Quiz for Hamlet: Language and Writing (HLW), chapter 1

• In what three very different forms has the play survived?
• What is "profoundly paradoxical" about the status of Hamlet as a "literary monument"?
• Why do the Arden editors print their edition of Hamlet the way they do? Which version of Hamlet do they assume is the "real" one?
• Give an example of a textual difference between Q1 and Q2 that affects our interpretation of Hamlet.
• How was the writing surface of legal documents "merely testaments to death and decay"?
• When Polonius refers to the "law of writ," what restrictions does he refer to?
• In what sense is Hamlet "scurrility unworthy of chaste ears"?
• What English and Italian influences formed "a kind of template for English revenge tragedy"?
• What, for Bacon, represented "the most tolerable sort of Revenge"?
• What types of modern films ask "who, if anyone, has the right to revenge"?
• Where does the bible stand on revenge? Explain.
• How did Elizabethan law stand on the issue of revenge?
• How is Hamlet a victim of "providentialism"?
• Explain how Laertes is a foil (a jeweler's term for a setting that sets off a stone's luster) for Hamlet's deliberations about revenge.
• Explain the significance of Pyrrhus' Pause as explained by the author.
• Why is it important that Hamlet's brief "What?" and "O God!" are followed by complete iambic lines?
• In the "Writing Matters" section, the author writes about another "source" for Hamlet, Khamlet. Explain.

Essay: Briefly summarize the issues associated with memory in Hamlet.