hamlet (1 Viewer)

[rebeka94]

hey guys, i'm sort of stuck on how to write a generic hamlet essay, which can be applied to any question, any suggestions?

 

[Glorious]

I've noticed a common pattern in the two sets of trials i sat for. They both revolved around the idea of Shakespeare putting across intriguing ideas and how WE, as an audience, respond to these ideas. E.G - What we think has constituted Hamlet's madness, or how view the significance of Yorick's skull. You can also have ideas about textual integrity if a question comes up which goes along the lines of seeing flashes of ourselves through characters in Hamlet. That could be a good start. Otherwise, have ideas jotted down, and i'm bound to believe that the question in the HSC will be a generic one, but its all about how you tweak your ideas to fit the question.

 

[UnrealAnchovies]

read the syllabus (the important bits)

 

[blackberrystone]

Create your own reading (i.e. 'Hamlet is a play about the death of idealism', or 'Hamlet is about the struggle of an individual to understanding his shifting world' or some shit) and practise tweaking to questions.

So if the question's about love and your reading is about Hamlet is about the failed search for truth (which ultimately leads to disillusionment), I would write something along the lines of 'In a contradictory world such as Elsinore, Hamlet attempts to search for absolute truths through reconciling diametrically opposed ideals. However, such an attempt, which is driven by his idealistic love for his father, ultimately fails and leads to his continued disillusionment as such positive values cannot exist in his deceptive community' (NOTE: I just made that up, and I can't really remember my reading).