University of Washington 131 UW in the High School – Lynden Christian School
Mr. Thomas Fall Semester
UW IN THE HIGH SCHOOL
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UW 131: Course Overview English 131 (from UW EWP Website)
As gateways to academic reading, research, and writing at the University of Washington, all Expository Writing Program (EWP) courses are designed around a set of shared learning outcomes. These outcomes articulate the need for students to develop and practice the skills and habits that are foundational to academic writing and to recognize how to adapt these skills and habits for the varied demands of university-wide writing that students will encounter. The most popular Expository Writing Program offering, in English 131, students work closely with their peers and instructor to develop a portfolio of writing that reflects an ability to write papers with complex claims that matter in academic contexts. The readings in this class focus on academic discourse from a variety of disciplines. The course will be taught in Two Academic Sequences: Sequence 1 – Ethics and Decision Making (Academic and Analytical Writing) Sequence 2 – Pop Culture Persuasion (Persuasion and Argumentation)
English 131 Course Description: Do you know what you should write, and when? Sometimes a writer has to speak formally, as if they are in an interview; sometimes the get to speak like they are with their friends in a locker room. Sometimes, a writer needs to push, other times they need to invite. Most importantly, the write needs to understand context — the time and place in which you are writing, and the audience to whom you are writing. Particularly, we will develop the skills that will be useful in both academic and professional settings. This process requires careful reading, complex argumentation based on solid evidence, and thoughtful revision and proofreading of your work. Academically, we will write for the sake of analysis and argumentation as it relates to reading and response of academic issues. As for Professional and Technical Writing, we will focus on Advertising, Branding, and Campaigning as a way to emphasize persuasive and argumentative texts. Over the course of the semester, you will produce 6 Small Papers (SP) of 2-3 pages and 2 Major Papers (MP) of 5-7 pages; you will also engage in a drafting process that will culminate in a Final Writing Portfolio that will ask you to reflect upon how your writing exemplifies the EWP Outcomes (listed below). Throughout the quarter, these outcomes will guide our discussions and focus our writing practice. Achieving proficiency in these outcomes will give you a strong foundation for writing across disciplines in your academic work in the next few
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FALL SEMESTER UW_THOMAS@ICLOUD.COM years.. Our course readings will explore the ways that writers use language in different contexts. We will consider and produce texts for personal, public, and academic purposes based on reading research, data, and feedback and, in doing so, we will watch our voices shape and shift toward their final destination Required Texts – • Acts of Inquiry • Pop Culture
EWP Outcomes (from UW EWP Website) All coursework will be evaluated according to University of Washington EWP Outcomes:
To demonstrate an awareness of the strategies that writers use in different writing contexts. • The writing employs style, tone, and conventions appropriate to the demands of a particular genre and situation. • The writer is able to demonstrate the ability to write for different audiences and contexts, both within and outside the university classroom. • The writing has a clear understanding of its audience, and various aspects of the writing (mode of inquiry, content, structure, appeals, tone, sentences, and word choice) address and are strategically pitched to that audience. • The writer articulates and assesses the effects of his or her writing choices.
To read, analyze, and synthesize complex texts and incorporate multiple kinds of evidence purposefully in order to generate and support writing. • The writing demonstrates an understanding of the course texts as necessary for the purpose at hand. • Course texts are used in strategic, focused ways (for example: summarized, cited, applied, challenged, re-contextualized) to support the goals of the writing. • The writing is intertextual, meaning that a “conversation” between texts and ideas is created in support of the writer’s goals. • The writer is able to utilize multiple kinds of evidence gathered from various sources (primary and secondary – for example, library research, interviews, questionnaires, observations, cultural artifacts) in order to support writing goals. • The writing demonstrates responsible use of the MLA (or other appropriate) system of documenting sources.
To produce complex, analytic, persuasive arguments that matter in academic contexts. • The argument is appropriately complex, based in a claim that emerges from and explores a line of inquiry. • The stakes of the argument, why what is being argued matters, are articulated and persuasive. • The argument involves analysis, which is the close scrutiny and examination of evidence and assumptions in support of a larger set of ideas. • The argument is persuasive, taking into consideration counterclaims and multiple points of view as it generates its own perspective and position. • The argument utilizes a clear organizational strategy and effective transitions that develop its line of inquiry.
To develop flexible strategies for revising, editing, and proofreading writing. • The writing demonstrates substantial and successful revision. • The writing responds to substantive issues raised by the instructor and peers. • Errors of grammar, punctuation, and mechanics are proofread and edited so as not to interfere with reading and understanding the writing.
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University of Washington Grading Scale This course fulfills all requirements for the University of Washington’s English 131 course, and uses all required elements such as textbook, assessments, evaluation, and grading. UWHS courses are graded using the UW’s numeric grading system. Grades can be assigned from 0.7 to 4.0; 0.7 is the lowest passing grade. For more information the grading system and the numeric equivalent of letter grades please see this link: UWHS Grading Equivalent Scale.
Letter
Number
Note
A
4.0 – 3.9
A-
3.8 – 3.5
B+
3.4 – 3.2
B
3.1 – 2.9
B-
2.8 – 2.5
C+
2.4 – 2.2
C
2.1 – 1.9
Lowest Passing Portfolio Grade
C-
1.8 – 1.5
Lowest grade to remain in class
D+
1.4 – 1.2
D
1.1 – 0.9
University of Washington Academic Integrity Statement From the UW Student Conduct Code: Admission to the university carries with it the presumption that students will conduct themselves as responsible members of the academic community. As a condition of enrollment, all students assume responsibility to observe standards of conduct that will contribute to the pursuit of academic goals and to the welfare of the academic community. That responsibility includes, but is not limited to “Practicing the high standards of academic and professional honesty and integrity,” and, insofar as the University of Washington has defined it in their academic integrity statement.
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Sequence One Overview: Ethics and Decision Making SP 1.1: Form Analysis Literary Form comes from the literary devices an author uses. In the Allegory of the Cave, Plato uses the literary structure of the dialogue (a conversation between a teacher and his students). His goal: to have his students envision how the world works. Your job, then, is to become his student: 1. 2. 3.
Read/Annotate Allegory of the Cave Isolate three symbols that help Plato tell his story Write a Telescope-Correlation Essay a. Thematic Introduction using UW Introduction Template b. 3-OCI Paragraphs (examining three separate symbols in relation to theme) c. Feature Conclusion (examine Plato’s ultimate point)
Keep in Mind: The cave is not just a story, it’s a picture of a worldview. Remember that worldview and start a conversation with it. Do you agree? Do you disagree? Where are you in relationship to this story? Are you a prisoner? Are you a guardian? Even if it is not true as a whole, the story can maintain truths that let us examine ourselves Focus:
OCI Format a. Fact – Claim from Text b. Detail/Analysis — Examine Text c. Interpretation— Apply Abstract/Theme/Idea/Feeling
Personalize the Information — Familiar Correlations
Globalize the Information — Worldly Correlations
Hooks/Transitions — keep the paragraphs tied together SP 1.1 Rubric
Outstanding
Strong
Adequate
Inadequate
OCI Format (Outcome 1) Claim from Inquiry (Outcome 3) Purposeful Evidence (Outcome 2) So What? (Outcome 3)
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SP 1.2 – Argumentative Response For this assignment, you have watched a documentary and a feature film. You have also encountered different theories related to ethics and truth-telling. Your job, then, is to examine the implications of these theories in relationship to the texts you have encountered and answer the following prompt:
Plato argues that people are prisoners who are kept in bondage by other people’s knowledge. In looking at the classroom resources (Zeitgeist, Equilibrium, Clancy Martin’s article), examine what happens to a culture when it stops seeking the truth.
To do so, do the following: Read/Annotate Clancy Martin’s Is it Okay to Tell a Lie? and construct a Complex-Claim (problem and solution). Then write an Identify-Identify Correlation Essay: d. Establish Problem using Minding the Gap Introduction using UW Introduction Template e. 3 Paragraphs a. Examine problem in Documentary (OCI) b. Examine problem in Film (OCI) c. Discuss Implications in both using voices from class (Deductive Response) f. Editorial Conclusion (Why does truth matter — globally speaking?) Keep in Mind: This essay will be more involved than your last one — it will integrate more voices, it will use different paragraph structures, and it will include more of your personal voice (it will be more argumentative).Focus:
OCI Format a. Fact – Claim from Text b. Detail/Analysis — Examine Text c. Interpretation— Apply Abstract/Theme/Idea/Feeling
Outcome #2 — Integrating Sources
Implications — Subtext = What we do not see in the story
Hooks/Transitions — keep the paragraphs tied to introduction
MP 1.1 – Story of My Life To this point, you have written for academic situations only. Now, using the skills based on the outcomes below, you will have 8 Writing Scenarios for which you must do reading, viewing, and writing. Each Scenario will require a different approach. After writing, you will have to evaluate your writing according to the UW Outcomes and assess the difference between the situations to explain your writing strategy. Scenario 1 — Letter of Recommendation Scenario 2 — Police Report Scenario 3 — Eye-Witness Account Scenario 4 — Book Introduction Scenario 5 — Graphic Novel Scenario 6 — Facebook Fight Focus Points: Language and Decorum — Writing appropriate to the situation Synthesis of Major Ideas — Integrating Academic Sources we have used within the course of the year • Allegory of the Cave, Plato • Moral Decision Making, Martin • Zeitgeist Documentary • Ways We See, Berger Citations — demonstrate your understanding of • Formal — Gladwell, when talking about the success of Joe Flomm, says “ . . . “ (44) • Paraphrase — Gladwell says Joe Flomm was successful because of his background (44-50) • Embedded — Gladwell knows Joe Flomm “saw hard work change” the lives around him (44)
MP 1.1 Rubric
Outstanding
Strong
Adequate
Inadequate
Decorum and Situation (Outcome 1) Synthesis and Texts (Outcome 2) Argument & Persuasion (Outcome 3)
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Sequence Two Overview: Marketing, Branding, Campaigning SP 2.1 – Positioning Statement The Positioning Statement is your target-market research, marketing personas, emotional triggers, and more; it lays the foundation for the success of your marketing Developing the actual content of the case study is an exercise in solid research, reporting, and writing. The trick is to develop a coherent narrative that will naturally bring out the points you want to emphasize. Wherever possible, try to tie the narrative into current trends, issues, and ideas so the article is part of what people already are buzzing about in the industry, in business in general, or in society at large. There are five basic styles in which the case study can be written: •
Problem-solution–by far the most common way to structure the case study. The narrative is simple: this customer was wrestling with a particular problem or challenge or opportunity, and this is how the product played a role in the solution. There are some variations within the basic problem-solution model, usually involving implementation or future directions. [See the Case Study Template provided below.]
•
Results first–starts with results, especially when the results are unusual. Then you jump back to fill in the why and how.
•
Inverted pyramid–comes straight from journalism. You proceed as if writing a detailed, journalistic news article with a compelling opening followed immediately by the most important information.
•
Anecdotal-feature–also comes from journalism. Here the customer’s story is fleshed out with frequent anecdotes.
•
First person account–the customer is telling the story directly, in his or her voice. (Your writer will actually write the piece for the customer using the first- person voice.)
Writing Options: Third-Person or Journalistic: In the third-person style, an unidentified narrator tells the story. This style is particularly appropriate when the case study includes a lot of technical or highly specialized detail. The journalistic style is much like the third-person style except it includes direct customer quotes. The quotes give the case study more color and personality and create more emotional involvement. It requires that an individual at the customer organization willing to have quotes attributed to him or her by name. The first-person voice provides great believability. However, it requires more effort on the part of the customer, who will probably spend more time with the writer and more time reviewing and revising the results. It also implies a deeper commitment to your product, which the customer may be reluctant to make. After the text is developed, you can proceed with layout and design. Use a photo/picture of the customer or a metaphorical picture that captures his dilemma/ solution. SP 2.1 Rubric
FALL SEMESTER UW_THOMAS@ICLOUD.COM SP 2.2 – Visual Text Sales is concrete and abstract. With advertising, you have to make your words pictures and your pictures words. You have isolated the needs of your Straw Man, now give him a pacifier — something that appeases the need. Often, people don’t know they need it, but you — the marketer — need to convinces them. To do so, you will need to integrate your reading and visuals related to Denasi’s Pop Culture (Pop Language, Marketing, Branding, and Advertising): A Slogan – a phrase that summarizes your Straw Man’s “dilemma” A Logo – a picture that captures the essence of the solution. Consider These Slogans (see if you can place them) Just Do It Think Different Impossible is Nothing Your World. Delivered. The Best a Man Can Get Want to Get Away? It’s in the Game. Logos tell a picture with words. Consider These Logos (note what they are saying below):
You are the only one with the product to meet this person’s needs. You’ve done the research, you have labelled your market, now how are you going to get the customer to the table? Are you to: Sell Negatively — Against the Competitor Hard Sell — Twist the customer’s arm Soft Sell — Leave an impression Sell Emotion — Fix a Need Sell Logically — Solve a Problem Sell Credibility – Make a Copycat SP 2.2 Rubric
SP 2.3 – Presidential Vitae Now you need to become an campaign committee. Using Stimson Bullitt’s How to be a Politician as a strategy, you need to decide to decide on your strategy for political influence. This vitae should demonstrate that strategy. One of two results will come about: 1.
You’re the Committee — You Set the Agenda (Propaganda) A. Advantage — you control the conversation B. Disadvantage — your opinions may not reflect the people’s
2.
Market Research — Let the People “Talk” (Focus Groups) A. Advantage – using other people’s voices to connect B. Disadvantage — you may find yourself out of touch
In the end, you will have to write a one-page Vitae (overview of a person’s qualifications and experience). This will be done in the form of a narrative description — not a sales pitch — that answers the primary question every candidate will have to ask themselves:
Vitae Define Leadership Who is this campaign about? Qualities of a good candidate What is this campaign about? Two job duties as a candidate
SP 2.4 – Posterizing You have your vitae. You have your research. You have read Image-Making in the Post-Modern Age (Olson, Finnegan, and Hope). Now, you have to create traction. You will need to make a poster that chrysalises your campaign. It should have:
Metaphor/Synecdoche
Slogan
Problem/Solution
Representative Object that
Phrase that Captures
Both word and picture
clarifies the candidate’s
Essence of Campaign/
should clearly identify
objectives
Candidate
the candidate’s solutions
SP 2.3 Rubric
Outstanding
Strong
Adequate
Inadequate
Visual Appeals (Outcome 3) Major Claim (Outcome 3) Synthesized Message (Outcome 4) Connection to Reading (Outcome 2)
MP 2.1: Humanize Me UW IN THE HIGH SCHOOL
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FALL SEMESTER UW_THOMAS@ICLOUD.COM This final paper will examine the difference between advertising, branding, marketing and creating (artistic and literary ventures). Being a Major Paper, you will write a 5-page (minimum) Classical Argument using personal response, past research, classroom reading, and your own written/visual work to answer the following prompt:
What is the difference between brand, market, political texts versus literature — and which gives us a better glimpse into who we are as human beings? Your primary goal should be to show the difference between the motivations of commercialism versus the motivations of the creative spirit. Before you write the paper, then, write a reflective response related to the questions below (to be handed in). These address the EWP Writing Outcomes, so be mindful of each outcome’s expectation as you answer. Answering these questions will also help you address the proper issues in your paper.
Paper Requirements Paradoxical Introduction (reflect on the nature of the different assignments and answer prompt with Major Claim) Topic #1 – Straw Man (Outcome #1 – Audience/Situation) How did it feel creating someone? Why/How was it easy or hard? What was missing from the process? Topic #2 – Advertising (Outcome #4 – Editing) What decisions need to be made to sell something? What role do evaluators play in the creation of an Ad? What happens to the final product through editorial review? Topic #3 – Politics (Outcome #3 – Complex Arguments) What happens when a person, not an object, needs to be sold? What are different demands for media (writing, visual, audio-visual) in a campaign setting? What was your reaction to the feedback (to yours specifically and to the other candidates’)? Topic #4 – Literature and Art What is the significant difference between these texts? What are these people searching for, and do you think their desires are universal? What do their creative expression say about the Human Condition? Conclusion (Outcome #2 – Evidence) (Comparative OCI Paragraph — why your conclusion works best in comparison to alternatives) SP 2.3 Rubric
Heroes and Villains The Generic Hero The generic Hero is the protagonist or main character of most stories, although stories may also have multiple heroes in them (for example Lord of the Rings). The Hero is important in that we identify with him or her more strongly than with other character. We thus vicariously experience what the hero goes through, empathizing with their fears and exaltations. To identify with them means that they must be sympathetic in some way, and that the less attractive heroes have some redeeming feature with which we can connect. A common theme is that the hero demonstrates courage in overcoming external obstacles to their goal. This may also parallel an internal transformation where they also overcome internal obstacles, thus growing and learning. The Classic Hero The Classic Hero is the person who goes on a quest to achieve some good end that benefits other people in some way. Perhaps they are rescuing a maiden in distress or preventing a dastardly villain from ruling the world. We look up to the Classic Hero but may not fully believe their perfection. Nevertheless they are a clear ideal to which we can aspire. The Tragic Hero The Tragic Hero reflects more of the real world in that the slings, arrows and bullets that are thrown at them do not always miss. The classic Tragic Hero is doomed from the outset, yet the continue in their quest, perhaps achieving it just before they (tragically) die. The Tragic Hero may also fail in their quest, perhaps having bitten off more than they can chew. For the audience, the tragic hero may represent their fears for themselves, that despite their best efforts that they will fail. The Accidental Hero The Accidental Hero just happens to get in the way of excitement and adventure and is swept up, often protesting, in the action. Perhaps their car is hi-jacked by gunmen or they are in a plane that crashes on a desert island. Which ever way, they are thrust into the main storyline and somehow manage to succeed, either stepping up to the plate and taking unavoidable responsibility or bumbling through and succeeding despite their own protests and inappropriate actions. We associate more easily with the Accidental Hero as they generally represent the common person more than other heroes. Their plight is often a recipe for comedy as they stumble through the plot and we laugh at their naivety and slapstick. The Super-hero The Super-hero is an exaggeration of the classic hero in their abilities to succeed. In the modern genre they have super-human powers, such as Superman and the characters of the X-Men. In older stories, such heroes were mighty warriors or magicians. These powers could make them human, so they often are portrayed with very human weaknesses and go through life-threatening experiences just as other heroes. Thus Superman is weakened by green kryptonite. The Super-hero story often paints black-and-white caricatured characters in the same way that hero’s powers are exaggerated. Thus thus bad guy is truly evil and the henchmen are pretty stupid. The Super-hero represents our dreams in which we can fly and have super-human strength. The Anti-hero The Anti-hero is a hero that we do not particularly like. Their indifference or distraction irritate us and they seem determined not to be heroic, but when the chips are down they pull out the stops and deliver. Anti-heros can be frustrating for the audience, but they do increase anticipation and excitement as we wonder what they will do next. The Knight The Knight is driven by the knightly code of honor that demands bold acts and confrontation of evil wherever it may be found. The Knight thus rescues maidens but does not woo them, preferring instead to preserve a distant purity. We tend not to associate directly with the Knight but they do represent the rescue that we often crave. The Crusader The Crusader is characterized by being driven by a powerful mission to which all other activities are subservient. The crusade often targets many others and may, for example, be to convert many people to a way of thinking. We admire the Crusader’s fortitude in standing up to almost overwhelming odds. Through them we may realize that we can persuade others and change the world. The Genius The Genius is a highly intelligent person who uses their substantial brain-power to solve the problems with which they are confronted and decide what to do next. No problem is too big for them and they relish in conundrums and puzzles. Geniuses may play in supporting roles, but can also take on the leading role. They are often nerdy, lacking social skills, but making up for this with their towering intellect. Sherlock Holmes is a classic example. We may well envy their mental powers but are grateful that they are on the side of good. The Leader The Leader directs the troops, often from the front, who may contain other heroes, in achieving a critical goal. Their main skill is in inspiring and motivating others, although they also need to be able to determine which direction to lead their party. The Leader can represent a parent or teacher who tells you what to do. By ceding decision to them, you place your trust in their ability to chose and achieve the final treasure. The Bold Adventurer The Bold Adventurer is close to the classic hero although with the primary goal of excitement and stimulation more than achieving some end (which they may also need to achieve — it is just that their personal satisfaction comes from the thrills of getting there). The Adventurer thus
steps into the unknown with a smile on their face and, whilst we might not follow them as we would the leader, we are drawn along with the story which promises non-stop excitement. The courageous Child When children are cast into leading roles, we expect them to behave as children, seeking adults who will protect them from harm. Thus when a child steps forward and takes on the bad guys we are amazed and impressed. The Courageous Child perhaps represents something from our own childhood, where we played imaginary games of adventure, thus letting us recapture our youth for a little while. The Whizz kid The Whizz-kid is first a genius who usually knows everything there is to know about some subject — often technology — and usually more than the bumbling adults who are thrown into confusion by the amazing genius before them. The Whizz-kid invents prodigiously and comes up with amazing contraptions or other solutions to whatever problems they face. This prodigy perhaps represents some secret desires we have for super powers of the intellect. If we were to be like them (or at least have their brains) we could solve most of the problems before us at a single stroke. The Silent Man The Silent hero says little and does what is necessary with the minimum of fuss. They express little emotion, just getting on with what needs doing. They are often mysterious characters and we wonder why they do what they do. Nevertheless we admire their abilities and also their lack of demands on the people around them. Other heroes may be a bit full of themselves by comparison. The Founder The Founder begins things, often institutions or societies that become great, perhaps through taking on some of the greatness of the founder. In real life, company founders are often mythologized into heroic characters by the stories told of their vision and compassion. Founders are also associated with birth and creation, which reaches deep into our psyches. The Martyr The Martyr first offers self-sacrifice in the name of a greater cause or the safety of significant others. This putting of others before oneself is a characteristic of most other heroes and martyrdom is a potential and defining route for any heroic action. We may have great admiration for those who lay down their lives for their countries or their faiths, particularly in their ability to transcend our deep fear of dying and death. The Savior The Savior’s noble goal is to rescue others from discomfort and distress. Whether it is a lost child or captured maiden, the savior’s promise is of succor and salvation. The Savior plays directly to our need for rescue that echoes down from early childhood, where parents would save us from real or imagined ills. The Noble Savage The Noble Savage is a primitive being who, from their appearance, would seem to be little more than an animal and hence could be expected to be fierce and uncaring (and perhaps too primitive to understand care). Yet they also have a deep spark of humanity that perhaps exceeds our own, as they act with dignity and concern that is thrown into contrast against our expectations of them. Thus there may be a confusing juxtaposition, as we become the savage and they become the civilized being. Thus the Noble Savage surprises and teaches us. The Gentle Giant Something like the Noble Savage, the huge person would seem to be able harm us without difficulty, yet they act in contrast to their appearance (and perhaps deliberately so) in the way that they gently and delicately interface with the world around them. The Gentle Giant may not always be gentle as they mete out punishment to the villains, perhaps as they barge their way through on a rescue mission. We are grateful to them for not harming the good guys and thus place them on a heroic plinth. The Rough Diamond The Rough Diamond is someone who may appear as a villain and maybe does have villainous tendencies. However, they also have a heart of gold and may unexpectedly perform heroic acts, perhaps even surprising themselves in the process. The Rough Diamond, as with the noble savage and the gentle giant, reminds us that the world is not always as it seems and that goodness can be reassuringly found in even the most unexpected places.
Pearson’s Heroic Archetypes Carol Pearson, in Awakening The Heroes Within, describes twelve archetypes, each of which can go on a heroic quest. It is notable that some of these are not ‘traditional’ heroes in the sense of having archetypal strength of body or mind. Here are a few notes and interpretations on each of Pearson’s archetypes. Innocent The Innocent, fearing abandonment, seeks safety. Their greatest strength is the trust and optimism that endears them to others and so gain help and support on their quest. Their main danger is that they may be blind to their obvious weaknesses or perhaps deny them. They can also become dependent on others to fulfil their heroic tasks.
Orphan The Orphan, fearing exploitation, seeks to regain the comfort of the womb and neonatal safety in the arms of loving parents. To fulfil their quest they must go through the agonies of the developmental stages they have missed. Their strength is the interdependence and pragmatic realism that they had to learn at an early age. A hazard is that they will fall into the victim mentality and so never achieve a heroic position. Warrior The Warrior is relatively simple in their thought patterns, seeking simply to win whatever confronts them, including the dragons that live inside the mind and their underlying fear of weakness. Their challenge is to bring meaning to what they do, perhaps choosing their battles wisely, which they do using courage and the warrior’s discipline. Caregiver Caregivers first seek to help others, which they do with compassion and generosity. A risk they take is that in their pursuit to help others they may end up being harmed themselves. They dislike selfishness, especially in themselves, and fear what it might make them. Seeker Seekers are looking for something that will improve their life in some way, but in doing so may not realize that they have much already inside themselves. They embrace learning and are ambitious in their quest and often avoid the encumbrance of support from others. Needing to ‘do it themselves’, they keep moving until they find their goal (and usually their true self too). Lover The Lover seeks the bliss of true love and the syzygy of the divine couple. They often show the passion that they seek in a relationship in their energy and commitment to gaining the reciprocal love of another. They fear both being alone and losing the love that they have gained, driving them to constantly sustain their love relationships. Destroyer The Destroyer is a paradoxical character whose destructiveness reflects the death drive and an inner fear of annihilation. As a fighter, they are thus careless of their own safety and may put others in danger too. Their quest is to change, to let go of their anger or whatever force drives them and return to balance, finding the life drive that will sustain them. Living on the cusp of life and death, they are often surprisingly humble. Creator Creators, fearing that all is an illusion, seek to prove reality outside of their minds. A critical part of their quest is in finding and accepting themselves, discovering their true identity in relation to the external world. Ruler The Ruler’s quest is to create order and structure and hence an effective society in which the subjects of the Ruler can live productive and relatively happy lives. This is not necessarily an easy task, as order and chaos are not far apart, and the Ruler has to commit themself fully to the task. The buck stops with them and they must thus be wholly responsible — for which they need ultimate authority. Magician The Magician’s quest is not to ‘do magic’ but to transform or change something or someone in some way. The Magician has significant power and as such may be feared. They may also fear themselves and their potential to do harm. Perhaps their ultimate goal is to transform themselves, achieving a higher plane of existence. Sage The Sage is a seeker after truth and enlightenment and journeys far in search of the next golden nugget of knowledge. The danger for the sage and their deep fear is that their hard-won wisdom is built on the sand of falsehood. Their best hope is that they play from a position of objective honesty and learn to see with a clarity that knows truth and untruth. Fool The goal of the Fool is perhaps the wisest goal of all, which is just to enjoy life as it is, with all its paradoxes and dilemmas. What causes most dread in the Fool is a lack of stimulation and being ‘not alive’. They must seek to ‘be’, perhaps as the Sage, but may not understand this.
Villainous characters The Mastermind The Mastermind does not commit the crime, but is the brains behind the big event, whether it is a stealing, a scam or some other crime. They are typically brilliantly clever and master planners, allowing for every eventuality including being caught in the act. They may also leave a deliberate signature, such as a rose or some other symbol, to taunt the police and show that they cannot be caught. The hero who captures the mastermind must outwit them at every turn, including avoiding the snares and false trails that the mastermind leaves behind. Moriarty, for example, is the mastermind that is the nemesis of the brilliant Sherlock Holmes.
The Thief The Thief steals, often from a remarkably secure environment, somehow overcoming the security systems that protect the wonderful treasures kept there. They are dextrous and agile, able to get past any defence. The lone thief may also be clever enough to be classed as a Mastermind. Thieves are seldom violent and their villainy is based in their lack of concern for the rights of property of others. When they are involved in combat, their agility and precision can make them very dangerous. The hero who defeats the Thief is a detective, discovering the clues that others miss and piecing together the jigsaw of how the crime was committed and how to find the Thief. The Thief story is thus a cerebral one, where the hero outwits the Thief’s mental dexterity. The Robber The Robber is less subtle than the thief and may work in a gang with others. Where the thief is precise, the Robber is clumsy. Where the thief waits until people are away, the Robber will steal from the person’s body. The hero who catches the Robber may do so by entrapment, into which the Robber walks unawares. Other methods of capture include basic police work. The Thug Below the Robber in the intellectual order of villains is the Thug, who gets what they want simply though physical violence. They seldom work alone, needing direction from elsewhere and may act as guards or a human battering-ram into the fortress where the treasure is kept. Defeating the Thug is relatively easy if you can dodge their heavy-handed blows. Their slowness and size makes them a simple target for a quicker opponent. Otherwise they can be easily outwitted (‘Goodness, look at that!’ — whack!!). The Sneak The Sneak is known for their dishonesty and general lack of values (it’s not that other villains lack them — it is more that the sneak has even less). They will work for whoever pays them. They thus make good double-agents — as long as your offer remains the most attractive. They are often very cowardly and will squeal easily under pressure. Their tendency for lying, however, makes what ever they say difficult to believe. The Sneak is defeated first by never trusting them wholly and then by buying them off. The Trickster The Trickster is a mischievous character who is not what might first be envisaged. They often have their own agenda and may be the main Villain or a distraction that adds confusion to the story. Tricksters sometimes play tricks simply to entertain themselves so they can marvel at their own ability and domination over others. They also may set traps to ensnare the unwary and ply false trust to lead the naive astray. The Hero is always on guard and defeating the Trickster demonstrates intelligence as well as bravery or skill. The Trickster reminds us not to trust people and that not all is as it seems. Their deviousness and the uncertainty of their actions shows that sometimes people behave in unpredictable ways and for unknown reason. The Knave The Knave is a higher-class rogue who has uses his aristocratic position to get what he wants, including favors from a lady. He may promise much in return, but in fact gives nothing. The hero defeats the Knave by exposing his deception. He may also have to battle the Knave who, lacking honor, may again use deceptive methods here. The Assassin The Assassin is a dark and secret person who kills to order. Their killing is not the open murder of others but a hidden delivery, perhaps with poison or distant rifle. When up-close, they prefer the dagger, which may be hidden before use and closely controlled in action. Defeating assassins is difficult as they are very skilled in their art. When they do not wish to be found they can be almost invisible. Sometimes it is easier to defeat the person who commissioned the Assassin. The Lovable Rogue The Lovable Rogue is a sympathetic and attractive character who is steeped with charisma. They somehow balance selfish acts with sudden and unexpected generosity and kindness that endears them to us. We (and story characters) thus have a love-hate relationship with them as we wish that they would improve the integrity. In some ways we also envy them their freedom as they make their own rules in the world. The False Hero The False Hero is a a deceptive person who seeks to usurp the glory of the real hero, either by claiming to having done what the hero did or otherwise claiming some other greatness that overshadows the hero. The False Hero often seeks the same end as the Hero, such as the hand of the princess, making it a zero-sum, win-lose game. In the end, they may have to fight to prove who is the true hero, and where perhaps the underhand, non-heroic methods of the False Hero exposes reality. The Bad Boy The Bad Boy is a naughty child who does wrong. The Bad Boy may know what they are doing and be well on the road to evil, or they may be going through a phase and are still redeemable. We all know Bad Boys of some kind, and perhaps we recognize ourselves in some of the variants. Because they are children, they may evoke some sympathy, particularly if they have not yet gone completely bad. The Evil Genius The Evil Genius is a very clever person who has turned their ingenuity to selfish and harmful means. They are often also Mastermind, getting others to do their bidding. They may also work for another, such as the inventor of dastardly devices. The audience may be aghast at the perversion of a good mind and at the bad that can be done by it. Like a gun, a brain can do good or evil. The Nemesis
The Nemesis is the exact opposite of the Hero, seeking to beat them at their own game. Where the hero is a Genius, the Nemesis is a Mastermind. Where the hero is a Warrior, the Nemesis is also likely to be a fighter. Moriarty, for example was the Nemesis for Sherlock Holmes, matching his intellect and cunning. The Nemesis scares the Hero and the audience perhaps more than any other villain as the hero’s defining characteristics are cancelled out. The Psychopath The Psychopathic villain has the classic symptom of psychopathy, being a lack of empathy for others, combined with a cunning that manipulates people in unbelievably callous ways. The Psychopath may thus appear to be good, right up until the moment of betrayal (making them very difficult to detect and defeat), after which they show no remorse at all. Psychopaths scare us as they indicate that anybody might fall into the same category. More than others, they trigger the anger and retributive justice of betrayal. The Fanatic The Fanatic is single-minded person whose crime is seldom of the traditional variety (robbery, etc.). They may well driven by religion or some other ideology that gives them the fervor to carry out their mission. The Fanatic is difficult to defeat as they typically put their mission above their own safety and will fight like a Madman. The Traitor The Traitor is the archetypal betrayer, seeming to be on your side but eventually betraying you to the enemy. Their reasons may be that they are spies, they are bought by the enemy or that they are actually good, but they are blackmailed into their treachery. Defeating Traitors may occur if they are detected before their treacherous act, but is usually afterwards, when they may be caught as they try to hide or escape
This packet contains all the information required for the assignments required in your Final Portfolio. It gives instruction and examples for assignments you will be expected to do. In addition, it provides the terms you will be accountable to know (related to the Literary and Rhetorical Devices), and a schedule for when they have to be finished. Keep this journal in your portfolio. If you need a working copy to carry with you, feel free to photocopy the material, but you will need a clean copy for your Final Portfolio, inasmuch as you will frequently need help with terminology, definitions, annotation, and organization.
Literary Devices Below you will find a list of 84 Terms for which you must create study cards. Accompanying the terms is a schedule for their completion (you will have four weeks before we study poetry: 4/84 = 21 per week). Though they will not be collected until the end of the four weeks, some terms may wind up on quizzes. Of primary importance: KNOWING the terms is the FIRST STEP. The AP Exam does not ask for definitions; they expect students to see the devices in context. Therefore, your cards must follow a certain pattern: 1) SIDE 1 – Term 2) SIDE 2 – a. Definition b. Sentence: using device in context
POETRY TERMS
WEEK 1
WEEK 2
WEEK 3
WEEK 4
alliteration
dimeter
irony
quatrain
allusion
dramatic monologue
rhetorical question
ambiguity
dramatic situation
Italian sonnet (aka Petrarchan Sonnet)
anapest , anapestic
elegy
antithesis
end rhyme
approximate rhyme (see slant rhyme)
end-stopped line
litotes lyric poem masculine rhyme metaphor
assonance
English sonnet aka Shakespearean
aubade
enjambment
audience
epithet
ballad
euphony
blank verse
exact rhyme
cacophony
extended metaphor
narrative poem
caesura
feminine rhyme
octave
carpe diem
foot
ode
conceit
free verse
onomatapoeia
connotation
hexameter
oxymoron
consonance
hyperbole
paradox
couplet
iamb, iambic
parallelism
dactyl, dactylic denotation diction
imagery implied metaphor internal rhyme
metaphysical poetry
rhyme scheme run-on line (enjambment) scansion sestet simile
Rhetorical Devices Great writing and excellent reading come from an understanding of syntax. Syntax is created out of different literary structures listed below. Though you will not be required to know the definitions of each of these terms (they will not do you much good in life), recognizing a difference in sentence pattern can put you way ahead for the AP Exam.
Like with literary devices, you will have a Rhetorical Journal (Unit 2) wherein you will be asked to spot different rhetorical devices in poetry and write a brief journal entry in the following pattern: Device:
Name it
Definition:
Define it
Context:
Quotation with Citation
Explanation:
Tell the impact this device has on the poem/reader at large
Adapted and excerpted from Edward P. J. Corbett and Robert J. Connors’ Classical Rhetoric for the Modern Student. Oxford University Press. ISBN: 0195115422.
Schemes of Construction 1) Schemes of Balance
Parallelism- similarity of structure in a pair or series of related words, phrases, or clauses. This basic principle of grammar and rhetoric demands that equivalent things be set forth in coordinate grammatical structures: nouns with nouns, infinitives with infinitives, and adverb clauses with adverb clauses. a.
“…for the support of this declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor”—The Declaration of Independence
b.
“ …the love of liberty, jury trial, the writ of habeus corpus, and all the blessings of free government….”—John Randolph of Roanoke, “Speech on the Greek Cause.
c.
“So Janey waited a bloom time, and a green time and an orange time.”—Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God
d.
“It will be long before our larger life interprets itself in such imagination as Hawthorne’s, such wisdom as Emerson’s, such poetry as Longfellow’s, such prophesy as Whittier’s, such grace as Holmes’s, such humor and humanity as Lowell’s.”—William Dean Howells, Literary Friends and Acquaintance
Isocolon is a scheme of parallel structure which occurs when the parallel elements are similar not only in grammatical structure but also in length (number of words or even number of syllables). This is very effective, but a little goes a long way. a.
“His purpose was to impress the ignorant, to perplex the dubious, and to confound the scrupulous.”
b.
“An envious heart makes a treacherous ear.”—Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God
Antithesis – the juxtaposition of contrasting ideas, often in parallel structure. The contrast may be in words or in ideas or both. When used well, antithesis can be very effective, even witty. a.
“ What if I am rich, and another is poor—strong, and he is weak—intelligent, and he is benighted—elevated, and he is depraved? Have we not one Father? Hath not one God created us?”—William Lloyd Garrison, “No Compromise with Slavery”
b.
“Your forefathers crossed the great water and landed on this island. Their numbers were small. They found friends and not enemies. They told us they had fled from their own country for fear of wicked men, and had come here to enjoy their religion. They asked for a small seat. We took pity on them, granted their request; and they sat down amongst us. We gave them corn and meat; they gave us poison in return.”—Red Jacket, 1805
2.
Schemes of unusual or inverted word order
Anastrophe- inversion of the natural or usual word order. This deviation can emphasize a point or it can just sound awkward. It is most effective if the author rarely writes awkwardly, because when set among well-structured sentences it emphasizes the inverted phrase. a.
“As the saint of old sweetly sang, “I was glad when they said unto me, let us go into the house of the Lord;” so ought we to be glad when any opportunity of going good is presented to us.” –Cotton Mather “The Reward of Well-Doing”
b.
“Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country.” –John F. Kennedy, Inaugural speech
Parenthesis – insertion of some verbal unit in a position that interrupts the normal syntactical flow of the sentence. One obvious way to use parenthesis is to use the punctuation marks (parentheses). However, there are other ways to insert a comment into a sentence. One might use commas, or dashes, for example. The parenthetical remark, however, is off on a tangent, cut off from the thrust of the sentence and grammatically unrelated to the sentence. a.
“Those two spots are among the darkest of our whole civilization—pardon me, our whole culture (an important distinction, I’ve heard) which might sound like a hoax, or a contradiction, but that (by contradiction, I mean) is how the world moves: not like an arrow, but a boomerang.” –Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man
b.
“And they went further and further from her, being attached to her by a thin thread (since they had lunched with her) which would stretch and stretch, get thinner and thinner as they walked across London; as if one’s friends were attached to one’s body, after lunching with them, by a thin thread, which (as she dozed there) became hazy with the sound of bells, striking the hour or ringing to service, as a single spider’s thread is blotted with rain-drops, and burdened, sags down. So she slept” .—Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway
Apposition – placing side by side two coordinate elements, the second of which serves as an explanation or modification of the first. In grammar, this is the appositive or verbal cluster.
3.
a.
“The mountain was the earth, her home.”—Rudolfo Anaya, Alburquerque
b.
“Here was the source of the mistaken strategy –the reason why activists could so easily ignore class and could consider race alone a sufficient measure of social oppression”.—Richard Rodriguez, The Hunger of Memory
Schemes of Omission
Ellipsis – deliberate omission of a word or of words which are readily implied by the context. While this can make clear, economical sentences; if the understood words are grammatically incompatible, the resulting sentence may be awkward. a.
“So singularly clear was the water that when it was only twenty or thirty feet deep the bottom seemed floating on the air! Yes, where it was even eighty feet deep. Every little pebble was distinct, every speckled trout, every hand’s breadth of sand.” — Mark Twain, Roughing It
b.
“And he to England shall along with you.” –Shakespeare, Hamlet III,iii
Asyndeton – deliberate omission of conjunctions between a series of related clauses. The effect of this device is to produce a hurried rhythm in the sentence. a. “I came, I saw, I conquered.”—Julius Caesar b. “They may have it in well doing, they have it in learning, they may have it even in criticism.” –Matthew Arnold
Polysyndeton – deliberate use of many conjunctions. The effect of polysyndeton is to slow down the rhythm of the sentence. a.
“I said, “Who killed him?” and he said, “I don’t know who killed him but he’s dead all right,” and it was dark and there was water standing in the street and no lights and windows broke and boats all up in the town and trees blown down and everything all blown and I got a skiff and went out and found my boat where I had her inside Mango Key and she was all right only she was full of water.”—Ernest Hemingway, “After the Storm”
b.
“On and on she went, across Piccadilly, and up Regent Street, ahead of him, her cloak, her gloves, her shoulders combining with the fringes and the laces and the feather boas in the windows to make the spirit of finery and whimsy which dwindled out of the shops on to the pavement, as the light of a lamp goes wavering at night over hedges in the
darkness.”—Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway
4.
Schemes of Repetition
Alliteration – repetition of initial or medial consonants in two or more adjacent words. Used sparingly, alliteration provides emphasis. Overused, it sounds silly. a.
“Already American vessels has been searched, seized, and sank.”—John F. Kennedy, Profiles in Courage
b.
“It was the meanest moment of eternity”.—Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God
Assonance – the repetition of similar vowel sounds, preceded and followed by different consonants, in the stressed syllables of adjacent words. a.
“Whales in the wake like capes and Alps/ Quaked the sick sea and snouted deep”. –Dylan Thomas, “Ballad of the Long Legged Bait”
b.
“Refresh your zest for living.”—advertisement for French Line Ships
Anaphora – repetition of the same word or groups of words at the beginnings of successive clauses. This device produces a strong emotional effect, especially in speech. It also establishes a marked change in rhythm. a.
“We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills.”—Winston Churchill, speech in the House of Commons, 6/4/40
b.
“Why should white people be running all the stores in our community? Why should white people be running the banks of our community? Why should the economy of our community be in the hands of the white man? Why?”—Malcolm X
Epistrophe – repetition of the same word or group of words at the ends of successive clauses. Like anaphora, epistrophe produces a strong rhythm and emphasis. a.
“But to all of those who would be tempted by weakness, let us leave no doubt that we will be as strong as we need to be for as long as we need to be.” Richard Nixon, First Inaugural Address
b.
“When we first came we were very many and you were very few. Now you are many and we are getting very few.”—Red Cloud
Epanalepsis – repetition at the end of a clause of the word that occurred at the beginning of the clause. Like other schemes of repetition, epanalepsis often produces or expresses strong emotion. a.
Blood hath bought blood, and blows have answer’d blows:/ Strength match’d with strength, and power confronted power.—William Shakespeare, King John
Anadiplosis – repetition of the last word of one clause at the beginning of the following clause. a.
“The crime was common, common be the pain”.—Alexander Pope, “Eloise to Abelard”
b.
“Aboard my ship, excellent performance is standard. Standard performance is sub-standard. Sub-standard performance is not permitted to exist.”—Captain Queeg, Herman Wouk’s The Caine Mutiny
c.
“Trees and buildings rose and fell against a pale-blue clouded sky, beech changed to elm, and elm to fir, and fir to stone; a world like lead upon a hot fire, bubbled into varying shapes, now like a flame, now like a leaf of clover.” -Graham Greene, Orient Express
Climax – arrangement of words, phrases, or clauses in an order of increasing importance. a.
“More than that, we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint us, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit which has been given to us.”—St. Paul, Romans
Antimetabole – repetition of words, in successive clauses, in reverse grammatical order.
a.
“One should eat to live, not live to eat.”—Moliere, L’Avare
b.
“Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country.”—John F. Kennedy, Inaugural Address
c.
“The Negro needs the white man to free him from his fears. The white man needs the Negro to free him from his guilt.”—Martin Luther King, Jr., from a speech delivered in 1966
d.
“The truth is the light and light is the truth.” –Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man
Chiasmus (the “criss-cross”) – reversal of grammatical structures in successive phrases or clauses. Chiasmus is similar to antimetabole in that it too involves a reversal of grammatical structures in successive phrases or clauses, but it is unlike antimetabole in that it does not involve a repetition of words. Both chiasmus and antimetabole can be used to reinforce antithesis. a.
Exalts his enemies, his friends destroys.—John Dryden, “Absalom and Achitophel”
Polyptoton – repetition of words derived from the same root. a.
“But in this desert country they may see the land being rendered useless by overuse” –Joseph Wood Krutch, The Voice of the Desert
b.
“We would like to contain the uncontainable future in a glass.”—Loren Eiseley, from an article in Harper’s, March 1964
Tropes – Common Devices Metaphor – implied comparison between two things of unlike nature a.
“The symbol of all our aspirations, one of the student leaders called her: the fruit of our struggle.” –John Simpson, “Tianamen Square”
b.
“A breeze blew through the room, blue curtains in at one end and out the other…twisting them up toward the frosted wedding-cake of a ceiling, and the rippled over the wine-colored rug, making a shadow on it…. –F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby
Simile – explicit comparison between two things of unlike nature a.
“The night is bleeding like a cut.” –Bono
b.
“Ah my!” said Eustacia, with a laugh which unclosed her lips so that the sun shone into her mouth as into a tulip and lent it a similar scarlet fire.”–Thomas Hardy, The Return of the Native
Synecdoche – figure of speech in which a part stands for the whole a.
The British crown has been plagued by scandal.
b.
There is no word from the Pentagon on the new rumors from Afghanistan.
Metonymy – substitution of some attributive or suggestive word for what is actually meant a.
“I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears, and sweat.” –Winston Churchill, 1940
b.
“In Europe, we gave the cold shoulder to De Gaulle, and now he gives the warm hand to Mao Tse-tung.” –Richard Nixon, 1960
Antanaclasis (a type of pun)– repetition of a word in two different senses a.
“Your argument is sound, nothing but sound.” –Benjamin Franklin
b.
“If we don’t hand together, we’ll hang separately.” –Benjamin Franklin
Paronomasia (a type of pun) – use of words alike in sound but different in meaning a.
“Ask for me tomorrow and you will find me a grave man.” –William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet
b.
“The Bustle: A Deceitful Seatful.” –Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita
Syllepsis (a type of pun) – use of a word understood differently in relation to two or more other words, which it modifies or governs a.
“There is a certain type of woman who’d rather press grapes than clothes.” –Advertisement for Peck & Peck
b.
“The ink, like our pig, keeps running out of the pen.” –Student paper
Anthimeria – the substitution of one part of speech for another a. “I’ll unhair thy head.” –William Shakespeare, Antony and Cleopatra b. “Me, dictionarying heavily, ‘Where was the one they were watching?’” –Ernest Hemingway, The Green Hills of Africa
Periphrasis (autonomasia) – substitution of a descriptive word or phrase for a proper name or of a proper name for a quality associated with the name a.
“They do not escape Jim Crow; they merely encounter another, not less deadly variety.”–James Baldwin, Nobody Knows My Name
b.
“In his later years, he became in fact the most scarifying of his own creatures: a Quixote of the Cotswolds…” Time, referring to Evelyn Waugh
Personification (prosopesis) – investing abstractions or inanimate objects with human qualities a.
“The night comes crawling in on all fours.” –David Lowery
b.
“And indeed there will be time/ For the yellow smoke that slides along the street,/Rubbings its back upon the window panes.” –T.S. Eliot, “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”
Hyperbole – the use of exaggerated terms for the purpose of emphasis or heightened effect. a.
“It rained for four years, eleven months, and two days.” —Gabriel Garcia Marquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude
b.
“We walked along a road in Cumberland and stooped, because the sky hung so low.” —Thomas Wolfe, Look Homeward, Angel
Litotes – deliberate use of understatement a.
“Last week I saw a woman flayed, and you will hardly believe how much it altered her appearance for the worse.”—Jonathan Swift, A Tale of a Tub
Rhetorical question – asking a question, not for the purpose of eliciting an answer but for the purpose of asserting or denying something obliquely a.
“Isn’t it interesting that this person to whom you set on your knees in your most private sessions at night and you pray, doesn’t even look like you?” –Malcolm X
b.
“Wasn’t the cult of James a revealing symbol and symbol of an age and society which wanted to dwell like him in some false world or false art and false culture?” –Maxwell Geismar, Henry James and His Cult
c.
“You say there is but one way to worship and serve the Great Spirit. If there is but one religion, why do you white people differ so much about it?” –Red Jacket, 1805 speech
Irony – use of a word in such a way as to convey a meaning opposite to the literal meaning of the word a.
“This plan means that one generation pays for another. Now that’s just dandy.” –Huey P. Long
b.
“By Spring, if God was good, all the proud privileges of trench lice, mustard gas, spattered brains, punctured lungs, ripped guts, asphyxiation, mud and gangrene might be his.” –Thomas Wolfe, Look Homeward Angel
Onomatapoeia – use of words whose sound echoes the sense a.
“Snap, crackle, pop!” –Commercial
b.
“…From the clamor and the clangor of the bells!” –Edgar Allan Poe, “The Bells”
Oxymoron – the yoking of two terms which are ordinarily contradictory a.
“The unheard sounds came through, each melodic line existed of itself, stood out clearly from all the rest, said its piece, and waiting patiently for the other voices to speak.” –Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man
b.
“Still waking sleep, that is not what it is!/ This love I feel, that feel no love is this.” –William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet
Paradox – an apparently contradictory statement that nevertheless contains a measure of truth a.
“And yet, it was a strangely satisfying experience for an invisible man to hear the silence of sound.”—Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man
b.
“Art is a form of lying in order to tell the truth.” –Pablo Picasso
3-Cs
3-Cs are the most concise form of writing for the AP Literature Exam. In writing these short journals, you will learn the art of economy, citation, and analysis of the terms and devices you have been learning in class. You must write 18 3-Cs Assignments by the end of the semester (no more than two a week), and they must follow the specific patterns below.
Your weekly assignments will be graded punctually (within a day or two) and returned to you with specific comments: Then you must re-write 9 3-C’s for your Final Portfolio following the instructions below:
Hilight changes you have made
Attach the original to the back of the Re-Write
Write a 200 word explanation on i. What you changed ii. How the change differs from your first draft iii. How it changed the tone of the paragraph POETRY DRILLS
On the AP Exam, you will be expected to read, dissect, and analyze poems in various ways. As a way to prepare you for the dissection, we will use several Annotation Methods in class. These will be called Poetry Drills and the three we will use are listed below:
SOAPS(tone) Method
Read poem aloud twice.
Identify the rhetorical stance (SOAPStone) Speaker Occasion Audience Purpose–is the purpose of the speaker the same as that of the author? Subject Tone
Identify literal level of meaning Paraphrase aloud Consider implication of title
Identify key examples of diction Look up unfamiliar words Consider sound (phonetic intensives, assonance, consonance, and alliteration) Consider rhyme and repetition Is the language euphonious or cacophonous? Identify ambiguous words or phrases Categorize the diction Check for allusions
Identify key details Identify sensory details–consider which senses they engage
Identify imagery Categorize the imagery Look for repetitions or extensions of images
Reread the poem. Reconsider the subject–what is the subject of the poem at and beyond the literal level? Reconsider SOAPStone. Write a tentative thesis that explains the relationship between the thematic and the technical levels of the poem.
Characterize the language, i.e. formal, clinical, jargon
Identify syntactical patterns Identify rhetorical devices (schemes and tropes) Identify patterns of emphasis or repetition
Identify rhythm and meter 11. Reconsider relationship between theme and technique
Restate thesis TPS-FASTT AIM Model Taking A-I-M: Encouraging Complete Analysis
Effective analysis requires much of a writer. Unlike the discourse you see on talk shows, where someone states an opinion based on nothing but his or her own OPINION, analysis requires EVIDENCE. However, moving from the text to a thesis requires more than merely providing a quote. It requires you to
TAKE A-I-M!! When you are analyzing a text, you need to make sure that your ideas are based on careful analysis of the text, rather than feelings or personal opinion. The following steps will encourage discipline in analysis:
Annotate: In other words, underline words/phrases that seem important. You may even find connections between underlined words/phrases and draw arrows/lines between them. Are literary devices in action? The point is to make sure that you choose some specific textual examples and then write brief commentary next to the text you select.
Infer: At this point, you need to comment directly on the words/phrases you have selected so that you can draw INFERENCES from your observations. Is there a discernable pattern? Is there something concrete you notice about the words/phrases? Do they contribute to the literal action, or are they figurative? In other words, in what ways do all of your observations function in the context of the piece as a whole?
Main Idea: Taking all of your annotations and inferences into account, you are then prepared to discuss a main idea in the text you are analyzing. If you are looking at the text as a whole you may wish to draft a thesis statement that addresses your text. Remember that your thesis must always address a specific subject and a specific opinion concerning that subject based on the evidence. Vendler Model (Emotional Curve)
Excerpted from Helen Vendler. Poems, Poets, Poetry: An Introduction and Anthology. Boston: Bedford, 1997.
New terms: agency, skeleton, emotional curve, contexts of diction, chains of significant relation, speech acts, outer form.
1.
Meaning: Can you paraphrase in prose the general outline of the poem?
2.
Antecedent Scenario: What has been happening before the poem begins? What has provoked the speaker into utterance? How has a previous equilibrium been unsettled? What is the speaker upset about?
3.
Division into parts: How many? Where do the breaks come?
4.
The climax: How do the other parts fall into place around it?
5.
The other parts: What makes you divide the poem into these parts? Are there changes in person? In agency? In tense? In parts of speech?
6.
Find the skeleton: What is the emotional curve on which the whole poem is strung? (It even helps to draw a shape—a crescendo, perhaps, or an hourglass-shape, or a sharp ascent followed by a steep decline—so you’ll know how the poem looks to you as a whole.)
7.
Games with the skeleton: How is this emotional curve made new?
8.
Language: What are the contexts of diction: chains of significant relation; parts of speech emphasized, tenses; and so on?
9.
Tone: Can you name the pieces of the emotional curve—the changes in tone you can hear in the speaker’s voice as the poem goes along?
Agency and its speech acts: Who is the main agent in the poem, and does the main agent change as the poem progresses? See what the main speech act of the agent is, and whether that changes. Notice oddities about agency and speech acts.
Roads not taken: Can you imagine the poem written in a different person, or a different tense, or with the parts rearranged, or with an additional stanza, or with one stanza left out, conjecturing by such means why the poem might have wanted these pieces in this order?
Genres: What are they by content, by speech act, and by outer form?
The imagination: What has it invented that is new, striking, memorable—in content, in genre, in analogies, in rhythm, in a speaker? FINAL PORTFOLIO
At the end of the semester, you will be required to put the following information into your Final Portfolio. Because the object of AP is to learn, you will get full credit on all assignments handed in on time (full credit meaning A). However, your final grade will be dependent upon your re-writes, which you will put in your journal according to the specifications the list below. The rewrites and the other sections will account for 25% of your final grade – it is your FINAL EXAM.
WARNING: this portfolio, if left to the last minute (meaning the week before it is due), is BRUTAL and nearly impossible to finish on time. RECOMMENDATION: stay on top of your re-writes (I suggest doing them very soon after you get them back).
Portfolio Requirements
Journals 1. 2.
All 3 Cs
Rhetorical Journal
Timed Writes 1.
All timed-‐writes written in class
Tests/Quizzes 1.
All tests and quizzes given in class
Novel Study 1. 2. 3.
Dialectical Journals (if used)
Guided Studies (Completed Study Guides)
Any notes taken in class
Final Drafts 1.
2.
3.
2
Re-‐writes – Any two re-‐written Analytical Papers
a. Original Draft
b. Peer Review Comment Sheets
c. Re-‐writes (hi-‐lighted changes)
d. Brief (200-‐300 word) written explanation of changes
9 Re-‐written 3 Cs
a. Re-‐written page (attached to Original)
b. 200 word explanation of Revisions
1 -‐ Argumentative Paper
a. Original Draft
b. Peer Review Comment Sheets
c. Re-‐writes (hi-‐lighted changes)
d. Brief (200-‐300 word) written explanation of changes
Contributors: Brian Phillips, Jeremy Zorn, Julie Blattberg Copyright (c) 2001 by SparkNotes LLC All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without the written permission of the Publisher. SPARKNOTES is a registered trademark of SparkNotes LLC. This edition published by Spark Publishing Spark Publishing A Division of SparkNotes LLC 76 9th Avenue, 11th Floor New York, NY 10011
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A Prologue from the Bard Brave scholars, blessed with time and energy, At school, fair Harvard, set about to glean, From dusty tomes and modern poetry, All truths and knowledge formerly unseen. From forth the hungry minds of these good folk Study guides, star–floss’d, soon came to life; Whose deep and deft analysis awoke The latent “A”s of those in literary strife. Aim far past passing—insight from our trove Will free your comprehension from its cage. Our SparkNotes’ worth, online we also prove; Behold this book! Same brains, but paper page. If patient or “whatever,” please attend, What you have missed, our toil shall strive to mend.
CONTEXT The most influential writer in all of English literature, William Shakespeare was born in 1564 to a successful middle-class glove-maker in Stratford-upon-Avon, England. Shakespeare attended grammar school, but his formal education proceeded no further. In 1582 he married an older woman, Anne Hathaway, and had three children with her. Around 1590 he left his family behind and traveled to London to work as an actor and playwright. Public and critical success quickly followed, and Shakespeare eventually became the most popular playwright in England and part-owner of the Globe Theater. His career bridged the reigns of Elizabeth I (ruled 1558–1603) and James I (ruled 1603–1625), and he was a favorite of both monarchs. Indeed, James granted Shakespeare’s company the greatest possible compliment by bestowing upon its members the title of King’s Men. Wealthy and renowned, Shakespeare retired to Stratford and died in 1616 at the age of fifty-two. At the time of Shakespeare’s death, literary luminaries such as Ben Jonson hailed his works as timeless. Shakespeare’s works were collected and printed in various editions in the century following his death, and by the early eighteenth century his reputation as the greatest poet ever to write in English was well established. The unprecedented admiration garnered by his works led to a fierce curiosity about Shakespeare’s life, but the dearth of biographical information has left many details of Shakespeare’s personal history shrouded in mystery. Some people have concluded from this fact that Shakespeare’s plays were really written by someone else—Francis Bacon and the Earl of Oxford are the two most popular candidates— but the support for this claim is overwhelmingly circumstantial, and the theory is not taken seriously by many scholars. In the absence of credible evidence to the contrary, Shakespeare must be viewed as the author of the thirty-seven plays and 154 sonnets that bear his name. The legacy of this body of work is immense. A number of Shakespeare’s plays seem to have transcended even the category of brilliance, becoming so influential as to profoundly affect the course of Western literature and culture ever after. Written during the first part of the seventeenth century (probably in 1600 or 1601), Hamlet was probably first performed in July 1602. It was first published in printed form in 1603 and appeared in an enlarged edition in 1604. As was common practice during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, Shakespeare borrowed for his plays ideas and stories from earlier literary works. He could have taken the story of Hamlet from several possible sources, including a twelfth-century Latin history of Denmark compiled by Saxo Grammaticus and a prose work by the French writer Franç ois de Belleforest, entitled Histoires Tragiques. The raw material that Shakespeare appropriated in writing Hamlet is the story of a Danish prince whose uncle murders the prince’s father, marries his mother, and claims the throne. The prince pretends to be feeble-minded to throw his uncle off guard, then manages to kill
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his uncle in revenge. Shakespeare changed the emphasis of this story entirely, making his Hamlet a philosophically-minded prince who delays taking action because his knowledge of his uncle’s crime is so uncertain. Shakespeare went far beyond making uncertainty a personal quirk of Hamlet’s, introducing a number of important ambiguities into the play that even the audience cannot resolve with certainty. For instance, whether Hamlet’s mother, Gertrude, shares in Claudius’s guilt; whether Hamlet continues to love Ophelia even as he spurns her, in Act III; whether Ophelia’s death is suicide or accident; whether the ghost offers reliable knowledge, or seeks to deceive and tempt Hamlet; and, perhaps most importantly, whether Hamlet would be morally justified in taking revenge on his uncle. Shakespeare makes it clear that the stakes riding on some of these questions are enormous—the actions of these characters bring disaster upon an entire kingdom. At the play’s end it is not even clear whether justice has been achieved. By modifying his source materials in this way, Shakespeare was able to take an unremarkable revenge story and make it resonate with the most fundamental themes and problems of the Renaissance. The Renaissance is a vast cultural phenomenon that began in 15th-century Italy with the recovery of classical Greek and Latin texts that had been lost to the Middle Ages. The scholars who enthusiastically rediscovered these classical texts were motivated by an educational and political ideal called (in Latin) humanitas—the idea that all of the capabilities and virtues peculiar to human beings should be studied and developed to their furthest extent. Renaissance humanism, as this movement is now called, generated a new interest in human experience, and also an enormous optimism about the potential scope of human understanding. Hamlet’s famous speech in Act II, “What a piece of work is a man! How noble in reason, how infinite in faculty, in form and moving how express and admirable, in action how like an angel, in apprehension how like a god—the beauty of the world, the paragon of animals!” (II.ii.293–297) is directly based upon one of the major texts of the Italian humanists, Pico della Mirandola’s Oration on the Dignity of Man. For the humanists, the purpose of cultivating reason was to lead to a better understanding of how to act, and their fondest hope was that the coordination of action and understanding would lead to great benefits for society as a whole. As the Renaissance spread to other countries in the 16th and 17th Centuries, however, a more skeptical strain of humanism developed, stressing the limitations of human understanding. For example, the 16th-century French humanist, Michel de Montaigne, was no less interested in studying human experiences than the earlier humanists were, but he maintained that the world of experience was a world of appearances, and that human beings could never hope to see past those appearances into the “realities” that lie behind them. This is the world in which Shakespeare places his characters. Hamlet is faced with the difficult task of correcting an injustice that he can never have sufficient knowledge of—a dilemma that is by no means unique, or even uncommon. And while Hamlet is fond of pointing out questions that cannot be answered because they concern supernatural and metaphysical matters, the play as a whole chiefly demonstrates the difficulty of knowing the truth about other people—their guilt or innocence, their motivations, their feelings, their relative states
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of sanity or insanity. The world of other people is a world of appearances, and Hamlet is, fundamentally, a play about the difficulty of living in that world.
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PLOT OVERVIEW On a dark winter night, a ghost walks the ramparts of Elsinore Castle in Denmark. Discovered first by a pair of watchmen, then by the scholar Horatio, the ghost resembles the recently deceased King Hamlet, whose brother Claudius has inherited the throne and married the dead king’s widow, Queen Gertrude. When Horatio and the watchmen bring Prince Hamlet, the son of Gertrude and the dead king, to see the ghost, it speaks to him, declaring ominously that it is indeed his father’s spirit, and that he was murdered by none other than Claudius. Ordering Hamlet to seek revenge upon the man who usurped his throne and married his wife, the ghost disappears with the coming of dawn. Prince Hamlet devotes himself to avenging his father’s death, but, because he is contemplative and thoughtful by nature, he delays, entering into a deep melancholy and even apparent madness. Claudius and Gertrude worry about the prince’s erratic behavior and attempt to discover its cause. They employ a pair of Hamlet’s friends, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, to watch him. When Polonius, the pompous Lord Chamberlain, suggests that Hamlet may be mad with love for his daughter, Ophelia, Claudius agrees to spy on Hamlet in conversation with the girl. But though Hamlet certainly seems mad, he does not seem to love Ophelia: he orders her to enter a nunnery and declares that he wishes to ban marriages. A group of traveling actors comes to Elsinore, and Hamlet seizes upon an idea to test his uncle’s guilt. He will have the players perform a scene closely resembling the sequence by which Hamlet imagines his uncle to have murdered his father, so that if Claudius is guilty, he will surely react. When the moment of the murder arrives in the theater, Claudius leaps up and leaves the room. Hamlet and Horatio agree that this proves his guilt. Hamlet goes to kill Claudius but finds him praying. Since he believes that killing Claudius while in prayer would send Claudius’s soul to heaven, Hamlet considers that it would be an inadequate revenge and decides to wait. Claudius, now frightened of Hamlet’s madness and fearing for his own safety, orders that Hamlet be sent to England at once. Hamlet goes to confront his mother, in whose bedchamber Polonius has hidden behind a tapestry. Hearing a noise from behind the tapestry, Hamlet believes the king is hiding there. He draws his sword and stabs through the fabric, killing Polonius. For this crime, he is immediately dispatched to England with Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. However, Claudius’s plan for Hamlet includes more than banishment, as he has given Rosencrantz and Guildenstern sealed orders for the King of England demanding that Hamlet be put to death. In the aftermath of her father’s death, Ophelia goes mad with grief and drowns in the river. Polonius’s son, Laertes, who has been staying in France, returns to Denmark in a rage. Claudius convinces him that Hamlet is to blame for his father’s and sister’s deaths. When Horatio and the king receive letters from Hamlet indicating that the prince has returned to Denmark after pirates attacked his ship en route to England, Claudius concocts a plan to
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use Laertes’ desire for revenge to secure Hamlet’s death. Laertes will fence with Hamlet in innocent sport, but Claudius will poison Laertes’ blade so that if he draws blood, Hamlet will die. As a backup plan, the king decides to poison a goblet, which he will give Hamlet to drink should Hamlet score the first or second hits of the match.Hamlet returns to the vicinity of Elsinore just as Ophelia’s funeral is taking place. Stricken with grief, he attacks Laertes and declares that he had in fact always loved Ophelia. Back at the castle, he tells Horatio that he believes one must be prepared to die, since death can come at any moment. A foolish courtier named Osric arrives on Claudius’s orders to arrange the fencing match between Hamlet and Laertes. The sword-fighting begins. Hamlet scores the first hit, but declines to drink from the king’s proffered goblet. Instead, Gertrude takes a drink from it and is swiftly killed by the poison. Laertes succeeds in wounding Hamlet, though Hamlet does not die of the poison immediately. First, Laertes is cut by his own sword’s blade, and, after revealing to Hamlet that Claudius is responsible for the queen’s death, he dies from the blade’s poison. Hamlet then stabs Claudius through with the poisoned sword and forces him to drink down the rest of the poisoned wine. Claudius dies, and Hamlet dies immediately after achieving his revenge. At this moment, a Norwegian prince named Fortinbras, who has led an army to Denmark and attacked Poland earlier in the play, enters with ambassadors from England, who report that Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are dead. Fortinbras is stunned by the gruesome sight in the castle of the entire royal family lying sprawled on the floor dead. He moves to take power of the kingdom. Horatio, fulfilling Hamlet’s last request, steps forward to tell him Hamlet’s tragic story. Fortinbras orders that Hamlet be carried away in a manner befitting a fallen soldier.
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CHARACTER LIST Hamlet—The Prince of Denmark, the title character, and the protagonist. About thirty years
old at the start of the play, Hamlet is the son of Queen Gertrude and the late King Hamlet, and the nephew of the present king, Claudius. Hamlet is melancholy, bitter, and cynical, full of hatred for his uncle’s scheming and disgust for his mother’s sexuality. A reflective and thoughtful young man who has studied at the University of Wittenberg, Hamlet is sometimes indecisive and hesitant, but at other times prone to rash and impulsive acts. Claudius—The King of Denmark, Hamlet’s uncle, and the play’s antagonist. The villain of
the play, Claudius is a calculating, ambitious politician, driven by his sexual appetites and his lust for power, but he occasionally shows signs of guilt and human feeling—his love for Gertrude, for instance, seems sincere. Gertrude—The Queen of Denmark, Hamlet’s mother, recently married to Claudius.
Gertrude loves Hamlet deeply, but she is a shallow, weak woman who seeks affection and status more urgently than moral rectitude or truth. Polonius—The Lord Chamberlain of Claudius’s court, a pompous, conniving old man.
Polonius is the father of Laertes and Ophelia. Horatio—Hamlet’s close friend, who studied with the prince at the university in Wittenberg.
Horatio is loyal and helpful to Hamlet throughout the play. After Hamlet’s death, Horatio remains alive to tell Hamlet’s story. Ophelia—Polonius’s daughter, a beautiful young woman with whom Hamlet has been in
love. Ophelia is a sweet and innocent young girl, who obeys her father and her brother, Laertes. Dependent on men to tell her how to behave, she gives in to Polonius’s schemes to spy on Hamlet. Even in her lapse into madness and death, she remains maidenly, singing songs about flowers and finally drowning in the river amid the flower garlands she had gathered. Laertes—Polonius’s son and Ophelia’s brother, a young man who spends much of the play
in France. Passionate and quick to action, Laertes is clearly a foil for the reflective Hamlet. Fortinbras—The young Prince of Norway, whose father the king (also named Fortinbras)
was killed by Hamlet’s father (also named Hamlet). Now Fortinbras wishes to attack Denmark to avenge his father’s honor, making him another foil for Prince Hamlet. The Ghost—The specter of Hamlet’s recently deceased father. The ghost, who claims to
have been murdered by Claudius, calls upon Hamlet to avenge him. However, it is not entirely certain whether the ghost is what it appears to be, or whether it is something else. Hamlet speculates that the ghost might be a devil sent to deceive him and tempt him into murder, and the question of what the ghost is or where it comes from is never definitively resolved.
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Rosencrantz and Guildenstern—Two slightly bumbling courtiers, former friends of Ham-
let from Wittenberg, who are summoned by Claudius and Gertrude to discover the cause of Hamlet’s strange behavior. Osric—The foolish courtier who summons Hamlet to his duel with Laertes. Voltimand and Cornelius—Courtiers whom Claudius sends to Norway to persuade the
king to prevent Fortinbras from attacking. Marcellus and Bernardo—The officers who first see the ghost walking the ramparts of
Elsinore and who summon Horatio to witness it. Marcellus is present when Hamlet first encounters the ghost. Francisco—A soldier and guardsman at Elsinore. Reynaldo—Polonius’s servant, who is sent to France by Polonius to check up on and spy
on Laertes.
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ANALYSIS OF MAJOR CHARACTERS
Hamlet Hamlet has fascinated audiences and readers for centuries, and the first thing to point about him is that he is enigmatic. There is always more to him than the other characters in the play can figure out; even the most careful and clever readers come away with the sense that they don’t know everything there is to know about this character. Hamlet actually tells other characters that there is more to him than meets the eye—notably, his mother, and Rosencrantz and Guildenstern—but his fascination involves much more than this. When he speaks, he sounds as if there’s something important he’s not saying, maybe something even he is not aware of. The ability to write soliloquies and dialogues that create this effect is one of Shakespeare’s most impressive achievements. A university student whose studies are interrupted by his father’s death, Hamlet is extremely philosophical and contemplative. He is particularly drawn to difficult questions or questions that cannot be answered with any certainty. Faced with evidence that his uncle murdered his father, evidence that any other character in a play would believe, Hamlet becomes obsessed with proving his uncle’s guilt before trying to act. The standard of “beyond a reasonable doubt” is simply unacceptable to him. He is equally plagued with questions about the afterlife, about the wisdom of suicide, about what happens to bodies after they die—the list is extensive. But even though he is thoughtful to the point of obsession, Hamlet also behaves rashly and impulsively. When he does act, it is with surprising swiftness and little or no premeditation, as when he stabs Polonius through a curtain without even checking to see who he is. He seems to step very easily into the role of a madman, behaving erratically and upsetting the other characters with his wild speech and pointed innuendos. It is also important to note that Hamlet is extremely melancholy and discontented with the state of affairs in Denmark and in his own family—indeed, in the world at large. He is extremely disappointed with his mother for marrying his uncle so quickly, and he repudiates Ophelia, a woman he once claimed to love, in the harshest terms. His words often indicate his disgust with and distrust of women in general. At a number of points in the play, he contemplates his own death and even the option of suicide. But, despite all of the things with which Hamlet professes dissatisfaction, it is remarkable that the prince and heir apparent of Denmark should think about these problems only in personal and philosophical terms. He spends relatively little time thinking about the threats to Denmark’s national security from without or the threats to its stability from within (some of which he helps to create through his own carelessness).
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Claudius Hamlet’s major antagonist is a shrewd, lustful, conniving king who contrasts sharply with the other male characters in the play. Whereas most of the other important men in Hamlet are preoccupied with ideas of justice, revenge, and moral balance, Claudius is bent upon maintaining his own power. The old King Hamlet was apparently a stern warrior, but Claudius is a corrupt politician whose main weapon is his ability to manipulate others through his skillful use of language. Claudius’s speech is compared to poison being poured in the ear—the method he used to murder Hamlet’s father. Claudius’s love for Gertrude may be sincere, but it also seems likely that he married her as a strategic move, to help him win the throne away from Hamlet after the death of the king. As the play progresses, Claudius’s mounting fear of Hamlet’s insanity leads him to ever greater self-preoccupation; when Gertrude tells him that Hamlet has killed Polonius, Claudius does not remark that Gertrude might have been in danger, but only that he would have been in danger had he been in the room. He tells Laertes the same thing as he attempts to soothe the young man’s anger after his father’s death. Claudius is ultimately too crafty for his own good. In Act V, scene ii, rather than allowing Laertes only two methods of killing Hamlet, the sharpened sword and the poison on the blade, Claudius insists on a third, the poisoned goblet. When Gertrude inadvertently drinks the poison and dies, Hamlet is at last able to bring himself to kill Claudius, and the king is felled by his own cowardly machination.
Gertrude Few Shakespearean characters have caused as much uncertainty as Gertrude, the beautiful Queen of Denmark. The play seems to raise more questions about Gertrude than it answers, including: Was she involved with Claudius before the death of her husband? Did she love her husband? Did she know about Claudius’s plan to commit the murder? Did she love Claudius, or did she marry him simply to keep her high station in Denmark? Does she believe Hamlet when he insists that he is not mad, or does she pretend to believe him simply to protect herself? Does she intentionally betray Hamlet to Claudius, or does she believe that she is protecting her son’s secret? These questions can be answered in numerous ways, depending upon one’s reading of the play. The Gertrude who does emerge clearly in Hamlet is a woman defined by her desire for station and affection, as well as by her tendency to use men to fulfill her instinct for self-preservation—which, of course, makes her extremely dependent upon the men in her life. Hamlet’s most famous comment about Gertrude is his furious condemnation of women in general: “Frailty, thy name is woman!” (I.ii.146). This comment is as much indicative of Hamlet’s agonized state of mind as of anything else, but to a great extent Gertrude does seem morally frail. She never exhibits the ability to think critically about her situation, but seems merely to move instinctively toward seemingly safe choices, as when she immediately runs to Claudius after her confrontation with Hamlet. She is at her best in social situations (I.ii
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and V.ii), when her natural grace and charm seem to indicate a rich, rounded personality. At times it seems that her grace and charm are her only characteristics, and her reliance on men appears to be her sole way of capitalizing on her abilities.
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THEMES, MOTIFS, AND SYMBOLS
Themes Themes are the fundamental and often universal ideas explored in a literary work.
Certainty What separates Hamlet from other revenge plays (and maybe from every play written before it) is that the action we expect to see, particularly from Hamlet himself, is continually postponed while Hamlet tries to obtain more certain knowledge about what he is doing. This play poses many questions that other plays would simply take for granted. Can we have certain knowledge about ghosts? Is the ghost what it appears to be, or is it really a misleading fiend? Does the ghost have reliable knowledge about its own death, or is the ghost itself deluded? Moving to more earthly matters: How can we know for certain the facts about a crime that has no witnesses? Can Hamlet know the state of Claudius’s soul by watching his behavior? If so, can he know the facts of what Claudius did by observing the state of his soul? Can Claudius (or the audience) know the state of Hamlet’s mind by observing his behavior and listening to his speech? Can we know whether our actions will have the consequences we want them to have? Can we know anything about the afterlife? Many people have seen Hamlet as a play about indecisiveness, and thus about Hamlet’s failure to act appropriately. It might be more interesting to consider that the play shows us how many uncertainties our lives are built upon, how many unknown quantities are taken for granted when people act or when they evaluate one another’s actions.
Action Directly related to the theme of certainty is the theme of action. How is it possible to take reasonable, effective, purposeful action? In Hamlet, the question of how to act is affected not only by rational considerations, such as the need for certainty, but also by emotional, ethical, and psychological factors. Hamlet himself appears to distrust the idea that it’s even possible to act in a controlled, purposeful way. When he does act, he prefers to do it blindly, recklessly, and violently. The other characters obviously think much less about “action” in the abstract than Hamlet does, and are therefore less troubled about the possibility of acting effectively. They simply act as they feel is appropriate. But in some sense they prove that Hamlet is right, because all of their actions miscarry. Claudius possesses himself of queen and crown through bold action, but his conscience torments him, and he is beset by threats to his authority (and, of course, he dies). Laertes resolves that nothing will distract him from
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acting out his revenge, but he is easily influenced and manipulated into serving Claudius’s ends, and his poisoned rapier is turned back upon himself.
Death In the aftermath of his father’s murder, Hamlet is obsessed with the idea of death, and over the course of the play he considers death from a great many perspectives. He ponders both the spiritual aftermath of death, embodied in the ghost, and the physical remainders of the dead, such as by Yorick’s skull and the decaying corpses in the cemetery. Throughout, the idea of death is closely tied to the themes of spirituality, truth, and uncertainty in that death may bring the answers to Hamlet’s deepest questions, ending once and for all the problem of trying to determine truth in an ambiguous world. And, since death is both the cause and the consequence of revenge, it is intimately tied to the theme of revenge and justice—Claudius’s murder of King Hamlet initiates Hamlet’s quest for revenge, and Claudius’s death is the end of that quest. The question of his own death plagues Hamlet as well, as he repeatedly contemplates whether or not suicide is a morally legitimate action in an unbearably painful world. Hamlet’s grief and misery is such that he frequently longs for death to end to his suffering, but he fears that if he commits suicide, he will be consigned to eternal suffering in hell because of the Christian religion’s prohibition of suicide. In his famous “To be or not to be” soliloquy (III.i), Hamlet philosophically concludes that no one would choose to endure the pain of life if he or she were not afraid of what will come after death, and that it is this fear which causes complex moral considerations to interfere with the capacity for action.
The Diseased Nation Everything is connected in Hamlet, including the welfare of the royal family and the health of the state as a whole. The play’s early scenes explore the sense of anxiety and dread that surrounds the transfer of power from one ruler to the next. Throughout the play, characters draw explicit connections between the moral legitimacy of a ruler and the health of the nation. Denmark is frequently described as a physical body made ill by the moral corruption of Claudius and Gertrude, and many observers interpret the presence of the ghost as a supernatural omen indicating that “[s]omething is rotten in the state of Denmark” (I.iv.67). The dead King Hamlet is portrayed as a strong, forthright ruler under whose guard the state was in good health, while Claudius, a wicked politician, has corrupted and compromised Denmark to satisfy his own appetites. At the end of the play, the rise to power of the upright Fortinbras suggests that Denmark will be strengthened once again.
Motifs Motifs are recurring structures, contrasts, or literary devices that can help to develop and inform the text’s major themes.
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Incest and Incestuous Desire The motif of incest runs throughout the play and is frequently alluded to by Hamlet and the ghost, most obviously in conversations about Gertrude and Claudius, the former brotherin-law and sister-in-law who are now married. A subtle motif of incestuous desire can be found in the relationship of Laertes and Ophelia, as Laertes sometimes speaks to his sister in suggestively sexual terms and, at her funeral, leaps into her grave to hold her in his arms. However, the strongest overtones of incestuous desire arise in the relationship of Hamlet and Gertrude, in Hamlet’s fixation on Gertrude’s sex life with Claudius and his preoccupation with her in general.
Misogyny Shattered by his mother’s repugnant decision to marry Claudius so soon after her husband’s death, Hamlet becomes extremely cynical, even neurotic, about women in general, showing a particular obsession with what he perceives to be a connection between female sexuality and moral corruption. This motif of misogyny, or hatred of women, occurs only sporadically throughout the play, but it is an important inhibiting factor in Hamlet’s relationships with Ophelia and Gertrude. He urges Ophelia to go to a nunnery rather than experience the corruptions of sexuality and exclaims of Gertrude, “Frailty, thy name is woman” (I.ii.146).
Ears and Hearing One facet of Hamlet’s exploration of the difficulty of attaining true knowledge is slipperiness of language. Words are used to communicate ideas, but they can also be used to distort the truth, manipulate other people, and serve as tools in corrupt quests for power. Claudius, the shrewd politician, is the most obvious example of a man who manipulates words to enhance his own power. The sinister uses of words are represented by images of ears and hearing, from Claudius’s murder of the king by pouring poison into his ear to Hamlet’s claim to Horatio that “I have words to speak in thine ear will make thee dumb” (IV.vi.21). The poison poured in the king’s ear by Claudius is used by the ghost to symbolize the corrosive effect of Claudius’s dishonesty on the health of Denmark. Declaring that the story that he was killed by a snake is a lie, he says that “the whole ear of Denmark” is “Rankly abused….” (I.v.36–38).
Symbols Symbols are objects, characters, figures, or colors used to represent abstract ideas or concepts.
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Yorick’s Skull Hamlet is not a particularly symbolic play, at least in the sense that physical objects are rarely used to represent thematic ideas. One important exception is Yorick’s skull, which Hamlet discovers in the graveyard in the first scene of Act V. As Hamlet speaks to and about the skull of the king’s former jester, it becomes a symbol of several different aspects of death, including its inevitability and its disintegration of the body. Hamlet urges the skull to “get you to my lady’s chamber, and tell her, let her paint an inch thick, to this favor she must come”—no one can avoid death (V.i.178–179). He also traces the skull’s mouth and says, “Here hung those lips that I have kissed I know not how oft,” indicating his fascination with the physical consequences of death (V.i.174–175). This latter idea is an important motif throughout the play, as Hamlet frequently makes comments referring to every human body’s eventual decay, noting that Polonius will be eaten by worms, that even kings are eaten by worms, and that dust from the decayed body of Alexander the Great might be used to stop a hole in a beer barrel.
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SUMMARY AND ANALYSIS
Act I, scene i Summary On a dark winter night outside Elsinore Castle in Denmark, an officer named Bernardo comes to relieve the watchman Francisco. In the heavy darkness, the men cannot see each other. Bernardo hears a footstep near him and cries, “Who’s there?” After both men ensure that the other is also a watchman, they relax. Cold, tired, and apprehensive from his many hours of guarding the castle, Francisco thanks Bernardo and prepares to go home and go to bed. Shortly thereafter, Bernardo is joined by Marcellus, another watchman, and Horatio, a friend of Prince Hamlet. Bernardo and Marcellus have urged Horatio to stand watch with them, because they believe they have something shocking to show him. In hushed tones, the two guardsmen discuss the apparition they have seen for the past two nights, and which they now hope to show Horatio: the ghost of the recently deceased King Hamlet, which they claim has appeared before them on the castle ramparts in the late hours of the night. Horatio is skeptical, but then the ghost suddenly appears before the men and just as suddenly vanishes. Terrified, Horatio acknowledges that the specter does indeed resemble the dead King of Denmark, that it even wears the armor King Hamlet wore when he battled against the armies of Norway, and the same frown he wore when he fought against the Poles. Horatio declares that the ghost must bring warning of impending misfortune for Denmark, perhaps in the form of a military attack. He recounts the story of King Hamlet’s conquest of certain lands once belonging to Norway, saying that Fortinbras, the young prince of Norway, now seeks to reconquer those forfeited lands. The ghost materializes for a second time, and Horatio tries urgently to speak to it. The ghost remains silent, however, and disappears again just as the cock crows at the first hint of dawn. Horatio suggests that they tell Prince Hamlet, the dead king’s son, about the apparition. He believes that though the ghost did not speak to him, if it is really the ghost of King Hamlet, it will not refuse to speak to his beloved son.
Analysis Hamlet was written around the year 1600 in the final years of the reign of Queen Elizabeth I, who had been the monarch of England for more than forty years and was then in her late sixties. The prospect of Elizabeth’s death and the question of who would succeed her was
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a subject of grave anxiety at the time, since Elizabeth had no children, and the only person with a legitimate royal claim, James of Scotland, was the son of Mary, Queen of Scots, and therefore represented a political faction to which Elizabeth was opposed. (When Elizabeth died in 1603, James did inherit the throne, becoming King James I.) It is no surprise, then, that many of Shakespeare’s plays from this period, including Hamlet, concern transfers of power from one monarch to the next. These plays focus particularly on the uncertainties, betrayals, and upheavals that accompany such shifts in power, and the general sense of anxiety and fear that surround them. The situation Shakespeare presents at the beginning of Hamlet is that a strong and beloved king has died, and the throne has been inherited not by his son, as we might expect, but by his brother. Still grieving the old king, no one knows yet what to expect from the new one, and the guards outside the castle are fearful and suspicious. The supernatural appearance of the ghost on a chilling, misty night outside Elsinore Castle indicates immediately that something is wrong in Denmark. The ghost serves to enlarge the shadow King Hamlet casts across Denmark, indicating that something about his death has upset the balance of nature. The appearance of the ghost also gives physical form to the fearful anxiety that surrounds the transfer of power after the king’s death, seeming to imply that the future of Denmark is a dark and frightening one. Horatio in particular sees the ghost as an ill omen boding violence and turmoil in Denmark’s future, comparing it to the supernatural omens that supposedly presaged the assassination of Julius Caesar in ancient Rome (and which Shakespeare had recently represented in Julius Caesar). Since Horatio proves to be right, and the appearance of the ghost does presage the later tragedies of the play, the ghost functions as a kind of internal foreshadowing, implying tragedy not only to the audience but to the characters as well. The scene also introduces the character of Horatio, who, with the exception of the ghost, is the only major character in the scene. Without sacrificing the forward flow of action or breaking the atmosphere of dread, Shakespeare establishes that Horatio is a good-humored man who is also educated, intelligent, and skeptical of supernatural events. Before he sees the ghost, he insists, “Tush, tush, ’twill not appear” (I.i.29). Even after seeing it, he is reluctant to give full credence to stories of magic and mysticism. When Marcellus says that he has heard that the crowing of the cock has the power to dispel evil powers, so that “[n]o fairy takes, nor witch hath power to charm,” Horatio replies, “So have I heard, and do in part believe it,” emphasizing the “in part” (I.i.144–146). But Horatio is not a blind rationalist, either, and when he sees the ghost, he does not deny its existence—on the contrary, he is overwhelmed with terror. His ability to accept the truth at once even when his predictions have been proved wrong indicates the fundamental trustworthiness of his character. His reaction to the ghost functions to overcome the audience’s sense of disbelief, since for a man as skeptical, intelligent, and trustworthy as Horatio to believe in and fear the ghost is far more impressive and convincing than if its only witnesses had been a pair of superstitious watchman. In this subtle way, Shakespeare
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uses Horatio to represent the audience’s perspective throughout this scene. By overcoming Horatio’s skeptical resistance, the ghost gains the audience’s suspension of disbelief as well.
Act I, scene ii Summary The morning after Horatio and the guardsmen see the ghost, King Claudius gives a speech to his courtiers, explaining his recent marriage to Gertrude, his brother’s widow and the mother of Prince Hamlet. Claudius says that he mourns his brother but has chosen to balance Denmark’s mourning with the delight of his marriage. He mentions that young Fortinbras has written to him, rashly demanding the surrender of the lands King Hamlet won from Fortinbras’s father, and dispatches Cornelius and Voltimand with a message for the King of Norway, Fortinbras’s elderly uncle. His speech concluded, Claudius turns to Laertes, the son of the Lord Chamberlain, Polonius. Laertes expresses his desire to return to France, where he was staying before his return to Denmark for Claudius’s coronation. Polonius gives his son permission, and Claudius jovially grants Laertes his consent as well. Turning to Prince Hamlet, Claudius asks why “the clouds still hang” upon him, as Hamlet is still wearing black mourning clothes (I.ii.66). Gertrude urges him to cast off his “nightly colour,” but he replies bitterly that his inner sorrow is so great that his dour appearance is merely a poor mirror of it (I.ii.68). Affecting a tone of fatherly advice, Claudius declares that all fathers die, and all sons must lose their fathers. When a son loses a father, he is duty-bound to mourn, but to mourn for too long is unmanly and inappropriate. Claudius urges Hamlet to think of him as a father, reminding the prince that he stands in line to succeed to the throne upon Claudius’s death. With this in mind, Claudius says that he does not wish for Hamlet to return to school at Wittenberg (where he had been studying before his father’s death), as Hamlet has asked to do. Gertrude echoes her husband, professing a desire for Hamlet to remain close to her. Hamlet stiffly agrees to obey her. Claudius claims to be so pleased by Hamlet’s decision to stay that he will celebrate with festivities and cannon fire, an old custom called “the king’s rouse.” Ordering Gertrude to follow him, he escorts her from the room, and the court follows. Alone, Hamlet exclaims that he wishes he could die, that he could evaporate and cease to exist. He wishes bitterly that God had not made suicide a sin. Anguished, he laments his father’s death and his mother’s hasty marriage to his uncle. He remembers how deeply in love his parents seemed, and he curses the thought that now, only a month after his father’s death, his mother has married his father’s far inferior brother.
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O God! a beast that wants discourse of reason, Would have mourn’d longer,—married with mine uncle, My father’s brother; but no more like my father Than I to Hercules: within a month; Ere yet the salt of most unrighteous tears Had left the flushing in her galled eyes, She married:— O, most wicked speed, to post With such dexterity to incestuous sheets! (I.ii.150–157) Hamlet quiets suddenly as Horatio strides into the room, followed by Marcellus and Bernardo. Horatio was a close friend of Hamlet at the university in Wittenberg, and Hamlet, happy to see him, asks why he has left the school to travel to Denmark. Horatio says that he came to see King Hamlet’s funeral, to which Hamlet curtly replies that Horatio came to see his mother’s wedding. Horatio agrees that the one followed closely on the heels of the other. He then tells Hamlet that he, Marcellus, and Bernardo have seen what appears to be his father’s ghost. Stunned, Hamlet agrees to keep watch with them that night, in the hope that he will be able to speak to the apparition.
Analysis Having established a dark, ghostly atmosphere in the first scene, Shakespeare devotes the second to the seemingly jovial court of the recently crowned King Claudius. If the area outside the castle is murky with the aura of dread and anxiety, the rooms inside the castle are devoted to an energetic attempt to banish that aura, as the king, the queen, and the courtiers desperately pretend that nothing is out of the ordinary. It is difficult to imagine a more convoluted family dynamic or a more out-of-balance political situation, but Claudius nevertheless preaches an ethic of balance to his courtiers, pledging to sustain and combine the sorrow he feels for the king’s death and the joy he feels for his wedding in equal parts. But despite Claudius’s efforts, the merriment of the court seems superficial. This is largely due to the fact that the idea of balance Claudius pledges to follow is unnatural. How is it possible to balance sorrow for a brother’s death with happiness for having married a dead brother’s wife? Claudius’s speech is full of contradictory words, ideas, and phrases, beginning with “Though yet of Hamlet our late brother’s death / The memory be green,” which combines the idea of death and decay with the idea of greenery, growth, and renewal (I.ii.1–2). He also speaks of “[o]ur sometime sister, now our queen,” “defeated joy,” “an auspicious and a dropping eye,” “mirth in funeral,” and “dirge in marriage” (I.ii.8–12). These ideas sit uneasily with one another, and Shakespeare uses this speech to give his audience an uncomfortable first impression of Claudius. The negative impression is furthered when Claudius affects a fatherly role toward the bereaved Hamlet, advising him to stop grieving
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for his dead father and adapt to a new life in Denmark. Hamlet obviously does not want Claudius’s advice, and Claudius’s motives in giving it are thoroughly suspect, since, after all, Hamlet is the man who would have inherited the throne had Claudius not snatched it from him. The result of all this blatant dishonesty is that this scene portrays as dire a situation in Denmark as the first scene does. Where the first scene illustrated the fear and supernatural danger lurking in Denmark, the second hints at the corruption and weakness of the king and his court. The scene also furthers the idea that Denmark is somehow unsound as a nation, as Claudius declares that Fortinbras makes his battle plans “[h]olding a weak supposal of our worth, / Or thinking by our late dear brother’s death / Our state to be disjoint and out of frame” (I.ii.18–20). Prince Hamlet, devastated by his father’s death and betrayed by his mother’s marriage, is introduced as the only character who is unwilling to play along with Claudius’s gaudy attempt to mimic a healthy royal court. On the one hand, this may suggest that he is the only honest character in the royal court, the only person of high standing whose sensibilities are offended by what has happened in the aftermath of his father’s death. On the other hand, it suggests that he is a malcontent, someone who refuses to go along with the rest of the court for the sake of the greater good of stability. In any case, Hamlet already feels, as Marcellus will say later, that “something is rotten in the state of Denmark” (I.iv.67). We also see that his mother’s hasty remarriage has shattered his opinion of womanhood (“Frailty, thy name is woman,” he cries out famously in this scene [I.ii.146]), a motif that will develop through his unraveling romantic relationship with Ophelia and his deteriorating relationship with his mother. His soliloquy about suicide (“O, that this too too solid flesh would melt, / Thaw and resolve itself into a dew!” [I.ii.129–130]) ushers in what will be a central idea in the play. The world is painful to live in, but, within the Christian framework of the play, if one commits suicide to end that pain, one damns oneself to eternal suffering in hell. The question of the moral validity of suicide in an unbearably painful world will haunt the rest of the play; it reaches the height of its urgency in the most famous line in all of English literature: “To be, or not to be: that is the question” (III.i.58). In this scene Hamlet mainly focuses on the appalling conditions of life, railing against Claudius’s court as “an unweeded garden, / That grows to seed; things rank and gross in nature / Possess it merely” (I.ii.135–137). Throughout the play, we watch the gradual crumbling of the beliefs on which Hamlet’s worldview has been based. Already, in this first soliloquy, religion has failed him, and his warped family situation can offer him no solace.
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Act I, scenes iii–iv Summary Act I, scene iii In Polonius’s house, Laertes prepares to leave for France. Bidding his sister, Ophelia, farewell, he cautions her against falling in love with Hamlet, who is, according to Laertes, too far above her by birth to be able to love her honorably. Since Hamlet is responsible not only for his own feelings but for his position in the state, it may be impossible for him to marry her. Ophelia agrees to keep Laertes’ advice as a “watchman” close to her heart but urges him not to give her advice that he does not practice himself. Laertes reassures her that he will take care of himself. Polonius enters to bid his son farewell. He tells Laertes that he must hurry to his ship but then delays him by giving him a great deal of advice about how to behave with integrity and practicality. Polonius admonishes Laertes to keep his thoughts to himself, restrain himself from acting on rash desires, and treat people with familiarity but not with vulgarity. He advises him to hold on to his old friends but be slow to embrace new friends; to be slow to quarrel but to fight boldly if the need arises; to listen more than he talks; to dress richly but not gaudily; to refrain from borrowing or lending money; and, finally, to be true to himself above all things. Laertes leaves, bidding farewell to Ophelia once more. Alone with his daughter, Polonius asks Ophelia what Laertes told her before he left. Ophelia says that it was “something touching the Lord Hamlet” (I.ii.89). Polonius asks her about her relationship with Hamlet. She tells him that Hamlet claims to love her. Polonius sternly echoes Laertes’ advice, and forbids Ophelia to associate with Hamlet anymore. He tells her that Hamlet has deceived her in swearing his love, and that she should see through his false vows and rebuff his affections. Ophelia pledges to obey.
Act I, scene iv It is now night. Hamlet keeps watch outside the castle with Horatio and Marcellus, waiting in the cold for the ghost to appear. Shortly after midnight, trumpets and gunfire sound from the castle, and Hamlet explains that the new king is spending the night carousing, as is the Danish custom. Disgusted, Hamlet declares that this sort of custom is better broken than kept, saying that the king’s revelry makes Denmark a laughingstock among other nations and lessens the Danes’ otherwise impressive achievements. Then the ghost appears, and Hamlet calls out to it. The ghost beckons Hamlet to follow it out into the night. His companions urge him not to follow, begging him to consider that the ghost might lead him toward harm.
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Hamlet himself is unsure whether his father’s apparition is truly the king’s spirit or an evil demon, but he declares that he cares nothing for his life and that, if his soul is immortal, the ghost can do nothing to harm his soul. He follows after the apparition and disappears into the darkness. Horatio and Marcellus, stunned, declare that the event bodes ill for the nation. Horatio proclaims that heaven will oversee the outcome of Hamlet’s encounter with the ghost, but Marcellus says that they should follow and try to protect him themselves. After a moment, Horatio and Marcellus follow after Hamlet and the ghost.
Analysis Neither a borrower nor a lender be: For loan oft loses both itself and friend; And borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry. (I.iii.75–77) The active, headstrong, and affectionate Laertes contrasts powerfully with the contemplative Hamlet, becoming one of Hamlet’s most important foils in the play. (A foil is a character who by contrast emphasizes the distinct characteristics of another character.) As the plot progresses, Hamlet’s hesitancy to undertake his father’s revenge will markedly contrast with Laertes’ furious willingness to avenge his father’s death (III.iv). Act I, scene iii serves to introduce this contrast. Since the last scene portrayed the bitterly fractured state of Hamlet’s family, by comparison, the bustling normalcy of Polonius’s household appears all the more striking. Polonius’s long speech advising Laertes on how to behave in France is self-consciously paternal, almost excessively so, as if to hammer home the contrast between the fatherly love Laertes enjoys and Hamlet’s state of loss and estrangement. Hamlet’s conversation with the ghost of his father in Act I, scene v will be a grotesque recapitulation of the father-to-son speech, with vastly darker content. As in the previous scene, when Claudius and Gertrude advised Hamlet to stay in Denmark and cast off his mourning, the third scene develops through a motif of family members giving one another advice, or orders masked as advice. While Polonius and Laertes seem to have a relatively normal father-son relationship, their relationships with Ophelia seem somewhat troubling. They each assume a position of unquestioned authority over her, Polonius treating his daughter as though her feelings are irrelevant (“Affection! pooh! you speak like a green girl”) and Laertes treating her as though her judgment is suspect (I.iii.101). Further, Laertes’ speech to Ophelia is laced with forceful sexual imagery, referring to her “chaste treasure open” to Hamlet’s “unmaster’d importunity” (I.iii.31–32). Combined with the extremely affectionate interplay between the brother and sister, this sexual imagery creates an incestuous undertone, echoing the incest of Claudius’s marriage to his brother’s wife and Hamlet’s passionate, conflicting feelings for his mother.
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The short transitional scene that follows serves a number of important purposes, as Shakespeare begins to construct a unified world out of the various environments of the play. Whereas the play up to this point has been divided into a number of separate settings, this scene begins to blend together elements of different settings. Hamlet, for instance, has been associated with the world inside Elsinore, but he now makes his appearance in the darkness outside it. Likewise, the terror outside the castle so far has been quite separate from the revelry inside, but now the sound of Claudius’s carousing leaks through the walls and reaches Hamlet and his companions in the night. Act I, scene iv also continues the development of the motif of the ill health of Denmark. Hamlet views the king’s carousing as a further sign of the state’s corruption, commenting that alcohol makes the bad aspects of a person’s character overwhelm all of his or her good qualities. And the appearance of the ghost is again seen as a sign of Denmark’s decay, this time by Marcellus, who famously declares, “Something is rotten in the state of Denmark” (I.iv.67). Finally, the reappearance of the still-silent ghost brings with it a return of the theme of spirituality, truth, and uncertainty, or, more specifically, the uncertainty of truth in a world of spiritual ambiguity. Since Hamlet does not know what lies beyond death, he cannot tell whether the ghost is truly his father’s spirit or whether it is an evil demon come from hell to tempt him toward destruction. This uncertainty about the spiritual world will lead Hamlet to wrenching considerations of moral truth. These considerations have already been raised by Hamlet’s desire to kill himself in Act I, scene ii and will be explored more directly in the scenes to come.
Act I, scene v–Act II, scene i Summary Act I, scene v In the darkness, the ghost speaks to Hamlet, claiming to be his father’s spirit, come to rouse Hamlet to revenge his death, a “foul and most unnatural murder” (I.v.25). Hamlet is appalled at the revelation that his father has been murdered, and the ghost tells him that as he slept in his garden, a villain poured poison into his ear—the very villain who now wears his crown, Claudius. Hamlet’s worst fears about his uncle are confirmed. “O my prophetic soul!” he cries (I.v.40). The ghost exhorts Hamlet to seek revenge, telling him that Claudius has corrupted Denmark and corrupted Gertrude, having taken her from the pure love of her first marriage and seduced her in the foul lust of their incestuous union. But the ghost urges Hamlet not to act against his mother in any way, telling him to “leave her to heaven” and to the pangs of her own conscience (I.v.86).
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As dawn breaks, the ghost disappears. Intensely moved, Hamlet swears to remember and obey the ghost. Horatio and Marcellus arrive upon the scene and frantically ask Hamlet what has happened. Shaken and extremely agitated, he refuses to tell them, and insists that they swear upon his sword not to reveal what they have seen. He tells them further that he may pretend to be a madman, and he makes them swear not to give the slightest hint that they know anything about his motives. Three times the ghost’s voice echoes from beneath the ground, proclaiming, “Swear.” Horatio and Marcellus take the oath upon Hamlet’s sword, and the three men exit toward the castle. As they leave, Hamlet bemoans the responsibility he now carries: “The time is out of joint: O cursed spite / That ever I was born to set it right!” (I.v.189–190).
Act II, scene i Polonius dispatches his servant Reynaldo to France with money and written notes for Laertes, also ordering him to inquire about and spy on Laertes’ personal life. He gives him explicit directions as to how to pursue his investigations, then sends him on his way. As Reynaldo leaves, Ophelia enters, visibly upset. She tells Polonius that Hamlet, unkempt and wildeyed, has accosted her. Hamlet grabbed her, held her, and sighed heavily, but did not speak to her. Polonius says that Hamlet must be mad with his love for Ophelia, for she has distanced herself from him ever since Polonius ordered her to do so. Polonius speculates that this lovesickness might be the cause of Hamlet’s moodiness, and he hurries out to tell Claudius of his idea.
Analysis The ghost’s demand for Hamlet to seek revenge upon Claudius is the pivotal event of Act I. It sets the main plot of the play into motion and leads Hamlet to the idea of feigning madness, which becomes his primary mode of interacting with other people for most of the next three acts, as well as a major device Shakespeare uses to develop his character. Perhaps most important, it introduces the idea of retributive justice, the notion that sin must be returned with punishment. Claudius has committed a sin, and now, to restore balance to the kingdom, the sin must be punished. The idea of retribution haunts and goads characters throughout the play, functioning as an important motivation for action, spurring Claudius to guilt, Hamlet to the avoidance of suicide, and Laertes to murderous rage after the deaths of Ophelia and Polonius. While Hamlet fits a genre called revenge tragedy, loosely following the form popularized by Thomas Kyd’s earlier Spanish Tragedy, it is unlike any other revenge tragedy in that it is more concerned with thought and moral questioning than with bloody action. One of the central tensions in the play comes from Hamlet’s inability to find any certain moral truths as he works his way toward revenge. Even in his first encounter with the ghost, Hamlet questions the appearances of things around him and worries whether he can trust his
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perceptions, doubting the authenticity of his father’s ghost and its tragic claim. Because he is contemplative to the point of obsession, Hamlet’s decision to feign madness, ostensibly in order to keep the other characters from guessing the motive for his behavior, will lead him at times perilously close to actual madness. In fact, it is impossible to say for certain whether or not Hamlet actually does go mad, and, if so, when his act becomes reality. We have already seen that Hamlet, though thoughtful by nature, also has an excitable streak, which makes him erratic, nervous, and unpredictable. In Act I, scene v, as the ghost disappears, Hamlet seems to have too much nervous energy to deal competently with the curious Horatio and Marcellus. He is already unsure of what to believe and what to do, and the tension of his uncertainty comes out in sprawling wordplay that makes him seem already slightly mad, calling the ghost names such as “truepenny” and “old mole” as it rumbles, “Swear,” from beneath the ground (I.v.152, I.v.164). The short scene that begins Act II is divided into two parts, the first of which involves Polonius’s conversation with Reynaldo about Laertes and the second of which involves Polonius’s conversation with Ophelia about Hamlet. The scene serves to develop the character of Polonius, who is one of the most intriguing figures in Hamlet. Polonius can be interpreted as either a doddering fool or as a cunning manipulator, and he has been portrayed onstage as both. In this scene, as he carefully instructs Reynaldo in the art of snooping, he seems more the manipulator than the fool, though his obvious love of hearing his own voice leads him into some comical misphrasings (“And then, sir, does a this — a does — / what was I about to say? By the mass, I was about to say some / thing. Where did I leave?” [II.i.49–51]). In his advice to Reynaldo, Polonius explicitly develops one of the themes of Hamlet, the idea that words can be used to bend and alter the truth. He explains to Reynaldo how to ask leading questions of Laertes’ acquaintances and how to phrase questions in a way that will seem inoffensive. As with Claudius, who manipulated the royal court with his speech in Act I, scene ii, words become a tool for influencing the minds of others and controlling their perception of the truth. Remember that Claudius killed King Hamlet by pouring poison into his ear. Shakespeare continually illustrates that words can function as poison in the ear as well. As the ghost says in Act I, scene v, Claudius has poisoned “the whole ear of Denmark” with his words (I.v.36). The running imagery of ears and hearing serves as an important symbol of the power of words to manipulate the truth. Polonius’s conversation with Ophelia is important for several reasons. First, it illustrates how Hamlet has been behaving since his encounter with the ghost: he has made good on his promise to Horatio and is behaving as a madman. Though we learn about it only through her description, his emotional scene with Ophelia may stem in part from his general plan to feign insanity, and in part from real distress at seeing Ophelia, since she has recently spurned him. In addition, his mother’s marriage to Claudius seems to have shattered his opinion of women in general. The conversation also informs the audience that she has obeyed her father’s orders and broken off her relationship with Hamlet, confirming her docile nature and dependence on her father to tell her how to behave. And finally, the conversation engenders an important
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moment for the plot of the play: Polonius’s sudden idea that Hamlet’s melancholy and strange behavior may be due to his lovesickness for Ophelia. Though Polonius’s overly simple theory is obviously insufficient to explain Hamlet’s behavior, it does lead to several plot developments in the next few scenes, including Hamlet’s disastrous confrontation with Ophelia and Gertrude and Claudius’s decision to spy on Hamlet.
Act II, scene ii Summary Within the castle, Claudius and Gertrude welcome Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, two of Hamlet’s friends from Wittenberg. Increasingly concerned about Hamlet’s erratic behavior and his apparent inability to recover from his father’s death, the king and queen have summoned his friends to Elsinore in the hope that they might be able to cheer Hamlet out of his melancholy, or at least discover the cause of it. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern agree to investigate, and the queen orders attendants to take them to her “too much changed” son (II.ii.36). Polonius enters, announcing the return of the ambassadors whom Claudius sent to Norway. Voltimand and Cornelius enter and describe what took place with the aged and ailing king of Norway: the king rebuked Fortinbras for attempting to make war on Denmark, and Fortinbras swore he would never again attack the Danes. The Norwegian king, overjoyed, bequeathed upon Fortinbras a large annuity, and urged him to use the army he had assembled to attack the Poles instead of the Danes. He has therefore sent a request back to Claudius that Prince Fortinbras’s armies be allowed safe passage through Denmark on their way to attack the Poles. Relieved to have averted a war with Fortinbras’s army, Claudius declares that he will see to this business later. Voltimand and Cornelius leave. Turning to the subject of Hamlet, Polonius declares, after a wordy preamble, that the prince is mad with love for Ophelia. He shows the king and queen letters and love poems Hamlet has given to Ophelia, and proposes a plan to test his theory. Hamlet often walks alone through the lobby of the castle, and, at such a time, they could hide behind an arras (a curtain or wall hanging) while Ophelia confronts Hamlet, allowing them to see for themselves whether Hamlet’s madness really emanates from his love for her. The king declares that they will try the plan. Gertrude notices that Hamlet is approaching, reading from a book as he walks, and Polonius says that he will speak to the prince. Gertrude and Claudius exit, leaving Polonius alone with Hamlet. Polonius attempts to converse with Hamlet, who appears utterly insane; he calls the old man a “fishmonger” and answers his questions irrationally. But many of Hamlet’s seemingly lunatic statements hide barbed observations about Polonius’s pomposity and his old age. Polonius comments that while Hamlet is clearly mad, his replies are often “pregnant” with
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meaning (II.ii.206). He hurries away, determined to arrange the meeting between Hamlet and Ophelia. As Polonius leaves, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern enter, and Hamlet seems pleased to see them. They discuss Hamlet’s unhappiness about recent affairs in Denmark. Hamlet asks why they have come. Sheepishly, the two men claim they have come merely to visit Hamlet, but he sternly declares that he knows that the king and queen sent for them. They confess this to be true, and Hamlet says that he knows why: because he has lost all of his joy and descended into a state of melancholy in which everything (and everyone) appears sterile and worthless. Rosencrantz smiles and says he wonders then how Hamlet will receive a theatrical troupe that is currently traveling toward the castle. The trumpets blow, announcing the arrival of the actors (or “players”). Hamlet tells his friends that they are welcome to stay at Elsinore, but that his “uncle-father and aunt-mother” are deceived in his madness. He is mad only some of the time and at other times is completely sane. Polonius enters to announce the arrival of the players, who follow him into the room. Hamlet welcomes them and entreats one of them to give him a speech about the fall of Troy and the death of the Trojan king and queen, Priam and Hecuba. Impressed with the player’s speech, Hamlet orders Polonius to see them escorted to guestrooms. He announces that the next night they will hear “The Murder of Gonzago” performed, with an additional short speech that he will write himself. Hamlet leaves Rosencrantz and Guildenstern and now stands alone in the room. He immediately begins cursing himself, bitterly commenting that the player who gave the speech was able to summon a depth of feeling and expression for long-dead figures who mean nothing to him, while Hamlet is unable to take action even with his far more powerful motives. He resolves to devise a trap for Claudius, forcing the king to watch a play whose plot closely resembles the murder of Hamlet’s father; if the king is guilty, he thinks, he will surely show some visible sign of guilt when he sees his sin reenacted on stage. Then, Hamlet reasons, he will obtain definitive proof of Claudius’s guilt. “The play’s the thing,” he declares, “wherein I’ll catch the conscience of the king” (II.ii.581–582).
Analysis If Hamlet is merely pretending to be mad, as he suggests, he does almost too good a job of it. His portrayal is so convincing that many critics contend that his already fragile sanity shatters at the sight of his dead father’s ghost. However, the acute and cutting observations he makes while supposedly mad support the view that he is only pretending. Importantly, he declares, “I am but mad north-north-west: when the wind is southerly I know a hawk from a handsaw” (II.ii.361–362). That is, he is only “mad” at certain calculated times, and the rest of the time he knows what is what. But he is certainly confused and upset, and his confusion translates into an extraordinarily intense state of mind suggestive of madness. He
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may know a “hawk from a handsaw,” but the very fact that he would select those two bizarre elements as items to compare indicates the eccentricity of his current thoughts. This scene, by far the longest in the play, includes several important revelations and furthers the development of some of the play’s main themes. The scene contains four main parts: Polonius’s conversation with Claudius and Gertrude, which includes the discussion with the ambassadors; Hamlet’s conversation with Polonius, in which we see Hamlet consciously feigning madness for the first time; Hamlet’s reunion with Rosencrantz and Guildenstern; and the scene with the players, followed by Hamlet’s concluding soliloquy on the theme of action. Shakespeare’s bundling of these separate plot developments into a single scene indicates that they all take place consecutively, in the same location, and also indicates that Shakespeare wanted them to occur in quick succession. We have already seen the developing contrast between Hamlet and Laertes. The section involving the Norwegian ambassadors develops another important contrast, this time between Hamlet and Fortinbras. Like Hamlet, Fortinbras is the grieving son of a dead king, a prince whose uncle inherited the throne in his place. But where Hamlet has sunk into despair, contemplation, and indecision, Fortinbras has devoted himself to the pursuit of revenge. This contrast will be explored much more thoroughly later in the play. Here, it is important mainly to note that Fortinbras’s uncle has forbidden him to attack Denmark but given him permission to ride through Denmark on his way to attack Poland. This at least suggests the possibility that the King of Norway is trying to trick Claudius into allowing a hostile army into his country. It is notable that Claudius appears indifferent to the fact that a powerful enemy will be riding through his country with a large army in tow. Claudius seems much more worried about Hamlet’s madness, indicating that where King Hamlet was a powerful warrior who sought to expand Denmark’s power abroad, Claudius is a politician who is more concerned about threats from within his state. The arrival of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, two of the most enigmatic figures in Hamlet, is another important development. These two characters are manipulated by all of the members of the royal family and seem to exist in a state of fear that they will offend the wrong person or give away the wrong secret at the wrong time. One of the strangest qualities of the two men is their extraordinary similarity. In fact, Shakespeare leaves Rosencrantz and Guildenstern almost entirely undifferentiated from one another. “Thanks, Rosencrantz and gentle Guildenstern,” Claudius says, and Gertrude replies, “Thanks, Guildenstern and gentle Rosencrantz,” almost as though it does not matter which is which (II.ii.33–34). The two men’s questioning of Hamlet is a parody of a Socratic dialogue. They propose possibilities, develop ideas according to rational argument, and find their attempts to understand Hamlet’s behavior entirely thwarted by his uncooperative replies. What a piece of work is man! How noble in reason! how infinite in faculties! in form and moving, how express and admirable! in action how like an angel! in apprehension, how like a god! the beauty of the world! the paragon of animals! And yet, to me, what is this quintessence of dust? (II.ii.293–298)
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The other important event in this scene is the arrival of the players. The presence of players and play-acting within the play points to an important theme: that real life is in certain ways like play-acting. Hamlet professes to be amazed by the player king’s ability to engage emotionally with the story he is telling even though it is only an imaginative recreation. Hamlet is prevented from responding to his own situation because he doesn’t have certain knowledge about it, but the player king, and theater audiences in general, can respond feelingly even to things they know to be untrue. In fact, most of the time people respond to their real-life situations with feelings and actions that are not based on certain knowledge. This is what Hamlet refuses to do. His refusal to act like he knows what he’s doing when he really doesn’t may be construed as heroic and appropriate, or quixotic and impossible. In either case, Hamlet’s plan to trap the king by eliciting an emotional response is highly unsound: Claudius’s feelings about a play could never be construed as a reliable index of its truth.
Act III, scene i Summary Claudius and Gertrude discuss Hamlet’s behavior with Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, who say they have been unable to learn the cause of his melancholy. They tell the king and queen about Hamlet’s enthusiasm for the players. Encouraged, Gertrude and Claudius agree that they will see the play that evening. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern leave, and Claudius orders Gertrude to leave as well, saying that he and Polonius intend to spy on Hamlet’s confrontation with Ophelia. Gertrude exits, and Polonius directs Ophelia to walk around the lobby. Polonius hears Hamlet coming, and he and the king hide. Hamlet enters, speaking thoughtfully and agonizingly to himself about the question of whether to commit suicide to end the pain of experience: “To be, or not to be: that is the question” (III.i.58). He says that the miseries of life are such that no one would willingly bear them, except that they are afraid of “something after death” (III.i.80). Because we do not know what to expect in the afterlife, we would rather “bear those ills we have,” Hamlet says, “than fly to others that we know not of” (III.i.83–84). In mid-thought, Hamlet sees Ophelia approaching. Having received her orders from Polonius, she tells him that she wishes to return the tokens of love he has given her. Angrily, Hamlet denies having given her anything; he laments the dishonesty of beauty, and claims both to have loved Ophelia once and never to have loved her at all. Bitterly commenting on the wretchedness of humankind, he urges Ophelia to enter a nunnery rather than become a “breeder of sinners” (III.i.122– 123). He criticizes women for making men behave like monsters and for contributing to the world’s dishonesty by painting their faces to appear more beautiful than they are. Working himself into a rage, Hamlet denounces Ophelia, women, and humankind in general, saying
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that he wishes to end all marriages. As he storms out, Ophelia mourns the “noble mind” that has now lapsed into apparent madness (III.i.149). The king and Polonius emerge from behind the tapestry. Claudius says that Hamlet’s strange behavior has clearly not been caused by love for Ophelia and that his speech does not seem like the speech of insanity. He says that he fears that melancholy sits on something dangerous in Hamlet’s soul like a bird sits on her egg, and that he fears what will happen when it hatches. He declares that he will send Hamlet to England, in the hope that a change of scenery might help him get over his troubles. Polonius agrees that this is a good idea, but he still believes that Hamlet’s agitation comes from loving Ophelia. He asks Claudius to send Hamlet to Gertrude’s chamber after the play, where Polonius can hide again and watch unseen; he hopes to learn whether Hamlet is really mad with love. Claudius agrees, saying that “[m]adness in great ones” must be carefully watched (III.i.187).
Analysis “To be, or not to be” is probably the most famous line in all of literature. What does it mean? Why are these words, and the words that follow, special? One reason is that they are a stunning example of Shakespeare’s ability to make his characters seem three-dimensional. The audience senses that there is more to Hamlet’s words than meets the ear—that there is something behind his words that is never spoken. Or, to put it another way, the audience witnesses signs of something within Hamlet’s mind that even he isn’t aware of. Hamlet is a fictional character who seems to possess a subconscious mind. How does Shakespeare manage to accomplish this? In the first place, Hamlet doesn’t talk directly about what he’s really talking about. When he questions whether it is better “to be, or not to be,” the obvious implication is, “Should I kill myself?” The entire soliloquy strongly suggests that he is toying with suicide and perhaps trying to work up his courage to do it. But at no point does he say that he is in pain or discuss why he wants to kill himself. In fact, he never says “I” or “me” in the entire speech. He’s not trying to “express” himself at all; instead, he poses the question as a matter of philosophical debate. When he claims that everybody would commit suicide if they weren’t uncertain about the afterlife, it sounds as if he’s making an argument to convince an imaginary listener about an abstract point rather than directly addressing how the question applies to him. Now, it’s perfectly ordinary for characters in plays to say something other than what they mean to other characters (this suggests that they are consciously hiding their true motives), but Hamlet does it when he’s talking to himself. This creates the general impression that there are things going on in Hamlet’s mind that he can’t think about directly. While we’re on the subject of what’s going on inside Hamlet’s mind, consider his encounter with Ophelia. This conversation is closely watched by Claudius, Gertrude, and Ophelia. It is, in fact, a test. It’s supposed to establish whether Hamlet’s madness stems from his lovesickness over Ophelia. Before we, the audience, see this encounter, we already
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think we know more than Claudius does: we know that Hamlet is only acting crazy, and that he’s doing it to hide the fact that he’s plotting against (or at least investigating) his uncle. Therefore, it can’t be true that he’s acting mad because of his love for Ophelia. But witnessing Hamlet’s encounter with her throws everything we think we know into question. Does Hamlet mean what he says to Ophelia? He says that he did love her once but that he doesn’t love her now. There are several problems with concluding that Hamlet says the opposite of what he means in order to appear crazy. For one thing, if he really does love her, this is unnecessarily self-destructive behavior. It’s unnecessary because it doesn’t accomplish very much; that is, it doesn’t make Claudius suspect him less. His professions of former love make him appear fickle, or emotionally withdrawn, rather than crazy. Is Hamlet really crazy or just pretending? He announced ahead of time that he was going to act crazy, so it’s hard to conclude that he (coincidentally) really went mad right after saying so. But his behavior toward Ophelia is both self-destructive and fraught with emotional intensity. It doesn’t obviously further his plans. Moreover, his bitterness against Ophelia, and against women in general, resonates with his general discontentedness about the state of the world, the same discontentedness that he expresses when he thinks no one is watching. There is a passionate intensity to his unstable behavior that keeps us from viewing it as fake. Perhaps it is worthwhile to ask this question: if a person in a rational state of mind decides to act as if he is crazy, to abuse the people around him regardless of whether he loves those people or hates them, and to give free expression to all of his most antisocial thoughts, when he starts to carry those actions out, will it even be possible to say at what point he stops pretending to be crazy and starts actually being crazy?
Act III, scene ii Summary That evening, in the castle hall now doubling as a theater, Hamlet anxiously lectures the players on how to act the parts he has written for them. Polonius shuffles by with Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, and Hamlet dispatches them to hurry the players in their preparations. Horatio enters, and Hamlet, pleased to see him, praises him heartily, expressing his affection for and high opinion of Horatio’s mind and manner, especially Horatio’s qualities of selfcontrol and reserve. Having told Horatio what he learned from the ghost—that Claudius murdered his father—he now asks him to watch Claudius carefully during the play so that they might compare their impressions of his behavior afterward. Horatio agrees, saying that if Claudius shows any signs of guilt, he will detect them. The trumpets play a Danish march as the audience of lords and ladies begins streaming into the room. Hamlet warns Horatio that he will begin to act strangely. Sure enough,
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when Claudius asks how he is, his response seems quite insane: “Excellent, i’ faith; of the chameleon’s dish: I eat the air, promise-crammed” (III.ii.84–86). Hamlet asks Polonius about his history as an actor and torments Ophelia with a string of erotic puns. The players enter and act out a brief, silent version of the play to come called a “dumbshow.” In the dumbshow, a king and queen display their love. The queen leaves the king to sleep, and while he is sleeping, a man murders him by pouring poison into his ear. The murderer seduces the dead queen, who gradually accepts his advances. The players begin to enact the play in full, and we learn that the man who kills the king is the king’s nephew. Throughout, Hamlet keeps up a running commentary on the characters and their actions, and continues to tease Ophelia with oblique sexual references. When the murderer pours the poison into the sleeping king’s ear, Claudius rises and cries out for light. Chaos ensues as the play comes to a sudden halt, the torches are lit, and the king flees the room, followed by the audience. When the scene quiets, Hamlet is left alone with Horatio. Hamlet and Horatio agree that the king’s behavior was telling. Now extremely excited, Hamlet continues to act frantic and scatterbrained, speaking glibly and inventing little poems. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern arrive to tell Hamlet that he is wanted in his mother’s chambers. Rosencrantz asks again about the cause of Hamlet’s “distemper,” and Hamlet angrily accuses the pair of trying to play him as if he were a musical pipe. Polonius enters to escort Hamlet to the queen. Hamlet says he will go to her in a moment and asks for a moment alone. He steels himself to speak to his mother, resolving to be brutally honest with her but not to lose control of himself: “I will speak daggers to her, but use none” (III.ii.366).
Analysis In the first two scenes of Act III, Hamlet and Claudius both devise traps to catch one another’s secrets: Claudius spies on Hamlet to discover the true nature of his madness, and Hamlet attempts to “catch the conscience of the king” in the theater (III.i.582). The play-within-aplay tells the story of Gonzago, the duke of Vienna, and his wife, Baptista, who marries his murdering nephew, Lucianus. Hamlet believes that the play is an opportunity to establish a more reliable basis for Claudius’s guilt than the claims of the ghost. Since he has no way of knowing whether to believe a member of the spirit world, he tries to determine whether Claudius is guilty by reading his behavior for signs of a psychological state of guilt. Although Hamlet exults at the success of his stratagem, interpreting Claudius’s interruption isn’t as simple as it seems. In the first place, Claudius does not react to the dumbshow, which exactly mimics the actions of which the ghost accuses Claudius. Claudius reacts to the play itself, which, unlike the dumbshow, makes it clear that the king is murdered by his nephew. Does Claudius react to being confronted with his own crimes, or to a play about uncle-killing sponsored by his crazy nephew? Or does he simply have indigestion? Hamlet appears more in control of his own behavior in this scene than in the one before, as shown by his effortless manipulations of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern and his frank
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conversation with Horatio. He even expresses admiration and affection for Horatio’s calm level-headedness, the lack of which is his own weakest point: “Give me that man / That is not passion’s slave, and I will wear him / In my heart’s core, ay, in my heart of heart, / As I do thee” (III.ii.64–67). In this scene he seems to prove that he is not insane after all, given the effortlessness with which he alternates between wild, erratic behavior and focused, sane behavior. He is excited but coherent during his conversation with Horatio before the play, but as soon as the king and queen enter, he begins to act insane, a sign that he is only pretending. His only questionable behavior in this scene arises in his crude comments to Ophelia, which show him capable of real cruelty. His misogyny has crossed rational bounds, and his every comment is laced with sexual innuendo. For instance, she comments, “You are keen, my lord, you are keen,” complimenting him on his sharp intellect, and he replies, “It would cost you a groaning to take off my edge” (III.ii.227–228). His interchange with Ophelia is a mere prelude to the passionate rage he will unleash on Gertrude in the next scene.
Act III, scene iii Summary Elsewhere in the castle, King Claudius speaks to Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. Badly shaken by the play and now considering Hamlet’s madness to be dangerous, Claudius asks the pair to escort Hamlet on a voyage to England and to depart immediately. They agree and leave to make preparations. Polonius enters and reminds the king of his plan to hide in Gertrude’s room and observe Hamlet’s confrontation with her. He promises to tell Claudius all that he learns. When Polonius leaves, the king is alone, and he immediately expresses his guilt and grief over his sin. A brother’s murder, he says, is the oldest sin and “hath the primal eldest curse upon’t” (III.iii.37). He longs to ask for forgiveness, but says that he is unprepared to give up that which he gained by committing the murder, namely, the crown and the queen. He falls to his knees and begins to pray. Hamlet slips quietly into the room and steels himself to kill the unseeing Claudius. But suddenly it occurs to him that if he kills Claudius while he is praying, he will end the king’s life at the moment when he was seeking forgiveness for his sins, sending Claudius’s soul to heaven. This is hardly an adequate revenge, Hamlet thinks, especially since Claudius, by killing Hamlet’s father before he had time to make his last confession, ensured that his brother would not go to heaven. Hamlet decides to wait, resolving to kill Claudius when the king is sinning—when he is either drunk, angry, or lustful. He leaves. Claudius rises and declares that he has been unable to pray sincerely: “My words fly up, my thoughts remain below” (III.iii.96).
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Analysis Thus conscience does make cowards of us all; And thus the native hue of resolution Is sicklied o’er with the pale cast of thought; And enterprises of great pith and moment, With this regard, their currents turn awry, And lose the name of action. (III.i.85–90) In Act III, scene iii, Hamlet finally seems ready to put his desire for revenge into action. He is satisfied that the play has proven his uncle’s guilt. When Claudius prays, the audience is given real certainty that Claudius murdered his brother: a full, spontaneous confession, even though nobody else hears it. This only heightens our sense that the climax of the play is due to arrive. But Hamlet waits. On the surface, it seems that he waits because he wants a more radical revenge. Critics such as Samuel Taylor Coleridge have been horrified by Hamlet’s words here—he completely oversteps the bounds of Christian morality in trying to damn his opponent’s soul as well as kill him. But apart from this ultraviolent posturing, Hamlet has once again avoided the imperative to act by involving himself in a problem of knowledge. Now that he’s satisfied that he knows Claudius’s guilt, he wants to know that his punishment will be sufficient. It may have been difficult to prove the former, but how can Hamlet ever hope to know the fate of Claudius’s immortal soul? Hamlet poses his desire to damn Claudius as a matter of fairness: his own father was killed without having cleansed his soul by praying or confessing, so why should his murderer be given that chance? But Hamlet is forced to admit that he doesn’t really know what happened to his father, remarking “how his audit stands, who knows, save heaven?” (III.iv.82). The most he can say is that “in our circumstance and course of thought / ’Tis heavy with him” (III.iv.83–84). The Norton Shakespeare paraphrases “in our circumstance and course of thought” as “in our indirect and limited way of knowing on earth.” Having proven his uncle’s guilt to himself, against all odds, Hamlet suddenly finds something else to be uncertain about. At this point, Hamlet has gone beyond his earlier need to know the facts about the crime, and he now craves metaphysical knowledge, knowledge of the afterlife and of God, before he is willing to act. The audience has had plenty of opportunity to see that Hamlet is fascinated with philosophical questions. In the case of the “to be, or not to be” soliloquy, we saw that his philosophizing can be a way for him to avoid thinking about or acknowledging something more immediately important (in that case, his urge to kill himself). Is Hamlet using his speculations about Claudius’s soul to avoid thinking about something in this case? Perhaps the task he has set for himself—killing another human being in cold blood—is
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too much for him to face. Whatever it is, the audience may once again get the sense that there is something more to Hamlet’s behavior than meets the eye. That Shakespeare is able to convey this sense is a remarkable achievement in itself, quite apart from how we try to explain what Hamlet’s unacknowledged motives might be.
Act III, scene iv Summary In Gertrude’s chamber, the queen and Polonius wait for Hamlet’s arrival. Polonius plans to hide in order to eavesdrop on Gertrude’s confrontation with her son, in the hope that doing so will enable him to determine the cause of Hamlet’s bizarre and threatening behavior. Polonius urges the queen to be harsh with Hamlet when he arrives, saying that she should chastise him for his recent behavior. Gertrude agrees, and Polonius hides behind an arras, or tapestry. Hamlet storms into the room and asks his mother why she has sent for him. She says that he has offended his father, meaning his stepfather, Claudius. He interrupts her and says that she has offended his father, meaning the dead King Hamlet, by marrying Claudius. Hamlet accosts her with an almost violent intensity and declares his intention to make her fully aware of the profundity of her sin. Fearing for her life, Gertrude cries out. From behind the arras, Polonius calls out for help. Hamlet, realizing that someone is behind the arras and suspecting that it might be Claudius, cries, “How now! a rat?” (III.iv.22). He draws his sword and stabs it through the tapestry, killing the unseen Polonius. Gertrude asks what Hamlet has done, and he replies, “Nay, I know not: / Is it the king?” (III.iv.24). The queen says his action was a “rash and bloody” deed, and Hamlet replies that it was almost as rash and bloody as murdering a king and marrying his brother (III.iv.26–28). Disbelieving, the queen exclaims, “As kill a king!” and Hamlet replies that she heard him correctly (III.iv.29). Hamlet lifts the arras and discovers Polonius’s body: he has not killed the king and achieved his revenge but has murdered the relatively innocent Polonius. He bids the old man farewell, calling him an “intruding fool” (III.iv.30). He turns to his mother, declaring that he will wring her heart. He shows her a picture of the dead king and a picture of the current king, bitterly comments on the superiority of his father to his uncle, and asks her furiously what has driven her to marry a rotten man such as Claudius. She pleads with him to stop, saying that he has turned her eyes onto her soul and that she does not like what she sees there. Hamlet continues to denounce her and rail against Claudius, until, suddenly, the ghost of his father again appears before him. Hamlet speaks to the apparition, but Gertrude is unable to see it and believes him to be mad. The ghost intones that it has come to remind Hamlet of his purpose, that Hamlet has not yet killed Claudius and must achieve his revenge. Noting that Gertrude is amazed and
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unable to see him, the ghost asks Hamlet to intercede with her. Hamlet describes the ghost, but Gertrude sees nothing, and in a moment the ghost disappears. Hamlet tries desperately to convince Gertrude that he is not mad but has merely feigned madness all along, and he urges her to forsake Claudius and regain her good conscience. He urges her as well not to reveal to Claudius that his madness has been an act. Gertrude, still shaken from Hamlet’s furious condemnation of her, agrees to keep his secret. He bids her goodnight, but, before he leaves, he points to Polonius’s corpse and declares that heaven has “punished me with this, and this with me” (III.iv.158). Hamlet reminds his mother that he must sail to England with Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, whom he says he will regard with suspicion, as though they were poisonous snakes, since he assumes that their loyalties are with Claudius, not with him. Dragging Polonius’s body behind him, Hamlet leaves his mother’s room.
Analysis What is Hamlet trying to do in his confrontation with his mother? It is possible that he wants her to confirm her knowledge of Claudius’s crime, to provide further proof of his guilt. Or it may be that Hamlet wants to know whether she was complicit in the crime. Or he may feel that he needs her on his side if he is to achieve justice. While all of these are possibilities, what Hamlet actually does is urge his mother to repent choosing Claudius over his own father. More specifically, he repeatedly demands that she avoid Claudius’s bed. Actually, he’s much more specific: he tells her not to let Claudius arouse her by fondling her neck, not to stay within his semen-infested sheets, and other shockingly graphic details. This is another point in the play where audiences and readers have felt that there is more going on in Hamlet’s brain than we can quite put our fingers on. Sigmund Freud wrote that Hamlet harbors an unconscious desire to sexually enjoy his mother. Freud maintained that all men unconsciously desire their mothers in this way, and he called this the “Oedipus Complex,” after the character in Sophocles’ play who unwittingly murders his father and has several children by his own mother. Whether or not Freud was right about this is as difficult to prove as any of the problems that Hamlet worries about, but his argument in regard to Hamlet is quite remarkable. He says that while Oedipus actually enacts this fantasy, Hamlet only betrays the unconscious desire to do so. Hamlet is thus a quintessentially modern person, because he has repressed desires. Though Gertrude’s speech in this scene is largely limited to brief reactions to Hamlet’s lengthy denunciations of her, it is our most revealing look at her character. As the scene progresses, Gertrude goes through several states of feeling: she is haughty and accusatory at the beginning, then afraid that Hamlet will hurt her, shocked and upset when Hamlet kills Polonius, overwhelmed by fear and panic as Hamlet accosts her, and disbelieving when Hamlet sees the ghost. Finally, she is contrite toward her son and apparently willing to take his part and help him. For Gertrude, then, the scene progresses as a sequence of great shocks, each of which weakens her resistance to Hamlet’s condemnation of her behavior. Of course, Gertrude is convinced mainly by Hamlet’s insistence and power of feeling, illustrating what
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many readers have felt to be her central characteristic: her tendency to be dominated by powerful men and her need for men to show her what to think and how to feel. This quality explains why Gertrude would have turned to Claudius so soon after her husband’s death, and it also explains why she so quickly adopts Hamlet’s point of view in this scene. Of course, the play does not specifically explain Gertrude’s behavior. It is possible that she was complicit with Claudius in the murder of her husband, though that seems unlikely given her surprised reaction to Hamlet’s accusation in this scene, and it is possible that she merely pretends to take Hamlet’s side to placate him, which would explain why she immediately reports his behavior to Claudius after promising not to do so. But another interpretation of Gertrude’s character seems to be that she has a powerful instinct for self-preservation and advancement that leads her to rely too deeply on men. Not only does this interpretation explain her behavior throughout much of the play; it also links her thematically to Ophelia, the play’s other important female character, who is also submissive and utterly dependent on men. Hamlet’s rash, murderous action in stabbing Polonius is an important illustration of his inability to coordinate his thoughts and actions, which might be considered his tragic flaw. In his passive, thoughtful mode, Hamlet is too beset by moral considerations and uncertainties to avenge his father’s death by killing Claudius, even when the opportunity is before him. But when he does choose to act, he does so blindly, stabbing his anonymous “enemy” through a curtain. It is as if Hamlet is so distrustful of the possibility of acting rationally that he believes his revenge is more likely to come about as an accident than as a premeditated act. When he sees Polonius’s corpse, Hamlet interprets his misdeed within the terms of retribution, punishment, and vengeance: “Heaven hath pleased it so / To punish me with this, and this with me” (III.iv.157–158). Though Hamlet has not achieved his vengeance upon Claudius, he believes that God has used him as a tool of vengeance to punish Polonius’s sins and punish Hamlet’s sins by staining his soul with the murder.
Act IV, scenes i–ii Summary Act IV, scene i Frantic after her confrontation with Hamlet, Gertrude hurries to Claudius, who is conferring with Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. She asks to speak to the king alone. When Rosencrantz and Guildenstern exit, she tells Claudius about her encounter with Hamlet. She says that he is as mad as the sea during a violent storm; she also tells Claudius that Hamlet has killed
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Polonius. Aghast, the king notes that had he been concealed behind the arras, Hamlet would have killed him. Claudius wonders aloud how he will be able to handle this public crisis without damaging his hold on Denmark. He tells Gertrude that they must ship Hamlet to England at once and find a way to explain Hamlet’s misdeed to the court and to the people. He calls Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, tells them about the murder, and sends them to find Hamlet.
Act IV, scene ii Elsewhere in Elsinore, Hamlet has just finished disposing of Polonius’s body, commenting that the corpse has been “safely stowed” (IV.ii.1). Rosencrantz and Guildenstern appear and ask what he has done with the body. Hamlet refuses to give them a straight answer, instead saying, “The body is with the king, but the king is not with the body” (IV.ii.25– 26). Feigning offense at being questioned, he accuses them of being spies in the service of Claudius. He calls Rosencrantz a “sponge … that soaks up the king’s countenance, his rewards, his authorities,” and warns him that “when he needs what you have gleaned, it is but squeezing you, and, sponge, you shall be dry again” (IV.ii.11–19). At last he agrees to allow Rosencrantz and Guildenstern to escort him to Claudius.
Analysis The short first scene of Act IV centers around Gertrude’s betrayal of her son, turning him in to the king after having promised to help him. While she does keep her promise not to reveal that Hamlet was only pretending to be insane, the immediate and frank way in which she tells Claudius about Hamlet’s behavior and his murder of Polonius implies that she sees herself as allied to the king rather than to her son. Whether Gertrude really believes Hamlet to be mad, or has simply recognized that her best interest lies in allying herself with Claudius regardless of what she believes, is impossible to determine from this scene and is largely a matter of one’s personal interpretation of the events. Whatever the case, it is Gertrude’s speech to Claudius that cements the king’s secret plan to have Hamlet executed in England. As brief as it is, Act IV, scene i is a magnificent example of Shakespeare’s skill at developing characters, illustrated by the subtle development of Claudius. Where most of the other male characters in the play, including Hamlet, King Hamlet, Laertes, and Fortinbras, are obsessed with themes of honor, moral balance, and retributive justice, Claudius is a selfish, ambitious king who is more concerned with maintaining his own power and averting political danger than achieving justice through his rule. His response to Gertrude’s revelation that Hamlet has killed Polonius is extremely telling. Rather than considering that Gertrude might have been in danger, he immediately remarks that had he been in the room, he would have been in danger. Hamlet must be sent away from Denmark, he thinks, not as punishment for committing murder but because he represents a danger to Claudius. And as soon as he hears of the murder, Claudius’s mind begins working to find a way to characterize the killing
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so that it does not seem like a political crisis to his court and to the people of Denmark. To do this, he says, will require all his “majesty and skill” (IV.i.30). In this scene and the scenes to follow, Shakespeare creates in Claudius a convincing depiction of a conniving, ambitious politician. In this way, Claudius emerges as a figure of powerful contrast to the more forthright men in the play, including Laertes, Fortinbras, and Horatio, and the far more morally conscious Prince Hamlet. Hamlet’s murder of Polonius at the end of Act III is one of the most disturbing moments in the play. If it was previously possible to consider Hamlet a “hero” or an idealized version of a human being, it is no longer possible after he kills Polonius. His sensitive, reflective nature—the trait that constantly interfered with his ability to take revenge on Claudius— now disappears in the wake of its violent opposite: a rash, murderous explosion of activity. Hamlet leaps to the conclusion that Claudius is behind the arras, or else he simply lashes out thoughtlessly. In any case, Hamlet’s moral superiority to Claudius is now thrown into question. He has killed Polonius just as Claudius killed Hamlet’s father, the only differences being that Hamlet’s murder was not premeditated and was not committed out of jealousy or ambition. Hamlet also eases his conscience with the fact that Polonius was dishonestly spying on Hamlet at the moment when he was killed. But the result of Hamlet’s deed is very similar to that of Claudius’s: Laertes and Ophelia have lost a father, just as Hamlet himself did. Now, Hamlet hides the body. But rather than being overwhelmed with contrition, as we might expect of a hero who has committed such a terrible mistake, he seems manic, desperate, and self-righteous, especially in his condemnation of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. Throughout Act IV, scene ii, as in the play-within-a-play scene (Act III, scene ii), Hamlet’s biting, ironic wit is combined with his rash, impulsive streak, and his feigned madness seems very close to the real thing. Though Hamlet has many admirable qualities, scenes such as this one serve as powerful reminders that we are not meant to take the prince as an unqualified hero.
Act IV, scenes iii–iv Summary Act IV, scene iii The king speaks to a group of attendants, telling them of Polonius’s death and his intention to send Hamlet to England. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern appear with Hamlet, who is under guard. Pressed by Claudius to reveal the location of Polonius’s body, Hamlet is by turns inane, coy, and clever, saying that Polonius is being eaten by worms, and that the king could send a messenger to find Polonius in heaven or seek him in hell himself. Finally,
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Hamlet reveals that Polonius’s body is under the stairs near the castle lobby, and the king dispatches his attendants to look there. The king tells Hamlet that he must leave at once for England, and Hamlet enthusiastically agrees. He exits, and Claudius sends Rosencrantz and Guildenstern to ensure that he boards the ship at once. Alone with his thoughts, Claudius states his hope that England will obey the sealed orders he has sent with Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. The orders call for Prince Hamlet to be put to death.
Act IV, Scene iv On a nearby plain in Denmark, young Prince Fortinbras marches at the head of his army, traveling through Denmark on the way to attack Poland. Fortinbras orders his captain to go and ask the king of Denmark for permission to travel through his lands. On his way, the captain encounters Hamlet, Rosencrantz, and Guildenstern on their way to the ship bound for England. The captain informs them that the Norwegian army rides to fight the Poles. Hamlet asks about the basis of the conflict, and the man tells him that the armies will fight over “a little patch of land / That hath in it no profit but the name” (IV.iv.98–99). Astonished by the thought that a bloody war could be fought over something so insignificant, Hamlet marvels that human beings are able to act so violently and purposefully for so little gain. By comparison, Hamlet has a great deal to gain from seeking his own bloody revenge on Claudius, and yet he still delays and fails to act toward his purpose. Disgusted with himself for having failed to gain his revenge on Claudius, Hamlet declares that from this moment on, his thoughts will be bloody.
Analysis As we saw in Act IV, scene ii, the murder of Polonius and the subsequent traumatic encounter with his mother seem to leave Hamlet in a frantic, unstable frame of mind, the mode in which his excitable nature seems very similar to actual madness. He taunts Claudius, toward whom his hostility is now barely disguised, and makes light of Polonius’s murder with word games. He also pretends to be thrilled at the idea of sailing for England with Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. Of course, on some level he is prepared for what is to come. His farewell to his mother proved as much, when he told her that he would trust his old schoolfellows as if they were “adders fang’d,” that is, poisonous snakes (III.iv.185.2). But although Hamlet suspects his friends’ treachery, he may not fully realize the malevolence of Claudius’s designs for him. Claudius’s subterfuge in asking the English to execute Hamlet reveals the extent to which he now fears Hamlet: whether Hamlet is sane or mad, he is a danger to Claudius, and Claudius wishes him to die. It is also revealing that one of Claudius’s considerations in seeking to have Hamlet murdered in far-off England, rather than merely executing him in Denmark, is that he is beloved by the common people of Denmark— “loved of the distracted multitude,” as Claudius says (IV.iii.4). Again, where King Hamlet was a brave warrior, King Claudius
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is a crafty politician, constantly working to strengthen his own power, circumvent threats to his throne, and manipulate those around him to his own advantage. Act IV, scene iv restores the focus of the play to the theme of human action. Hamlet’s encounter with the Norwegian captain serves to remind the reader of Fortinbras’s presence in the world of the play and gives Hamlet another example of the will to action that he lacks. Earlier, he was amazed by the player’s evocation of powerful feeling for Hecuba, a legendary character who meant nothing to him (II.ii). Now, he is awestruck by the willingness of Fortinbras to devote the energy of an entire army, probably wasting hundreds of lives and risking his own, to reclaim a worthless scrap of land in Poland. Hamlet considers the moral ambiguity of Fortinbras’s action, but more than anything else he is impressed by the forcefulness of it, and that forcefulness becomes a kind of ideal toward which Hamlet decides at last to strive. “My thoughts be bloody, or be nothing worth!” he declares (IV.iv.9.56). Of course, he fails to put this exclamation into action, as he has failed at every previous turn to achieve his revenge on Claudius. “My thoughts be bloody,” Hamlet says. Tellingly, he does not say “My deeds be bloody.”
Act IV, scenes v–vi Summary Act IV, scene v Gertrude and Horatio discuss Ophelia. Gertrude does not wish to see the bereaved girl, but Horatio says that Ophelia should be pitied, explaining that her grief has made her disordered and incoherent. Ophelia enters. Adorned with flowers and singing strange songs, she seems to have gone mad. Claudius enters and hears Ophelia’s ravings, such as, “They say the owl was a baker’s daughter” (IV.v.42). He says that Ophelia’s grief stems from her father’s death, and that the people have been suspicious and disturbed by the death as well: “muddied, / Thick and unwholesome in their thoughts and whispers / For good Polonius’ death” (IV.v.77– 79). He also mentions that Laertes has secretly sailed back from France. A loud noise echoes from somewhere in the castle. Claudius calls for his guards, and a gentleman enters to warn the king that Laertes has come with a mob of commoners. The mob calls Laertes “lord,” according to the gentlemen, and the people whisper that “Laertes shall be king” (IV.v.102–106). A furious Laertes storms into the hall, fuming in his desire to avenge his father’s death. Claudius attempts to soothe him by frankly acknowledging that Polonius is dead. Gertrude nervously adds that Claudius is innocent in it. When Ophelia reenters, obviously insane, Laertes plunges again into rage. Claudius claims that he is not responsible for Polonius’s death and says that Laertes’s desire for revenge is a credit to him, so long as he seeks revenge upon the proper person. Claudius convinces Laertes to
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hear his version of events, which he says will answer all his questions. Laertes agrees, and Claudius seconds his desire to achieve justice in the aftermath of Polonius’s death: “Where th’ offence is, let the great axe fall” (IV.v.213).
Act IV, Scene vi In another part of the castle, Horatio is introduced to a pair of sailors bearing a letter for him from Hamlet. In the letter, Hamlet says that his ship was captured by pirates, who have returned him to Denmark. He asks Horatio to escort the sailors to the king and queen, for they have messages for them as well. He also says that he has much to tell of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. Horatio takes the sailors to the king and then follows them to find Hamlet, who is in the countryside near the castle.
Analysis As we have seen, one of the important themes of Hamlet is the connection between the health of a state and the moral legitimacy of its ruler. Claudius is rotten, and, as a result, Denmark is rotten, too. Here, at the beginning of Act IV, scene v, things have palpably darkened for the nation: Hamlet is gone, Polonius is dead and has been buried in secret, Ophelia is raving mad, and, as Claudius tells us, the common people are disturbed and murmuring among themselves. This ominous turn of events leads to the truncated, miniature rebellion that accompanies Laertes’ return to Denmark. Acting as the wronged son operating with open fury, Laertes has all the moral legitimacy that Claudius lacks, the legitimacy that Hamlet has forfeited through his murder of Polonius and his delay in avenging his father’s death. Laertes is Hamlet’s best foil throughout the play, and in this scene the contrast between the two, each of whom has a dead father to avenge, reaches its peak. (A third figure with a dead father to avenge, Fortinbras, lurks on the horizon.) Whereas Hamlet is reflective and has difficulty acting, Laertes is active and has no use for thought. He has no interest in moral concerns, only in his consuming desire to avenge Polonius. When Claudius later asks Laertes how far he would go to avenge his father, Laertes replies that he would slit Hamlet’s throat in the church (IV.vii.98). This statement, indicating his willingness to murder Hamlet even in a sacred place of worship, brings into sharp relief the contrast between the two sons: recall that Hamlet declined to kill Claudius as the king knelt in prayer (III.iii). As befits a scene full of anger and dark thoughts, Act IV, scene v brings a repetition of the motif of insanity, this time through the character of Ophelia, who has truly been driven mad by the death of her father. Shakespeare has demonstrated Ophelia’s chaste dependence on the men in her life; after Polonius’s sudden death and Hamlet’s subsequent exile, she finds herself abruptly without any of them. Ophelia’s lunatic ravings reveal a great deal about the nature of her mind at this stage in her young life. She is obsessed with death, beauty, and an ambiguous sexual desire, expressed in startlingly frank imagery:
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Young men will do’t, if they come to’t, By Cock, they are to blame. Quoth she ’Before you tumbled me, You promised me to wed.’ (IV.v.59–62) Some readers have interpreted passages such as these, combined with Hamlet’s sexually explicit taunting of Ophelia in Act III, scene ii, as evidence that Ophelia’s relationship with Hamlet was sexual in nature. Of course, this is impossible to conclude with any certainty, but from these lines it is apparent that Ophelia is grappling with sexuality and that her sexual feelings, discouraged by her father, her brother, and her society, are close to the forefront of her mind as she slips into insanity. But, most important, Ophelia’s insanity is designed to contrast strongly with Hamlet’s, differing primarily in its legitimacy: Ophelia does not feign madness to achieve an end, but is truly driven mad by external pressures. Many of the worst elements in Denmark, including madness, fear, and rebellion, so far have been kept hidden under various disguises, such as Hamlet’s pretense and Claudius’s court revelry, and are now beginning to emerge into the open. After exiling Hamlet to England in Act IV, scene iv, Shakespeare now returns him to Denmark only two scenes later through the bizarre deus ex machina—an improbable or unexpected device or character introduced to resolve a situation in a work of fiction or drama—of the pirate attack. The short Act IV, scene vi is primarily devoted to plot development, as Horatio reads Hamlet’s letter narrating his adventure. The story of the pirate attack has little to do with the main themes of the play, but it does provide an interesting variation on the idea of retributive justice, since instead of punishing someone for doing something wrong, Hamlet here states his intention to reward the pirates for the right they have done in returning him to Denmark. “They have dealt with me like thieves of mercy,” he says, “but they knew what they did: I am to do a good turn for them” (IV.vi.17–19). Additionally, Hamlet’s letter features a return of the motif of ears and hearing, as the prince tells Horatio that “I have words to speak in thine ear will make thee dumb,” an open reference to the poison poured into King Hamlet’s ear by the murderous Claudius (IV.vi.21).
Act IV, scene vii Summary As Horatio speaks to the sailors, Claudius and a calmer Laertes discuss Polonius’s death. Claudius explains that he acted as he did, burying Polonius secretly and not punishing Hamlet for the murder, because both the common people and the queen love Hamlet very much. As a king and as a husband, he did not wish to upset either of them. A messenger enters with the letter from Hamlet to Claudius, which informs the king that Hamlet will return tomorrow. Laertes is pleased that Hamlet has come back to Denmark, since it means that his revenge will not be delayed.
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Claudius agrees that Laertes deserves to be revenged upon Hamlet, and he is disposed to encourage Laertes to kill Hamlet, since Hamlet’s erratic behavior has made him a threat to Claudius’s reign. The devious king begins to think of a way for Laertes to ensure his revenge without creating any appearance of foul play. He recalls that Hamlet has been jealous in the past of Laertes’ prowess with a sword, which was recently praised before all the court by a Frenchman who had seen him in combat. The king speculates that if Hamlet could be tempted into a duel with Laertes, it might provide Laertes with the chance to kill him. Laertes agrees, and they settle on a plan. Laertes will use a sharpened sword rather than the customary dull fencing blade. Laertes also proposes to poison his sword, so that even a scratch from it will kill Hamlet. The king concocts a backup plan as well, proposing that if Hamlet succeeds in the duel, Claudius will offer him a poisoned cup of wine to drink from in celebration. Gertrude enters with tragic news. Ophelia, mad with grief, has drowned in the river. Anguished to have lost his sister so soon after his father’s death, Laertes flees the room. Claudius summons Gertrude to follow. He tells her that it was nearly impossible to quiet Laertes’ rage, and worries that the news of Ophelia’s death will reawaken it.
Analysis The scheming Claudius encounters Laertes at approximately the same moment as he learns that Hamlet has survived and returned to Denmark. Claudius’s behavior throughout this scene, as in Act IV, scene v, shows him at his most devious and calculating. Shakespeare shows Claudius’s mind working overtime to derail Laertes’ anger, which is thus far the greatest challenge his kingship has faced. In Act IV, scene v, Claudius decided that the way to appease Laertes was by appearing frank and honest. When Laertes asked furiously where his father was, Claudius replied, “Dead” (IV.v.123). Additionally, in a masterful stroke of characterization, Shakespeare has the nervous Gertrude, unable to see Claudius’s plan, follow this statement with a quick insistence on Claudius’s innocence: “But not by him” (IV.v.123). In this scene, Claudius has clearly decided that he can appease Laertes’ wrath and dispense with Hamlet in a single stroke: he hits upon the idea of the duel in order to use Laertes’ rage to ensure Hamlet’s death. The resulting plan brings both the theme of revenge and the repeated use of traps in the plot to a new height—Laertes and Claudius concoct not one but three covert mechanisms by which Hamlet may be killed. Ophelia’s tragic death occurs at the worst possible moment for Claudius. As Laertes flees the room in agony, Claudius follows, not to console or even to join him in mourning but because, as he tells Gertrude, it was so difficult to appease his anger in the first place. Claudius does not have time to worry about the victims of tragedy—he is too busy dealing with threats to his own power.
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The image of Ophelia drowning amid her garlands of flowers has proved to be one of the most enduring images in the play, represented countless times by artists and poets throughout the centuries. Ophelia is associated with flower imagery from the beginning of the play. In her first scene, Polonius presents her with a violet; after she goes mad, she sings songs about flowers; and now she drowns amid long streams of them. The fragile beauty of the flowers resembles Ophelia’s own fragile beauty, as well as her nascent sexuality and her exquisite, doomed innocence.
Act V, scene i Summary In the churchyard, two gravediggers shovel out a grave for Ophelia. They argue at length whether or not Ophelia should be buried in the churchyard, since her death looks like a suicide. According to religious doctrine, suicides may not receive Christian burial. The first gravedigger, who speaks cleverly and mischievously, asks the second gravedigger a riddle: “What is he that builds stronger than either the mason, the shipwright, or the carpenter?” (V.i.46–47). The second gravedigger answers that it must be the gallows-maker, for his frame outlasts a thousand tenants. The first gravedigger corrects him, saying that it is the gravedigger, for his “houses” will last until Doomsday. Hamlet and Horatio enter at a distance and watch the gravediggers work. Hamlet looks with wonder at the skulls they excavate to make room for the fresh grave and speculates darkly about what occupations the owners of these skulls served in life: “Why may not that be the skull of a lawyer? Where be his quiddities now … ?” (V.i.90–91). Hamlet asks the gravedigger whose grave he digs, and the gravedigger spars with him verbally, first claiming that the grave is his own, since he is digging it, then that the grave belongs to no man and no woman, because men and women are living things and the occupant of the grave will be dead. At last he admits that it belongs to one “that was a woman sir; but, rest her soul, she’s dead” (V.i.146). The gravedigger, who does not recognize Hamlet as the prince, tells him that he has been a gravedigger since King Hamlet defeated the elder Fortinbras in battle, the very day on which young Prince Hamlet was born. Hamlet picks up a skull, and the gravedigger tells him that the skull belonged to Yorick, King Hamlet’s jester. Hamlet tells Horatio that as a child he knew Yorick and is appalled at the sight of the skull. He realizes forcefully that all men will eventually become dust, even great men like Alexander the Great and Julius Caesar. Hamlet imagines that Julius Caesar has disintegrated and is now part of the dust used to patch up a wall. Suddenly, the funeral procession for Ophelia enters the churchyard, including Claudius, Gertrude, Laertes, and many mourning courtiers. Hamlet, wondering who has died, notices that the funeral rites seem “maimed,” indicating that the dead man or woman took his or
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her own life (V.i.242). He and Horatio hide as the procession approaches the grave. As Ophelia is laid in the earth, Hamlet realizes it is she who has died. At the same moment, Laertes becomes infuriated with the priest, who says that to give Ophelia a proper Christian burial would profane the dead. Laertes leaps into Ophelia’s grave to hold her once again in his arms. Grief-stricken and outraged, Hamlet bursts upon the company, declaring in agonized fury his own love for Ophelia. He leaps into the grave and fights with Laertes, saying that “forty thousand brothers / Could not, with all their quantity of love, / make up my sum” (V.i.254–256). Hamlet cries that he would do things for Ophelia that Laertes could not dream of—he would eat a crocodile for her, he would be buried alive with her. The combatants are pulled apart by the funeral company. Gertrude and Claudius declare that Hamlet is mad. Hamlet storms off, and Horatio follows. The king urges Laertes to be patient, and to remember their plan for revenge.
Analysis The gravediggers are designated as “clowns” in the stage directions and prompts, and it is important to note that in Shakespeare’s time the word clown referred to a rustic or peasant, and did not mean that the person in question was funny or wore a costume. Nevertheless, the gravediggers do represent a humorous type commonly found in Shakespeare’s plays: the clever commoner who gets the better of his social superior through wit. At the Globe Theater, this type of character may have particularly appealed to the “groundlings,” the members of the audience who could not afford seats and thus stood on the ground. Though they are usually figures of merriment, in this scene the gravediggers assume a rather macabre tone, since their jests and jibes are all made in a cemetery, among bones of the dead. Their conversation about Ophelia, however, furthers an important theme in the play: the question of the moral legitimacy of suicide under theological law. By giving this serious subject a darkly comic interpretation, Shakespeare essentially makes a grotesque parody of Hamlet’s earlier “To be, or not to be” soliloquy (III.i), indicating the collapse of every lasting value in the play into uncertainty and absurdity. Hamlet’s confrontation with death, manifested primarily in his discovery of Yorick’s skull, is, like Ophelia’s drowning, an enduring image from the play. However, his solemn theorizing explodes in grief and rage when he sees Ophelia’s funeral procession, and his assault on Laertes offers a glimpse of what his true feelings for Ophelia might once have been. Laertes’ passionate embrace of the dead Ophelia again advances the subtle motif of incest that hangs over their brother-sister relationship. Interestingly, Hamlet never expresses a sense of guilt over Ophelia’s death, which he indirectly caused through his murder of Polonius. In fact, the only time he even comes close to taking responsibility for Polonius’s death at all comes in the next and last scene, when he apologizes to Laertes before the duel, blaming his “madness” for Polonius’s death. This seems wholly inadequate, given that Hamlet has previously claimed repeatedly only to be feigning madness. But by the same token, to expect moral completeness from a character as troubled as Hamlet might
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be unrealistic. After all, Hamlet’s defining characteristics are his pain, his fear, and his self-conflict. Were he to take full responsibility for the consequences of Polonius’s death, he would probably not be able to withstand the psychological torment of the resulting guilt. A notable minor motif that is developed in this scene is Hamlet’s obsession with the physicality of death. Though many of his thoughts about death concern the spiritual consequences of dying—for instance, torment in the afterlife—he is nearly as fascinated by the physical decomposition of the body. This is nowhere more evident than in his preoccupation with Yorick’s skull, when he envisions physical features such as lips and skin that have decomposed from the bone. Recall that Hamlet previously commented to Claudius that Polonius’s body was at supper, because it was being eaten by worms (IV.iii). He is also fascinated by the equalizing effect of death and decomposition: great men and beggars both end as dust. In this scene, he imagines dust from the decomposed corpse of Julius Caesar being used to patch a wall; earlier, in Act IV, he noted, “A man may fish with the worm that have eat of a king, and eat of the fish that hath fed of that worm,” a metaphor by which he illustrates “how a king may go a progress through the guts of a beggar” (IV.iii.26–31).
Act V, scene ii Summary The next day at Elsinore Castle, Hamlet tells Horatio how he plotted to overcome Claudius’s scheme to have him murdered in England. He replaced the sealed letter carried by the unsuspecting Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, which called for Hamlet’s execution, with one calling for the execution of the bearers of the letter—Rosencrantz and Guildenstern themselves. He tells Horatio that he has no sympathy for Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, who betrayed him and catered to Claudius, but that he feels sorry for having behaved with such hostility toward Laertes. In Laertes’ desire to avenge his father’s death, he says, he sees the mirror image of his own desire, and he promises to seek Laertes’ good favor. Their conversation is interrupted by Osric, a foolish courtier. Osric tries to flatter Hamlet by agreeing with everything Hamlet says, even when he contradicts himself; in the space of seconds, he agrees first that it is cold, then that it is hot. He has come to tell them that Claudius wants Hamlet to fence with Laertes and that the king has made a wager with Laertes that Hamlet will win. Then Osric begins to praise Laertes effusively, though Hamlet and Horatio are unable to determine what point he is trying to make with his overly elaborate proclamations. Finally, a lord enters and asks Hamlet if he is ready to come to the match, as the king and queen are expecting him. Against Horatio’s advice, Hamlet agrees to fight, saying that “all’s ill here about my heart,” but that one must be ready for death, since it will come no matter what one does (V.ii.222). The court marches into the hall, and Hamlet asks Laertes for forgiveness, claiming that it was his madness, and not his own will, that
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murdered Polonius. Laertes says that he will not forgive Hamlet until an elder, an expert in the fine points of honor, has advised him in the matter. But, in the meantime, he says, he will accept Hamlet’s offer of love. They select their foils (blunted swords used in fencing), and the king says that if Hamlet wins the first or second hit, he will drink to Hamlet’s health, then throw into the cup a valuable gem (actually the poison) and give the wine to Hamlet. The duel begins. Hamlet strikes Laertes but declines to drink from the cup, saying that he will play another hit first. He hits Laertes again, and Gertrude rises to drink from the cup. The king tells her not to drink, but she does so anyway. In an aside, Claudius murmurs, “It is the poison’d cup: it is too late” (V.ii.235). Laertes remarks under his breath that to wound Hamlet with the poisoned sword is almost against his conscience. But they fight again, and Laertes scores a hit against Hamlet, drawing blood. Scuffling, they manage to exchange swords, and Hamlet wounds Laertes with Laertes’ own blade. The queen falls. Laertes, poisoned by his own sword, declares, “I am justly kill’d with my own treachery” (V.ii.318). The queen moans that the cup must have been poisoned, calls out to Hamlet, and dies. Laertes tells Hamlet that he, too, has been slain, by his own poisoned sword, and that the king is to blame both for the poison on the sword and for the poison in the cup. Hamlet, in a fury, runs Claudius through with the poisoned sword and forces him to drink down the rest of the poisoned wine. Claudius dies crying out for help. Hamlet tells Horatio that he is dying and exchanges a last forgiveness with Laertes, who dies after absolving Hamlet. The sound of marching echoes through the hall, and a shot rings out nearby. Osric declares that Fortinbras has come in conquest from Poland and now fires a volley to the English ambassadors. Hamlet tells Horatio again that he is dying, and urges his friend not to commit suicide in light of all the tragedies, but instead to stay alive and tell his story. He says that he wishes Fortinbras to be made King of Denmark; then he dies. Fortinbras marches into the room accompanied by the English ambassadors, who announce that Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are dead. Horatio says that he will tell everyone assembled the story that led to the gruesome scene now on display. Fortinbras orders for Hamlet to be carried away like a soldier.
Analysis In the final scene, the violence, so long delayed, erupts with dizzying speed. Characters drop one after the other, poisoned, stabbed, and, in the case of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, executed, as the theme of revenge and justice reaches its conclusion in the moment when Hamlet finally kills Claudius. In the moments before the duel, Hamlet seems peaceful, though also quite sad. He says that he feels ill in his heart, but he seems reconciled to the idea of death and no longer troubled by fear of the supernatural. Exactly what has caused the change in Hamlet is unclear, but his desire to attain Laertes’ forgiveness clearly represents
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an important shift in his mental state. Whereas Hamlet previously was obsessed almost wholly with himself and his family, he is now able to think sympathetically about others. He does not go quite so far as to take responsibility for Polonius’s death, but he does seem to be acting with a broader perspective after the shock of Ophelia’s death. Hamlet’s death at the hands of Laertes makes his earlier declaration over Polonius’s corpse, that God has chosen “to punish me with this and this with me,” prophetic (III.iv.174). His murder of Polonius does punish him in the end, since it is Laertes’ vengeful rage over that murder that leads to Hamlet’s death. That death is neither heroic nor shameful, according to the moral logic of the play. Hamlet achieves his father’s vengeance, but only after being spurred to it by the most extreme circumstances one might consider possible: watching his mother die and knowing that he, too, will die in moments. The arrival of Fortinbras effectively poses the question of political legitimacy once again. In marked contrast to the corrupted and weakened royal family lying dead on the floor, Fortinbras clearly represents a strong-willed, capable leader, though the play does not address the question of whether his rule will restore the moral authority of the state.
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IMPORTANT QUOTATIONS EXPLAINED
1. O that this too too solid flesh would melt, Thaw, and resolve itself into a dew! Or that the Everlasting had not fix’d His canon ’gainst self-slaughter! O God! O God! How weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable Seem to me all the uses of this world! Fie on’t! O fie! ’tis an unweeded garden, That grows to seed; things rank and gross in nature Possess it merely. That it should come to this! But two months dead!—nay, not so much, not two: So excellent a king; that was, to this, Hyperion to a satyr; so loving to my mother, That he might not beteem the winds of heaven Visit her face too roughly. Heaven and earth! Must I remember? Why, she would hang on him As if increase of appetite had grown By what it fed on: and yet, within a month,— Let me not think on’t,—Frailty, thy name is woman!— A little month; or ere those shoes were old With which she followed my poor father’s body Like Niobe, all tears;—why she, even she,— O God! a beast that wants discourse of reason, Would have mourn’d longer,—married with mine uncle, My father’s brother; but no more like my father Than I to Hercules: within a month; Ere yet the salt of most unrighteous tears Had left the flushing in her galled eyes, She married:— O, most wicked speed, to post With such dexterity to incestuous sheets! It is not, nor it cannot come to good; But break my heart,—for I must hold my tongue. This quotation, Hamlet’s first important soliloquy, occurs in Act I, scene ii (129–158). Hamlet speaks these lines after enduring the unpleasant scene at Claudius and Gertrude’s court, then being asked by his mother and stepfather not to return to his studies at Wittenberg
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but to remain in Denmark, presumably against his wishes. Here, Hamlet thinks for the first time about suicide (desiring his flesh to “melt”, and wishing that God had not made “selfslaughter” a sin), saying that the world is “weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable.” In other words, suicide seems like a desirable alternative to life in a painful world, but Hamlet feels that the option of suicide is closed to him because it is forbidden by religion. Hamlet then goes on to describe the causes of his pain, specifically his intense disgust at his mother’s marriage to Claudius. He describes the haste of their marriage, noting that the shoes his mother wore to his father’s funeral were not worn out before her marriage to Claudius. He compares Claudius to his father (his father was “so excellent a king” while Claudius is a bestial “satyr”). As he runs through his description of their marriage, he touches upon the important motifs of misogyny, crying, “Frailty, thy name is woman”; incest, commenting that his mother moved “[w]ith such dexterity to incestuous sheets”; and the ominous omen the marriage represents for Denmark, that “[i]t is not nor it cannot come to good.” Each of these motifs recurs throughout the play. 2. Give thy thoughts no tongue, Nor any unproportion’d thought his act. Be thou familiar, but by no means vulgar. Those friends thou hast, and their adoption tried, Grapple them unto thy soul with hoops of steel; But do not dull thy palm with entertainment Of each new-hatch’d, unfledg’d comrade. Beware Of entrance to a quarrel; but, being in, Bear’t that the opposed may beware of thee. Give every man thine ear, but few thy voice: Take each man’s censure, but reserve thy judgment. Costly thy habit as thy purse can buy, But not express’d in fancy; rich, not gaudy: For the apparel oft proclaims the man; And they in France of the best rank and station Are most select and generous chief in that. Neither a borrower nor a lender be: For loan oft loses both itself and friend; And borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry. This above all,—to thine own self be true; And it must follow, as the night the day, Thou canst not then be false to any man.
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This famous bit of fatherly advice is spoken by Polonius to Laertes shortly before Laertes leaves for France, in Act I, scene iii (59–80). Polonius, who is bidding Laertes farewell, gives him this list of instructions about how to behave before he sends him on his way. His advice amounts to a list of cliché s. Keep your thoughts to yourself; do not act rashly; treat people with familiarity but not excessively so; hold on to old friends and be slow to trust new friends; avoid fighting but fight boldly if it is unavoidable; be a good listener; accept criticism but do not be judgmental; maintain a proper appearance; do not borrow or lend money; and be true to yourself. This long list of quite normal fatherly advice emphasizes the regularity of Laertes’ family life compared to Hamlet’s, as well as contributing a somewhat stereotypical father-son encounter in the play’s exploration of family relationships. It seems to indicate that Polonius loves his son, though that idea is complicated later in the play when he sends Reynaldo to spy on him.
Something is rotten in the state of Denmark. This line is spoken by Marcellus in Act I, scene iv (67), as he and Horatio debate whether or not to follow Hamlet and the ghost into the dark night. The line refers both to the idea that the ghost is an ominous omen for Denmark and to the larger theme of the connection between the moral legitimacy of a ruler and the health of the state as a whole. The ghost is a visible symptom of the rottenness of Denmark created by Claudius’s crime.
I have of late,—but wherefore I know not,—lost all my mirth, forgone all custom of exercises; and indeed, it goes so heavily with my disposition that this goodly frame, the earth, seems to me a sterile promontory; this most excellent canopy, the air, look you, this brave o’erhanging firmament, this majestical roof fretted with golden fire,—why, it appears no other thing to me than a foul and pestilent congregation of vapours. What a piece of work is man! How noble in reason! how infinite in faculties! in form and moving, how express and admirable! in action how like an angel! in apprehension, how like a god! the beauty of the world! the paragon of animals! And yet, to me, what is this quintessence of dust? In these lines, Hamlet speaks to Rosencrantz and Guildenstern in Act II, scene ii (287–298), explaining the melancholy that has afflicted him since his father’s death. Perhaps moved by the presence of his former university companions, Hamlet essentially engages in a rhetorical exercise, building up an elaborate and glorified picture of the earth and humanity before declaring it all merely a “quintessence of dust.” He examines the earth, the air, and the sun, and rejects them as “a sterile promontory” and “a foul and pestilent congregation of vapors.” He then describes human beings from several perspectives, each one adding to his glorification of them. Human beings’ reason is noble, their faculties infinite, their forms and movements fast and admirable, their actions angelic, and their understanding godlike. But, to Hamlet, humankind is merely dust. This motif, an expression of his obsession with the physicality of death, recurs throughout the play, reaching its height in his speech over
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Yorick’s skull. Finally, it is also telling that Hamlet makes humankind more impressive in “apprehension” (meaning understanding) than in “action.” Hamlet himself is more prone to apprehension than to action, which is why he delays so long before seeking his revenge on Claudius. 5. To be, or not to be: that is the question: Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune Or to take arms against a sea of troubles, And by opposing end them?—To die,—to sleep,— No more; and by a sleep to say we end The heartache, and the thousand natural shocks That flesh is heir to,—’tis a consummation Devoutly to be wish’d. To die,—to sleep;— To sleep: perchance to dream:—ay, there’s the rub; For in that sleep of death what dreams may come, When we have shuffled off this mortal coil, Must give us pause: there’s the respect That makes calamity of so long life; For who would bear the whips and scorns of time, The oppressor’s wrong, the proud man’s contumely, The pangs of despis’d love, the law’s delay, The insolence of office, and the spurns That patient merit of the unworthy takes, When he himself might his quietus make With a bare bodkin? who would these fardels bear, To grunt and sweat under a weary life, But that the dread of something after death,— The undiscover’d country, from whose bourn No traveller returns,—puzzles the will, And makes us rather bear those ills we have Than fly to others that we know not of? Thus conscience does make cowards of us all; And thus the native hue of resolution Is sicklied o’er with the pale cast of thought; And enterprises of great pith and moment, With this regard, their currents turn awry, And lose the name of action.
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This soliloquy, probably the most famous speech in the English language, is spoken by Hamlet in Act III, scene i, lines 58–90. His most logical and powerful examination of the theme of the moral legitimacy of suicide in an unbearably painful world, it touches on several of the other important themes of the play. Hamlet poses the problem of whether to commit suicide as a logical question: “To be, or not to be,” that is, to live or not to live. He then weighs the moral ramifications of living and dying. Is it nobler to suffer life, “[t]he slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,” passively or to actively seek to end one’s suffering? He compares death to sleep and thinks of the end to suffering, pain, and uncertainty it might bring, “[t]he heartache, and the thousand natural shocks / That flesh is heir to.” Based on this metaphor, he decides that suicide is a desirable course of action, “a consummation / Devoutly to be wished.” But, as the religious word “devoutly” signifies, there is more to the question, namely, what will happen in the afterlife. Hamlet immediately realizes as much, and he reconfigures his metaphor of sleep to include the possibility of dreaming; he says that the dreams that may come in the sleep of death are daunting, that they “must give us pause.” He then decides that the uncertainty of the afterlife, which is intimately related to the theme of the difficulty of attaining truth in a spiritually ambiguous world, is essentially what prevents all of humanity from committing suicide to end the pain of life. He outlines a long list of the miseries of experience, ranging from lovesickness to hard work to political oppression, and asks who would choose to bear those miseries if he could bring himself peace with a knife, “[w]hen he himself might his quietus make / With a bare bodkin?” He answers himself again, saying no one would choose to live, except that “the dread of something after death” makes people submit to the suffering of their lives rather than go to another state of existence which might be even more miserable. The dread of the afterlife, Hamlet concludes, leads to excessive moral sensitivity that makes action impossible: “conscience does make cowards of us all … thus the native hue of resolution / Is sicklied o’er with the pale cast of thought.” In this way, this speech connects many of the play’s main themes, including the idea of suicide and death, the difficulty of knowing the truth in a spiritually ambiguous universe, and the connection between thought and action. In addition to its crucial thematic content, this speech is important for what it reveals about the quality of Hamlet’s mind. His deeply passionate nature is complemented by a relentlessly logical intellect, which works furiously to find a solution to his misery. He has turned to religion and found it inadequate to help him either kill himself or resolve to kill Claudius. Here, he turns to a logical philosophical inquiry and finds it equally frustrating.
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KEY FACTS FULL TITLE
The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark AUTHOR William Shakespeare TYPE OF WORK Drama GENRE Revenge tragedy LANGUAGE English TIME AND PLACE WRITTEN London, England, early seventeenth century (probably 1600–1602) DATE OF FIRST PUBLICATION 1603, in a pirated quarto edition titled The Tragicall Historie of Hamlet; 1604 in a superior quarto edition NARRATOR None CLIMAX The duel between Hamlet and Laertes in Act V, scene ii, which leads to the deaths of Hamlet, Laertes, Claudius, and Gertrude PROTAGONIST Hamlet ANTAGONIST Claudius
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SETTINGS (TIME) The late medieval period, though the play’s chronological setting is notoriously imprecise SETTINGS (PLACE) Denmark POINT OF VIEW Mainly Hamlet’s FALLING ACTION Fortinbras’s arrival at Elsinore after the deaths of the royal family in Act V, scene ii TENSE Present FORESHADOWING The ghost, which is taken to foreshadow an ominous future for Denmark TONES Dark, ironic, melancholy, passionate, contemplative, desperate, violent THEMES The relationship between thought and action; the difficulty of attaining moral truth in a spiritually ambiguous world; the morality of revenge and retributive justice; the connection between the health of a nation and the moral legitimacy of its ruler; the morality of suicide in an unbearably painful world; family relationships, especially the consequences of moral corruption on family relationships MOTIFS Incest and incestuous desire; ears and hearing; death and suicide; darkness and the supernatural; misogyny SYMBOLS The ghost (the spiritual consequences of death); Yorick’s skull (the physical consequences of death)
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STUDY QUESTIONS AND ESSAY TOPICS
Study Questions
Shakespeare includes characters in Hamlet who are obvious foils for Hamlet, including, most obviously, Horatio, Fortinbras, Claudius, and Laertes. Compare and contrast Hamlet with each of these characters. How are they alike? How are they different? How does each respond to the crises with which he is faced? Horatio’s steadfastness and loyalty contrasts with Hamlet’s variability and excitability, though both share a love of learning, reason, and thought. Claudius’s willingness to disregard all moral law and act decisively to fulfill his appetites and lust for power contrasts powerfully with Hamlet’s concern for morality and indecisive inability to act. Fortinbras’s willingness to go to great lengths to avenge his father’s death, even to the point of waging war, contrasts sharply with Hamlet’s inactivity, even though both of them are concerned with avenging their fathers. Laertes’ single-minded, furious desire to avengePolonius stands in stark opposition to Hamlet’s inactivity with regard to his own father’s death. Finally, Hamlet, Laertes, and Fortinbras are all in a position to seek revenge for the murders of their fathers, and their situations are deeply intertwined. Hamlet’s father killed Fortinbras’s father, and Hamlet killed Laertes’ father, meaning that Hamlet occupies the same role for Laertes as Claudius does for Hamlet.
Many critics take a deterministic view of Hamlet’s plot, arguing that the prince’s inability to act and tendency toward melancholy reflection is a “tragic flaw” that leads inevitably to his demise. Is this an accurate way of understanding the play? Why or why not? Given Hamlet’s character and situation, would another outcome of the play have been possible? The idea of the “tragic flaw” is a problematic one inHamlet. It is true that Hamlet possesses definable characteristics that, by shaping his behavior, contribute to his tragic fate. But to argue that his tragedy is inevitable because he possesses these characteristics is difficult to prove. Given a scenario and a description of the characters involved, it is highly unlikely that anyone who had not read or seenHamlet would be able to predict its ending based solely on the character of its hero. In fact, the play’s chaotic train of events suggests that human beings are forced to make choices whose consequences are unforeseeable as well as unavoidable. To argue that the play’s outcome is intended to appear inevitable seems incompatible with the thematic claims made by the play itself.
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Throughout the play, Hamlet claims to be feigning madness, but his portrayal of a madman is so intense and so convincing that many readers believe that Hamlet actually slips into insanity at certain moments in the play. Do you think this is true, or is Hamlet merely play-acting insanity? What evidence can you cite for either claim? At any given moment during the play, the most accurate assessment of Hamlet’s state of mind probably lies somewhere between sanity and insanity. Hamlet certainly displays a high degree of mania and instability throughout much of the play, but his “madness” is perhaps too purposeful and pointed for us to conclude that he actually loses his mind. His language is erratic and wild, but beneath his mad-sounding words often lie acute observations that show the sane mind working bitterly beneath the surface. Most likely, Hamlet’s decision to feign madness is a sane one, taken to confuse his enemies and hide his intentions.On the other hand, Hamlet finds himself in a unique and traumatic situation, one which calls into question the basic truths and ideals of his life. He can no longer believe in religion, which has failed his father and doomed him to life amid miserable experience. He can no longer trust society, which is full of hypocrisy and violence, nor love, which has been poisoned by his mother’s betrayal of his father’s memory. And, finally, he cannot turn to philosophy, which cannot explain ghosts or answer his moral questions and lead him to action.With this much discord in his mind, and already under the extraordinary pressure of grief from his father’s death, his mother’s marriage, and the responsibility bequeathed to him by theghost, Hamlet is understandably distraught. He may not be mad, but he likely is close to the edge of sanity during many of the most intense moments in the play, such as during the performance of the play-within-a-play (III.ii), his confrontation withOphelia (III.i), and his long confrontation with his mother (III.iv).
Suggested Essay Topics
Think about Hamlet’s relationship withOphelia. Does he love her? Does he stop loving her? Did he ever love her? What evidence can you find in the play to support your opinion?
ConsiderRosencrantz andGuildenstern’s role in the play. Why might Shakespeare have created characters like this? Are they there for comic relief, or do they serve a more serious purpose? Why does the news of their deaths come only after the deaths of the royal family in Act V, as if this news were not anticlimactic? Is it acceptable for Hamlet to treat them as he does? Why or why not?
Analyze the use of descriptions and images in Hamlet. How does Shakespeare use descriptive language to enhance the visual possibilities of a stage production?
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How does he use imagery to create a mood of tension, suspense, fear, and despair?
Analyze the use of comedy in Hamlet, paying particular attention to the gravediggers,Osric, and Polonius. Does comedy serve merely to relieve the tension of the tragedy, or do the comic scenes serve a more serious thematic purpose as well?
Suicide is an important theme in Hamlet. Discuss how the play treats the idea of suicide morally, religiously, and aesthetically, with particular attention to Hamlet’s two important statements about suicide: the “O, that this too too solid flesh would melt” soliloquy (I.ii.129–158) and the “To be, or not to be” soliloquy (III.i.56–88). Why does Hamlet believe that, although capable of suicide, most human beings choose to live, despite the cruelty, pain, and injustice of the world?
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REVIEW AND RESOURCES
Quiz
Whom does Polonius send to France to spy on Laertes? A. Reynaldo B. Ophelia C. Guido D. Marcellus
Where does the ghost appear during the play? A. The castle ramparts and the great hall of Elsinore B. Fortinbras’s tent and Hamlet’s bedchamber C. The castle ramparts and Gertrude’s bedchamber D. Gertrude’s bedchamber and the great hall of Elsinore
How did Claudius murder King Hamlet? A. By stabbing him through an arras B. By pouring poison into his ear C. By ordering him to be hanged D. By poisoning his wineglass
Where is the university at which Horatio and Hamlet studied? A. Paris B. Oxford C. Constantinople D. Wittenberg
Whose skull does Hamlet discover in the churchyard? A. The former court jester’s B. Reynaldo’s C. Ophelia’s D. His father’s
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Which of the following characters cannot see the ghost? A. Marcellus B. Hamlet C. Gertrude D. Horatio
Who escorts Hamlet on the voyage to England? A. Cornelius and Voltimand B. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern C. Marcellus and Bernardo D. Captain Vicissus and the one-eyed thief
Where do Hamlet and Laertes fight during Ophelia’s funeral? A. In the nearby woods B. Beside Ophelia’s grave C. Inside the church D. Inside the grave itself
Which of the following characters survive the play? A. Fortinbras, Horatio, and Osric B. Prince Hamlet, Polonius, and Gertrude C. Claudius, Rosencrantz, and Guildenstern D. Ophelia, Laertes, and King Hamlet
What does Hamlet claim to be able to tell the difference between when the wind is from the south? A. A flea and a fire log B. A nymph and a nihilist C. A hawk and a handsaw D. A shark and St. Timothy
In whose history of Denmark did Shakespeare find background material for his play? A. Oedipus of Thebes B. Saxo Grammaticus C. Franz Guntherhaasen D. Dionysus Finn
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How does Ophelia die? A. Claudius stabs her B. Hamlet strangles her C. She slits her wrists D. She drowns in the river
Whose story does Hamlet ask the players to tell upon their arrival to Elsinore? A. Priam and Hecuba’s B. Antony and Cleopatra’s C. Gertrude and Claudius’s D. His father’s
Why, according to Polonius, has Hamlet gone mad? A. He grieves too much for his father B. He despises Claudius for marrying Gertrude C. He is in love with Ophelia D. He is jealous of Laertes and longs to return to Wittenberg
Who is the last character to die in the play? A. Horatio B. Hamlet C. Claudius D. Fortinbras
How many characters die during the course of the play? A. 2 B. 5 C. 7 D. 8
Who speaks the famous “To be, or not to be” soliloquy? A. Claudius B. Hamlet C. The ghost D. Laertes
In what country do Rosencrantz and Guildenstern die? A. Belgium B. Denmark C. England D. Poland
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Why does Hamlet decide not to kill Claudius after the traveling players’ play? A. Claudius is praying B. Claudius is asleep C. Claudius pleads for mercy D. Gertrude is in the next room
Who killed Fortinbras’s father? A. Prince Hamlet B. Laertes C. Fortinbras D. Hamlet’s father
Which character speaks the first line of the play? A. Bernardo B. Francisco C. Hamlet D. Horatio
In which of the following years was Hamlet most likely written? A. 1570 B. 1601 C. 1581 D. 1610
Which of Claudius and Laertes’ traps for Hamlet succeeds in killing him? A. The poisoned cup B. The sharpened sword C. The poisoned dagger D. The poisoned sword
Which character speaks from beneath the stage toward the end of Act I? A. The Ghost B. Hamlet C. Claudius D. Polonius
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Who returns Hamlet to Denmark after his exile? A. Horatio B. Claudius C. A group of pirates D. A group of monks
Answer Key: 1: A
8: D
15: B
22: B
2: C
9: A
16: D
23: D
3: B
10: C
17: B
24: A
4: D
11: B
18: C
25: C
5: A
12: D
19: A
6: C
13: A
20: D
7: B
14: C
21: A
Suggestions for Further Reading Bloom, Harold.Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human. New York: Riverhead Books, 1998. Bradley, A. C.Shakespearean Tragedy: Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear & Macbeth. New York: Penguin, 1991. Eliot, Thomas Sterns. “Hamlet and His Problems.” InThe Sacred Wood. London: Methuen, 1920. Frye, Northrop.Fools of Time: Studies in Shakespearean Tragedy. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1967. Greenblatt, Stephen.Hamlet in Purgatory. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001. Levin, Harry.The Question of Hamlet. New York: Oxford University Press, 1959. Wilson, John Dover.What Happens in Hamlet. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1951. Note: This SparkNote uses theThe Norton Shakespeare edition ofHamlet. Some line and scene numbers may vary in other editions.
She went by the name of Belisa Crepusculario, not because she had been baptized with that name or given it by her mother, but because she herself had searched until she found the poetry of “beauty” and “twilight” and cloaked herself in it. She made her living selling words. She journeyed through the country from the high cold mountains to the burning coasts, stopping at fairs and in markets where she set up four poles covered by a canvas awning under which she took refuge from the sun and rain to minister to her customers. She did not have to peddle her merchandise because from having wandered far and near, everyone knew who she was. Some people waited for her from one year to the next, and when she appeared in the village with her bundle beneath her arm, they would form a line in front of her stall. Her prices were fair. For five centavos she delivered verses from memory, for seven she improved the quality of dreams, for nine she wrote love letters, for twelve she invented insults for irreconcilable enemies. She also sold stories, not fantasies but long, true stories she recited at one telling, never skipping a word. This is how she carried news from one town to another. People paid her to add a line or two: our son was born, so-and-so died, our children got married, the crops burned in the field. Wherever she went a small crowd gathered around to listen as she began to speak, and that was how they learned about each others’ doings, about distant relatives, about what was going on in the civil war. To anyone who paid her fifty centavos in trade, she gave the gift of a secret word to drive away melancholy. It was not the same word for everyone, naturally, because that would have been collective dece it. Each person received his or her own word, with the assurance that no one else would use it that way in this universe or the Beyond.
Belisa Crepusculario had been born into a family so poor they did not even have names to give their children. She came into the world and grew up in an inhospitable land where some years the rains became avalanches of water that bore everything away before them and others when not a drop fell from the sky and the sun swelled to fill the horizon and the world became a desert. Until she was twelve, Belisa had no occupation or virtue other than having withstood hunger and the exhaustion of centuries. During one interminable drought, it fell to her to bury four younger brothers and sisters, when she realized that her turn was next, she decided to set out across the
plains in the direction of the sea, in hopes that she might trick death along the way. The land was eroded, split with deep cracks, strewn with rocks, fossils of trees and thorny bushes, and skeletons of animals bleached by the sun. From time to time she ran into families who, like her, were heading south, following the mirage of water. Some had begun the march carrying their belongings on their back or in small carts, but they could barely move their own bones, and after a while they had to abandon their possessions. They dragged themselves along painfully, their skin turned to lizard hide and their eyes burned by the reverberating glare. Belisa greeted them with a wave as she passed, but she did not stop, because she had no strength to waste in acts of compassion. Many people fell by the wayside, but she was so stubborn that she survived to cross through that hell and at long last reach the first trickles of water, fine, almost invisible threads that fed spindly vegetation and farther down widened into small streams and marshes.
Belisa Crepusculario saved her life and in the process accidentally discovered writing. In a village near the coast, the wind blew a page of newspaper at her feet. She picked up the brittle yellow paper and stood a long while looking at it, unable to determine its purpose, until curiosity overcame her shyness. She walked over to a man who was washing his horse in the muddy pool where she had quenched her thirst.
“What is this?” she asked. “The sports page of the newspaper,” the man replied, concealing his surprise at her ignorance. The answer astounded the girl, but she did not want to seem rude, so she merely inquired about the significance of the fly tracks scattered across the page. “Those are words, child. Here it says that Fulgencio Barba knocked out El Negro Tiznao in the third round.” That was the day Belisa Crepusculario found out that words make their way in the world without a master, and that anyone with a little cleverness can appropriate them and do business with them. She made a quick assessment of her situation and concluded that aside from becoming a prostitute or working as a servant in the kitchens of the rich there were few occupations she was qualified for. It seemed to her that selling words would be an honorable alternative. From that moment on, she worked at that profession, and was never tempted by any other. At the beginning, she offered her merchandise unaware that words could be written outside of newspapers. When she learned otherwise, she calculated the infinite possibilities of her trade and with her savings paid a priest twenty pesos to teach her to read and write, with her three
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remaining coins she bought a dictionary. She poured over it from A to Z and then threw it into the sea, because it was not her intention to defraud her customers with packaged words. One August morning several years later, Belisa Crepusculario was sitting in her tent in the middle of a plaza, surrounded by the uproar of market day, selling legal arguments to an old man who had been trying for sixteen years to get his pension. Suddenly she heard yelling and thudding hoofbeats. She looked up from her writing and saw, first, a cloud of dust, and then a band of horsemen come galloping into the plaza. They were the Colonel’s men, sent under orders of El Mulato, a giant known throughout the land for the speed of his knife and his loyalty to his chief. Both the Colonel and El Mulato had spent their lives fighting in the civil war, and their names were ineradicably linked to devastation and calamity. The rebels swept into town like a stampeding herd, wrapped in noise, bathed in sweat, and leaving a hurricane of fear in their trail. Chickens took wing, dogs ran for their lives, women and children scurried out of sight, until the only living soul left in the market was Belisa Crepusculario. She had never seen El Mulato and was surprised to see him walking toward her.
“I’m looking for you,” he shouted, pointing his coiled whip at her, even before the words were out, two men rushed her — knocking over her canopy and shattering her inkwell — bound her hand and foot, and threw her like a sea bag across the rump of El Mulato’s mount. Then they thundered off toward the hills.
Hours later, just as Belisa Crepusculario was near death, her heart ground to sand by the pounding of the horse, they stopped, and four strong hands set her down. She tried to stand on her feet and hold her head high, but her strength failed her and she slumped to the ground, sinking into a confused dream. She awakened several hours later to the murmur of night in the camp, but before she had time to sort out the sounds, she opened her eyes and found herself staring into the impatient glare of El Mulato, kneeling beside her.
“Well, woman, at last you’ve come to,” he said. To speed her to her senses, he tipped his canteen and offered her a sip of liquor laced with gunpowder. She demanded to know the reason for such rough treatment, and El Mulato explained that the Colonel needed her services. He allowed her to splash water on her face, and then led her to the far end of the camp where the most feared man in all the land was lazing in a hammock strung between two trees. She could not see his face, because he lay in the deceptive shadow of the leaves and the indelible shadow of all his years as a bandit, but she imagined from the way his
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gigantic aide addressed him with such humility that he must have a very menacing expression. She was surprised by the Colonel’s voice, as soft and well-modulated as a professor’s. “Are you the woman who sells words?” he asked. “At your service,” she stammered, peering into the dark and trying to see him better.
The Colonel stood up, and turned straight toward her. She saw dark skin and the eyes of a ferocious puma, and she knew immediately that she was standing before the loneliest man in the world. “I want to be President,” he announced.
The Colonel was weary of riding across that godforsaken land, waging useless wars and suffering defeats that no subterfuge could transform into victories. For years he had been sleeping in the open air, bitten by mosquitoes, eating iguanas and snake soup, but those minor inconveniences were not why he wanted to change his destiny. What truly troubled him was the terror he saw in people’s eyes. He longed to ride into a town beneath a triumphal arch with bright flags and flowers everywhere, he wanted to be cheered, and be given newly laid eggs and freshly baked bread. Men fled at the sight of him, children trembled, and women miscarried from fright, he had had enough, and so he had decided to become President. El Mulato had suggested that they ride to the capital, gallop up to the Palace, and take over the government, the way they had taken so many other things without anyone’s permission. The Colonel, however, did not want to be just another tyrant, there had been enough of those before him and, besides, if he did that, he would never win people’s hearts. It was his aspiration to win the popular vote in the December elections.
“To do that, I have to talk like a candidate. Can you sell me the words for a speech?” the Colonel asked Belisa Crepusculario. She had accepted many assignments, but none like this. She did not dare refuse, fearing that El Mulato would shoot her between the eyes, or worse still, that the Colonel would burst into tears. There was more to it than that, however, she felt the urge to help him because she felt a throbbing warmth beneath her skin, a powerful desire to touch that man, to fondle him, to clasp him in her arms.
All night and a good part of the following day, Belisa Crepusculario searched her repertory for words adequate for a presidential speech, closely watched by El Mulato, who could not take his eyes from her firm wanderer’s legs and virginal breasts. She discarded harsh, cold words, words
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that were too flowery, words worn from abuse, words that offered improbable promises, untruthful and confusing words, until all she had left were words sure to touch the minds of men and women’s intuition. Calling upon the knowledge she had purchased from the priest for twenty pesos, she wrote the speech on a sheet of paper and then signaled El Mulato to untie the rope that bound her ankles to a tree. He led her once more to the Colonel, and again she felt the throbbing anxiety that had seized her when she first saw him. She handed him the paper and waited while he looked at it, holding it gingerly between thumbs and fingertips.
“What the shit does this say,” he asked finally. “Don’t you know how to read?” “War’s what I know,” he replied. She read the speech aloud. She read it three times, so her client could engrave it on his memory. When she finished, she saw the emotion in the faces of the soldiers who had gathered round to listen, and saw that the Colonel’s eyes glittered with enthusiasm, convinced that with those words the presidential chair would be his.
“If after they’ve heard it three times, the boys are still standing there with their mouths hanging open, it must mean the thing’s damn good, Colonel” was El Mulato’s approval. “All right, woman. How much do I owe you?” the leader asked. “One peso, Colonel.”
“That’s not much,” he said, opening the pouch he wore at his belt, heavy with proceeds from the last foray. “The peso entitles you to a bonus. I’m going to give you two secret words,” said Belisa Crepusculario.
“What for?” She explained that for every fifty centavos a client paid, she gave him the gift of a word for his exclusive use. The Colonel shrugged. He had no interest at all in her offer, but he did not want to be impolite to someone who had served him so well. She walked slowly to the leather stool where he was sitting, and bent down to give him her gift. The man smelled the scent of a mountain cat issuing from the woman, a fiery heat radiating from her hips, he heard the terrible whisper of her hair, and a breath of sweetmint murmured into his ear the two secret words that were his alone. “They are yours, Colonel,” she said as she stepped back. “You may use them as much as you
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please.” El Mulato accompanied Belisa to the roadside, his eyes as entreating as a stray dog’s, but when he reached out to touch her, he was stopped by an avalanche of words he had never heard before; believing them to be an irrevocable curse, the flame of his desire was extinguished. During the months of September, October, and November the Colonel delivered his speech so many times that had it not been crafted from glowing and durable words it would have turned to ash as he spoke. He travelled up and down and across the country, riding into cities with a triumphal air, stopping in even the most forgotten villages where only the dump heap betrayed a human presence, to convince his fellow citizens to vote for him. While he spoke from a platform erected in the middle of the plaza, El Mulato and his men handed out sweets and painted his name on all the walls in gold frost. No one paid the least attention to those advertising ploys; they were dazzled by the clarity of the Colonel’s proposals and the poetic lucidity of his arguments, infected by his powerful wish to right the wrongs of history, happy for the first time in their lives. When the Candidate had finished his speech, his soldiers would fire their pistols into the air and set off firecrackers, and when finally they rode off, they left behind a wake of hope that lingered for days on the air, like the splendid memory of a comet’s tail. Soon the Colonel was the favorite. No one had ever witnessed such a phenomenon: a man who surfaced from the civil war, covered with scars and speaking like a professor, a man whose fame spread to every corner of the land and captured the nation’s heart. The press focused their attention on him. Newspapermen came from far away to interview him and repeat his phrases, and the number of his followers and enemies continued to grow. “We’re doing great, Colonel,” said El Mulato, after twelve successful weeks of campaigning. But the Candidate did not hear. He was repeating his secret words, as he did more and more obsessively. He said them when he was mellow with nostalgia; he murmured them in his sleep; he carried them with him on horseback; he thought them before delivering his famous speech; and he caught himself savoring them in his leisure time. And every time he thought of those two words, he thought of Belisa Crepusculario, and his senses were inflamed with the memory of her feral scent, her fiery heat, the whisper of her hair, and her sweetmint breath in his ear, until he began to go around like a sleepwalker, and his men realized that he might die before he ever sat in the presidential chair. “What’s got hold of you, Colonel,” El Mulato asked so often that finally one day his chief broke
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down and told him the source of his befuddlement: those two words that were buried like two daggers in his gut. “Tell me what they are and maybe they’ll lose their magic,” his faithful aide suggested. “I can’t tell them, they’re for me alone,” the Colonel replied.
Saddened by watching his chief decline like a man with a death sentence on his head, El Mulato slung his rifle over his shoulder and set out to find Belisa Crepusculario. He followed her trail through all that vast country, until he found her in a village in the far south, sitting under her tent reciting her rosary of news. He planted himself, spraddle-legged, before her, weapon in hand. “You! You’re coming with me,” he ordered.
She had been waiting. She picked up her inkwell, folded the canvas of her small stall, arranged her shawl around her shoulders, and without a word took her place behind El Mulato’s saddle. They did not exchange so much as a word in all the trip; El Mulato’s desire for her had turned into rage, and only his fear of her tongue prevented his cutting her to shreds with his whip. Nor was he inclined to tell her that the Colonel was in a fog, and that a spell whispered into his ear had done what years of battle had not been able to do. Three days later they arrived at the encampment, and immediately, in view of all the troops, El Mulato led his prisoner before the Candidate.
“I brought this witch here so you can give her back her words, Colonel,” El Mulato said, pointing the barrel of his rifle at the woman’s head. “And then she can give you back your manhood.” The Colonel and Belisa Crepusculario stared at each other, measuring one another from a distance. The men knew then that their leader would never undo the witchcraft of those accursed words, because the whole world could see the voracious-puma eyes soften as the woman walked to him and took his hand in hers.
Write a conversational, Deductive Response Paragraph, written from ther perspective of a trickster, giving the reasons for each perspective all three voices.
The voices should be in conversation with the Trickser: “Oh, Changez would say . . . That’s not like _____________, he/she would might argue . . .”
We are all products of culture, Western Culture. Our goal in this class is to pull back the layers of that culture and help you see Who You Are, Where You Came From, and Where You Are Going? We will do this by examining our history, traditions, philosophical foundations, and (more than anything) our decision making. This week, we will start our talk on Ethics — how we do what we do, and why . . .
Week 2 – Why Are You Here? (Reason – Logos)
Do you know what you believe? Great. Do you know what others think? Even better. Good writers know their argument, they know the voices involved in the argument, and they present both sides before they give the ultimate conclusion. This week, we are going to start working on theory — examining our worldview through the lenses of others’. We’re going to make you take a stand; It starts with claims — Beliefs — and moves toward conclusions — the Call to Action. It’s a bit like a card game; you know where you are headed, but you do not want to tip your hand too soon. It’s our first step toward moving you out of simplicity and toward sophistication.
Week 3 – Life in the Cave (Investigation – Ethos)
This week we will be looking at ourselves through the lense of Plato’s Idealism. We will be reading his work in light of our own foundational beliefs. We will look at three specific world views (Greek, Hebrew, and Christian) as a foundation for future discussion related to ethical decision making. As we do, we will be integrating the multiple voices which will lead to your first Small Paper: Life in the Cave.
Week 4 – Week 5: Writing
Assumption is death to a writer. If we assume our first idea is the best — if the first sentence we write is a masterpiece, and our first-draft our best –, we will find ourselves out-classed at every stage. Writing is discipline, and discipline generally requires thinking about matters more than once. This week we will be working with writing and re-writing. We will watch a thought move from a first-draft/brainstorm to a finished product. It will be the first trial of your finished portfolio; learn to do this, and you will take one step closer to becoming a good writer
We know the Western Hero (Odysseus): tall, strong, great warrior, defends the weak. There is the Comic Hero, the trickster (Brer Rabbit, Jacob – from the Bible), who takes on the great powers within a community and defeats them by his wits and cunning. We know the Rogue (Lord Goring) who knows the rules, chooses not to operate within them, but manages to affect change by virtue of his disconnection to everything his community values. Finally, we have the Tragic Hero (Hamlet, Thomas More), the man who takes on a culture and loses, but, in losing, changes the hearts of the community around him.
Heroism is relative to any age. A hero reflects a culture’s values (or sometimes even its fears). As we study this week, we will examine the role of Martin Dressler and ask the question “Is he a hero?” Some of the answer will be subjective (it’s really a personal stance). Some of it will be archetyal (as defined by the traditional traits of a hero). And some of it will be outright cultural (does Martin do the best for the greatest number of people, or are his actions motivated by traditionally heroic virtues?)
Whatever the answer, you will see the evolution of a concept right before your eyes. As you see the hero, you will see the values the make him — and, hopefully, you will see yourself.
An important rule of analysis: write in a different tone than the one being examined. Therefore, using an analytic tone (technical terms and cause/effect), explain the elements that make these scenes work. Review your different kinds of shots and angles. Review sounds and cuts. In your paragraph, explain the correlations between the different pieces
