Module B: Critical Study of Hamlet quiz

Theme, motif, symbol, allegory

Textual integrity, considered, enduring, personal response

Plot, character, setting, conflict

Iambic pentameter, soliloquy, aside, foil

He needs proof Claudius really did it

He is too cowardly to act

There is a gap between his stated reasons and what the text actually shows about his hesitation

His mother stops him

A suicide note from Hamlet

A philosophical inquiry into whether known suffering is preferable to unknown death

Hamlet plotting Claudius's murder

Hamlet's grief for Ophelia

Quoting too much from the text

Paraphrasing the quote instead of analysing the word choice itself

Not enough context about Shakespeare's life

Using too many semicolons

To thine own self be true

Something is rotten in the state of Denmark

Brevity is the soul of wit

The lady doth protest too much

It is comic relief from the tragedy

It reframes the play's meditation on mortality through the concrete reality of a skull

It introduces a new character

It explains the plot to the audience

The play has no plot holes

The play coheres as a unified work where form and meaning reinforce each other

The text is historically accurate

The actors did not change the script

Shakespeare uses many techniques in Hamlet to show themes.

Hamlet's interrogation of revenge endures because the play refuses to provide a clean moral answer.

Hamlet was written in around 1600 by William Shakespeare.

There are many themes in Hamlet such as revenge, love, and death.

Hamlet genuinely going mad from grief

A performance that becomes harder to distinguish from authentic instability, raising the play's question about authenticity

A clever ruse Hamlet maintains perfectly

Comic relief

The play is still entertaining

Students still study the play in school

The play's textual ambiguity allows successive generations to read themselves into it, which is itself a feature of how it is constructed

The play has been translated into many languages