Claudius

Question 1

Claudius as impious in Act1, Scene 1

Answer 1

‘whose sore task does not divide the Sunday from the week’

Question 2

Claudius reprimanding Hamlet’s Grief in Act 1, Scene 2

Answer 2

‘Your father lost a father, that father lost, lost his…impious stubbornness, ‘tis unmanly grief…’tis a fault to heaven, a fault against the dead, a fault to nature’ = Recurring theme of FATHER/SON, presentation of CLAUDIUS as hypocritical, and evil as his view of grief as impious is paradoxical to that of the Protestant audience.

Question 3

CLAUDIUS’s crime in Act 1, Scene 2

Answer 3

‘the first corse’ = A biblical allusion that Claudius confuses. He tries to invoke the first dead father, but the ‘first corse’ of Genesis is a murdered brother, Abel, killed by his envious brother, Cain - Biblical Irony

Question 4

LAERTES TO CLAUDIUS about himself in the plan in act 4 scene 7

Answer 4

‘If you could devise it so that i might be the organ’Orchestrating HAMLETS murder - actions if older generation determining tragedy for younger - ‘organ’ everyone is a pawn in CLAUDIUS’s game

Question 5

CLAUDIUS’s first admission of guilt 3.1

Answer 5

‘How smart a lash that speech doth give my conscience…more ugly…than…my deed to my most painted world O heavy burden!’

Question 6

Clauidu’s confession 3.3

Answer 6

‘Oh my offence is rank, it smells to heaven; it hath the primal eldest cursing upon’t…my stronger guilt defeats my strong intent…my foul murder’

Question 7

4.2 Claudius uses R&G, Hamlet describes them…

Answer 7

‘like an ape in the corner of his jaw, first mouthed to be last swallowed