Death & The Ghost

Question 1

Act 1, Scene 1 on the Ghosts Ambiguity

Answer 1

‘The cock crows…it started like a guilty thing upon a fearful summons.’ = The cock is a symbol of purity that scares the GHOST implying it is EVIL, as believed by Protestant audiences.

Question 2

Gertrude on Death in Scene 2, Act 1

Answer 2

‘all that lives must die, passing through nature to eternity’

Question 3

HAMLET about GHOST in Act 1, Scene 4

Answer 3

‘Be thy intents wicked or charitable’
- ambiguous, & hamlet overtrusting?

Question 4

About the ghost’s ambiguity act 2, scene 2

Answer 4

‘The spirit that i have seen my be a devil - and the devil hath power t’assume a pleasing shape…out of my weakness and my melancholy…abuses me to damn me’

Question 5

Hamlet about ghost 1.5

Answer 5

‘It is an honest ghost’

Question 6

1.5 The ghost has come from…

Answer 6

‘sulph’rous and tormenting flames’

Question 7

Death in 2b 3.1

Answer 7

‘To die, to sleep - to sleep, perchance, to dream…for in that sleep of death what dreams may come…weary life…the dread of something after death, the undiscovered country from whose bound no traveller returns’

Question 8

Ghost’s visit 3.4

Answer 8

‘This visitation is but to whet thy almost blunted purpose’

Question 9

POLONIUS is at supper says Hamlet 4.3

Answer 9

‘At supper…where [polonius] is eaten… we fat all creatures else to fat us, and we fat ourselves for maggots. Your fat king and lean beggar is but variable service’