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Hamlet > AO2 > Flashcards

AO2 Flashcards

1
Q

Opening

A

“Who’s there?” - Barnardo
“Tis bitter cold, and I am sick at heart”
- Francisco

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2
Q

Horatio about the Ghost

A

“This bodes some strange eruption to our state”

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3
Q

Claudius’s First Speech: Skill as an Orator

A

“Have we, as t’were with a defeated joy/ With one auspicious and one dropping eye…mirth in funeral and dirge in marriage…in equal scale weighing delight and dole/ Taken to wife”

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4
Q

Chaos in the Court: 1.2

A

Claudius moves from issues affecting the whole “warlike state” to personally dealing with Laertes - conflation of family and state, chaos, England in the control of splintered families

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5
Q

Hamlet’s First Words

A

“(aside) A little more than kin, and less than kind”

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6
Q

Gertrude trying to comfort Hamlet: 1.2

A

“Do not forever with thy vailèd lids/ Seek for thy noble father in the dust”

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7
Q

1.2: Hamlet on duplicity in the court

A

“Seems madam? Nay it is, I know not seems”

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8
Q

Hamlet’s heroic couplet after mourning positions him with motivation for revenge

A

“But I have that within which passes show/ These but the trappings and the suits of woe”

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9
Q

Hamlet is chastised by Claudius for his grief

A

“‘tis unmanly grief/ It shows a will most incorrect to heaven/ A heart unfortified, a mind impatient/ An understanding simple and unschooled”

This is a public scene, embarrassing!

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10
Q

The beginning of Hamlet’s first soliloquy

A

“O that this too too solid flesh would melt/ Thaw and resolve itself into a dew”

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11
Q

Soliloquy 1: Hamlet on the state of Denmark

A

“tis an unweeded garden/ That grows to seed, things rank and gross in nature/ Possess it merely”

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12
Q

Soliloquy 1: Hamlet idealising his father

A

“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”

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13
Q

Soliloquy 1: Hamlet’s disgust at Gertrude’s sexuality

A

“why, she would hang on him as if increase of appetite had grown by what it fed on”

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14
Q

Soliloquy 1: Hamlet’s disgust at the speed of Gertrude’s remarriage

A

“Oh most wicked speed, to post with such dexterity to incestuous sheets”

Henry VIII’s attempted marriage to Catherine of Aragon, leading to the Reformation!

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15
Q

Soliloquy 1: Hamlet’s ‘resolution’

A

“But break, my heart, for I must hold my tongue”

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16
Q

1.2: Hamlet’s confusion of the real and imaginary with regards to his father

A

“Methinks I see my father…in my mind’s eye, Horatio”

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17
Q

1.3: Laertes on Hamlet’s position

A

“his choice be circumscribed unto the voice and yielding of that body whereof he is the head”

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18
Q

1.3: Laertes warning Ophelia

A

“Fear it Ophelia, fear it my dear sister, and keep you…out of the shot and danger of desire…in the morn and liquid dew of youth contagious blastments are most imminent”

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19
Q

1.3: Ophelia asserting herself to Laertes

A

“do not as some ungracious pastors do show my the steep and thorny way to heaven, whiles like a puffed and reckless libertine…recks not his own rede”

Laertes is positioned as a ‘pastor’ - strength of family unit in post-Reformation England,.no monasteries for guidance

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20
Q

1.3: Polonius to Laertes

A

“Give thy thoughts no tongue…Be thou familiar, but by no means vulgar…Bear’t that th’opposèd may beware of thee”

Imperatives! Contrast w Hamlet’s indecision, lack of a father figure, BUT Polonius is also positioned as rambling here….

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21
Q

1.3: Laertes’ final farewell and parallel with the Ghost

A

“Farewell Ophelia, and remember well what I have said to you”
“Tis in my memory locked, and you yourself shall keep the key of it”

Ophelia even refers to her own memory as being possessed by Laertes here: without him she goes mad!

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22
Q

1.3: Polonius lecturing Ophelia

A

“Affection? Puh! You speak like a green girl, unsifted in such perilous circumstance…Tender yourself more dearly, or you’ll tender me a fool”

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23
Q

1.4: Hamlet’s first address to the Ghost

A

“Angels and ministers of grace defend us!”
“King, father, royal Dane”
“Tell why thy canonised bones, hearsed in death, have burst their cerements; why the sepulchre hath oped his ponderous and marble jaws”

PASSIVE - Hamlet, aware of the conventions of RT, sees the ghost as a symptom of something else

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24
Q

1.4: Hamlet talking about the Ghost to Horatio

A

“What if it tempt you toward the flood my lord”
“My fate cries out, and makes each petty arture in this body as hardy as the Nemean lion’s nerve”

Biblical vs Classical allusion

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25
Q

1.4: The problems in Denmark are noticed by a relative commoner, Marcellus

A

“Something is rotten in the state of Denmark”

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26
Q

1.5: The Ghost on Purgatory

A

“for the day confined to fast in fires till the foul crimes done in my days of nature are burnt and purged away”

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27
Q

1.5: Hamlet’s decisive nature with the Ghost

A

“Haste me to know’t, that I with wings as swift as meditation or the thoughts of love may sweep to my revenge”

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28
Q

1.5: The Ghost on his poisoning

A

“Swift as quicksilver it courses through the natural gates and alleys of the body…barked about, most lazar-like, with vile and loathsome crust, all my smooth body”

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29
Q

1.5: The Ghost on Gertrude

A

“So lust, though to a radiant angel linked, will sate itself in a celestial bed and prey on garbage”

Gertrude as Elizabeth: it is possible for even the most virtuous to be corrupted, vivid contrast and following description of poisoning

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30
Q

1.5: The Ghost instructs to “swear”

A

Ghost cries under the stage
“Come on, you hear this fellow in the cellarage, consent to swear”

Interesting that H’s motivation is quite literally coming from below as opposed to above? How far is revenge compatible with contemporary religion?

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31
Q

2.1 Polonius instructing Reynaldo

A

“Your bait of falsehood takes the carp of truth”

Parallels to Hamlet’s “antic disposition”

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32
Q

2.1 Hamlet becomes a revenger (Ophelia’s account)

A

“He raised a sigh so piteous and profound as it did seem to shatter all his bulk and end his being.”

Ophelia exists only to develop Hamlet’s character!

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33
Q

2.2 Polonius declaring Hamlet’s madness

A

“This business is well ended…since brevity is the soul of wit(!)…I will be brief. Your son is mad”

Polonius typically gets everything wrong, and dismisses the much greater threat to the state out of hand

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34
Q

2.2 Polonius gets caught up in himself instructing the King

A

Harsh imperative “perpend”
Anadiplosis for comedic effect “tis true, tis true, tis pity, and pity tis tis true”

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35
Q

2.2 Polonius’ ownership of Ophelia

A

“at such a time I’ll loose my daughter to him”

36
Q

2.2 Hamlet making fun of Polonius

A

“For if the sun breeds maggots in a dead dog, being a good kissing carrion - Have you a daughter?”

Court jester role

37
Q

2.2 Hamlet’s relativism

A

“there is nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so”

38
Q

‘Soliloquy’ 2: Hamlet seems to reject humanism

A

“this goodly frame, the Earth, seems to me a sterile promontory”
“What a piece of work is man!”
“How noble in reason, how infinite in faculties…yet what is this quintessence of dust”

These lines are broken off by Rosencrantz’s lewd joke on “man delights not me”, base court

39
Q

2.2 Polonius talking about the playwrights in a funny way

A

“tragical-comical-historical-pastoral, scene individable or poem unlimited. Seneca cannot be too heavy, nor Plautus too light”

40
Q

2.2 Hamlet’s inaction is foreshadowed by the Players through Pyrrhus

A

“So, as a painted tyrant, Pyrrhus stood and like a neutral to his will and matter //// Did nothing”

LINE BREAK, INDECISION!

41
Q

Soliloquy 3 Hamlet chides himself

A

“O what a rogue and peasant slave am I!”

42
Q

Soliloquy 3 Hamlet’s base language demonstrates him stepping into the revenger role

A

“Tweaks me by the nose, gives me the lie ‘i’th’throat as deep to the lungs? Who does me this?”

43
Q

Soliloquy 3 Hamlet professes faith in divine intervention

A

“For murder, though it have no tongue, will speak with most miraculous organ”

44
Q

Soliloquy 3 ends with a decision!

A

“The play’s the thing wherein I’ll catch the conscience of the King”

45
Q

3.1 Even Gertrude views Ophelia as a tool

A

“And for your part Ophelia I do wish that your good beauties be the happy cause of Hamlet’s wildness”

“Part”, reduced to “beauties”, wildness as a fashionable trait for a Renaissance man

46
Q

Soliloquy 4 The opening everyone knows…

A

“To be or not to be, that is the question”

47
Q

Soliloquy 4 Hamlet talking about death

A

“For in that sleep of death what dreams may come when we have shuffled off this mortal coil”

48
Q

Soliloquy 4 Hamlet reflects on his role as a revenger being ruined by human nature

A

“conscience does make cowards of us all/ And thus the native hue of resolution is sicklied oer with the pale cast of thought”

49
Q

3.1 Hamlet telling Ophelia about the state of Denmark

A

“virtue cannot so inoculate our old stock”

imagery is from tree grafting, a branch of virtue cannot be put onto a trunk of sin

50
Q

3.1 Nunnery

A

“We are arrant knaves all, believe none of us. Go thy ways to a nunnery. Where’s your father?”

nunnery = whorehouse(?)
Ophelia still cannot escape her father

51
Q

3.1 Ophelia’s Lament

A

“Oh woe is me T’have seen what I have seen and see what I see”

Lack of future tense, lack of hope?
Seeing, perception, superficiality of Hamlet’s performance

52
Q

3.1 Claudius remarks on Hamlet’s madness

A

“It shall be so. Madness in great ones must not unwatched go.”

53
Q

3.2 Hamlet talks about Fortune with Horatio

A

“they are not a pipe for Fortune’s finger to sound what stop she please”

54
Q

3.2 Hamlet predicts Claudius’ reaction to the play

A

“If his occulted guilt do not itself unkennel in one speech, it is a damned Ghost we have seen”

55
Q

3.2 Hamlet reassuring Claudius on the poisoning in the play

A

“No, no, they do but jest, poison in jest, no offence i’th’world”

Colloquialism reflects antic disposition
Oxymoron furthers confusion, blurring of senses

56
Q

3.2 Hamlet on Rosencrantz and Guildenstern after the play

A

“Come, the recorders! For if the king like not the comedy, why then - he belikes it not, perdy”

Reference to Spanish Tragedy, but “if the world likes not this tragedy” has been turned to “comedy”, confusion of revenge tragedy tropes(?)

57
Q

3.2 Hamlet psychs himself up for his meeting with Gertrude

A

“O heart, lose not thy nature; let not ever the soul of Nero enter this firm bosom…O will speak daggers to her but use none”

Heroic couplet is once again undermined by the conflict between words and actions

58
Q

3.3 G + R on Claudius’ responsibility as King

A

“Most holy and religious fear it is to keep those many bodies safe that live and feed upon your majesty”

59
Q

Claudius Soliloquy: He recognises the gravity of his murder

A

“Oh my offence is rank, it smells to heaven; it hath the primal eldest curse upon it”

60
Q

Claudius Soliloquy: Justice can be bribed

A

“Offence’s gilded hand may shove by justice…but tis not so above, there is no shuffling, there the action lies in his true nature”

61
Q

3.3 Hamlet passes on killing Claudius

A

“My mother stays. This physics but prolongs thy sickly day.”
“My words fly up, my thoughts remain below. Words without thoughts never to heaven go”

Also structure, “To heaven” and “No” are given as separate lines by Shakespeare -> Hamlet is certain to not do something!

62
Q

3.4 Hamlet on Gertrude’s position

A

“You are the queen, your husband’s brother’s wife, and would it were not so, you are my mother”

63
Q

3.4 Hamlet’s moral interrogation of Gertrude

A

“Heaven’s face doth glow”
“Such an act that…takes off the rose from the fair forehead of an innocent love and sets a blister there”

Gertrude’s authority is gradually eroded, H as a revenger overtakes H as a son, contrast w Ghost who later can get Hamlet to do what he wants”

64
Q

3.4 Hamlet’s disgust at Gertrude

A

“Ha! Have you eyes? You cannot call it love, for at your age the heyday in the blood is tame…and waits upon the judgement”

65
Q

3.4 Gertrude’s self reflection

A

“Thou turnst my eyes into my very soul, and there I see such black and grained spots as will not leave their tinct”

66
Q

3.4 Hamlet’s damning comment on the royal bed

A

“to live in the rank sweat of an enseamed bed, honeying and making love over the nasty sty”

67
Q

3.4 Hamlet submits to the Ghost

A

“Do you not come your tardy son to chide…the important acting of your dread command? Oh say!”

Reference to “acting “, the play as a means of stalling the plot

68
Q

3.4 Hamlet applies Renaissance logic to Gertrude’s soul

A

“Oh Hamlet, thou hast cleft my heart in twain”
“Oh throw away the worser half of it, and live purer with the other half..assume a virtue if you have it not”

69
Q

3.4 Hamlet’s regression as a revenger

A

“I’ll lug the guts into the neighbour room”

70
Q

4.3 Hamlet joking around with Polonius’ death

A

“Not where he eats, but where a is eaten. A certain convocation of politic worms are een at him…Your fat king and your lean beggar is but variable service, two dishes, but to one table”

Digestion metaphor could also show breakdown of the court?

71
Q

4.4 Hamlet really tries hard to idealise Fortinbras’ army

A

“this army of such mass and charge, led by a delicate and tender prince whose spirit with divine ambition puffed”

“sharked up a list of lawless resolutes”

Why the contrast? Shakespeare’s plot revision (rabble given to Laertes?) Dysfunction of court’s intelligence? Hamlet’s exercise in self deception?

72
Q

4.5 Horatio on ‘solving the Ophelia problem’

A

“T’were good she were spoken with, for she may strew dangerous conjectures in ill breeding minds”

73
Q

4.5 Gertrude’s aside

A

“So full of artless jealousy is guilt, it spills itself in fearing to be spilt”

74
Q

4.5 Ophelia’s madness

A

“Indeed la! I’ll make an end ont. By Gus and by Saint Charity, alack and fie for shame. Young men will dot if they come to it, By Cock they are to blame”

75
Q

4.5 Laertes rebellion is dismissed by Claudius

A

“that thy rebellion looks so giant-like?…There’s such divinity doth hedge a king that treason can but peep to what it would”

76
Q

4.5 Laertes clear, specific focus as a revenger

A

“Give me my father”
“Where is my father?”
“I’ll be revenged most thoroughly for my father”

Specific goal, as opposed to Hamlet also obsessing over the sickness in court more generally

77
Q

4.7 Laertes on Ophelia’s death

A

“Too much of water hast thou, poor Ophelia, and therefore I forbid my tears”
“Let shame say what it will”

78
Q

5.1 The death of Yorick

A

“Quite chop-fallen? Now get you to my lady’s chamber and tell her, let her paint an inch thick…to what base uses we may return!”

H is much more lucid here than talking about his own father
Death of the jester (who would speak truths): sickness, confusion at court

79
Q

5.1 Ophelia shouldn’t be given a proper religious burial

A

“Who is this they follow? And with such maimed rites?”
“Her death was doubtful…and but that great command oersways the order”
“I tell thee churlish priest, a ministering angel shall my sister be”

80
Q

5.1 Laertes leaps into the grave

A

“Now pile your dust upon the quick and the dead…to oertop old Pelion or the skyish head of blue Olympus”

81
Q

5.1 Hamlet’s mathematical lament for Ophelia

A

“I loved Ophelia, forty thousand brothers could not with all the quantity of their love make up my son”

82
Q

5.2 Hamlet on fate

A

“There is special providence in the fall of a sparrow. If it be now, tis not to come, if it be not to come, it will be now…the readiness is all”

Incisive speech positions Hamlet as heroic and Christian while also neatly tying up his role as a revenger.
Contrast with performative court entrance immediately after

83
Q

5.2 Hamlet almost quotes Bacon

A

“Your skill shall like a star i’the darkest night stick fiery off indeed”

Bacon’s “arrow that flieth in the dark”, contrast with “star” which alludes to nobility, divine will, suggests this is a ‘good’ revenge

84
Q

5.2 Claudius’ cup is refused

A

“Hamlet, this pearl is thine. Here’s to thy health” performative stage directions “Give him the cup.”
“I’ll play this bout first, set it by a while”

85
Q

5.2 Claudius chooses the cowards way out, this is not a satisfying revenge

A

“Here, thou incestuous, murderous damned Dane, Drink off this potion”

86
Q

5.2 Uncertain ending, Horatio

A

“Now cracks a noble heart. Good night sweet prince, and flights of angels sing thee to thy rest - Why does the drum come hither?”

Hamlet (2 decks)

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