2.2 Hamlets Self Loathing Soliloquy

Question 1

“ Must like a _____ unpack my heart with words”

Answer 1

Whore

Question 2

What critic goes well with this scene

Answer 2

Hamlet seems incapable of deliberate action - Hazlitt
Hamlets delay is due to a form of melancholy - Bradley

Question 3

What A03 Context goes well with this scene

Answer 3

• Elizabethan medicine and the four humours. Elizabethan doctors believed that certain personality traits stemmed from an excess of specific fluids in the body - blood bile and phlegm. The choleric ( fire) temperament was associated with aggressive behaviour, due to an excess of yellow bile in the body. So when Hamlet says he is ‘ pigeon liver’d and lacks gall’ he is specifically referring to this, and how he lacks the aggression to be able to act.

Question 4

“O what a _____________slave”

Answer 4

Rouge and peasant

Question 5

“_________to my cause”

Answer 5

Unpregnant

Question 6

“ But i am ___________and lack gall”

Answer 6

Pigeon liver’d

Question 7

Why does Hamlet refer to himself as a ‘rogue and peasant slave’?

Answer 7

The metaphore conveys how hamlet sees himself as lowly and ignoble - undeserving of his position.

Question 8

Why does hamlet say he is ‘pigeon liver’d and lacks gall’?

Answer 8

It shows how hamlet views himself to lack to bold masculine temperament he feels is necessary for deliberate action.

Question 9

Why does Hamlet say ‘ unpregnant of my cause’

Answer 9

Hamlet feels emasculated, viewing his lack of resolve as a failure to embody the masculine courage that he believes avenging his father requires.

Question 10

Why does hamlet say he ‘must like a whore unpack my heart with words’

Answer 10

the simile Shakespeare employs shows how H sees himself as reduced to mere emotional outbursts instead of honourable and decisive action. Hamlet feels tainted/sullied by the need to reflect and think as a renaissance man