All Hamlet character based essay plans for A-Level English Literature
(blue = quotes/AO1, green = context/AO3, red = critics/AO4)
Explore how Shakespeare presents Gertrude in Hamlet. You must relate your discussion to
relevant contextual factors and ideas from your critical reading.
Intro: main idea + main context
Para 1: a victim of male oppression due to the prominence of the patriarchy in the play
- Levernes states that the power of men in Hamlet is ‘defined by an ability to order women and children around’
- In the closet scene Hamlet is able to assert power over Gertrude (his own mother) where he asks her to ‘see the
inmost part of you’ and insults her ‘almost as bad, good mother, as kill a king and marry with his brother’
- Asks ‘have you eyes?’ and insults her sexuality ‘you cannot call it love, for at your age the heyday in the blood is
tame’
- In many productions this scene is very violent and Hamlet is able to physically grab Gertude, this asserts physical
and linguistic power over her
- At the time of writing women were seen as dependent on men and were uneducated, this is reflected in the
portrayal of Gertrude and Ophelia as overly emotional and dependent on male counterparts, the misogynistic
beliefs of Shakespeare’s time are prevalent throughout the play
- Heilburn ‘they fail to see Gertude for the strong minded, intelligent, succinct and sensible women she is’
Para 2: a character with powerful sexual power allowing her to control the play
- Jones ‘Hamlet is driven subconsciously by an incestuous desire for his mother which complicates his task of
avenging the murder of his father’
- Jones ‘he has a long repressed desire to take his father’s place in his mother’s affection’
- ‘Your husband’s brother’s wife’ begins very close closet scene with an incestuous description of family relations
- Uses the phrase ‘takes off the rose from the fair forehead of an innocent love and sets a blister there’ where the
rose represents idealised love and the blister refers to the practice or branding prostitutes showing a concern with
Gertrude’s sexuality arise for Hamlet
- Uses sexual language ‘heaven-kissing’
- ‘You cannot call it love, for at your age the heyday in the blood is tame’ oddly open discussion about her desires
for sex
- ‘In the rank sweat of an enseamed bed stewed in corruption, honeying and making love’ animalistic image of sex
in marriage
- This references Freud’s Oedipus Complex which poses the idea that a young boy holds an unconscious sexual
desire towards his mother which comes to manifest in different ways, for Hamlet one of these is his disgust at his
mothers sex life which Freud would see as a sexual envy
Para 3: a vessel for communicating truth in the play
- This can be interpreted in the way that Gertude understands what is going on when Claudius says ‘do not drink’
and her line ‘I will, my lord. I pray you pardon me’ asks him to pardon her for understanding and sacrificing herself
- She uses her dying breath to protect Hamlet ‘No, no, the drink, the drink, O my dear Hamlet, the drink, the drink -
I am poisoned’
- Montgomery sees that ‘Gertrude’s words repeatedly deliver important information and commentary to other
characters and to the audience’
- In David Tennant's film version directed by Gregory Doran, Gertrude is played as if she knows the plan
Explore how Shakespeare presents Hamlet in Hamlet. You must relate your discussion to
relevant contextual factors and ideas from your critical reading.
Intro: main idea + main context
Para 1: Hamlet as a tragic hero
- Hamlet adheres to Aristotle’s rules for tragedy in which the tragic hero must have a fatal flaw that in the end leads
to their demise, for Hamlet this is his preoccupation with thinking too much and considering his actions that
means he is unable to be a hero and carry out his revenge
, - Burton ‘good scholars are never good soldiers’ ‘studies weakens the scholar’s bodies’ and ‘abates their strength
and courage’
- Applies to Hamlet as he sees himself as ‘dull and muddy-mettled rascal’ ‘unpregnant of [his] cause’
- ‘Am I a coward?’ ‘consciousness does make cowards’ showing the act of thinking renders revenge impossible
- Foakes believes Hamlet is ‘a soul unfit for the performance of great action’
- The ailment of thought sees ‘the currents turn awry and lose the name of action’
- Draws upon the idea of the Renaissance prince, a man of great thought and consideration who is able to question
and relet upon all subjects and find meaning in the world, Hamlet is built up as the idealised Renaissance prince
in the manner that he is able to question his own values and action
- When he finds Claudius praying he ‘shethes[s] his sword’ and prepares to complete revenge but cannot as he
decided to wait for when he can ‘trip him that his heels may kick at Heaven and that is soul may be damned and
black as hell’
- Ultimately because he cannot kill Claudius, Claudius’ plot kills him showing how his hamartia does lead to his
death at the end of the play
Para 2: Hamlet as a victim and creator of deceit
- Righter ‘caught in a maze of deceiving appearances, he takes refuge in an illusion of his own devising. He
becomes an actor’
- Hamlet decides to ‘put an antic disposition’ which is made to seem highly theatrical through his ideas to have his
‘arms encumbered’, ‘this headshake’ and ‘pronouncing of some doubtful phrases’
- This play is a tragedy which is defined as a genre of uncompensated suffering and in many of Shakespeare’s
plays madness is used a form of divine punishment, in this way the hero of the play being mad allows the play to
centre around suffering
- Bradely makes the point about tragedy that ‘suffering and calamity are exceptional, some striking kind’ which may
feed into the striking acting of Hamlet’s madness
- His madness is made to seem highly theatrical as Ophelia accounts his ‘doublet all unbraced’, ‘no hat upon his
head’, ‘stockings fouled’, ‘knees knocking’ and his acting with ‘his other hand thus o’er his brow’
- It is seen by his friends Rosencrantz and Guildenstrean as a ‘crafty madness’ or a clever act which he is putting
on
- Polonius too sees Hamlet’s madness as being put on as he speaks TO AUDIENCE ‘though this be madness yet
there is method in’t’
- In Saxo Grammaticus Amleth adopts the guise of a fool or madman as a protective cover, in this original version
madness is clearly an act and is never assumed to be real perhaps hinting that Hamlet’s madness is not intended
to be real
- ‘I am essentially not in madness, but mad in craft’ Hamlet speaks to his mother
- Mack sees this phase as ‘dramatically useful, arresting, combination of the tragic hero and buffon’
- Charney agrees seeing ‘all that is scenic could be seen as creating a language of theatrical gesture’
- The true virtue of theatre proves Righter’s view right that ‘Hamlet is a tragedy dominated by the idea of the play’
as it is of utmost importance to both Shakespeare and Hamlet
- This can also be seen as the cause for Ophelia’s madness in part
- He also creates ‘The Mousetrap’ as a deceitful plan in order to ‘unkennel’ his uncles guilt
- Righter ‘a moment in which a preoccupation with truth and falsehood, deception and reality, expressed in
theatrical terms, radiates’
Para 3: Hamlet loses his power where other character gain it, how he is reflected through foil characters
Laertes
- ‘I’ll be your foil, Laertes’
- Laertes sometimes listed with the weapons in the stage directions before the duel ‘Cushions, foils, daggers and
Laertes’
- Prosser ‘Laertes is like a hurricane. He rushes into the palace in an uncontrolled rage, roaring for blood’
- Hall states Laertes is ‘the most expressive contrast to the non-activity of the Danish prince’
- Hazlitt sees Hamlet’s powers as ‘eaten up by thought’
- Laertes enters the court demanding ‘O thou vile King, give me my father’ ‘vows to the blackest devil’ and
threatens ‘to hell allegiance’
- This is significant to the Elizabethan audience as Hell was a very real place and the Devil a real person as many
painting and representations emerged at the time representing Hell as a dark and firefly landscape that was
decidedly foreboding, Laertes is seen to be going to great lengths to avenge his father
- ‘Cut his throat i’th’ church’ shows his preference for action and he becomes a hero in avenging his father
Fortinbras
