shall obey, my lord’

‘I have a daughter – have while she is mine’ (Polonius)

Ophelia gives her father Hamlet’s love letter to her

Question 4

Hamlet obsessed with G’s lack of duty to KH

Answer 4

‘O most pernicious woman! O villain, villain, smiling damned villain!’

‘You cannot call it love; for at your age / The heyday in the blood is tame’

‘But to live in the rank sweat of an enseamed bed, / Stew’d in corruption’

Question 5

Duty to State and Monarch

Answer 5

‘We both obey, and here give up ourselves in the full bent’ (Rosencrantz and Guildenstern)

‘The King rises’

‘To keep those many bodies safe / That live and feed upon your Majesty’

Question 6

Hamlet’s religious duty

Answer 6

‘Or that the Everlasting had not fixed/ His canon ‘gainst self-slaughter!’

‘Oh God! God!’

Hamlet is able to confess his sins and get forgiveness from Laertes at end of play

Question 7

Hamlet’s regal duty

Answer 7

‘So excellent a king that was to this / Hyperion to a satyr’

“I’ll call thee Hamlet, King, father, royal Dane.”

‘He that hath kill’d my king and … popp’d in between th’election and my hopes’

Question 8

Family

Answer 8

• Hamlet’s filial duty
• Ophelia’s filial duty
• Hamlet obsessed with G’s lack of duty to her late husband

Question 9

Violence

Answer 9

• Hamlet’s failure to act violently
• Hamlet’s obsession with death
• Violence signifying Hamlet’s mental deterioration

Question 10

Hamlet’s failure to act violently

Answer 10

‘But break my heart, — for I must hold my tongue!’

‘I will speak daggers to her, but use none’

‘To take him in the purging of his soul, / When he is fit and season’d for his passage? No.’

Question 11

Hamlet’s obsession with death

Answer 11

‘Or that the Everlasting has not fix’d / His canon ‘gainst self-slaughter’

‘A king may go a progress/ Through the guts of a beggar’

‘Go to their graves like beds’

‘Alas, poor Yorick!’

Question 12

Violence signifying Hamlet’s mental deterioration

Answer 12

‘[Thrusts his rapier through the arras]’ (Murder of P)

‘He should those bearers put to sudden death’ (Murder of R and G

‘[Grappling with (Hamlet)]’ (Laertes and Hamlet fight in O’s grave)

Question 13

Women

Answer 13

• Ophelia’s filial duty
• Gertrude villainised for her sexuality by her own son
• Ophelia’s madness

Question 14

Ophelia’s madness, and how she is villainized for suicide

Answer 14

‘Before you tumbled me, / You promis’d me to wed.’

‘Mermaid-like awhile they bore her up, / Which time she chanted snatches of old lauds’

‘If this had not been a / gentlewoman, she should have been buried out o’ / Christian burial’

Question 15

Morality

Answer 15

• Hamlet’s filial duty
• Gertrude’s lack of loyalty to KH
• Hamlet’s religious duty

Question 16

Madness

Answer 16

• Violence signifying Hamlet’s mental deterioration
• Ophelia’s madness
• H’s relationship with his own madness

Question 17

Hamlet’s relationship with his own madness

Answer 17

‘I essentially am not in madness, / But mad in craft’

‘Who does it then? His madness.’

‘But I do prophesy th’election lights on Fortinbras. He has my dying voice’

Question 18

Personal vs Political

Answer 18

• Hamlet’s filial duty to father
• Hamlet’s regal duties
• Hamlet’s castigation of his mother

Question 19

Revenge

Answer 19

• Hamlet’s inability to act in revenge
• Laertes is a man of action when Hamlet is not
• Filial or regal revenge?

Question 20

Laertes is a man of action when Hamlet is not

Answer 20

‘Let come what comes, only I’ll be reveng’d’

About H: ‘To cut his throat I’th’ church’

‘[Leaps into the grave]’

Question 21

Filial or regal revenge?

Answer 21

‘A villain kills my father’

‘Do you not come your tardy son to chide, / That, laps’d in time and passion’

‘He that hath kill’d my king and … popp’d in between th’election’

Question 22

Power

Answer 22

• Power of KH despite death due to H filial duty
• Ophelia submits to power of her father
• Power of King and duty to monarch

Question 23

Hamlet is disappointing

Answer 23

• Hamlet’s failure to act
• Modern audience see Hamlet as misogynist
• Hamlet’s pressure to fulfil filial duty

Question 24

Modern audience may see Hamlet as misogynist

Answer 24

‘Frailty, thy name is woman!’

‘O most pernicious woman! O villain, villain, smiling damned villain!’

‘Get thee to a nunnery. Why, wouldst thou be a breeder / of sinners?