Contents:

• Introduction to Leaving Cert single texts
• Themes
• Style
• How to approach the text from the angle of the essay title
• Sample answer and detailed approach breakdown:
  a. 2011: “Revenge and justice are finely balanced themes in the play, Hamlet.” Discuss this statement, supporting your answer with suitable reference to the text.
• Sample answers:
  • b. 2012: “Hamlet’s madness, whether genuine or not, adds to the fascination of this character for the audience.” Discuss this statement, supporting your answer with suitable reference to the play, Hamlet.
  • c. 2011: “Cladius can be seen as both a heartless villain and a character with some redeeming qualities in the play, Hamlet.” Discuss both aspects of this statement supporting your answer with suitable reference to the text.
  • d. “The portrayal of Hamlet as an outsider allows Shakespeare to critique the values of society.”
  • e. “Uncertainty, which features constantly in Shakespeare’s play, Hamlet, adds significantly to the dramatic impact of the play” (2020)
  • f. Discuss how Shakespeare makes effective use, for a variety of purposes, of the contradictions and inconsistencies evident in Hamlet’s character. Develop your discussion with reference to Shakespeare’s play, Hamlet (2020)
• Short notes on 2017 questions
  • “Shakespeare’s play Hamlet has been described as “a disturbing psychological thriller.”
  • “Shakespeare makes effective use of both Laertes and Horatio to fulfil a variety of dramatic functions in his play, Hamlet.”

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This question on Hamlet came up on the 2011 Higher Level English Paper 2:

“Revenge and justice are finely balanced themes in the play, Hamlet.” 

Discuss this statement, supporting your answer with suitable reference to the text.  

The marking scheme directs examiners to reward reference to

– contrasting approaches to justice/revenge of Hamlet, Fortinbras and Laertes,

– symbols and imagery,

– Hamlet’s soliloquies,

– poetic justice (a literary device in which ultimately virtue is rewarded and vice punished),
– Ophelia’s role and

– comment on whether justice has or hasn’t been served at the end of the tragedy.
The plot of Shakespeare’s Hamlet is charged with a compulsion for revenge. A usurper kills the noble king and seizes the throne, while the rightful heir is burdened with the fate to avenge his father and re-establish justice in his father’s kingdom. Within Hamlet’s most quoted soliloquy the reader witnesses his agonising search for the meaning of justice: “to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, or to take arms against a sea of troubles, and by opposing end them.”

 

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