Theatre / Appearance Vs Reality

Question 1

Hamlet Acting

Answer 1

‘Seems, madam! nay, it is, I know not ‘seems’…these indeed seem, for they are actions that a man might play, but I have that within which passes show - these but the trappings and the suits of woe.’ 1.2
“What a piece of work a man!” is performative

Question 2

Horatio’s summary of play in act 5 scene 2

Answer 2

‘So shall you hear/Of carnal, bloody, and unnatural acts,/Of accidental judgments, casual slaughters,/Of deaths put on by cunning and forced cause’

Question 3

Theatre: Very end of act 2, scene 2

Answer 3

‘The play’s the thing Wherein I’ll catch the conscience of the King’

Question 4

POLONIUS about acting to disguise the devil 3.1

Answer 4

‘It’s too much proved, that with devotion’s visage, and pious action, we do sugar o’er the devil himself’

Question 5

Hamlet to Ophelia about paintings 3.1

Answer 5

‘I have heard of your paintings well enough. God hath given you one face and you make yourselves another[…] It hath made me mad.’
APPEARANCE VS REALITY

Question 6

3.2 Shakespeare has his title character explain to a group of actors that the “purpose of playing” is…

Answer 6

“to hold as ‘twere the mirror up to nature: to show virtue her feature, scorn her own image, and the very age and body of the time his form and pressure.” In other words, Hamlet proposes that what is seen onstage reflect what is real in our lives and in our world.

Question 7

Claudius Acting as a benevolent king / concerned for Hamlet

Answer 7

“With one auspicious, and one dropping eye”, from the contemporary proverb that a false man looks up with one eye and down with the other
“Our most valiant brother. So much for him”
“one may smile, and smile, and be a villain.”
CLAUDIUS:” my most painted word. O heavy burden!”
SHIFT: “where is your son?” in A4S1
To Laetres: “why now you speak like a good child…I am guiltless of your father’s death…now must your conscience my acquittance seal”

Manipulation: praising Laertes with “the gentleman of Normandy” Lamond and “was your father dear to you?” = parallel with ghost

Question 8

Theatre

Answer 8

POWER of acting: The player “has tears in’s eyes” after the monologue about Hecuba - “but in a fiction, in a dream of passion…all for nothing! For Hecuba!”
“They are the abstract and brief chronicles of the time”
Hamlet inserts “a speech of some dozen or sixteen lines” in the “Murder of Gonzago”
HAMLET: “Speak the speech…as i pronounced it to you” - experienced in acting
“the purpose of playing…was and is, to hold, as ‘twere, the mirror up to nature”
The PLay as for catching Claudius and shaming Gertrude: “a second time i kill my husband dead when second husband kisses me in bed”
after the play, hamlet will “take the ghost’s word for a thousand pound” as “the king rises…frightened with false fire”
“You that look pale and tremble at this chance, That are but mutes or audience to this act,… these bodies high in a stage be placed to the view”