Hamlet Entire Study Guide (1).doc

HAMLET

UNIT:

ACT I OUTLINE (Sentence Structure and Author’s Choices Focus)

WHO ARE THESE FOLKS?

KILLER QUOTES

(WHO SAID ‘EM & WHAT THEY MEAN)

 Claudius

 Gertrude

 Ghost

 Polonius

 Laertes

 Bernardo, Francisco, & Marcellus

 Old Norway

 Young Fortinbras

 Ophelia

 Horatio

POST-READING QUESTIONS

1. Why are the guards so nervous at the start of the play? (1.1)

2. How does the ghost react when the cock crows? Why? (1.1)

3. Where do Laertes and Hamlet desire to go? Do they get to go? (1.2)

4. Why does Laertes not want Ophelia to date Hamlet? (1.3)

5. What secret does the Ghost reveal to Hamlet concerning his death? (1.5)

6. What does the Ghost ask Hamlet to do? (1.5)

7. When the Ghost commands Marcellus and Horatio to “swear” to secrecy, where does his voice come from? (1.5)

8. What plot does Hamlet use to misdirect others from any unusual behavior he might convey while plotting to get back at Claudius?

HAMLET

UNIT:

 “Let us impart what we have seen tonight/Unto young Hamlet; for upon my life,/This spirit, dumb to us, will speak to him.” (1.1, 175-77)

 “A little more than kin, and less than kind.” (1.2, 65)

 “For your intent/In going back to school in Wittenburg,/It is most retrograde to our desire,/And we beseech you bend you to remain/Here in the cheer and comfort of our eye,/Our chiefest courtier, cousin, & our son.” (1.2, 112-17)

 “O that this too, too solid flesh would melt...” (1.2)

 “Frailty, thy name is woman.” (1.2)

 “Then weigh what loss your honor may sustain/If with too credent ear you list his songs,/Or lose your heart, or your chaste treasure open/To his unmastered importunity.” (1.3, 29-32)

 “This above all else: to thine own self be ture.” (1..3)

 “Something is rotten in the state of Denmark.” (1.4, 90)

 “Revenge his foul and most unnatural murder.” (1.5, 26)

 “But know, thou noble youth,/The serpent that did sting thy father’s life/Now wears his crown.” (1.5, 39-41)

 The time is out of joint. O cursed spite/That ever I was born to set it right! (1.5)

 “But, howsomever thou pursues this act,/Taint not thy mind nor let thy soul contrive/Against thy mother aught.” (1.5, 85-87)

 “Oh, villain, villain, smiling, damned villain!” (1.5, 107)

ACT II OUTLINE (Sentence Structure and Word Palette)

WHO ARE THESE FOLKS?

KILLER QUOTES

(WHO SAID ‘EM & WHAT THEY MEAN)

 Gildenstern

 Reynaldo

 Elsinore (place)

POST-READING QUESTIONS

1. Why does Polonius send Reynaldo to Paris?

2. What does this reveal about Polonius’ family relationships?

3. Who does Claudius send to spy on Hamlet and monitor his insanity?

4. What does Polonius tell Claudius & Gertrude about Hamlet?

6. What does Hamlet (correctly) suspect about his friends?

7. Why does Hamlet say that Denmark is a prison?

8. What plan or test does Hamlet come up with for seeing if his Uncle is guilty?

HAMLET

UNIT:

ACT III OUTLINE (Point of View and Structure/Turning Point)

DEFINE THESE TERMS!

KILLER QUOTES

 “By indirections find directions out./So by my former lecture and advice/Shall you my son…. Observe his inclination in yourself.” (2.1, 67-69, 72)

 “No, my good lord, but as you did command/I did repel his letters and denied/His access to me.” (2.1, 110-112)

 “I am sorry that with better heed and judgment/I had not quoted him. I feared he did but trifle/And meant to wrack thee./But beshrew my jealousy!” (2.1, 112-115)

 …brevity is the soul of wit. (2.2)

 …there is nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so. (2.2)

 “…so by your companies/To draw him on to pleasures, and to gather/So much as from occasion you may glean,/Whether aught to us unknown afflicts him thus/That, opened, lies within our remedy.” (2.2, 13-18)

 “Your noble son is mad./ Mad call I it, for, to define true madness,/What is’t but to be nothing else but mad?” (2.2, 92-94)

 “Though this be madness, yet there is/method in’t.” (2.2, 205)

 “What have/you, my good friends, deserved at the hands of/Fortune that she sends you to prison hither?” (2.2, 240-242)

 “What a piece of work is a man!” (2.2)

(WHO SAID ‘EM & WHAT THEY MEAN)

 Blank Verse/Iambic Pentameter

 Foil

 Dumb Show

POST-READING QUESTIONS

1. Rephrase the question, “To be, or not to be?”

2. How does Hamlet treat Ophelia during the play?

3. How do Gertrude and Claudius react to the play?

4. Why does Hamlet pause and not kill Claudius in the chapel? How is that ironic?

5. Why does Hamlet stab through the curtains in Gertrude’s room? Who does he stab?

6. Why does Hamlet stop before he commits violence upon Gertrude?

7. Was Gertrude “in” on the murder of Hamlet’s father?

HAMLET

UNIT:

ACT IV OUTLINE (Point of View)

From the tragedy, give examples of the following:

KILLER QUOTES

(WHO SAID ‘EM & WHAT THEY MEAN)

 “To be, or not to be, that is the question:” (3.1, 57)

 “We are arrant knaves all; believe none of us./Go thy ways to a nunnery.” (3.1, 130-131)

 “There’s something in his soul/O’er which his melancholy sits on brood,/And I do doubt the hatch and the disclose/Will be some danger;” (3.1, 167-169)

 “A second time I kill my husband dead/When second husband kisses me in bed.” (3.2, 181)

 “The lady doth protest too much, methinks.” (3.2, 228)

 “Oh, good Horatio, I’ll take the ghost’s word for/a thousand pound. Didst perceive?/Very well, my lord./Upon the talks of the poisoning?/I did very well note him.” (3.2, 283-288)

 “Let me be cruel, not unnatural;/I will speak daggers to her, but use none.” (3.2, 394-395)

 “Oh, my offense is rank! It smells to heaven,/It hath the primal eldest curse upon’t,/A brother’s murder.” (3.3, 36-38)

 “This physic but prolong thy sickly days.” (3.3., 96)

 “How now? A rat? Dead for a ducat, dead!...A bloody dead – almost as bad, good mother,/As kill a king, and marry with his brother.” (3.4, 25-29)

 “Oh, step between her and her fighting soul!/Conceit in weakest bodies stronger works.” (3.4, 117-118)

 “Confess yourself to heaven,/Repent what’s past, avoid what is to come,/And do not spread the compost on the weeds/To make them ranker.” (3.4, 156-159)

 “Oh, ‘tis most sweet/When in one line two crafts directly meet.” (3.4, 216-217)  “His liberty is full of threats to us all-/To you yourself, to us, to everyone.” (4.1, 14-15)

 “A man may fish with the worm that hath eat/of a king, and eat of the fish that had fed of that/worm.” (4.3, 27-29)

 “Do it, England,/For like the hectic in my blood he rages,/And thou must cure me. Till I know ‘tis done,/Howe’er my haps, my joys were ne’er begun.” (4.3, 69-72)

 “Oh, from this time forth/My thoughts be bloody or be nothing worth!” (4.4, 65-66)

 “When sorrows come, they come not single spies, But in battalions.” (4.5, 79-80)

 “Let come what comes, only I’ll be revenged/Most thoroughly for my father.” (4.5, 138-139)

 “…you may choose/A sword unbated,… I will do’t,/And for that purpose I’ll anoint my sword…. I’ll touch my point/With this contagion, that if I gall him slightly,/It may be death…. And that he calls for drink, I’ll have prepared him/A chalice for the nonce, whereon but slipping,/If he by chance escape your venomed stuck,/Our purpose may hold there.” (4.7, 138-163)

Comic Relief

External Conflict

Internal Conflict

Imagery

Simile

Metaphor

POST-READING QUESTIONS

1. How does the King react when he learns that Polonius is dead?

2. How are Fortinbras & Hamlet the same?

3. How does Ophelia react to her father’s death?

4. What happened to Hamlet on the way to England? Why have the pirates been helpful?

5. How does Ophelia die?

6. What is the plot to kill Hamlet upon his return?

HAMLET

UNIT:

ACT V OUTLINE

Characteristics of a Tragic Hero

KILLER QUOTES

(WHO SAID ‘EM & WHAT THEY MEAN)



 “Oh, that that earth which kept the world in awe/Should patch a wall t’expel the winter’s flaw!” (5.1, 215-216)

 Alas, poor Yorick! I knew him, Horatio. ( 5.1)

 “I loved Ophelia. Forty thousand brothers/Could not with all their quantity of love/Make up my sum.” (5.1, 272-274)

 “The cat will mew, and dog will have his day.” (5.1, 295)

 “But I am very sorry, good Horatio,/That to Laertes I forgot myself,/For by the image of my cause I see/The portraiture of his.” (5.2, 75-78)

 “Let the foils be brought, the gentlemen willing, and the/King hold his purpose, I will win for him an I can; if/not, I will gain nothing but my shame and the odd/hits.” (5.2, 172-176)

 “Not a whit, we defy augury. There is special/providence in the fall of a sparrow. If it be now, ‘tis/not to come; if it be not to come, it will be now; if it/be not now; yet it will come.” (5.2, 217-220)

 “The Queen carouses to thy fortune, Hamlet.” (5.2, 291)

 “Why, as a woodcock to mine own springe, Osric;/ I am justly killed with mine own treachery.” (5.2, 309-310)

 “Here, thou incestuous, murderous, damned Dane,/Drink off this potion. Is thy union here?/Follow my mother.” (5.2, 327-329)

 “Had I but time – as this fell seargant, Death,/Is strict in his arrest – oh, I could tell you - /But let it be. Horatio, I am dead;” (5.2, 338-340)

 “Now cracks a noble heart. Good night, sweet prince,/And flights of angels sing thee to thy rest! (5.2)



POST-READING QUESTIONS

1. What does Hamlet learn from the gravediggers?

2. What message does Osric deliver?

3. How does Claudius’ plan go bad?

4. What is Claudius’ reaction when Gertrude drinks?

5. Does Laertes forgive Hamlet?

6. What does Horatio almost do?

7. Does Hamlet avenge his father? Explain.

8. What happens to Rosencrantz & Guildenstern? How did this come about?