Remember: Monday is the second Hamlet vocabulary quiz. E-mail me with any questions on the paper.
In class today: we are reviewing Act II.
You have the my notes in a previous blog. Please note especially Hamlet's soliloquy.
Act 2 Scene 2:
O, What A Rogue And Peasant Slave Am I (Spoken by Hamlet)
O, what a rogue and peasant slave am I!
Is it not monstrous that this player here,
But in a fiction, in a dream of passion,
Could force his soul so to his own conceit
That from her working all his visage wann'd,
Tears in his eyes, distraction in's aspect,
A broken voice, and his whole function suiting
With forms to his conceit? and all for nothing!
For Hecuba!
What's Hecuba to him, or he to Hecuba,
That he should weep for her? What would he do,
Had he the motive and the cue for passion
That I have? He would drown the stage with tears
And cleave the general ear with horrid speech,
Make mad the guilty and appal the free,
Confound the ignorant, and amaze indeed
The very faculties of eyes and ears. Yet I,
A dull and muddy-mettled rascal, peak,
Like John-a-dreams, unpregnant of my cause,
And can say nothing; no, not for a king,
Upon whose property and most dear life
A damn'd defeat was made. Am I a coward?
Who calls me villain? breaks my pate across?
Plucks off my beard, and blows it in my face?
Tweaks me by the nose? gives me the lie i' the throat,
As deep as to the lungs? who does me this?
Ha!
'Swounds, I should take it: for it cannot be
But I am pigeon-liver'd and lack gall
To make oppression bitter, or ere this
I should have fatted all the region kites
With this slave's offal: bloody, bawdy villain!
Remorseless, treacherous, lecherous, kindless villain!
O, vengeance!
Why, what an ass am I! This is most brave,
That I, the son of a dear father murder'd,
Prompted to my revenge by heaven and hell,
Must, like a whore, unpack my heart with words,
And fall a-cursing, like a very drab,
A scullion!
Fie upon't! foh! About, my brain! I have heard
That guilty creatures sitting at a play
Have by the very cunning of the scene
Been struck so to the soul that presently
They have proclaim'd their malefactions;
For murder, though it have no tongue, will speak
With most miraculous organ. I'll have these players
Play something like the murder of my father
Before mine uncle: I'll observe his looks;
I'll tent him to the quick: if he but blench,
I know my course. The spirit that I have seen
May be the devil: and the devil hath power
To assume a pleasing shape; yea, and perhaps
Out of my weakness and my melancholy,
As he is very potent with such spirits,
Abuses me to damn me: I'll have grounds
More relative than this: the play 's the thing
Wherein I'll catch the conscience of the king.
Wherein I'll catch the conscience of the king?
ReplyDelete(this means) ill catch the reactin once i show the play of what hes done to my father
the last act of Hamlet in general seems kinda mysterious....it really seems straightforward for shakespeare, to me. it was kind of confusing at first though. i had trouble figuring out what was going on at first but i re-read/skimmed and now i get it
ReplyDeleteOlivia
ReplyDeletei found the final act of hamlet to contain many interesting twists and turns. the beginning of the act, containing the scene with the gravediggers discussing the rumor about ohphelia to be very interesting as ophelia became such a person of interest when she seemed so minute atr the beginning.
Finally the violence kicks in but it happens so fast, people are stabbed, poisoned and executed. Wow! It sucks that Hamlet justified his fathes death by killing Claudius but in return he to dies.
ReplyDeleteJust like Shakespeare to end a play with no way to make a sequel I really applaud him for that.
ReplyDeleteI like how at the end of the play they honored hamlet because that shows his hard work for getting revenge paid off.
ReplyDeleteperi - I feel that young Fortinbras was an unnecessary character in the plot and that Horatio should have inherited the thorne of Denmark
ReplyDeleteLee Ana
ReplyDeleteIs the test on Monday the same like the other test?
i think hamlet shouldn't have died in the end, but i guess then it wouldn't have been a tragedy.
ReplyDeleteShakespear always puts all the drama well at least really good parts at the end of his plays. It really makes you wonder what might have happened if it ended this way raither than the way that it ended. He really does know how to write and I love how all the action was just pacted into the last act.
ReplyDeleteThe last act of Hamlet was very goorie. There were a lot of quick deaths which was very disappointing in my point of view and i don't like the fact that Hamlet had to die.
ReplyDeleteMary,
ReplyDeleteLaertes had every right to kill Hamlet, Hamlet killed his father. Although Hamlet died, I thought that he was going to live.
I don't think Shakespeare should have killed off his main character like that. That was kind of like a let down, but on the contrary it did make the play more dramatic, which is the very essence of Shakespeare's work.
ReplyDelete