Backwards and Forwards Worksheet

1. Theatricality is the act of eliciting strong audience response. Theatricality occurs during the final scene of Hamlet when all of the character die. Theatrical language is also used during the ghost’s speech in act 1 scene 5 and also when Hamlet talks to his mother.

2. A “Forward: is anything that grabs the audience’s interest in things that are going to occur during the play.

3. In the play, Hamlet’s super objective is to avenge his father’s death

4. Three ways Hamlet tries to achieve his overall objective is by putting on a play with players in order to provoke his uncle to feel guilty for murdering Hamlet’s father, confronting his mother about marrying Claudius after his father died, and isolating Ophelia’s and his other friends, Guildenstern and Rosencrantz in order to prevent them from finding out Hamlet’s plan to kill his uncle.

5. Some obstacles that Hamlet faces while pursuing his objective are the royal court is corrupt, his struggle with his inner self, his realization that men can be evil, his realization that his father was murdered, and the struggle of wanting to get revenge for his father’s murder.

6. Stasis is motionlessness. It is a condition of balance between different forces, a standing still, a state where all forces balance each other out and therefore results in no movement.

7. Intrusion is a pushing, thrusting, or forcing in.

8. The intrusion in the play is when Hamlet meets his father’s ghost and finds out that he was murdered by Claudius.

9.

A) The relationship between Hamlet and Ophelia is tormented because they both had feelings for each other, but due to Hamlet being lost and upset over his father’s death, he believes that Ophelia is using him to gain information which causes the relationship to fall apart. Hamlet acts crazy which causes her to commit suicide when Hamlet kills her father which causes him to feel regret over this and also pity because he lost another person in his life

B) Hamlet hates Claudius and has a very strained relationship with him because Claudius murdered Hamlet’s father. Claudius also does not really like Hamlet because he feels like Hamlet is going to discover that he killed his father.

C) Hamlet’s relationship with his mother has two sides. Hamlet really loves and cares about his mother but at the same time he resents her because she married her father’s brother only a few days after her husband’s death. Hamlet feels betrayed over this which causes him to call her out and yell at her. His mother loves Hamlet so much and wants to understand why he had been acting so strange since his father’s death. However, when Hamlet confronts his mother in her bedroom she begins to feel afraid of Hamlet and realizes how crazy