Hamlet, Part 5: Characteristics of Elizabethan Drama Answers

Which statement best describes why Shakespeare’s Hamlet is a complex character?

How are Shakespeare’s characters examples of Elizabethan drama? Select two answers.They are variations on familiar Biblical figures.They grow and change throughout the play.They display a wide range of human emotion.They represent a single allegorical concept.They express their reverence for Christian saints.

Read the excerpt from Act III of Hamlet.Ophelia:What means this, my lord?Hamlet:Marry, this is miching mallecho; it means mischief.Ophelia:Belike this show imports the argument of the play.Enter Prologue.Hamlet:We shall know by this fellow: the players cannot keep counsel; they’ll tell all.Ophelia:Will he tell us what this show meant?Hamlet:Ay, or any show that you’ll show him; be not you ashamed to show, he’ll not shame to tell you what it means.Ophelia:You are naught, you are naught. I’ll mark the play.

Shakespeare’s Hamlet is an example of Elizabethan drama because

Read the excerpt from Act III of Hamlet.Claudius:Have you heard the argument? Is there no offence in ’t?Hamlet:No, no, they do but jest, poison in jest; no offence i’ the world.Claudius:What do you call the play?Hamlet:The Mouse-trap. Marry, how? Tropically. This play is the image of a murder done in Vienna: Gonzago is the duke’s name; his wife, Baptista. You shall see anon; ’tis a knavish piece of work: but what of that? your majesty and we that have free souls, it touches us not: let the galle

What excerpt from Act III of Hamlet supports the conclusion that Hamlet is critical of women?

Read the excerpt from Act III of Hamlet.Hamlet: [L]et your own discretion be your tutor: suit the action to the word, the word to the action; with this special observance, that you o’erstep not the modesty of nature; for anything so overdone is from the purpose of playing, whose end, both at the first and now, was and is, to hold, as ’twere, the mirror up to nature; to show virtue her own feature, scorn her own image, and the very age and body of the time his form and pressure. Now, this overdone, or come tardy off, though it make the unskilful laugh, cannot but make the judicious grieve; the censure of which one must in your allowance o’erweigh a whole theatre of others. O! there be players that I have seen play, and heard others praise, and that highly, not to speak it profanely, that, neither having the accent of Christians nor the gait of Christian, pagan, nor man, have so strutted and bellowed that I have thought some of nature’s journeymen had made men and not made them well, they imitated humanity so abominably.

What line from Act III of Hamlet supports the conclusion that Shakespeare is critical of actors?

Read the excerpt from Act III of Hamlet.Hamlet:Up, sword, and know thou a more horrid hent;When he is drunk asleep, or in his rage, Or in the incestuous pleasure of his bed, At gaming, swearing, or about some act That has no relish of salvation in ’t; Then trip him, that his heels may kick at heaven, And that his soul may be as damn’d and black As hell, whereto it goes. My mother stays: This physic but prolongs thy sickly days.

Read the excerpt from Act III of Hamlet.Polonius:My lord, he’s going to his mother’s closet: Behind the arras I’ll convey myself To hear the process; I’ll warrant she’ll tax him home; And, as you said, and wisely was it said, ’Tis meet that some more audience than a mother, Since nature makes them partial, should o’er-hear The speech, of vantage. Fare you well, my liege: I’ll call upon you ere you go to bed And tell you what I know.