Directing Hamlet Assignment

Directing Hamlet Assignment

You are a film director. You are applying to be the director of a new version of Hamlet set to begin filming in 2013. After studying parts of several versions of Hamlet you have begun work on an application consisting of (1) a screenplay excerpt based on a passage you’ve chosen from the play, (2) a proposal explaining your choices (including proposed actors), and (3) a visual representation of some significant aspect of your screenplay excerpt.

Additional Notes

(1) screenplay excerpt:

Turn the excerpt you have chosen into a screenplay with interpolated film directions about elements such as setting, movement, speaking, facial expression, sound, music, camera shot selection, etc. Use the screenplay format. (See screenplay handouts.)

(2) proposal:

Write a proposal to the producers of Hamlet 2013. In your proposal the first paragraph will provide an overview of your vision for a new Hamlet (setting, visual style, acting contributing to effect and meaning), the second paragraph will explain the choices in your screenplay (How do the choices help you express meaning and achieve your purpose?), the third paragraph will explain choices in your visual representation (How do the choices help you express meaning and achieve your purpose?), the fourth paragraph will explain other choices (actors and soundtrack for example), conclude with a final pitch to the film producers.

(3) visual representation:

Your visual representation could be a storyboard¹, costume sketches, stage/film lighting scheme², stage/film blocking scheme³, live performance, demo film⁴. The visual representation will be assessed for choices, clarity, care, and creativity.

All of this is due by the end of the school day Friday, December 21.

1 A storyboard is a series of illustrations (or other images) used to depict a film (or other moving) sequence before the production of the actual film (or other moving sequence). Do some research for directions, examples, and advice.

2 A theatre/film lighting scheme is a plan for the use of lights (what type and color, where, and when) during a performance or during filming. Do some research for directions, examples, and advice.

3 A blocking scheme is a plan for the movement (where, when, and how) of actors during a performance. Do some research for directions examples and advice.

4 See me if you are interested in this option.

Hamlet Passage Analysis Essay Reminders

Reminders:

0. On Monday during class you will turn in (1) your final draft (for MLA format consult the Compass), (2) an AP style prompt (including context sentences that you write, the prompt from the blog), the passage, notes you consulted, an MLA works cited; click here to see the example I showed you in class with everything except the citation), (3) first draft (with evidence of self/peer assessment: consult Kincaid essay self/peer assess handout if necessary), (4) plan (with organization & minitheses), and (5) thesis (with clear insights into strategies and theme).

1. Special considerations:

Title
Don't forget a title that indicates your focus & (if possible) your attitude toward that focus. For my 5.1 analysis I've created the tentative title "From 'Infinite Jest' to 'Noble Dust': The Absurdity and Tragedy of Death in Hamlet's Gravedigger Scene"

Theme
Make sure you have stated your theme in a way that shows that it goes beyond the play. (Instead of "The passage shows Hamlet struggles with the corruption of women in his life." Write "the passage explores the dangers of idealizing women and expecting impossible purity." The first is an internal conflict for Hamlet that is expressed in outward conflicts with Ophelia and Gertrude. The second sentence is a statement about theme. Then discussion of the internal/external conflict would support the discussion of the theme.) Make sure you've also said something about the theme, so not just "the scene shows responses to wrongdoing" but "the scene conveys the difficulty of retaining self-worth and compassion in a world filled with wrongdoing". Notice the second phrase offers a bold insight whereas the first is more superficial.

Literary/Rhetorical Strategies
More strategies named on the blog w/ examples from Hamlet: Consider using terms from the strategies posting on the website. I know you're curious about litotes & metonymy & synecdoche, etc.

Quoting
I will pay particular attention to your use of quotations in this paper. Here are some things to keep in mind.

Quoting conventions:
a. The period (or other terminal punctuation) should be placed after the parenthetical citation. For example look at the part I've underlined at the end of the following sentence:

In his initial speech Claudius uses paradoxical language to express the difficulty of his situation and to attempt to trick his Danish subjects into feeling sympathy for his situation: "with mirth in funeral and with dirge in marriage" (1.2.12).

b. If you put a quotation at the end of a sentence that does not have a parenthetical citation, the period should go inside the final quotation mark, liike this:

In act one scene two line twelve, Claudius uses paradoxical language to express the difficulty of his situation and to attempt to trick his Danish subjects into feeling sympathy for his situation: "with mirth in funeral and with dirge in marriage."c. Quotations that are longer than three lines should be indented. The indent is used instead of quotation marks, like this:

Claudius uses a series of paradoxes in an attempt to to express the difficulty of his situation and to trick his Danish subjects into feeling sympathy for his situation:
     ...We with wisest sorrow think on him
     Together with remembrance of ourselves.
     Therefore our sometime sister, now our queen,
     The imperial jointress to this warlike state,
     Have we, as 'twere with a defeated joy,
     With an auspicious, and a dropping eye,
     With mirth in funeral, and with dirge in marriage,
     In equal scale weighing delight and dole,
    Taken to wife. (1.2.6-13)

d. Use a ellipsis (...) to indicate that parts of sentence have been left out. When quoting a word or phrase you don't need to use an ellipsis because it will already be clear to the reader that parts of the sentence have been left out. (Look at the beginning previous quotation for an example.)

e. Use brackets to insert a word or change that clarifies the sentence or allows it to fit the grammatical context.
Hamlet express his view of the world succinctly, using a strong exclamation and vivid metaphor: "Fie on't! ah, fie! [the world is] an unweeded garden/That grows to seed; things rank and gross in nature/Posses it merely" (1.2.138-140).

f. Use a slash (/) to indicate where the breaks are between lines of poetry. See above for an example.

g. Use a colon to introduce a quotation that follows a complete thought leading up to the quotation. (See all of the above for examples.)

h. You can also weave quotations into your own sentences in this way:
Claudius expresses his "defeated joy" (1.2.9) with an oxymoron and several vivid paradoxes.
i. Notice that I've avoided introducing quotations with phrases like "One quotation is..." or "For example,..." or "One thing Hamlet says is...," etc. These phrases are not "wrong" but they are clumsier and less elegant than the options given above.
Work hard to make your quotations work elegantly and clearly in your essay.

j. Introduce and provide context for your quotations.

k. Explain your quotations in a way that links them back to the point your trying to make. Do not expect the quotations to do this on their own. Sometimes it will take several sentences to explain a quotation and to develop how it develops your thesis.

2. Plagiarism:

We talked about this a couple of weeks ago, but it bears repeating here and now.

Do not use any sources beyond the notes that have been approved (Folgers book notes, eNotes). Use of other notes, especially notes that offer interpretation of the significance of strategies, is egregious plagiarism (blatant cheating). Your tasks is to use the text and the notes I've selected to help you understand the difficulties presented by the text to create your own interpretation of how the strategies contribute to the development of a central theme. Remember that we are practicing for the AP exam's passage analysis essay; when you take that exam you will be alone with the passage and whatever notes (if any) the College Board supplies.

If you think your work might be tainted by ideas you've taken from other people you might need to start over with a new passage or you might be able to strip away the offending parts. Remember plagiarism will result in a zero on the assignment and no chance to re-do it for credit. (That's the school's policy and has been the policy for a long time.)

3. Before you pass your final draft in...

One foot reading! Read your paper aloud!

Use standard English language conventions & the conventions of passage analysis essay writing.
Double check your essay for homophone errors and errors in sentence structure. (No run-ons. No sentence fragments.)
Avoid first person in passage analysis writing.
Write about literature in the present tense.
Be precise with your word choices.
Use varied sentence structures.
Include transitions between your body paragraphs.

**********************
I'm looking forward to reading your papers!

As requested: Some more rhetorical strategies with examples I compiled from Hamlet

Literary and Rhetorical Strategies

FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE

written expression or language that is not meant to be taken literally.

SIMILE

a comparison of two distinctly different things using "like" or "as"

“swift as quicksilver it [the poison] courses through/The natural gates and alleys of the body/…it doth…/curd, like eager droppings into milk,/the thin and wholesome blood.”(1.5)

“Her clothes spread wide,/And mermaid-like awhile they bore her up, which time she chanted snatches of old lauds [songs] / As one incapable of her own distress/Or like a creature native and endued/Unto that element.”(4.7)

METAPHOR

a direct comparison of two things; when a word or expression, which in literal usage denotes one kind of thing or action is applied to a distinctly different kind of thing or action

“Leave her [Gertrude] to…/…those thorns that in her bosom lodge/To prick and sting her.” (1.5)

“Your bait of falsehood take this carp of truth” (2.1)

“The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune/…a sea of troubles…”(3.1)

“[The world is] an unweeded garden/That grows to seed.”(1.2)

METONYMY

a figure of speech used in rhetoric and literature in which a thing or concept is not called by its own name, but by the name of something closely associated with it

Here’s a sexist metonymy: “When these [tears] are

gone/The woman will be out.”

“I should have fatted all the region kites/With this slave’s offal.”

“The Everlasting”

“the quick”

"So I do still, by these pickers and stealers" (3.2.336)

SYNECHDOCHE

a type of metaphor; when a part of something is used to signify the whole or the whole is used to signify the part

"So the whole ear of Denmark/ Is by a forged process of my death /Rankly abused."

"I am glad of it: a knavish speech sleeps in a foolish ear" (4.2.23-24)

HYPERBOLE

The use of extreme exaggeration to make a point

“I loved Ophelia. Forty thousand brothers/Could not with all their quantity of love/Make up my sum.”(Hamlet, 5.1)

LITOTES

A form of understatement

“He will stay until you come.” (Hamlet, 4.3)

PERSONIFICATION

A type of metaphor that gives human qualities to animals, inanimate objects, or abstract concepts.

Guildenstern: Happy in that we are not overhappy. On Fortune’s cap, we are not the very button.

Hamlet: Nor the soles of her shoe?

Rosencrantz: Neither, my lord.

Hamlet: Then you live about her waist, or in the middle of her favors?

Guildenstern: Faith, her privates we.

Hamlet: In the secret parts of Fortune? O, most true! She is a strumpet.

            (3.2)

“...here joy most revels, grief doth most lament;/Grief joys, joy grieves on, on slender accident.”(Player King, 3.2)

“I am glad of it: a knavish speech sleeps in a foolish ear” (Hamlet, 4.2)

APOSTROPHE

A rhetorical figure of speech that allows the speaker to address an absent person or inanimate entity

"frailty, thy name is woman" (Hamlet, 1.2)

CONCEIT

a figure of speech (an elaborate and extended metaphor) that draws an elaborate parallel between dissimilar things

“are you like the painting of a sorrow, a face without a heart?”

Claudius to Laertes, 4.7

G: Happy in that we are not overhappy./On Fortune’s cap, we are not the very button./H: Nor the soles of her shoe?/R: Neither, my lord./H: Then you live about her waist, or in the middle of her favors?/G: Faith, her privates we./H: In the secret parts of Fortune? O, most true! She is a strumpet (2.2)

...You would play upon me, you would seem to know my stops, you would pluck out the heart of my mystery, you would sound me from my lowest note to the top of my compass; and there is much music, excellent voice, in this little organ, yet cannot you make it speak. ‘Sblood, do you think I am easier to be played on than a pipe? Call me what instrument you will, though you can fret me, you cannot play upon me. (Hamlet, 3.2)

"a king may go a progress through the guts of a beggar" (4.3)

PARADOX

A statement which at first seems to be self-contradictory or absurd, but in the end actually makes sense

"more than kin and less than kind"

“I could be bounded in a nutshell and count myself a king of infinite space…”

“I must be cruel only to be kind....”(3.4)

OXYMORON

When two paradoxical contradictory terms are joined together

“mirth in funeral, dirge in marriage” (1.2)

PUN

 “I think it be thine indeed, for thou liest in ‘t./G: You lie out on’t, sir, and therefore ‘tis not yours. For my part, I do not lie in ‘t, yet it is mine./H: Thou dost lie in ‘t, to be in ‘t and say it is thine. ‘Tis for the dead, no for the quick; therefore thou liest.”

"Indeed this counsellor / Is now most still, most secret and most grave, / Who was in life a foolish prating knave" (3.4)

DOUBLE ENTENDRE

“Faith, her privates we.”

INNUENDO

“may I lie my head upon your lap”

“It would cost you a groaning to take off my edge” (3.2.249)

ALLUSION

hyperion to a satyr

…than I to Hercules

Hecuba

Julius Caesar

Alexander the Great

ANALOGY

“A dream itself is but a shadow.”

”To die, to sleep—To sleep, perchance to dream”

“The harlot’s cheek beautied with plast’ring art/Is not more ugly to the thing that helps it/Than is my deed to my most painted word.”

***

Antithesis: The use of a word (or sentence) being placed against another to form a balanced contrast is known in rhetoric as ANTITHESIS. To be or not to be… (Claudius explains the death of his brother and his marriage to the widow, scene 2)

These are also a form of “balanced” sentence.

Periodic sentence: A periodic sentence is a stylistic device employed at the sentence level, described as one that is not complete grammatically or semantically before the final clause or phrase. A periodic sentence delays…

(Lucianus’ speech in “The Murder of Gonzago”)

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.

Responding to Motifs in Hamlet: Acts 3, 4, and 5

In the comment box below do the following by class time on Wednesday, November 28.

Write your first name and last initial.
Write down your motif (or thread).
Write down the act, scene, line of each place you notice your motif in acts 3-5. (This is a new part of the assignment.)

Write down a quotation that develops your motif. (Include act, scene, and line.)
Write an explanation of what the quotation means (in context) and how the quotation develops the motif.

Write down another quotation that develops your motif. (Include act, scene, and line.)
Write an explanation of what the quotation means (in context) and how the quotation develops the motif.

Write down a third quotation that develops your motif. (Include act, scene, and line.)
Write an explanation of what the quotation means (in context) and how the quotation develops the motif.

Write down a fourth quotation that develops your motif. (Include act, scene, and line.)
Write an explanation of what the quotation means (in context) and how the quotation develops the motif.

Write down a fifth quotation that develops your motif. (Include act, scene, and line.)
Write an explanation of what the quotation means (in context) and how the quotation develops the motif.

Then explain the development and significance of the motif in play overall. Use quotations and other details to support your explanation.(These were often underdeveloped in the act 1-2 responses.)

Here you'll find searchable text. (Click on the act then search for words related to your motif.)

Ophelia Speaks

Ophelia Speaks

Role: You are a playwright commissioned by a theatrical troupe to create a soliloquy (or monologue or letter written by Ophelia) that will be inserted into Hamlet.

Audience: Readers and viewers of Hamlet who want to understand Ophelia more deeply.

Format:       1. a soliloquy (or monologue)

                   2. 14+ lines*

3. The lines conclude with a rhyming couplet in iambic pentameter. (*The other 12 or more lines may be in prose or in iambic pentameter# [blank verse).)

4. Try to use Elizabethan language (diction and syntax), or use language that does not stand out as obviously modern.

5. State where in the play you would insert the soliloquy (or monologue). (Would you create a 4.8? Would you place it somewhere in 4.5? Where? Be precise: act, scene, line. You could even, I suppose, create a 4.8 in which she returns as a ghost; or perhaps someone finds a letter she has written or a diary.)

6. Refer to song lyrics and flower imagery (from 4.5).

7. Show Ophelia’s mind puzzling out and wrestling with her dramatic situation and inner consciousness (just as Hamlet does in his soliloquies).

Topic: What Ophelia is thinking and feeling at the moment in the play into which you decide to insert her soliloquy?

# Much of Hamlet is written in blank verse meaning most lines do not rhyme but they do follow a particular meter (a pattern of unstressed and stressed syllables). The meter is called iambic pentameter. “Iambic” means unstressed syllables are followed by stressed syllables: “And makes us rather bear those ills we have”. Pentameter means there are five iambs.

“…And makes us rather bear those ills we have,

than fly to others that we know not of…”

Due by class time Tuesday, November 20
(For explication of a passage assignment (3.1-4.4) due Monday, November 19 scroll down or click here.)

Hamlet Soliloquy 4.4

How all occasions do inform against me, (35)
And spur my dull revenge! What is a man,
If his chief good and market of his time
Be but to sleep and feed? a beast, no more.
Sure, he that made us with such large discourse,
Looking before and after, gave us not (40)
That capability and god-like reason
To fust in us unused. Now, whether it be
Bestial oblivion, or some craven scruple
Of thinking too precisely on the event,
A thought which, quarter'd, hath but one part wisdom (45)
And ever three parts coward, I do not know
Why yet I live to say 'This thing's to do;'
Sith I have cause and will and strength and means
To do't. Examples gross as earth exhort me:
Witness this army of such mass and charge (50)
Led by a delicate and tender prince,
Whose spirit with divine ambition puff'd
Makes mouths at the invisible event,
Exposing what is mortal and unsure
To all that fortune, death and danger dare, (55)
Even for an egg-shell. Rightly to be great
Is not to stir without great argument,
But greatly to find quarrel in a straw
When honour's at the stake. How stand I then,
That have a father kill'd, a mother stain'd, (60)
Excitements of my reason and my blood,
And let all sleep? while, to my shame, I see
The imminent death of twenty thousand men,
That, for a fantasy and trick of fame,
Go to their graves like beds, fight for a plot (65)
Whereon the numbers cannot try the cause,
Which is not tomb enough and continent
To hide the slain? O, from this time forth,
My thoughts be bloody, or be nothing worth!

NOTES

[Source: http://shakespeare.about.com/od/studentresources/a/allinform.htm  Amanda Mabillard, B.A. (Honors) is a freelance writer specializing in Shakespeare, Renaissance political theory, theatre history, comparative literary history, and linguistic topics in Renaissance literature.]

inform against ] Accuse me.

market ] Employment.

discourse ] The power of reason. God gave human beings the ability to reflect on life's events.

Looking before and after ] Our intelligence allows us to analyze past experiences and make rational judgments about the future.

fust ] Grow mouldy. Hamlet is saying that God did not give us the power of reason for it to go unused.

Bestial oblivion ] The forgetfulness of an animal. Our capability to remember separates mankind from other animals or "beasts". But Hamlet forgetting Claudius's deeds is clearly not why he delays the murder.

craven scruple ] Cowardly feelings.

of ] From.

event ] Outcome.

quarter'd ] Meticulously analyzed (literally, divided into four).

Sith ] Since.

gross ] Obvious.

mass and charge ] Size and cost. Hamlet is referring to the army led by Fortinbras, prince of Norway. Hamlet wishes he had Fortinbras's courage.

puff'd ] Inflated.

Makes mouths at the invisible event ] Shows contempt for (or cares not about) the uncertain outcome of battle.

Rightly to be great...stake ] Truly great men refrain from fighting over insignificant things, but they will fight without hesitation over something trivial when their honour is at risk. "True nobility of soul is to restrain one's self unless there is a great cause for resentment, but nobly to recognize even a trifle as such as cause when honour is involved" (Kittredge 121). Ironically, "Hamlet never learns from the Captain or attempts to clarify what the specific issue of honor is that motivates the Prince of Norway. In fact, there is none, for the play has made it clear that Fortinbras's uncle, after discovering and stopping his nephew's secret and illegal revenge campaign against Claudius, encouraged him to use newly levied forces to fight in Poland...Since no issue of honor is to be found in Fortinbras's cause, Hamlet, through his excessive desire to emulate the Norwegian leader, ironically calls into question whether there is any honour in his own cause" (Newell 143). [Mr. Cook adds: or, perhaps, Hamlet’s mind has once again moved from the particular (Fortinbras and his army) to the abstract (consideration of what defines greatness). It seems Fortinbras and his army are not important in and of themselves but in how they “inform against” (indict, critique, etc.) Hamlet’s inaction.]

twenty thousand men ] In line 25, it was 20000 ducats and only 2000 men. It is undecided whether this confusion is Hamlet's or Shakespeare's.

blood ] Passions.

trick of fame ] Trifle of reputation. But is not Hamlet jealous of Fortinbras and his ability to fight in defense of his honour? "Fortinbras is enticed by a dream, and thousands must die for it. Hamlet's common sense about the absurdity of Fortinbras's venture shows the pointlessness of his envy" (Edwards 193).

Whereon...slain ] The cause is not significant enough to consume the thousands of men fighting over it, and the tombs and coffins are not plentiful enough to hold those who are killed (continent = container).

Use first name and last initial. Number each of your responses.

1.        (Make connections!) In a well-developed paragraph compare what Hamlet says in lines 36-49 of this soliloquy to what he says in lines 91-96 of his “To be or not to be” soliloquy (below). Begin your paragraph with a bold, insightful assertion comparing the two soliloquies. Develop the assertion by citing specific language from both soliloquies. End by reaffirming your bold insight.

Thus conscience does make cowards of us all;
And thus the native hue of resolution
Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought,
And enterprises of great pitch and moment
With this regard their currents turn awry, (95)
And lose the name of action.—

2.        (Make connections!) In a well-developed paragraph compare this soliloquy with the “O What a rogue and peasant slave” (2.2.576) soliloquy. (Think about the role that Fortinbras plays in this speech and that the First Player plays in the earlier speech: “What would he do,  / Had he the motive and the cue for passion / That I have?”) Begin your paragraph with a bold, insightful assertion comparing the two soliloquies. Develop the assertion by citing specific language from both soliloquies. End by reaffirming your bold insight.

3.        (What’s your opinion?) Hamlet contrasts his own cowardly thought with the actions of Fortinbras. Do you think Fortinbras is a good role model for Hamlet? In other words, should Hamlet be more like Fortinbras or not? Explain your answer in a paragraph. Use evidence from the play and this soliloquy to develop your answer. (Like Hamlet, you might be able to argue “yes” in someways and “no” in others.) Begin by asserting your position. Develop your position. Cite and explain specific evidence from this soliloquy and from elsewhere in the text to support your position.