Though this be madness, yet there is method in't

In case you haven't had enough examination feedback, I'm sharing even more: this time on t he first part of the exam question which invited you to discuss the passage from Act 1 Scene 2, lines 65-120, exploring Shakespeare's use of language and its dramatic effects.  This scene is a gift, as it offers Hamlet’s first words and actions of the play. Because it is Shakespeare, of course they are rich with imagery and ideas that set up all sorts of themes and conflicts for the rest of the play - so there is plenty to discuss. You are interested in how Shakespeare shapes meaning through the interplay of language, form and structure . It is, in many ways, easier to deal with all three together, since that word 'interplay' is quite important. Form is really concerned with aspects of genre that appear within a text, as well as the 'form,' or type, of the text itself, in this case a play, and specifically, a Shakespearian tragedy. Form might also inclu...

Here we are in the final act of Hamlet , and one of the most iconic scenes of the play - the bit with the skull! Clue: Not Hamlet. Two gravediggers are going about their business of digging a grave (that we immediately find out will be the final resting place of Ophelia) and making a few lighthearted observations as they do so. Though the graveyard setting foreshadows the tragedy that is about to beset Hamlet and the court, there is now a moment's pause in the chaotic hurtling towards a bitter end. It's probably worth a few words on 'comic relief' in Shakespearean tragedy. The stage direction gives us 'Enter two clowns'. Although 'clowns' in Shakespeare's time would have referred to simple country folk (in this instance two manual workers doing their job, not connected with the court),something of the modern meaning is inherent in their comic purpose at this moment in the drama. Somehow they achieve comedic banter from the burial of the dea...

The pacy, almost real-time movement continues into another short scene as Rosencrantz announces that they have brought Hamlet to the King. Claudius reveals something of Hamlet's popularity, which hasn't been directly alluded to before. 'He's lov'd of the distracted multitude' (IV.iii.4). Hamlet's wordplay also continues - in somewhat poor taste, perhaps. He refuses to give a straight answer to the question of where Polonius' body lies, but emphasises its corporeal nature as fodder for worms, and jokes that if it isn't found within a month then the King will be able to detect his decaying corpse and 'nose him as you go up the stairs' (IV.iii.36). It is at least a hint as to the location, and enables Claudius to dispatch his attendants in search of it. The air of melancholy and general futility of life that he expressed earlier in the play underlies sentiments such as 'we fat ourselves for maggots' (IV.iii.22). But death is ...

This is another very short scene, of less than thirty lines; the shortest in the entire play, in fact. Hamlet describes the body of Polonius as 'Safely stowed' in the opening line. It's an odd description: indicating something neatly stored or packed away - perhaps concealed - but with the suggestion of later use. Hamlet's speech is disordered and irrational. He speaks in non-sequiturs and riddles when Rosencrantz and Guildenstern arrive, emphasising his distrust of former friends in his depiction of them as foolish: mere sponges who 'soak up the king's countenance' but will get their just desserts when they are squeezed out 'dry' in the end. Gone is the iambic pentameter that has mostly shaped Hamlet's speech previously,  but there is an interesting use of double syntax or syntactic slide   at the end of the scene.  (This is where meaning is created in one line and then recreated differently in the next - one of my favourite th...