ASSIGNMENT 1

Q1.
A.) THEMES OF PLAY HAMLET :

● The Impossibility of Certainty : What separates Hamlet from other revenge plays (and
maybe from every play written before it) is that the action we expect to see,
particularly from Hamlet himself, is continually postponed while Hamlet tries to obtain
more certain knowledge about what he is doing. Many people have seen Hamlet as a
play about indecisiveness, and thus about Hamlet’s failure to act appropriately. It
might be more interesting to consider that the play shows us how many uncertainties
our lives are built upon, and how many unknown quantities are taken for granted
when people act or when they evaluate one another’s actions.

● The Complexity of Action : Directly related to the theme of certainty is the theme of
action.In Hamlet, the question of how to act is affected not only by rational
considerations, such as the need for certainty, but also by emotional, ethical, and
psychological factors. Hamlet himself appears to distrust the idea that it’s even
possible to act in a controlled, purposeful way. When he does act, he prefers to do it
blindly, recklessly, and violently. The other characters obviously think much less
about “action” in the abstract than Hamlet does, and are therefore less troubled about
the possibility of acting effectively. They simply act as they feel is appropriate. But in
some sense they prove that Hamlet is right, because all of their actions miscarry.
Claudius possesses himself of queen and crown through bold action, but his
conscience torments him, and he is beset by threats to his authority (and, of course,
he dies). Laertes resolves that nothing will distract him from acting out his revenge,
but he is easily influenced and manipulated into serving Claudius’s ends, and his
poisoned rapier is turned back upon himself.

● The Mystery of Death : In the aftermath of his father’s murder, Hamlet is obsessed
with the idea of death, and over the course of the play he considers death from a
great many perspectives. He ponders both the spiritual aftermath of death, embodied
in the ghost, and the physical remainders of the dead, such as by Yorick’s skull and
 the decaying corpses in the cemetery. Throughout, the idea of death is closely tied to
the themes of spirituality, truth, and uncertainty in that death may bring the answers
to Hamlet’s deepest questions, ending once and for all the problem of trying to
determine truth in an ambiguous world. And, since death is both the cause and the
consequence of revenge, it is intimately tied to the theme of revenge and
justice—Claudius’s murder of King Hamlet initiates Hamlet’s quest for revenge, and
Claudius’s death is the end of that quest. The question of his own death plagues
Hamlet as well, as he repeatedly contemplates whether or not suicide is a morally
legitimate action in an unbearably painful world. Hamlet’s grief and misery is such
that he frequently longs for death to end his suffering, but he fears that if he commits
suicide, he will be consigned to eternal suffering in hell because of the Christian
religion’s prohibition of suicide. In his famous “To be or not to be” soliloquy, Hamlet
philosophically concludes that no one would choose to endure the pain of life if he or
she were not afraid of what will come after death, and that it is this fear which causes
complex moral considerations to interfere with the capacity for action.

● The Nation as a Diseased Body : Everything is connected in Hamlet, including the

welfare of the royal family and the health of the state as a whole. The play’s early
scenes explore the sense of anxiety and dread that surrounds the transfer of power
from one ruler to the next. Throughout the play, characters draw explicit connections
between the moral legitimacy of a ruler and the health of the nation. Denmark is
frequently described as a physical body made ill by the moral corruption of Claudius
and Gertrude, and many observers interpret the presence of the ghost as a
supernatural omen indicating that “something is rotten in the state of Denmark” . The
dead King Hamlet is portrayed as a strong, forthright ruler under whose guard the
state was in good health, while Claudius, a wicked politician, has corrupted and
compromised Denmark to satisfy his own appetites. At the end of the play, the rise to
power of the upright Fortinbras suggests that Denmark will be strengthened once
again.

● Madness : One of the central questions of Hamlet is whether the main character has
lost his mind or is only pretending to be mad. Hamlet’s erratic behavior and
nonsensical speech can be interpreted as a ruse to get the other characters to
believe he’s gone mad. On the other hand, his behavior may be a logical response to
the “mad” situation he finds himself in – his father has been murdered by his uncle,
who is now his stepfather. Initially, Hamlet himself seems to believe he’s sane – he
describes his plans to “put an antic disposition on” and tells Rosencrantz and
Guildenstern he is only mad when the wind blows “north-north-west” – in other
words, his madness is something he can turn on and off at will. By the end of the
play, however, Hamlet seems to doubt his own sanity. Referring to himself in the third
person, he says “And when he’s not himself does harm Laertes,” suggesting Hamlet
has become estranged from his former, sane self. Referring to his murder of
Polonius, he says, “Who does it then? His madness.” At the same time, Hamlet’s
excuse of madness absolves him of murder, so it can also be read as the workings of
a sane and cunning mind.

● Doubt : In Hamlet, the main character’s doubt creates a world where very little is
known for sure. Hamlet thinks, but isn’t entirely sure, that his uncle killed his father.
 He believes he sees his father’s Ghost, but he isn’t sure he should believe in the
Ghost or listen to what the Ghost tells him: “I’ll have grounds / More relative than
this.” In his “to be or not to be” soliloquy, Hamlet suspects he should probably just kill
himself, but doubt about what lies beyond the grave prevents him from acting.
Hamlet is so wracked with doubt, he even works to infect other characters with his
lack of certainty, as when he tells Ophelia “you should not have believed me” when
he told her he loved her. As a result, the audience doubts Hamlet’s reliability as a
protagonist. We are left with many doubts about the action – whether Gertrude was
having an affair with Claudius before he killed Hamlet’s father; whether Hamlet is
sane or mad; what Hamlet’s true feelings are for Ophelia.

C.) CHARACTER OF FAUSTUS : Faustus is the protagonist and tragic hero of Marlowe’s
play. He is a contradictory character, capable of tremendous eloquence and possessing
awesome ambition, yet prone to a strange, almost willful blindness and a willingness to
waste powers that he has gained at great cost. When we first meet Faustus, he is just
preparing to embark on his career as a magician, and while we already anticipate that things
will turn out badly (the Chorus’s introduction, if nothing else, prepares us), there is
nonetheless a grandeur to Faustus as he contemplates all the marvels that his magical
powers will produce. He imagines piling up wealth from the four corners of the globe,
reshaping the map of Europe (both politically and physically), and gaining access to every
scrap of knowledge about the universe. He is an arrogant, self-aggrandizing man, but his
ambitions are so grand that we cannot help being impressed, and we even feel sympathetic
toward him. He represents the spirit of the Renaissance, with its rejection of the medieval,
God-centered universe, and its embrace of human possibility. Faustus, at least early on in
his acquisition of magic, is the personification of possibility.
But Faustus also possesses an obtuseness that becomes apparent during his bargaining
sessions with Mephastophilis. Having decided that a pact with the devil is the only way to
fulfill his ambitions, Faustus then blinds himself happily to what such a pact actually means.
Sometimes he tells himself that hell is not so bad and that one needs only “fortitude”; at
other times, even while conversing with Mephastophilis, he remarks to the disbelieving
demon that he does not actually believe hell exists. Meanwhile, despite his lack of concern
about the prospect of eternal damnation, -Faustus is also beset with doubts from the
beginning, setting a pattern for the play in which he repeatedly approaches repentance only
to pull back at the last moment. Why he fails to repent is unclear: -sometimes it seems a
matter of pride and continuing ambition, sometimes a conviction that God will not hear his
plea. Other times, it seems that Mephastophilis simply bullies him away from repenting.

Q2.
A.) HAMARTIA : The term hamartia derives from the Greek which means "to miss the mark"
or "to err". It is most often associated with Greek tragedy, although it is also used in Christian
theology. The term is often said to depict the flaws or defects of a character and portraying
these as the reason of a potential downfall. However, other critics point to the term's
derivation and say that it refers only to a tragic but random accident or mistake, with
devastating consequences but with no judgment implied as to the character.
Hamartia as it pertains to dramatic literaturewas first used by Aristotle in his Poetics. In
tragedy, hamartia is commonly understood to refer to the protagonist's error that leads to a
chain of actions which culminate in a reversal of events from felicity to disaster.
What qualifies as the error or flaw varies, and can include an error resulting from ignorance,
an error of judgment, an inherent flaw in the character, or a wrongdoing. The spectrum of
meanings has invited debate among critics and scholars and different interpretations among
dramatists.

B.) MEPHASTOPHILIS : Mephistophilis is the second most important dramatic personage in

the drama. He appears in most of the scenes with Faustus. When he is first seen by
Faustus, he is horrendously ugly. Faustus immediately sends him away and has him
reappear in the form of a Franciscan friar. The mere physical appearance of Mephistophilis
suggests the ugliness of hell itself. Throughout the play, Faustus seems to have forgotten
how ugly the devils are in their natural shape. Only at the very end of the drama, when devils
come to carry Faustus off to his eternal damnation, does he once again understand the
terrible significance of their ugly physical appearance. As Faustus exclaims when he sees
the devils at the end of the drama, "Adders and serpents, let me breathe awhile! / Ugly hell,
gape not."

C.) COMIC ELEMENTS IN HAMLET :"the key comic element of the play is madness."
Shakespeare uses comedic elements to serve his thematic purpose, Hamlet raises many
philosophical questions regarding life and death, and raises interesting questions about
afterlife. This is particularly interesting as during Shakespeare's 16th century England
religion was still prominent, many of Hamlet's posing questions questions regarding afterlife
and the purpose of life were seen as controversial and 'taboo' making the play shocking for
audiences at the time. Shakespeare uses the character Polonius to diffuse Hamlet's tense
soliloquies regarding suicide, and makes Polonius out to be a bumbling fool. An example of
this can be seen in the scene with Polonius and Hamlet discussing Ophelia, the term
"fishmonger" is used to describe Polonius, this suggests a lower class profession insulting
Polonius despite him being unaware of this offence. The term may also be considered as a
sort of euphemism, reflecting Polonius selling off Ophelia. This creates a sharp contrast and
increases the severity of Hamlet's dark themes.

D.) BEN JOHNSON : Ben Jonson, (born June 11, 1572, London, Eng.—died Aug. 6, 1637,
London), British playwright, poet, and critic. After learning stagecraft as a strolling player, he
wrote plays for Philip Henslowe’s theatres. In 1598 his comedy Every Man in His Humour
established his reputation. He wrote several masques for the court of James I and created
the “antimasque” to precede the masque proper. His classic plays Volpone (1605–06), The
Alchemist (1610), and Bartholomew Fair (1614) use satire to expose the follies and vices of
his age, attacking greed, charlatanism, and religious hypocrisy as well as mocking the fools
who fall victim to them. Regarded as the era’s leading dramatist after William Shakespeare,
Jonson influenced later playwrights, notably in the dramatic characterization of Restoration
comedies (see Restoration literature). He was also a lyric poet whose works include two
famous elegies for his son and daughter.
E.) FORTINBRAS : Fortinbras, frequently referred to in the play, Hamlet, as “young”
Fortinbras, is one of Shakespeare’s most minor characters. He has no dramatic relevance
and hardly appears in the play at all. However, he is an important idea in the play and has a
major function in the meaning of it.
He is a man of action and a soldier which, in the first place, is the opposite of Hamlet in
those respects. He is the nephew of “old” Fortinbras, the king of Norway. Like Hamlet, he
has recently lost his father in a conflict between Norway and Denmark, in which his father
was killed by Hamlet’s father, “old’ Hamlet. A small piece of land was lost to the Danes and
the young prince has gathered a large following and marched on Denmark to recover the
land and get revenge for his father’s death. This expedition is a backdrop to the action of the
play.

ASSIGNMENT 2

Q1.
B.) JUSTICE IN THE PLAY THE DUCHESS OF MALFI : In The Duchess of Malfi, justice
fails completely as a force for good; instead, it is corrupted into a tool for Ferdinand and the
Cardinal. The rules that govern their world are perverse and immoral, so the justice they
seek to enact inherently becomes perverse and immoral itself. Delioprepares the audience
for this in the first act, when he says of Ferdinand, then the law to him is like a foul black
cobweb to a spider : he makes it his dwelling, and a prison to entangle those shall feed him.
The law, which should uphold peace and fairness, is instead a “foul” trap that Ferdinand
uses to benefit himself.
Once the Duchess is dead and Ferdinand is overcome with regret, he himself points out how
he has misused justice, when he asks, “Did any ceremonial form of law/Doom her to
not-being?”. Bosola, to assuage his own guilt, has imagined the Duchess's murder as an
officially sanctioned act. He describes himself as “the common bellman/That usually is sent
to condemned persons” , as if she had actually been condemned by a judge or jury. When
Ferdinand disabuses this notion by arguing he (Ferdinand) holds no authority with which to
condemn the Duchess to death, Bosola says, “The office of justice is perverted quite/When
one thief hangs another” . Only now, when it corrupted justice is working directly against him,
does he realize how perverted their system truly is.
Justice is important in the play because of how much it is lacking. Both good and bad
characters in the play come to tragic ends.

C.) SUMMARY OF THE CHANGELING : A wealthy young Spaniard named Alsemero is

visiting Alicante, a city in the Spanish province of Valencia. Near the end of his stay,
Alsemero spots the beautiful noblewoman Beatrice Joanna and instantly falls in love with
her. Desperate to spend more time with Beatrice, Alsemero cancels his planned trading
voyage, surprising his friend Jasperino.
Alsemero courts Beatrice, though she urges caution, warning him that “eyes are rash
sometimes, and tell us wonders of common things.” Beatrice also tells Alsemero some bad
news: just five days ago, her father Vermanderoarranged for her to marry Alonzo de
Piracquo, a prominent nobleman. Beatrice does not want to marry Alonzo, so she convinces
Alsemero to extend his stay in the hopes that she can avoid her wedding. As Beatrice
schemes, Jasperino crudely flirts with Diaphanta, Beatrice’s lady-in-waiting.
Vermandero’s most trusted servant DeFloresarrives, and Beatrice is cruel to him; she
explains to Alsemero that she instinctively loathes DeFlores for his ugly appearance and
submissive mannerisms. While Vermandero invites Alsemero back to his palace in a show of
hospitality, DeFlores reveals in an aside that he is in love with Beatrice, despite her mockery.
Across town at the local madhouse, doctor Alibius has a problem: he is worried someone is
going to seduce his much-younger wife Isabella. Alibius enlists his assistant Lollio to lock
Isabella away, ensuring that she does not interact with any of the madhouse’s visitors. Lollio
and Alibius comically welcome a new patient named Antonio, a fool who comes from noble
birth.
Back at the castle, Alonzo de Piracquo has arrived for the wedding, with his brother Tomazo
in tow. Though Alonzo is excited about his new bride, Tomazo notices that Beatrice seems
deeply unenthused about her husband-to-be. Meanwhile, DeFlores is growing more and
more determined to have sex with Beatrice one way or another.
Privately, Beatrice decides she will manipulate DeFlores into killing Alonzo. The next time
Beatrice sees DeFlores, she flirts with him, and he vows to do anything she might ask. When
Beatrice explains that she wants DeFlores to murder Alonzo so that she can be with
Alsemero, DeFlores instantly agrees. DeFlores then brings Alonzo on a tour of the castle,
stabbing him to death with a rapier. When DeFlores notices a diamond ring on Alonzo’s
finger, he cuts the finger off, hoping to give the ring to Beatrice.
Meanwhile, Isabella is increasingly annoyed about being locked in the madhouse. A new
patient named Franciscus arrives, displaying violent tendencies. When Lollio goes off to deal
with Franciscus, Antonio approaches Isabella and reveals that he is not actually a fool—he
has merely been pretending to be one to get access to Isabella. From afar, Lollio sees
Antonio declare his love. Lollio re-enters and sends Antonio away—and then tries to force
himself on Isabella, just as Antonio did moments before.
In the nick of time, Alibius returns from a visit to Vermandero’s castle. He informs Lollio that
Vermandero wants the fools and madmen to dance at Beatrice’s upcoming wedding. Isabella
finds this distasteful, as she does not think the patients should be treated as a “commodity.”
DeFlores informs Beatrice that he has killed Alonzo, presenting her with the diamond ring
and severed finger. Beatrice tells DeFlores to keep the ring as part of his payment, alongside
3,000 gold florins. But though DeFlores needs the cash, he is horrified that Beatrice sees
him as someone who would kill simply for money. Instead, the only thing DeFlores wants is
to be the person Beatrice loses her virginity to. At first, Beatrice refuses. But when DeFlores
reminds her just how much their murderous conspiracy has linked them forever, Beatrice
relents, and the two go off to have sex.
A dumb show (montage) shows Vermandero learning of Alonzo’s disappearance. Now that
Alonzo is gone, Vermandero allows Beatrice and Alsemero to marry.
But Beatrice’s struggles are not over yet, as she discovers that Alsemero has prepared a
potion (labeled ‘M’ for maid) to determine whether she is actually a virgin. Since Beatrice did
have sex with DeFlores, she knows she will not be a virgin on her wedding night. So
Beatrice forms a plan: she will send Diaphanta, disguised as herself, to have sex with
Alsemero. To make sure that Diaphanta is actually a virgin, Beatrice tests her with the
potion, and Diaphanta has the predicted reaction for a “maid”: she gapes, sneezes, laughs,
and then becomes sad. Beatrice vows to pay Diaphanta handsomely for this trick.
Meanwhile, Tomazo is still desperate to know who killed his brother; he suspects Alsemero,
while Vermandero believes that Antonio and Franciscus—who have recently gone missing
from the palace—are at fault. Worse still, Jasperino reveals to Alsemero that he overheard
Beatrice and DeFlores flirting. Alsemero is overcome with jealousy, so he tests Beatrice with
the “M” potion. Fortunately, Beatrice is able to mimic Diaphanta’s reaction from earlier that
day, convincing Alsemero of her innocence.
Back at the madhouse, Franciscus, too, comes on to Isabella; like Antonio, he reveals that
he has only been pretending to be mad so as to get closer to her. Isabella laments her fate
and decides to herself dress up as a madwoman to teach Antonio a lesson. Antonio rejects
Isabella when she is in disguise, prompting her to assert that Antonio never really loved her
at all. Not wanting the fun to end, Lollio schemes to pit Franciscus and Antonio against each
other.
It’s now the middle of the night, and Beatrice is pacing the floors of the castle, waiting for
Diaphanta to finish her tryst with Alsemero. When DeFlores sees how anxious Beatrice is,
he offers to start a fire in the castle, causing chaos and forcing Diaphanta and Alsemero to
separate. Beatrice now finds herself truly attracted to DeFlores. After the fire breaks out,
DeFlores creeps off and shoots Diaphanta, thereby eliminating the source of Beatrice’s
newfound jealousy.
While Isabella, Vermandero, and Alibius work to bring Antonio and Franciscus to justice,
Alsemero continues to suspect Beatrice of infidelity. Eventually, she confesses to murder and
adultery, implicating DeFlores in her crimes. Alsemero locks the two conspirators away, and
DeFlores make one final pass at Beatrice. The rest of the characters arrive on the scene,
and Alsemero reveals Beatrice and DeFlores’s guilt to all. DeFlores kills himself, feeling that
he has fulfilled his life’s purpose by having sex with Beatrice; Beatrice follows suit, not
wanting to live to see her punishment.
Isabella, shocked at the scandal around her, begs Alibius for more patience and trust.
Vermandero blames himself for not having seen such cruelty and manipulation in either his
daughter or DeFlores, but Alsemero assures him that some things are impossible to predict.
In an epilogue, Alsemero testifies to the importance of family and forgiveness.

Q2.
A.) JOHN WEBSTER : John Webster (c. 1578 – c. 1632) was an English Jacobean
dramatist best known for his tragedies The White Devil and The Duchess of Malfi, which are
often seen as masterpieces of the early 17th-century English stage.His life and career
overlapped with Shakespeare's. By 1602, Webster was working with teams of playwrights on
history plays, most of which were never printed. They included a tragedy, Caesar's Fall, and
a collaboration with Dekker, Christmas Comes but Once a Year(1602).With Dekker he also
wrote Sir Thomas Wyatt, which was printed in 1607 and had probably been first performed in
1602. He worked with Dekker again on two city comedies, Westward Ho in 1604 and
Northward Ho in 1605. Despite his ability to write comedy, Webster is best known for two
brooding English tragedies based on Italian sources. The White Devil, a retelling of the
intrigues involving Vittoria Accoramboni, an Italian woman assassinated at the age of 28,
was a failure when staged at the Red Bull Theatrein 1612 (published the same year) being
too unusual and intellectual for its audience. The Duchess of Malfi, first performed by the
King's Men about 1614 and published nine years later, was more successful. He also wrote
a play called Guise, based on French history, of which little else is known, as no text has
survived.

B.) TRAGIC COMEDY : Tragicomedy is a literary genre that blends aspects of both tragic
and comic forms. Most often seen in dramatic literature, the term can describe either a tragic
play which contains enough comic elements to lighten the overall mood or a serious play
with a happy ending.Tragicomedy, as its name implies, invokes the intended response of
both the tragedy and the comedy in the audience, the former being a genre based on human
suffering that invokes an accompanying catharsis and the latter being a genre intended to be
humorous or amusing by inducing laughter.

C.) THEME OF SIN IN THE CHANGELING : In the climax of The Changeling, the hero
Alsemero remarks that nearly everyone around him has been transformed by their desires:
“here’s beauty changed to ugly whoredom,” he laments, “here servant obedience to a master
sin.” These most extreme examples refer to the beautiful Beatrice and her servant DeFlores,
who, motivated by various sexual longings, have conspired together to commit murder. But
even in the play’s more comedic subplot, courtiers Antonio and Franciscus disguise
themselves as fools and madmen to gain access to Isabella, the madhouse owner’s wife.
And though at first Antonio and Franciscus claim that they are only pretending, Isabella sees
that these two men—not to mention her husband Alibius and his assistant Lollio—are
actually driven insane by their desire for her; as she wonders in a moment of frustration,
“does love turn fool, run mad, and all at once?”
At every turn, the play demonstrates how characters’ strong sexual feelings can cloud their
judgment and motivate their bad behavior. But more than that, the aptly titled The
Changeling suggests that passion and desire can literally transform people, erasing their
identities and “changing” them into something less stable and more dangerous. By the end
of the play’s five acts, only characters who can distance themselves from their emotions (like
Alsemero and Isabella) are able to stay true to the identities they have established at the
beginning of the play. And even then, passion can be deforming; when Alsemero erupts in a
moment of jealousy, he has to ask his friend Jasperino, “prithee do not weigh my by
passions.” In other words, The Changeling suggest that one’s passions are almost separate
from oneself—and that strong emotions, left unchecked, can threaten both individual sanity
and stable personhood.

D.) REVENGE TRAGEDY : The revenge tragedy, or revenge play, is a dramatic genre in
which the protagonist seeks revenge for an imagined or actual injury. The term revenge
tragedy was first introduced in 1900 by A. H. Thorndike to label a class of plays written in the
late Elizabethan and early Jacobean eras (circa 1580s to 1620s).
Revenge tragedy (sometimes referred to as revenge drama, revenge play, or tragedy of
blood) is a theatrical genre, in which the principal theme is revenge and revenge's fatal
consequences. Formally established by American educator Ashley H. Thorndike in his 1902
article "The Relations of Hamlet to Contemporary Revenge Plays," a revenge tragedy
documents the progress of the protagonist's revenge plot and often leads to the demise of
both the murderers and the avenger himself.
The genre first appeared in early modern Britain with the publication of Thomas Kyd's The
Spanish Tragedy during the latter half of the 16th century. Earlier works, such as Jasper
Heywood's translations of Seneca(1560s) and Thomas Norton and Thomas Sackville's play
Gorbuduc (1561), are also considered revenge tragedies. Other well-known revenge
tragedies include William Shakespeare's Hamlet (c.1599-1602) and Titus Andronicus
(c.1588-1593), and The Revenger's Tragedy (c.1606) formerly believed to be by Cyril
Tourneur, now ascribed to Thomas Middleton.

E.) COMEDY OF HUMOURS : The comedy of humours is a genre of dramatic comedy that
focuses on a character or range of characters, each of whom exhibits two or more overriding
traits or 'humours' that dominates their personality, desires and conduct. This comic
technique may be found in Aristophanes, but the English playwrights Ben Jonson and
George Chapman popularised the genre in the closing years of the sixteenth century. In the
later half of the seventeenth century, it was combined with the comedy of mannersin
Restoration comedy.
The comedy of humours owes something to earlier vernacular comedy but more to a desire
to imitate the classical comedy of Plautus and Terence and to combat the vogue of romantic
comedy, as developed by William Shakespeare. The satiric purpose of the comedy of
humours and its realistic method led to more serious character studies with Jonson’s 1610
play The Alchemist. The humours each had been associated with physical and
mentalcharacteristics; the result was a system that was quite subtle in its capacity for
describing types of personality.