Hamlet notes- performance

All the words to describe if Shakespeare endorses something

affirms, reinforces, confirms, supports, approves, promotes, sells, promulgates, enhances, emphasises.

All the words to describe if Shakespeare challenges something

Critiques, attacks, resists, counters, rivals, opposes, undermines, questions, condemns, protests, conflicts with, subverts.

How does Hamlet relate to stock characters: familiar tropes subverted? repurposed? Internalised? projected?

Shakespeare uses the ghost in Hamlet to not represent a person of truth, as a stock character (standard portrayal in that era), instead it is dubious and should be treated with suspicion. The clowns that provide comedic relief (stock), are instead gravediggers, and they philosophise and question mortality.

Why did Elizabethan audiences hate actors?

They were seen as vagabonds and equal to prostitutes. They were critiqued for how God could give them one face and yet they ‘make themselves another’ (like Ophelia, to Hamlet), because it suggested they were sinnful and decietful. They were also seen as mercanary puppets- motivated by money. Critics viewed actors as empty vessels who spoke other people's words and changed their identities for money. Like literal puppets, they were seen as being manipulated—either by the financial greed of the theatre owners or the political agendas of their wealthy noble patrons. The actors are in control of which truth gets told, which can defame people.