Competition No 3689
Set by Gavin Ross Set on 9 July
A-level students expecting questions on Hamlet were confronted with questions on King Lear. We asked for specimen questions and plausible answers from students placed in a similar situation.
Report by Ms de Meaner
You tried two routes: 1) the students knew they had read the wrong text and took appropriate action, and 2) the students were oblivious to the misunderstanding. Either worked. £20 to the winners. The vouchers go to Watson Weeks.
King Lear/Hamlet
"By suffering, learn." Discuss with reference to King Lear.
It is impossible to discuss King Lear without a searching examination of Hamlet. Intertextuality, like "the readiness", is all. And, as the American critic Otis J Poindexter reminds us, no tragic hero is an island. "Ask not for whom nemesis calls: it calls it for all tragically flawed protagonists." Hamlet is, in fact, Shakespeare's Everyman, a reflection both of its creator and its readers. Understand Hamlet and we understand Lear. King Lear without the Prince is unthinkable. Hamlet is, in a sense, the son Lear never had. Lear is the king Hamlet might have become, having "proved most royally". Both face the eternal question of whether life is worth living. Hamlet said it; Lear, one feels, should have said it - and both of them in German, whether fresh from Wittenberg or in whatever Teutonic tribal society Lear rules over: "Sein, oder nicht sein: das ist die Frage." The whirligig of time links them, too. The name "Lear" has become synonymous with a type of comic verse; "Hamlet" has become a cheap cigar, promising happiness: an irony both men would have found poignant in their suffering. As to learning . . .
Watson Weeks
Hamlet/King Lear
What is the cause of the madness in Hamlet?
Shakespeare shows us that Lear has lived all his life in large Palaces, surrounded by "shadowy forests", and full of servants and knights who do his bidding. However, when cast out by his daughters, he is forced to take refuge in the wilderness, where everyone lived in Hamlets, and were poor, and "ate dung for sallets", and had no Pomp. In Hamlets, starvation and whipping were common, and Lear admits he has "ta'en too little care of this". When he meets Mad Tom, who has been chased from Hamlet to Hamlet, he meets the archetypal poor person, forced to exist in harsh and miserable minor villages like Bedlam. When Lear imitates the common man, he goes round the proverbial Hamlet twist. Shakespeare shows us that large and rich communities are corrupt, but horribly sane. In any Hamlet, miserable conditions cause brain fever, which is what Shakespeare condemns. It is reasonable to speculate that the Fool was brought up in a Hamlet, because he asks crazy questions, and speaks in riddles, associated with psychiatric cases. "Hamlet" is also a pun on "little pig", whereas large boars like Cornwall are the real swine.
Will Bellenger
Hamlet/A Midsummer Night's Dream
"Denmark's a prison." How does this image affect our reading of the play?
Although this play is not set in Denmark, nor do any of the characters refer directly to Denmark, many refer to places beyond Athens, Greece, to give the play a universal reference. Puck claims "I'll put a girdle round about the earth/In forty minutes". That would include Denmark, with the girdle suggesting the idea of something being fastened, like in a prison. This brings all countries within the action of this play. The character of Fairy says "I do wander everywhere", and that would include eg, Denmark, so the Fairy does have to be specific. Both Hippolyta and Theseus refer to their travels overseas, in Crete, and it is possible they would have talked of other countries had not Shakespeare made Egeus interrupt them at this point to indicate the lovers. Prisons are walled, and the Wall (played by Snout) diving Pyramus and Thisbe plays a major part in the play presented by Quince's players. So we can say that Denmark's status as a prison is important to this play, and is acknowledged throughout its action.
D A Prince
King Lear/Hamlet
Describe the relationship between the King and his favourite daughter.
Nowhere in the play does Shakespeare tell us in so many words that Ophelia was the daughter of the murdered King. But to the perceptive student, the conclusion is obvious. How else to explain the young Hamlet's tortured relationship with his beloved but inaccessible sister, and his horror of, as he puts it, being a "breeder of sinners" with her? His snide question to Polonius, "Have you a daughter?", and the old man's equivocal reply, reinforce the point. Polonius is merely the guardian of his late master's child, and he is aware that the Prince's question is satirical.
The daughter? Yes. But the favourite child? For the answer to this we have to look to the jealous venom of Hamlet's attack on his sibling's virtue in Act III. "Go your ways to a nunnery," he enjoins her, and adds the otherwise inexplicable question: "Where's your father?" Only a brother who resents a close and, he suspects, incestuous relationship between deceased father and all-too-alluring sister could have flung this cruel question at her. And finally, it is obvious of whom Ophelia is singing in her last tragic scene: "He is dead and gone, Lady,/ He is dead and gone . . . " This is surely the lament of a favourite daughter for her beloved father.
Frank Dunnill
No 3692 Set by Margaret Rogers
Neither new Labour nor the new century is that new any more. We want a list of ten cool new things, plus ten that's naff. Wot's in, wot's out. Max 200 words to be in by 16 August (to appear in the issue dated 27 August).
