What's next?

Over the next week or so you will have several opportunities to display the knowledge you have gained and skills you have developed while reading Hamlet.

1. On Friday Monday, we'll have a test on the play.

Here is a fill-in-the-blank outline of what--in addition to the characters and events you have reviewed in groups--you'll need to know. We'll review this tomorrow and Friday.

Hamlet Review 2012

What have we learned about how language works in literature, about Elizabethan theatre, about Shakespeare’s writing, and about Hamlet itself?

I.                     Hamlet’s sound

A.      _______________ _______________ provide memorable closure and summation

1.        “The time is out of joint: O cursed spite / That ever I was born to set it right.” (1.5)

2.        “The play’s the thing  / Wherein I’ll catch the conscience of the king.” (2.2)

B.       _______________ _______________ / _______________ _________________________

1.        provides structure, unity

2.        provides potential for emphasis by way of variation: “to be or not to be; that is the question.”

II.                   Hamlet’s language

A.      Word play

1.        5.1 “lie”: lie down & tell lies

2.        4.7 “too much of water”: tears & drowning [&, obliquely, Hamlet’s wish to melt (1.2)]

B.       paradoxes: “more than kin less than kind”

C.       figurative language/metaphors: king > worm > fish > beggar is a metaphor for Hamlet’s questioning of the Elizabethan social structure (4.3)

D.      diction

E.       syntax

III.                 Hamlet as theatre

A.      Acting Choices (interpretations)

1.        “To be or not to be” (3.1)

a.        Zefferelli= ____________________

b.       Almereyda= ____________________

c.        Branagh= ____________________

2.        The Murder of Gonzago / “The Mouse Trap” (3.2)

a.        Zefferelli= ____________________

b.       Almereyda= ____________________

c.        Branagh= ____________________

B.       Visual Choices (interpretations)

Ex. “to be or not to be”

1.        Branagh’s mirror= deceit, also outward action v. self-directed action

2.        Zefferelli’s catacombs= death “the undiscovered country”

3.        Almereyda’s Blockbuster= “Action” / “Go Home Happy” (irony)

IV.           Hamlet’s patterns

A.      Characters

1.        Hamlet’s foils (contrasting characters) in terms of action:

 ____________________ and ____________________

2.        Another similarity and contrast: Hamlet (acts mad, wishes to die), Ophelia (is mad, allows herself to do die)

3.        Who “spies”? How?

____________________________________________________________

____________________________________________________________

____________________________________________________________

4.        Who follows and obeys? Who flatters authority (kisses up to those in power)?

____________________________________________________________

 ____________________________________________________________

B.       Plot

1.        Irony (3.3)

a.        Hamlet believes ____________________ is confessing for his sins and so does not kill him.

b.       The reader/audience knows that ____________________ has failed to confess.

c.        Mel Gibson claims that Hamlet’s failure to kill ____________________ here triggers all the other deaths in the play (triggers the tragedy as such).

2.        Fitting deaths

a.        ____________________ dies spying (3.4)

b.       ____________________ dies passively (& in water) (4.7)

c.        ____________________ dies drinking to Hamlet (Perhaps her death triggers Hamlet to action vs. Claudius.) (5.2)

d.       ____________________ (“I am justly killed by my own treachery.”) (5.2)

e.        ____________________ (by sword and drink) (5.2)

f.         ____________________ (“the rest is silence”: Does Shakespeare intend this as a tragic and ironic contrast with Hamlet’s constant speaking) (5.2)

g.       ____________________ ____________________ die as servants (4.6, 5.1, 5.2)

3.        Is Fortinbras rewarded for

a.        Deception?

b.       Action?

C.       Imagery (Who or what is associated with these images?)

1.        water / liquids: _____________________________________________________

2.        weeds / flowers: ____________________________________________________

3.        snakes and other animals: _____________________________________________

4.        painting / make-up: __________________________________________________

5.        other: _____________________________________________________________

D.      Historical and Mythological Allusions

1.        Hyperion (Sun God) to Satyr (Goat Man) (1.2 soliloquy)):

____________________ and ____________________

2.        Priam and Hecuba (2.2 Player’s speech and Hamlet’s second soliloquy):

____________________ and ____________________

3.        Julius Caesar (3.2 Murder of Gonzago/Mouse Trap scene)

4.        Alexander the Great (5.1 graveyard scene)

5.        other: : ____________________

E.       Themes

1.        Fallen world

a.        Hamlet sees the world as corrupt.

aa.     “How weary, flat, stale, and unprofitable seem to me all the uses of this world.”

bb.    “tis an unweeded garden”

cc.     “Man delights not me nor woman neither”

b.       This view is triggered – it seems – by his mother’s overhasty marriage (and later by Ophelia’s lying).

aa.     “Frailty thy name is woman”

bb.    “Get thee to a nunnery.”

2.        Responses to corruption & trauma: Thought and Action

a.        ____________________ 1.2, 2.2, 3.1, 4.4

b.       ____________________ / ____________________ 4.5, 4.7

c.        ____________________ 1.2, 4.4, 5.2

3. Deception: Appearance and Reality, Seems and Is

a.        ______________________________________

b.       ______________________________________

c.        ______________________________________

d.       ______________________________________              

How does the play illustrate the complexity and variety of human responses to corrupt acts, traumatic loss, and the realization of human mortality (including one’s own)? What does the play suggest about these responses?

2. Friday (11/30) we'll get started working on a formal analysis essay in which we'll get to apply some of the analysis skills we've been working on and some of the essay writing skills we worked on during the first term.

Bring an annotated passage (100 lines, give or take) to class on Friday. Bring the annotated passage, a thesis, and a plan to class on Tuesday.

Here's the prompt:

AP English Language Q2/AP English Literature Q2 Style Essay

Choose a passage from Hamlet that is rich in content and style. Write a formal essay in which you explain how William Shakespeare’s use of rhetorical and/or literary strategies in the passage contributes to the play's exploration of the effects of and reactions to trauma, corruption, wrongdoing, and other human flaws.

There's a lot to unpack here. What passage should you write about? What strategies are used in the passage? What themes are found in the passage that are also developed in the play as a whole? How do the strategies contribute to the development of the theme?

3. You'll also write something about how you would direct a performance of the passage you've chosen. More on this later.