1. “To be or not to be….” “To thine own self be true….”

2. Tragedy  Greek Tragedy: Noble character meets destruction because of fate. Defined by Aristotle as “the imitation of an action that is serious and also, as having magnitude, complete in itself.”  Shakespearean Tragedy: Noble character meets destruction because of a certain character trait (tragic flaw)

3. Tragic Flaw  A failing in the hero’s character that brings about his downfall (often a positive characteristic turned against the hero). In Julius Caesar it was Brutus’s sense of honor. In Romeo and Juliet their flaw was their impulsive love. In Lord of the Flies, it’s Ralph’s desire for civilization. (Even though he doesn’t die.)

4. Tragic Hero  Usually a figure of importance within society  Suffers a change in fortune from happiness to misery  Audience is moved both to pity because we recognize his misfortune is greater than he deserves and to fear generated by our recognition of similar flaws in our own fallible selves.

5. Fun Pun

6. Elizabethan Age  (Hint: Elizabeth I was queen. )  Also considered The Renaissance (the “rebirth” of interest in all areas of knowledge)  Hygiene? What’s that?   The birth of modern science  Believed Earth was the center of the universe

7. Within that well-ordered universe…  Religious rules  Divine Right of Kings God given right to be king King was God’s representative on Earth  Elizabethan’s believed in a perfect order to their universe (i.e. God assigned everything and everyone a place.)

8. Elizabethan Hierarchy  God  Angels  Humans* King  Nobility  Knights  Merchant  Peasant  Serfs  Beasts, Fowl, Fish, and Insects

9. “The play’s the thing…”  Blank verse  Rhyming couplets  Stage directions  Prose  Aside  Foil  Soliloquy  Monologue  Motif*

10. Motifs in Hamlet  Revenge  Mortality  Appearance and Reality  Corruption  Madness  Doubt/Indecisiveness

11. Speaking of Shakespeare…