NOTE: Try to finish Act 5 for Tuesday, though don't worry if you can't finish it on time. You'll have time to finish later if you need to, and you can get to these questions by Thursday. But do your best, and try to consider some of these questions as you read, since we need to figure out WHAT we feel about this play by the end. Is it just one disaster after another? Or does it have an overall purpose that leads to 'art'?
Answer TWO of the following:
Q1: The Gravedigger would be played by Shakespeare's resident comic actor, who often specialized in 'fools' and other comic parts. Why do you think Shakespeare introduces this character into the play? Is it just some comic relief after a relentlessly grim Act 4? Or does the Gravedigger give Hamlet, and the play itself, a new perspective to consider?
Q2: Hamlet and Laertes each seem to compete in Act 5.1 over who loved Ophelia the most, with Hamlet's famous line, "Forty thousand brothers/Could not with all their quantity of love/Make up my sum" (255). How do you read this scene? Are they simply peforming for the crowd, and flexing their 'love/duty' towards Ophelia? Or are they both--or just one of them--truly sincere?
Q3: A tragedy is full of "what ifs," and moments where the final outcome could have easily been averted. How does Shakespeare insert some of these into the fabric of Act 5? Where do we see the play almost become a comedy with a happy ending? Why doesn't it? Does Shakespeare suggest the tragedy is inevitable, or do characters make a very 'tragic' decision to craft their own doom?
Q4: The end of the play is typical of a revenge tragedy: everyone dies on stage in one horrific dance of death. Do you feel Shakespeare tries to transform the gratuitous murder into a message of hope, peace, or purification? By giving Horatio some of the last words, does he rescue the play for the audience? And does Fortinbras' arrival in Denmark offer us the hope of a happy ending for the next generation?
Shakespeare is the most famous writer.
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