Hamlet

Question 1

Act 1 quotes

Answer 1

“Apparition” “It” “Illusion” “Spirit” “This thing”
“With mirth in funeral and with dirge in marriage”
“Tis an unweeded garden”
“Hyperion to a Satyr”
“Frailty thy name is woman”
“Or lose your heart or your chaste treasure open”
“Something is rotten in the state of Denmark”
“To fast in fires”, “eternal blazon” vs “My prison house”
“So the whole ear of Denmark/Is by a forged process of my death/Rankly abused”
“Blood of man” vs “Barked about”
“There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio”

Question 2

Act 2 quotes

Answer 2

“You are a fishmonger”
“Denmark is a prison”
“Earth seems to me a sterile promontory”
“I lost all my mirth”
“Yet to me, what is this quintessence of dust?”
References to Pyrrhus
“O, what a rogue and peasant slave I am! / “Lack gall! / “Am I a coward?”

Question 3

Act 3

Answer 3

“The harlot’s cheek beautied with plast-ring art / Than this my deed to my most heavy burden”
“To be or not to be, that is the question”
“To die, to sleep / There’s a rub / For in what sleep of death what dreams may come”
“To take arms against a sea of troubles”
“Conscience does make cowards of us all”
“The force of honesty can translate beauty into his likeness”
“Get thee to a nunnery”
“That sucked the honey of his musicked vows”
“The mirror up to nature, to show virtue her own feature”
“The lady doth protest too much, methinks”
“To wash it white as snow”
“I stand in pause where I shall first begin and both neglect”
“O limed soul”
Hamlet calls Claudius a “villain”
“Am I then revenged to take him in the purging of his soul, when he is fit and seasoned for his
passage”
“Nay but to live in the rank of an enseamed bed”
“This visitation is but to whet thy almost blunted purpose”
“This is the very coinage of your brain”
“Do not spread the compost on the weeds to make them ranker”

Question 4

Act 4

Answer 4

“The owner of a foul disease”
“To be demanded of a sponge”
“The body is with the King, but the King is not with the body, the King is a thing”
“How all occasions do inform against me and spur my dull revenge”
“Her speech is nothing”
Bawdy songs: “Before you tumbled me, you promised me to wed”
Giving out flowers that link to characters (Ophelia)
“Laertes, was your father dear to you?”
“Fell in the weeping brook. Her clothes spread wide, and mermaid-like”
“Till that her garments, heavy with their drink, pulled the poor wretch from her melodious lay
to muddy death”

Question 5

Act 5

Answer 5

Humor in scene 1, eg: “Whose grave is this, sirrah?/Mine, sir.”
‘Hamlet, {taking the skull}’: “Alas poor Yorick”
“There’s divinity that shapes our ends”
“Dost know this waterfly” (referring to Osric)
*”If it be now, tis not to come, if it be not to come, it will be now, if it be not now, yet it will
come”
“And you must needs have heard, how I am punished with a sore distraction”
“O, my dear Hamlet”
“And in this harsh world draw thy breath in pain to tell my story”

Question 6

Historical + Social context

Answer 6

• end of Queen Elizabeth reign -> period of uncertainty due to lack of a heir, unstable religion and war with Spain
• beginning of Reformation - uncertainty and turmoil due to such a large shift
• importance of Kingship for the peace of the Kingdom - body politic
• strong conventional gender roles
• Protestant Reformation
• rise of Humanism
• Renaissance Honour code celebrated Revenge
• Great Chain of Being

Question 7

Literary context

Answer 7

• popular genre of Revenge Tragedy -> Spanish Tragedy - Kyd
• inspiration from Aristotle’s Greek tragedy