Hamlet detailed A-Level essay plans for Appearances, Revenge and Madness (likely for OCR 2024)
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Course
Hamlet (H474)
Institution
OCR
Detailed essay plans covering AO1 and AO5 with complex analysis that achieved full marks at OCR A-Level. Appearances, Revenge and Madness are 3 very likely topics for the 2024 exams as they are yet to come up. These plans are comprehensive and will prepare you well. Created by a student who got an ...
🢒 This is the tragedy of a court so steeped in artifice and falsities that loyalty, friendship and trust are a danger
- a tragedy of corruption not of revenge
🢒 Obsessed with performance - performance as a paradoxical vehicle for the truth - ironic that truth is only
expressed in plays and in madness/antic disposition or spoken posthumously when it is too late
🢒 Sense that the ending is fated - the real tragedy of this play is that ‘no one knows or understands anyone
else’ (Charles) - court cannot be restored
🢒 Is duplicity a necessary means of survival in the court of elsinore or is this the root of tragedy?
AO1 AO5
P1 - Hamlet’s ‘Antic disposition’ - artifice as a means of Alexander “how does one deal with such a man without
survival in an inauthentic world? becoming like him”
🢒 1.2 (“nay it is I know not seems” “niobe” echo Woods “cannot escape the human impulse to perform”
later in 2.2) - Hamlet seems to be the character Johnson
most preoccupied/openly distressed by Cumberbatch performance - entirely sane
inauthenticity - suggests antic disposition is a
Relevant to both modern and contemporary audiences
means to an end - no choice
- a ‘human impulse’ = innate
🢒 1.5 (“Smiling damned villain … that one may
smile and be a villain”” “Perchance hereafter
think meet to put and antic disposition on”) -
contradictory - he becomes what he criticises =
no choice
🢒 2.2 (““You’re a fishmonger” “Though this be
madness yet there is method in’t”)
P2 - Claudius false appearances with a political (not Schofield - “morally empty”
personal) motive - guilty conscience Knight - “a strong monarch … enmeshed by a chain of
🢒 1.2 (“chiefest courtier cousin and our son” “Our causality linking him with his crime”
dear brother’s death the memory be green”) - Altick - “the dunning of claudius’ evil has corrupted the
figurehead of corruption - inauthenticity stems whole kingdom of denmark”
from Claudius - we cannot sympathise nor see Godwin 2016 - unconvincing interpretation of
hi as a ‘lawful espial’ as he is the cause and also self-disgust
this is political not personal (even is he frames it
as obligation ‘madness in great ones must never
unwatched go”)
🢒 3.3 (“Pray can I not” “My words fly up, my
thoughts remain below, words without thoughts
never to heaven go”) - change in speech = the
real claudius is far from the adept manipulative
usurping king of 1.2 - we can’t even sympathise
with the real him
🢒 (4.5 “So full of artless jealousy is guilt, it spills
itself in fearing to be spilt” G = summative -
appearance + reality cannot be kept separate
forever)
, P3 - Gertrude = real tragedy lies in the liminality of Bradby - “a character of ambiguous morality whom we
authenticity and pretence can never fully know”
🢒 3.4 and 4.1 juxtaposition - simultaneously loyal Lewes - “terrible adulterous queen”
and disloyal to both - true loyalty cannot exist in Charles - “no one in this play knows or understands
this court - her ambiguous morality is a anyone else”
symptom of the ambiguous boundaries of truth Graves - Hamlet is 'in an endlessly ambiguous play
and lies - wider links to political loyalty of P, R&G
Wide variations in performance - overt sexuality Doran
- all lead to death
2008 vs loyalty to Hamlet Holmes 2022 - no one can
🢒 True tragedy of this play is that the line has
settle on one interpretation = defined by her ambiguity
become unclear - full of paradoxes eg. truth
through performance (Murder of Gonzago) -
Gertrude too is a paradox as both loyal and
disloyal- she embodies both authenticity and
inauthenticity at once)
🢒 Tragic that this line only becomes clear in earth -
characters speak words of truth posthumously
eg. over the body of Ophelia
Summary
Issue of appearance vs reality transcends contemporary modern divide being relevant to all audiences
- The tragedy of Hamlet lies in its ambiguity - authenticity and pretence become so closely intertwined that
the only chance of reconciliation is through death and expurgation of corruption
- Explores the extent to which we can sympathise with duplicity and deceit - political vs. personal motives
- The tragedy of a court devolved so far that genuine human connection has become impossible
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