Action and Inaction - Hamlet Flashcards
Suicidal and contemplative nature - H 1:2
‘O that this too, too solid flesh would melt’
Destruction of cognition - H 2:2
‘I could be bounded in a nutshell and count myself a king of infinite space, were it not that I have bad dreams’
Additional case in which the importance of action as opposed to delaying is important - P 2:2
‘brevity is the soul of wit’
Decisive but not in the traditional sense - Hamlet 2:2
‘the play’s the thing wherein I’ll catch the conscience of the King’
Overthinking - Hamlet 2:2
‘there is nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so’
Cowardice - Hamlet 2:2
‘but I am pigeon livered and lack gall’
Debate, considering action vs fate - Hamlet 3:1
‘To be or not to be, that is the question: whether ‘tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, or take arms against a sea of troubles’
Words vs. intent - Claudius 3:3
‘my words fly up, my thoughts remain below; words without thoughts never to heaven go’
Problem of overthinking - Hamlet 3:1
‘conscience makes cowards of us all’
Words instead of revenge - Hamlet 3:2
‘I’ll speak daggers to her but use none’
Fortinbras as a foil - Hamlet 4:4
‘greatly to find quarrel in a straw’
Fate and revenge - Hamlet 1:5
‘the time is out of joint. O cursed spite, that ever I was born to set it right’
Thought as disordered and unnatural - Hamlet 3:1
‘the native hue of resolution is sicklied o’er with the pale cast of thought’
Fear of the afterlife causing inaction - Hamlet 3:1
‘the dread fear of something after death - the undiscovered country […] puzzles the will’
Contemplation destroys enterprise - Hamlet 3:1
‘enterprises of great pitch and moment […] lose the name of action’
Example of Hamlet’s thoughtless action - Gertrude 3:4
‘A rash and bloody deed’
