Shakespeare Birth/Death | April 23, 1564-April 23, 1616 |
Marriage/Children | Anne Hathaway-wife, Suzannah, Judith, Hamnet-kids |
Shakespeare Theaters | The Theatre, The Rose, The Curtain, The Swan, The Globe |
Shakespeare’s Works | Sonnets, Plays (Tragedies, Comedies), Histories |
Exposition | background info (Hamlet Sr. Death, Fortinbras, etc) |
Exciting Force | one event starts play (Ghost asks for revenge) |
Rising Action | things look good for tragic hero (play) |
Climax | tragic hero does something he cannot undo (kills Polonius) |
Falling Action | things look down for tragic hero (sent to England) |
Denouement | the unraveling (ready to duel) |
Catastrophe | tragic hero dies |
Characteristics of a Revenge Play | 1. Ghost cries for revenge2. Politician who has killed before for lust/power3. Woman who goes mad with grief4. Hero disguises himself (physically of with madness) to get info5. Hero must delay his revenge6. Hero gets revenge, but dies |
Qualities of tragic hero | born into nobility/wealth, responsible for own fate, have a tragic flaw, doomed to make an error in judgement (hamartia), falls from great heights, realizes he has made a mistake, meets a tragic death, faces/accepts death with honor |
Soliloquy | A character on stage alone, speaking his/her thoughts |
Aside | an actor addresses the audience or another character, but is not heard by other actors on stage |
Double Entendre | a figure of speech, literal meaning is innocent, other meaning is risqué and requires additional knowledge |
Motif | Recurring idea in a play (death, decay, disease, time out of joint, spying) |
Allusion | a reference to another work or history (compare ghost to what happened before Julius Caesar’s death) |
Enjambment | line of poetry with no punctuation at the end |
End-Stopped | line of poetry with punctuation at the end |
Pun | A play on words based on similarity of sound between two words with different meanings |
Malapropism | the misuse of one word for another that resembles it |
Foil | Two characters with obvious similarities meant to compare the two (Hamlet and Fortinbras) |
Situational Irony | An unexpected situation |
Dramatic Irony | The audience knows something the characters don’t know, creates suspense |
Blank Verse | Unrhymed iambic pentameter |
Iambic Pentameter | Five unstressed syllables followed by stressed syllables |
Meter | a rhythmic pattern in poetry wherein stresses recur at fixed intervals |
Couplet | Two lines with end rhymes that could stand alone |
Heroic Couplet | a couplet written in iambic pentameter |
Prose | A form of writing that does not have regular meter or rhyme |
Poetry | A form of writing that contains rhythm or rhyme |
Hamlet Problem | Questions not answered in the play (ex. Was Hamlet really crazy?) |
Character’s Deaths | Polonius-killed by Hamlet in Act IIIRosencrantz/Guildenstern-killed in England for betraying HamletLaertes-Killed after being hit by the poisoned swordGertrude-Killed after drinking the poisonClaudius-Hamlet stabs with the poisoned sword, then makes him drink the poisonHamlet-Killed after being hit by the poisoned sword |
Setting of Hamlet | Denmark, Elisnore Castle, Hamlet went to school at Wittenburg, Hamlet gets sent to England |
Hamlet’s Tragic Flaw | Procrastination |
Hamlet Objective Test
July 4, 2019