Hamlet Flashcards
(23 cards)
What is the first line of Hamlet and why is it significant?
‘Who’s There?’ - sets the tone of caution and uncertainty for the play. Also plays on the idea of a corrupt surveillance state that is vulnerable to opposition
What happens in Act 1, Scene 1 of Hamlet?
Marcellus and Bernardo see a ghost while on night watch
What does Horatio say to Marcellus about the apparition of Ghost Hamlet?
‘Horatio says tis but our fantasy’ (Act 1 Scene 1)
What is Ghost Hamlet wearing and what are it’s implications?
Battle Armour - most likely the battle armour he wore against Fortinbras - perhaps creating the connection between armour and king. A king has to be able to fight and conquer.
What happens in Act 1, Scene 2 of Hamlet?
Claudius address the court about his brothers death and his new wife. Hamlet then gives his first soliloquy
How does Hamlet describe his relationship with Claudius?
‘a little more than kin and less than kind’ (Act 1, Scene 2)
How is Hamlet’s grief dismissed by Claudius and Gertrude?
Gertrude tells him ‘tis common all that lives must die’ (1.2)
Claudius calls his grief ‘unmanly grief’ (1.2)
Describe Hamlet’s relationship with his mother and uncle in Act 1, Scene 2
Gertrude: Understands that it is his mother and he needs to uphold a level of respect towards her but he resents her for moving on and not continuing to grief like he is
Claudius: has an immense dislike towards him and has an instant distrust towards him. He hates the fact that his fathers brother is so easily able to replace him and take his wife without any heavy grief
Explain both the classical allusion Hamlet gives in his first soliloquy (1.2)
Hyperion to a Satyr: Hyperion is the God of the Sun and this is how Hamlet sees his father whereas Claudius is a half human, half goat creature associated with drunkenness and lechery (excess lust)
Niobe: a women who wept over her children so much she turned into a weeping stone. Hamlet is saying Niobe is how Gertrude should have acted but instead she acted at ‘o most wicked speed’ into ‘incestuous sheets’.
What are some other key quotations from Hamlet’s First Soliloquy (1.2)
- ‘O that this too too sallied flesh would melt, thaw and resolve itself into a dew’
- ‘How weary…and unprofitable seem to me all the uses of this world’
- ‘Frailty, thy name is Woman’
What happens in Act 1, Scene 3 of Hamlet?
Polonius gives some ‘fatherly advice’ to his children and Laertes leaves to France
What does Laertes say to Ophelia about her and Hamlet’s relationship? (1.3)
- Hamlet will never choose her due to his duty: ‘Perhaps he loves you now…his will is not his own’
- Not to allow her ‘chaste treasure open to his unmastered importunity’ in order to keep her own value and purity
- To fear the ‘danger of desire’
What advice does Polonius give to Laertes? (1.3)
- Avoid quarrels but do not back down from one
- ‘Give every man thy ear but few thy voice’
- Dress ‘rich not gaudy’
- Do not be ‘neither a borrower nor a lender’
- ‘This above all, to thine own self be true’
What advice does Polonius give to Ophelia? (1.3)
- Calls her a ‘green girl’ for believing in the affection Hamlet gives her
- To ‘tender yourself more dearly’ or ‘you’ll tender me a fool’
- Not to fall for Hamlet like ‘springes to catch woodcocks’ and that his promises give ‘more light than heat’
- ‘Do not believe his vows for they are brokers’
- Be aware of ‘unholy suits’ and do not give any more time to Hamlet
What happens in Act 1, Scene 4?
Hamlet joins the night watch in order to see the ghost of his father and his father beckons him
How does Hamlet view the ghost at first? (1.4)
- ‘Be thou a spirit of health or goblin dammed’
- ‘Be thy intents wicked or charitable’
- ‘I’ll call thee Hamlet, King, Father, Royal Dane’
How does Horatio foreshadow Hamlet’s madness in his warning? (1.4)
Warns Hamlet about following the Ghost as it ‘might deprive your sovereignty of reason and draw you into madness?’
What does Marcellus say about Denmark? (1.4)
‘Something is rotten in the state of Denmark’
What happens in Hamlet Act 1, Scene 5?
Ghost of Hamlet gives Hamlet his damming deed of revenge and reveals how he died. Hamlet also gives his second soliloquy.
What does the Ghost tell Hamlet to do ‘if thou didst ever thy dear father love’ (1.5)
‘Revenge his foul and most unnatural murder’
How does the Ghost of Hamlet describe his own brother? (1.5)
- ‘serpent that did sting thy father’s life’
- an ‘incestuous…adulterate beast’
- he had ‘shameful lust’ that won the will of ‘ my most seeming virtuous Queen’
What are some key quotations from Hamlet’s Second Soliloquy? (1.5)
‘O all you host of heaven… hold my heart’
‘Thy commandment all alone shall live within the book and volume of my brain’
‘Smiling, damned villain’
‘That one may smile and smile and be a villain’
What does Hamlet begin to portray after his father’s ghost visit? (1.5)
An Antic Disposition
