Essay
A LEVEL ENGLISH HAMLET ESSAY A* (ACT 1 SCENE 5 LANGUAGE)
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This is an essay on language within Act 1 Scene 5 of Hamlet that was awarded an A*.
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Hamlet Essay A1S5Shakespeare’s judiciously curated selection of language in Act One scene 5 of the play exuberates
Hamlet’s constantly fluctuating moods and attitudes towards his encounter with the ghost either out
of confusion or pure melodrama – a common trope of the archetypally indecisive nature of Hamlet.
Hamlet in this scene is presented as bold and declarative using melodramatic hyperboles and vicious
slander insinuating his raw emotions and pain, despite the irony in the lack of action he is willing to
commit to.
After the ghost of the former King Hamlet takes leave, Hamlet dispenses a litany of apostrophes ‘O
all you host of heaven! O earth! … O fie!’ evoking a sense of grief and bereavement, even breaking
the strict iambic pentameter with the anacrusis of ‘what else?’ furthermore accentuating Hamlet’s
loss of verbal control from his sadness. The fragmented utterances of ‘heaven … earth … hell’
juxtapose one another, conveying Hamlet’s own confusion - from his appeal to the good powers of
‘heaven’ to witness the shocking events, with the ‘earth’ as the scene of the event, and ‘hell’ as its
source – highlighting the demonic nature of the crime at hand, and the perpetrator of said crime.
The lasting effects of the ghost echo melancholically throughout Hamlet’s soliloquy through the
epiphora ‘Remember thee? … Remember thee?’ which could perhaps furthermore amplify the
bewildered nature of Prince Hamlet as he begins to unfold the ghost’s requests, or perhaps even
insinuate a sense of hopelessness. The former declarative ‘Remember me.’ is now instead replaced
with the interrogative 'Remember thee?' which is employed to allow Hamlet to begin to internally
question himself – the question here being whether he will keep to his vow to remember his father.
This could perhaps implicitly foreshadow how Hamlet will eventually forget his true intentions as he
sets foot on the path of vengeance where the ghost’s echoing words will eventually wilt into
nothingness. However, Hamlet eventually comes to his senses and commences the path of
vengeance by first denouncing his scholarly knowledge with the metaphor ‘from the table of my
memory I’ll wipe away all trivial fond records, all saws of books, all forms, all pressures past’. Firstly,
the metaphor of ‘table’ denotes an impermanent medium insinuating Hamlet’s failure to commit to
his promises which foreshadows his indecisive nature throughout the play. Despite this, he attempts
to convince himself of his determined nature with the anaphoric enumeration ‘all saws of books, all
forms, all pressures past’ serving to emphasise his decision. However, it is his bookish personality
through the metaphor ‘with the book and volume of my brain’ that defines his personality as a man
who is not willing to put word to action.
Shakespeare also utilises the microcosm of Hamlet’s own internal emotions to reflect the
macrocosmic state of Denmark as a singular entity. The duality of the pun ‘in this distracted globe’
can be interpreted as either Hamlet’s troubled mind (the ‘globe’ having clear connotations of a
head) or the state of Denmark as an isolated sphere where the play is entirely focused. The troubled
world of Denmark is intrinsically linked to the troubled mind of Hamlet as the true heir to the throne
of Denmark. Denmark sits in its ignorantly blind comfort despite looming on the precipice of
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