TEACHER PACK - HAMLET OR NOT - TOP GRUPS€¦ · 1. William Shakespeare Shakespeare would probably...
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TEACHER PACK - HAMLET OR NOT
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Contents
1. William Shakespeare
2. Hamlet - Tragedy of Tragedies
3. Characters
4. Key moments
5. The tradition of revenge tragedy
6. The act of acting - Playing Hamlet
7. Ideas for practical work
8. Exploring the ghost story
9. Exploring the everyday objects
10. Exploring the relationship with his best friend Horatio
11. Biography and further reading
12. Theatre glossary
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1. William Shakespeare
Shakespeare would probably be amazed
that you are studying one of his plays in
school over 400 years after his death. He
did not write his plays to be read, he
wrote them to be performed. When he
wrote, he expected a company of skilful
actors to interpret and perform his play
for an audience to listen to and watch.
A brief biography
Shakespeare was born in Stratford-upon-
Avon in 1564 and died there in 1616 aged
52. There is no exact record of the date of
his birth, only a record of his baptism,
which was on April 26th 1564. His birthday is anecdotally celebrated on
April 23rd, the day of the traditional English festival of St George.
He was the son of John Shakespeare, who was an alderman (similar to a
local councilor) and Mary Arden who was the daughter of a local farmer,
and he was the third of eight children. He went to the local grammar school
where he learnt Latin and classics, and in November 1582 at the age of 18
married Anne Hathaway. She was 26 and apparently the marriage
happened in haste – perhaps because their daughter Susanna was born just
six months after. Two years later in 1585, they had twins, Hamnet and
Judith.
Between 1585 and 1592, there are no records of what Shakespeare was
doing and some scholars have called these “the lost years”. Perhaps he
went to London and worked as a stable hand for theatre owners to try and
get into theatre; perhaps he worked as a school teacher; perhaps he fled
Stratford and disappeared into the city of London because he had been
poaching deer from the local landowner.
However in 1592, the first traces of his work in the London stage start to
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appear and, from then until around 1614, scholars think he lived mainly in
London, writing and acting with his company of players. After that, he
probably retired to Stratford, where he could by then afford one of the most
expensive houses in the town. He died there in 1616. His son Hamnet had
died aged 11, and neither of his two daughters children married. So the
Shakespeare line of descendents died when his grandchildren died.
In his will, he famously left his wife Anne his second best bed, though
nobody knows if this was an insult or an act of love. Sometimes people
would have saved their “best” bed for their guests, meaning that the second
best bed would have been the Shakespeare’s marriage bed and therefore a
gift with great sentimental value. Like so many things in Shakespeare’s
life, we do not really know, and can only speculate and make up our own
version of what we think is true...
Prose and verse
Most of the time, he wrote blank verse - verse where the ends of the lines
do not rhyme. So what makes it a verse? It has a rhythm. Normally there
are ten syllables in every line. Shakespeare wrote the lines to be spoken
with the stress on every second syllable.
Theatre was popular in Shakespeare's time
Shakespeare was the most successful playwright of his era, but there
was plenty of demand for new plays from other playwrights such as
Christopher Marlowe and Thomas Kyd.
The first successful theatres in London were built in the 1570s. Plays
attracted large crowds, including the wealthiest in society.
The theatre wasn't just for rich people - Shakespeare's audiences
included servants and labourers. The poorer people in the audience
stood in front of the stage - if it rained, the got wet.
There was no electricity, so most plays were put on during the day.
There wasn't much staging and sets were basic so they could be
adapted easily to show several different plays.
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Shakespeare's plays Shakespeare wrote 38 plays, between 1589 and 1613. Again, there has been
a lot of scholarly research around whether he was really the author of these
plays, whether he worked in collaboration with others, and whether there
were other plays he wrote that have not been recorded.
Shakespeare staged his plays at the Globe Theatre
Shakespeare's theatre company performed at the Globe Theatre in London.
This is what it might have looked like
The members of the audience who could afford a seat, sat in tiers of stalls
that created a full round amphitheatre, completed with the tiring house.
Groundlings were the poorer people, who stood in the pit close to the stage
for the performance. The tiring house was a backstage area where the
actors dressed and rested, and then entered the stage through the two doors
at the front. There were possibilities of using different levels in the Globe –
the stage, where most of the action would have happened, but also the
upper floor in the tiring house, which would have been useful for scenes
like the famous balcony scene in Romeo and Juliet, and also the under
stage space. Using a trap door, things could appear or disappear from the
stage, for example, the gravediggers may have used the trap door as
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Ophelia’s grave, into which Laertes and Hamlet leap and fight. Knowing
that an actor could literally get under the stage gives a bit of a theatrical in-
joke to the scene.
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2. Hamlet - Tragedy of Tragedies
An introduction
Shakespeare’s Hamlet is one of the most famous plays in the world. It has
been translated and performed all over the world, on stage and on screen.
Quotations from the play have become embedded in the language we use
today: “neither a borrower nor a lender be”, “suit the action to the word, the
word to the action”, “to be or not to be”, “the lady doth protest too much
methinks” - all came from Hamlet. It has been a major influence on culture
and on literature, from numerous critical studies, to new plays and stories
based on the characters. And, for an actor, young Hamlet is a part that
everyone seems to aspire to play.
The play was written sometime between 1599 and 1601. It is difficult to
say precisely when, because publishing worked in a very different way
then. It was not as easy as simply typing, printing and copying; all the texts
would have been written by hand.
Shakespeare may have been inspired to write Hamlet after the death of
his only son in 1596. His son’s name was Hamnet and he was 11 years
old at the time of his death.
Hamlet is Shakespeare’s longest play with 4,042 lines and up to five
hours of running time (but not in our version of the play).
Hamlet is the second most filmed story in the world, coming second
only to Cinderella.
Hamlet was the most popular work during Shakespeare’s own time
and has remained his most produced play to this day.
Disney’s The Lion King is an adaptation of Hamlet.
It is belived that Shakespare appeared in the play as the
Ghost at the Globe
The Queen marries her dead husband‘s brother,
Claudius, soon after he dies. Hamlet, the Queen‘s son,
is very upset about it.
Hamlet meets the ghost of his father who tells him that
it was his Uncle Claudius who killed him. The ghost
asks Hamlet to take revenge.
Hamlet gets some actors who visit the castle to play
the murder of his father. The actor playing Hamlet‘s
father is asleep and he is killed by poison being poured
into his ear. The new King Claudius stops the play as
the actor King dies.
Hamlet goes to speak to his mother. Polonius, the
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Also, Hamlet is the most produced play in the world. It has been
estimated that Hamlet is being performed somewhere every single
minute of every single day.
It is believed that Shakespeare played the Ghost in Hamlet when it
was first performed at the Globe.
Shakespeare advertises his own work in the play. When Polonius
interrupts the players and proclaims that he enacted Julius Caesar
and was “accounted a good actor” in Act 3 scene 2, he is reminding
the audience that he will soon be starring in Shakespeare’s
production of Julius Caesar.
At the end of every play performed at the Globe, four dancers, two
dressed as women, would perform an upbeat, bawdy song and dance
routine called a jig – even if the play was a tragedy like Hamlet.
The castle in which the play is set really exists. It is called Kronborg
Castle and was built in the Danish port of Helsingør in 1420s by the
Danish king, Eric of Pomerania.
Synopsis
This is a synopsis of Hamlet in its complete written form. To perform the
whole of Hamlet uncut would take about 4 and a half hours. Some
practitioners, like Peter Brook with Qui Est Là, Robert Wilson with
Hamlet: a Monologue, and Robert Lepage with Elsinore have cut, spliced
and added to the play so it was almost unrecognisable. In this version,
Hamlet or not (75 minutes), some cuts have been made.
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3. CHARACTERS
The Older Generation The Ghost of King Hamlet
Hamlet’s father, the former King of Denmark, who was murdered whilst
sleeping in his orchard and returns from the grave to demand revenge
Queen Gertrude
Hamlet’s mother, former wife of King Hamlet, who has retained her role as
Queen of Denmark by marrying her former brother-in-law Claudius
Polonius
Father of Laertes and Ophelia, and an advisor to the King
The Younger Generation Prince Hamlet
Son of Hamlet and Gertrude, and heir to the throne; a former student at
Wittenburg University, now remaining at Elsinore
Horatio
Hamlet’s best friend, also a student at Wittenburg
Laertes
Brother of Ophelia and son of Polonious; studying in Paris
Ophelia
Sister of Laertes and daughter of Polonius; possible lover or confident of
Hamlet
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern
Childhood friends of Hamlet
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Other Characters - The Players
A troupe of actors who arrive at Court to present their plays
Reynaldo
A servant from Polonius’ retinue – in Shakespeare’s time, noblemen like
Polonius would have had an entourage of men who were paid to be in
service to them
Osric
A servant in the King’s retinue
Gravedigger
An old man, outside the jurisdiction of the Court, who has been a sexton
for 23 years, and whose job would be to maintain and look after the
buildings and grounds of the church
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4. Key moments
A ghost has been seen on the roof of the castle at night. Two
guards and Hamlet‘s friend are looking out for it at midnight.
The Queen marries her dead husband‘s brother,
Claudius, soon after he dies. Hamlet, the Queen‘s son,
is very upset about it.
Hamlet meets the ghost of his father who tells him that
it was his Uncle Claudius who killed him. The ghost
asks Hamlet to take revenge.
Hamlet gets some actors who visit the castle to play
the murder of his father. The actor playing Hamlet‘s
father is asleep and he is killed by poison being poured
into his ear. The new King Claudius stops the play as
the actor King dies.
Hamlet goes to speak to his mother. Polonius, the
King‘s advisor, is hiding to hear what he says.
Polonius makes a noise. Hamlet thinks he is King
Claudius and kills him in his hiding place through a
curtain.
The Queen marries her dead husband‘s brother, Claudius, soon after
he dies. Hamlet, the Queen‘s son, is very upset about it.
The Queen marries her dead husband‘s brother,
Claudius, soon after he dies. Hamlet, the Queen‘s son,
is very upset about it.
Hamlet meets the ghost of his father who tells him that
it was his Uncle Claudius who killed him. The ghost
asks Hamlet to take revenge.
Hamlet gets some actors who visit the castle to play
the murder of his father. The actor playing Hamlet‘s
father is asleep and he is killed by poison being poured
into his ear. The new King Claudius stops the play as
the actor King dies.
Hamlet goes to speak to his mother. Polonius, the
King‘s advisor, is hiding to hear what he says.
Polonius makes a noise. Hamlet thinks he is King
Claudius and kills him in his hiding place through a
curtain.
Hamlet meets the ghost of his father who tells him that it was his
uncle Claudius who killed him. The ghost asks Hamlet to take
revenge.
The Queen marries her dead husband‘s brother,
Claudius, soon after he dies. Hamlet, the Queen‘s son,
is very upset about it.
Hamlet meets the ghost of his father who tells him that
it was his Uncle Claudius who killed him. The ghost
asks Hamlet to take revenge.
Hamlet gets some actors who visit the castle to play
the murder of his father. The actor playing Hamlet‘s
father is asleep and he is killed by poison being poured
into his ear. The new King Claudius stops the play as
the actor King dies.
Hamlet goes to speak to his mother. Polonius, the
King‘s advisor, is hiding to hear what he says.
Polonius makes a noise. Hamlet thinks he is King
Claudius and kills him in his hiding place through a
curtain.
Hamlet gets some actors who visit the castle to play the murder of his
father. The actor playing Hamlet‘s father is asleep and he is killed by
poison being poured into his ear. The new King Claudius stops the
play as the actor King dies.
The Queen marries her dead husband‘s brother,
Claudius, soon after he dies. Hamlet, the Queen‘s son,
is very upset about it.
Hamlet meets the ghost of his father who tells him that
it was his Uncle Claudius who killed him. The ghost
asks Hamlet to take revenge.
Hamlet gets some actors who visit the castle to play
the murder of his father. The actor playing Hamlet‘s
father is asleep and he is killed by poison being
poured into his ear. The new King Claudius stops the
play as the actor King dies.
Hamlet goes to speak to his mother. Polonius, the
King‘s advisor, is hiding to hear what he says.
Hamlet goes to speak to his mother. Polonius, the King‘s advisor, is
hiding to hear what he says. Polonius makes a noise. Hamlet thinks
he is King Claudius and kills him in his hiding place through a
curtain.
The Queen marries her dead husband‘s brother,
Claudius, soon after he dies. Hamlet, the Queen‘s son,
is very upset about it.
Hamlet meets the ghost of his father who tells him that
it was his Uncle Claudius who killed him. The ghost
asks Hamlet to take revenge.
Hamlet gets some actors who visit the castle to play
the murder of his father. The actor playing Hamlet‘s
father is asleep and he is killed by poison being
poured into his ear. The new King Claudius stops the
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5. The tradition of revenge tragedy
Hamlet can loosely be said to belong to a theatrical genre known as
revenge tragedy. It was immensely popular in Elizabethan theatre from
around the 1580’s to the 1640’s and tended to always include similar
elements: a wronged avenger, ghosts, murders, madness, disguise, a play-
within-a-play, plotting, suspense, intrigue, and grisly crescendo of on-stage
violence.
Scholars believe that these tragedies were initially influenced by the
Roman playwright and philosopher Seneca whose works from the 1st
Century AD started to be translated and performed in 16th Century
England. The most popular were based on Greek mythical stories and
characters, for example, Thyestes (who ate his own children), Medea (who
killed her own children) and Agamemnon (who was murdered by his
wife’s lover). They were large scale, spectacular performances in which
passions and stakes ran sky high. Similarly, it is sometimes thought that
Italian novella being translated at the time also influenced revenge tragedy
with their tales of Machiavellian villains, of sexual deceit and bloody
vendettas. Other scholars also chart the influence of the medieval tradition
of contemptus mundi on the genre of revenge tragedy. This means
“contempt of the world” and was a tradition preoccupied with the
ephemerality of our mortal lives, the split between the flesh and the spirit,
and the inevitability of death. The image of the memento mori – a man
holding a skull as he contemplates death – was the emblem of this.
Why was it so popular? The Elizabethan period was a time of great change in English history –
society was shifting from the Medieval period, with its codes of private
revenge, into the new Tudor era, with the construction of a sense of
statehood and new centralised codes of law and order. There was an
accompanying shift in the idea of justice. The private code of vengeance,
when individuals and families had used violence to settle their own
grievances, was being replaced by an emerging, organised system of law.
Perhaps revenge tragedy was so popular at this time because the public
needed a place to think about, maybe even to mourn, the passing of the old
ways of social organisation and understanding into the new ways.
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Hamlet - Shakespeare’s response Whether this was the case or not, it was out of this increasingly popular
genre that Shakespeare wrote Hamlet. The storyline was probably not
original – after The Spanish Tragedy, Kyd is believed to have written a
play called Ur-Hamlet, based on a legend called Amleth. No copies of this
play survive, but the King’s men probably bought the text from Kyd and
performed it before Shakespeare then reworked it into this new version:
The Tragica Story of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark.
But Hamlet, unlike earlier revenging protagonists, really wrestles with the
problem of revenge. He is a complex, psychologically real man forced into
an extra-ordinary and super-natural situation. Hamlet feels the weight of
his father’s indictment and knows what custom demands of him, but his
individual sense of morality and ethics and his own intellectual rigour,
make him question those demands. So, in some ways, Hamlet the avenger
is an emblem of a clash between an old and a new world order.
Madness & Melancholy Hamlet’s madness is a much debated element of the play, especially the
question of whether his madness is “real” or feigned. But as Polonius tells
us “to define true madness, / What is’t but to be nothing else but mad?”
We can never fully get inside the mind of another, and never fully
understand the unbearable pressures of a man in Hamlet’s position;
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behaviour that may look “mad” from an outside perspective may appear
entirely logical and sensible inside the mind of a “madman”. Also, there is
an accepted social code that labels what it is to be rational, sane and within
the boundaries of “normal”; if a person chooses to flout those conventions,
does it necessarily made him or her mad? Hamlet is certainly an expert in
flouting social mores and conventions, and at Elsinore - especially after the
ghost has appeared and revealed the truth under the veneer - perhaps he has
good, sane reasons to.
In Elizabethan thought, an individual’s emotions, behaviours and health
were understood to be affected by a number of internal and external causes,
notably the balance of bodily fluids inside her or him. The four liquids
were black bile, yellow bile, phlegm and water. When the four were well
balanced, the individual was healthy, effective and optimally functioning;
when they were out of balance, the result was illness, including mental
illness. Black bile was the substance thought to be responsible for
melancholia, so an excess of black bile might have been understood as the
physical cause of depression and mental ill health.
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The following chart shows the four humours with the
corresponding qualities, characteristics, elements, and organs
where the fluid was produced:
Hamlet shows qualities of a man with too much black bile, despondent,
sleepless and irritable; a melancholic, or a man suffering melancholy.
Those with a severe imbalance who went “mad”, might have been unlucky
enough to end up in Bedlam. Bedlam was a notorious institution for the
mentally ill that was a fixture in London from the 13th Century onwards –
a hospital where abuse, appalling conditions, and forced incarceration were
the norm. The playwright Nathaniel Lee ,who lived in the mid-late 1600’s,
was in Bedlam for five years, and famously reported that “They called me
mad, and I called them mad, and damn them, they outvoted me”.
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6. The act of acting - Playing Hamlet
Hamlet, as many of Shakespeare’s plays, is full of references to actors and
acting. In many ways, this reflects how the theatre of the day functioned.
While theatre today often reinforces a division between the audience and
the performers – with the audience often sitting in silence in the dark while
the actors “act” and pretend not to see them - in a theatre like The Globe
there was much less of a division. Plays were performed in the daytime,
without lighting or elaborate technology, and without the rules of an
audience having to arrive or leave on time. Actors and audience could
clearly see and respond to each other. Shakespeare’s plays acknowledge the
presence of this audience; they are self-conscious and delight in playing
around with their own theatrical conventions.
Playing Hamlet is a rite of passage for the younger actor and has been
described as “the supreme test for a performer in the earlier half of his
career”.
The experience must be a daunting one, not only because of the weight of
historical tradition on the actor’s shoulders, but also because the part
demands a brutal honesty.
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7. Ideas for practical work
Claudius’s Court - Act 1 Scene 2
A Space Exploration: This is an exploration which shows how much you can say simply by
where you choose to place yourself in space.
Define a large playing space. Have one person enter the space and take up a
position somewhere. Then a second person goes into the space and takes up
a position. The first person moves and then second person responds, and so
on, like a silent conversation. Think about the middle, the edges, the
corners, a low to the ground position, a far-away position, a high-up
position. Without there having been any intentions set, see what stories and
relationships start to emerge.
Build an image of the court based on your discoveries.
Act 3, Scene 1
To be, or not to be
Work in groups to think about the speech. Read the speech out loud
with each person reading a line. Read it again and change readers
when there is a punctuation mark, comma, dash, full stop. Which are
the words or phrases that jump out for you? Create a version of the
speech just based on those words. Discuss the imagery that Hamlet is
using. What is the effect of these images of war and combat? What
does it tell you about Hamlet’s state of mind?
Translate each sentence into modern day language. Try delivering
the speech “to yourself” and then to an audience member. What are
the differences? Read the monologue really focusing on the blank
verse. Blank verse, or iambic pentameter, has five feet or iambs of an
unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable
-de DUM, de DUM, de DUM, de DUM, de DUM
Look for where Shakespeare keeps this rhythm clean and where he
shifts the rhythm. What effect does it have to shift the rhythm?
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Act 3, Scene 1 - Ophelia & Hamlet
Investigate the relationship of Hamlet and Ophelia. Think about what has happened between Hamlet and Ophelia before
this scene. What do we know from the text has happened between
them? Look at Act 1 scene 2, when Laertes and Polonius were giving
advice to her about Hamlet, and remember Act 2 scene 1 when she
reported Hamlet’s “mad” visit to her room.
Make a list of the facts around their relationship and the questions:
for example, FACT: she has at some point received “remembrances”
from Hamlet which she has “longed long to re-deliver”, but
QUESTION: what are they, and when and under what circumstances
did he give them to her?
Improvise a scene before the start of the play, between Hamlet and
Ophelia, perhaps when she received these remembrances.
Improvise the scene when Hamlet visits Ophelia in her chamber and
behaves “madly”.
Read the duologue in pairs. Find out the meaning of any words you
don’t know, and establish what they are each saying to the other with
each sentence.
In this duologue, Ophelia has been ordered by her father to break up
with Hamlet, and she knows her father is watching the exchange.
Does she let on? Does Hamlet know he is being watched? At what
point does he realise? What difference does it make to how he
behaves? Try different versions of the scene, where Hamlet knows
he is being watched, where he does not know he is being watched,
where Ophelia is trying to tell him that he is being watched. See
what differences they make.
What do you think about their relationship, and about how Hamlet
treats Ophelia?
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Act 3, Scene 4
The Closest Scene The closest scene between Hamlet and Gertrude is when Hamlet confronts
his mother about her remarriage to Claudius and reveals that her former
husband did not die accidentally as she believed, but was murdered. It is
also Gertrude’s chance, spurred on by Polonius, to get to the bottom of
Hamlet’s behaviour and so save him from the measured punishment of
Claudius.
The scene opens with the lines:
HAMLET
Now, mother, what’s the matter?
QUEEN
Hamlet, you have insulted your father.
HAMLET
Mother, you have insulted my father.
QUEEN
Come, come, you answer with an idle tongue.
HAMLET
Go, go, you question with a wicked tongue.
What is the effect of the rhythm of these lines? Hamlet takes what his
mother says and turns it back on her. What does it tell you about how he is
feeling, and about the relationship between Hamlet and his mother?
Just a scene before, Hamlet had the opportunity to kill Claudius and get his
revenge. Now, he kills Polonius behind the arras. Why didn’t he kill
Claudius then and why does he kill Polonius now? Think about the
emotional motives of Hamlet. What does this say about his state of mind?
Read the scene. Think about the contrasts that Hamlet sets up between his
father and his uncle. How were these two men different? What is Hamlet’s
argument to his mother? Think about Gertrude’s response – how are
Hamlet’s words affecting her?
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8. Exploring the ghost story
For a Renaissance audience the appearance of the ghost would have been a
strong signal of a malevolent force. For many people the ghost would
represent a devil figure. For a modern audience our relationship with ghosts
is more ambivalent but the ghost is an unusual occurrence. Creating a ghost
on stage that can be taken seriously but is obviously different from the
living characters is a challenge. Without lights this is even more difficult.
Tarell and the actors have chosen one sound which represents the ghost.
Hamlet‘s father also moves very slowly in contrast to the rest of the
characters. In this activity your students will explore how to stage the ghost
using sound and movement, together with the text used when the ghost first
appears. You might want to allow the groups to use some minimal costume
or a representative costume such as a mask or a cloak in this activity, and
you might want to have some percussion instruments available. The
activity breaks into several sections. You can do as much or as little as you
choose with your group.
Soundscaping the Battlements Ask the group to form a circle
Ask them to close their eyes and imagine this scene: It‘s night time.
You are standing on the top of a castle in Denmark. The castle is by
the sea. It‘s a cold night and the wind is blowing. Your job is to
guard the castle.
With their eyes still shut ask them to quietly make one of the sounds
that they heard in their imagination.
Ask the students what they think they can hear.
You might want to move students around in the circle so that groups
making similar sounds are sitting close together.
Once every student is confident with the sound they have chosen you
can conduct the soundscape, building up the layers of sound and
changing the dynamics.
Once the soundscape has run for a few minutes ask them to think
about how they feel in this environment.
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Seeing the Ghost
Now tell them that the guards have seen a ghost the night before and
are on the lookout for his return.
Ask them what they think of when they think of a ghost. What do
ghosts look like? How do they move? What do they smell like? What
do they sound like? Do they appear suddenly or gradually?
Ask every student to stand in a space and to move like a ghost
without making a sound.
Remind students that this ghost signifies that something is wrong so
it is important that it is more scary than funny.
If the students are finding this hard, ask them all to move as slowly
as they can without being still and then build up the speed until they
are walking briskly.
Then ask them to pick the speed they think is most sinister.
Once they have chosen their ghost‘s speed they can think about the
sort of gestures it might make.
Ask the students to work out the way that their ghost might point and
beckon.
Finally ask them to think of one sound that will make it obvious to
someone else that they are a ghost. Try and avoid the stereotypical
ghost noises. You might want to try breathy sounds or groans. Again
remind the group that this ghost has bad news to deliver and their
sound has to represent that.
Once they have ghosts that they are happy with ask the group to
return to their soundscaping circle. Choose five people to stand
outside the circle. The group will create their soundscape again – this
time with their eyes open. The five students outside will enter as a
ghost, do their two gestures and make their sound.
You might want to repeat with different students. Discuss what they
consider to be good qualities of the ghosts that they‘ve seen.
Introducing the Guards
Pick three further students to play Horatio, Marcellus and Barnardo, who
will need to speak the lines on page 6 before the ghost enters. They are
guards. It will work best if the three students are standing across the circle
from one another as it will help them project their voices over the
soundscape.
Ask the group to make suggestions for how these students will talk. Ask
them to think about the atmosphere on the battlements. Remind them that
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the two guards saw the ghost the night before and that they have brought
Horatio to see it now. How would they talk? Would they want to be
overheard? Give the students a chance to practice their lines with these
suggestions.
The rest of the group who aren‘t the ghost or the guards start the
soundscape. They have to be able to hear the speakers, so if they can‘t they
have to make the soundscape quieter. When they are ready the student
playing Barnardo starts speaking.
After the character playing Horatio says “Tush, tush twill not appear” the
ghost can enter the circle and make its noise. Then everyone should freeze.
What‘s Your Reaction?
What would be the reaction of the guards?
You might want to try out some possible reactions.
Explain that the ghost looks like Prince Hamlet‘s dead father. Does
that make any difference? Ask the group to come up with a set of
reactions based on this information.
Is the ghost the scariest bit in this scene? What do they think is
important about the ghost coming twice? What do they think the
ghost wants?
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9 . Exploring the use of everyday objects as props
In this activity your students will explore creating different things out of
ordinary objects, and then look at creating objects from the play using fans.
You will need:
1. A selection of household/classroom items (things with one moving or
flexible part are best). Some suggestions are:
A bunch of keys
A hand whisk
A skipping rope
A dish mop
A plastic cafetiere
2. Paper fans – up to 30. These could be made by the students or bought
from toy shops.
Collect the household objects into a container or PE bag.
Sit the students in a circle and explain that they are going to pick an
object and make it into something else by doing an action with it and
saying ― “This is a...”.
You might want to model the activity – examples include making the
keys into an insect, the dish-mop into a person, etc.
Explain that the important thing is to believe that that is what the
object is.
Pass the objects round the circle and ask each student to try.
Explain the key to success is using the object convincingly as the
thing they say it is.
If the students are finding this activity easy you might want two of
the objects to meet each other.
Once every student has tried, explain that they are going to have an
opportunity to create moments from Hamlet using fans to create any
props.
They will be creating still images of the moment they are given.
Split the group into smaller groups of five and assign one of the
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moments from the play to them.
Explain that each student will be a character in that scene and will
need to use their bodies, facial expressions and their fans to create
the image of their scene.
Give the group approximately 10 minutes to come up with their
moment using the fans in the most creative way possible.
During their creative time you might want to coach them to push
their use of fans further.
Remind them that the fans open and close and can be used together.
Ask the group to show their moments in the order they occur in the
play.
What is the advantage of using only one prop to represent lots of
things?
Does it cause any problems?
What else might they use instead of fans?
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10. Exploring Hamlet‘s relationship with his best friend Horatio
Horatio is Hamlet‘s best friend and confidant. As Hamlet trusts his mother
and Claudius less and less he confides in Horatio more and more. Despite
the fact Hamlet and Horatio are dealing with life and death, the fierce
loyalty and trust between them parallels the strength of feeling that is
demonstrated in the playground. This activity will enable students to
explore friendship using Hamlet and Horatio‘s relationship as an example.
Explain to the students that they are going to explore the relationship
between two best friends.
Ask the group in pairs to make a frozen image of best friends. Pick
out pairs that seem to be showing qualities of friendship – trust, love,
etc.
Ask the students to make a second image showing the most
important quality a best friend should have.
Split the group in half. Ask one half to hold their images and others
to look and discuss and then swap over.
Repeat for the other side.
Ask the group to think about why having a best friend with those
qualities is important.
Ask them to think of one situation when they have really relied on
their best friend.
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Explain that for the rest of the session they are going to think about a pair of best friends. One of them is having a really tough time and the other one is trying to help him out.
As a whole group they are going to look at the letter Hamlet sends to
Horatio - a letter about the plot to kill him in England.
Look at the scenario statement at the top. Ask the students to think
about what they‘d need to enact what happens in this letter.
- Where are they?
- What characters are in it?
- Are there any props?
They are going to use the text of the letter to help them answer the
questions.
Read the speech through – you might want to display it on a
whiteboard and add notes as you are going along. Explain that one of
the first things actors do when they are looking at a scene is to find
actions for their characters.
Underline any actions they can see in the letter.
Pick three volunteers to be Hamlet, Rosencratz and Guildenstern.
Read the first three lines - what are each of them doing? Ask the
volunteers to act this out.
What does Hamlet find? Read the next three lines. Ask the volunteer
playing Hamlet to complete the actions in these lines.
What does the letter say? Read the final three lines. How would
Hamlet react?
Ask the students why Hamlet chooses to write to Horatio; what does
this show Hamlet feels about him? What do they think Horatio‘s
response will be?
Explain that the students are going to explore what qualities of
friendship Hamlet and Horatio show to each other during the course
of the play. These can also be negative qualities if they feel that one
or the other is not acting in the right way towards their friend.
In groups of four they will be given a scenario from the play and
what their character actually says. They can follow a similar process
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to the letter, looking for an action for every line. Two people will be
Hamlet and Horatio. The other two will vocalise the qualities they
are showing during the scene by standing behind one of the
characters and repeating the quality as they speak.
Play the scenarios with the qualities back to the group.
What are the most important qualities in Hamlet and Horatio‘s
friendship?
Why is it sometimes easier to talk to a best friend than a parent?
What do you think Hamlet would have done without Horatio?
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11. BIOGRAPHY AND FURTHER READING
Information on Shakespeare, Hamlet and Revenge Tragedy
http://www.britaininprint.net/shakespeare/study_tools/
http://shakespeare.about.com/od/hamlet/a/hamlet_themes.htm
http://www.teachit.co.uk/armoore/shakespeare/hamlet.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hamlet
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Shakespeare
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revenge_play
Some useful Websites:
See: www.rsc.org.uk- for information on Shakespeare and his theatre, and
for classroom resources on Hamlet from the Royal Shakespeare Company
See: www.shakespearesglobe.com
- for information on the Globe theatre reconstruction
Some interesting video resources:
www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-11380973
- actor Sam west talks about different ways of interpreting the ‘To be or not
to be’ soliloquy
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mOjpvNPr3JU
- the closet scene from director Gregory Doran’s RSC production with
David Tennant Some interesting audio resources:-
www.bbc.co.uk/archive.hamlet/8529.shtml- actors Kenneth Branagh and
Michael Pennington talk about playing Hamlet
www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00l16vp
12. THEATRE GLOSSARY
http://www.shakespearesglobe.com/discovery-space/adopt-an-actor/glossary