Players / Play Within The Play

Question 1

Finish and analyse the quote from (2,2) by R about the child actors:
“Little eyases that …

Answer 1

… cry out on the top of question and are most tyrannically clapped for’t are now the fashion”
> continue the debate around the use of child actors in their high voices
- “tyrannically” = Shakespeares view, conversation abt actors in the play acts as his mouthpiece / rassoneur where he can share his own views about theatre through his theatre > METATHEATRE

Question 2

Explain context of debates around child actors in theatre, supported by the quote from hamlet in 2,2: “their writer do them wrong to make them …

Answer 2

… exclaim against their own succession” > they are in turn working against themselves as one day they will be adult actors jobless replaced by child actors > beginning a circle of events

Question 3

Explain the use of the mouse trap play

Answer 3

• Purrus kills king Priam in revenge for the murder for his fathers murder the ho Priam killed in war. Priam wife, Hecuba stands by helplessly > Machiavellian view of how Hamlet should enact revenge
• clasical illusion that mirrors the central theme of revenge within the play (hamlet, Fortinbras and Laertes all seeking revenge for their fathers murders)

Question 4

(2,2) hamlet: “I’ll have grounds …

Answer 4

… more relative than this - the plays the thing wherein I’ll catch the conscious of the king.”
- using the play to test the words of the ghost > questioning nature of a renaissance man > ironic the play shows Machiavellian revenge but hamlet takes his own use of the story

Question 5

Worrall suggests the play “applies the emotional…

Answer 5

… brakes and control is reestablished” > I would argue the opposite as it increases tension as hamlet finally finds “grounds” to enact revenge