Advanced English Hamlet

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Year 12 English: Hamlet. Shakespeare uses context and drama in his writings to convey characters identity to the audience. Reading the play up to Act 2 gives you major insights into the character that Hamlet is. Hamlet is shown to have many defining characteristics, these including, him being a great listener, quite revengeful and violent. Hamlet is a fantastic listener, he always listens carefully to what is said to him and he often uses a word or many words that the person he is speaking to has said in order to construct his own reply. This is shown with his very first words of the play ‘A little more than kin and less than kind’ (1:2:65), which he is implying that Claudius is to overconfident in calling him son, and that his nature is unlike Claudius in anyway. Hamlet also uses puns to great effects with in the film, picking up speakers words and reuses them with a completely different meaning. This also shows that he has great care for what others are saying to him and that he really does appreciate them. Hamlet is revengeful, and shows this trait throughout the entire play, the play is about him trying to get revenge on Claudius for murdering his father. He spends the entire play unsure about what kind of response he should take in his action. He does get revenge, but it is at the price of his life and that of his mother and Ophelia. The quote ‘Haste me to know’t, that I with wings as swift as mediation or the thoughts of love may sweep to my revenge’ (1:5:29-31), shows the context of hamlet proclaiming his determination in his revenge. The effect of this quote is that Hamlet appears strong in his requests for the truth; hamlet has an obsession for the truth and hamlet feeling as though if he had of acted quicker his father may not have died. Another quote ‘The time is out of joint; O cursed spite that ever I was born to set it right’ (1:5:189-190). In

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