Hamlet Flashcards
Hamlet - “Frailty thy name is woman”
Act 1, Scene 2. Soliloquy 1
✅
Context: When Hamlet comes back from Uni and finds out his mother married Claudius.
Analysis: Literary Apostrophe
‘frailty’ - connotes to more than the physical, functioning as a direct reference to moral weakness and being fickle. Disloyal.
“Women” - imbues all womankind with traits of moral weakness and disloyalty. Actions of one are generalised to womenkind
Themes/Topics: Misogyny, relationship with Gertrude. Gender. Disloyalty, betrayal
Hamlet - “A beast that wants discourse of reason would have mourned longer”
Act 1, Scene 2. Soliloquy 1
✅
Context: After frailty, Hamlet returns from Uni and finds out his mother married Claudius.
Analysis: bestial imagery - used to emphasise his cruel views on women.
BEAST: Connotations of wildness and barbarianism, beasts are unfeeling and without sentiment.
Elizabethans - GCOB, see beasts and all below on the Chain as soulless and unable enter heaven.
Themes/Topics: Misogyny towards Gertrude. Gender. Disloyalty, betrayal
Hamlet - “Tis an unweeded garden, that grows to seed; things rank and gross in nature”
Act 1, Scene 2. Soliloquy 1
✅
Context: Spoken by Hamlet after the banquet/celebration of Claudius and Gertrude.
Analysis: Weeds - unwanted, suffocating, hard to manage, destructive.
Garden - synonymous with civilisation, order, and logic (GARDEN OF EDEN)
Rank – grotesque, rotting or class, position
Themes/Topics: Corruption of Denmark, Natural/unnatural
Hamlet - “Hyperion to a Satyr”
Act 1, Scene 2. Soliloquy 1
✅
Context: Hamlet is comparing his late father to his uncle (Claudius) in his first soliloquy, where he is overcome with grief and incredulity. He is questioning/insulting/berating why his mother married Claudius.
Analysis: Hyperion - Titan of the sun ‘god from above’ personification of the sun. strength and power, immortality and eternal being, superiority is paramount
Satyr - Connotations of trickery, lies, devil, lude behaviour
Themes/Topics: Masculinity, the ideology of man, greek gods
Horatio - “This bodes some strange eruption to our state”
Act 1, Scene 1
✅
Context: Said by Horatio after seeing the ghost.
Analysis:
“Strange” – supernatural, something bad is coming
“Eruption” – volcanoes, building up, spilling bursting, hot, fiery
Supernatural disturbance has visited Denmark as an outward warning of infection beneath
Themes/Topics: Denmark, Chaos,
Unnatural bad, natural good.
Hamlet - “The native hue of resolution/is sickled over with pale cast of thought”
Act 3, scene 1.
✅
Context: As he ponders the nature of existence, Hamlet comes to the conclusion that the reason why humanity chooses to endure struggle rather than take action is because of fear of the consequences.
Analysis: Self-flagellation is a sickness, the more you overthink you become more sick. Metaphor of sickness positions the audience against inaction and delay.
Themes/Topics:
DISEASE THOUGHT/ACTION PROCRASTINATION DELAY NATURE MASCULINITY
Hamlet - “I am pigeon-livered and lack gall to make oppression bitter”
Act 2, scene 2.
Context: third soliloquy
Analysis: Pigeons known to have small miniscule livers.
Liver - where they believed iron was produced, small liver means he is not strong
GCOB – self worth is lowered to animal
Themes/Topics: action/inaction, imagery, self flagellation
Hamlet - “I could interpret between you and your love, if I could see the puppets dallying.”
act 3, scene 2.
✅
Context: Hamlet to Ophelia. Hamlet is rude to ophelia and criticising her passiveness
During the play
Analysis:
Puppets –> control, possessive, tied down
Dallying –> dally” meant “to act or speak sportively, make sport, amuse oneself
Hamlet saying that Ophelia’s love is controlled by her father. Being told what to do and think.
Theme/topic
Misogyny by Hamlet, control, women as deceivers.
Hamlet - “I have heard of your paintings well enough. God hath given you one face and you make yourselves another”
act 3, scene 1
✅
Analysis: “paintings” – façade, fake, deception.
“yourselves” – plural – demonstrate how he is referring to women more generally,
Themes/Topics:
Relationship with Ophelia reavelas hamlets cruelty towards women
Gender roles/ double standards
Laertes - “to cut his throat in the church”
✅
Context: Laertes talking to Claudius about his plan of revenge on hamlet. In response to the murder of polonius – subjunctive tense – hypothesising.
Analysis: “Church” – law to not spill blood in the church
“cut his throat” – how they execute livestock.
Don’t have to look in the eye - a cowardly way to kill (ignoble)
Themes/Topics:
Can use to show how people suffer from revenge
consequences of corruption
Laertes - “The canker galls the infants of the spring too oft before their buttons be disclosed”’
✅
Context: Laertes talking to Ophelia, warning about Hamlet’s attentions.
Analysis: Metaphor,
“Infants of the spring - flower, new, very first shoot, delicate, fragile,
“disclosed” - shared, welcomed,
women are delicate, victims, vulnerable (casting as being weak)
Themes/Topics: Gender roles (women virginity)
Shakespeare warns that traditional roles of femininity, render women vulnerable.
Marcellus - “Something is rotten in the state of Denmark”
✅
Context: Marcellus speaks this to Horatio as they decide whether or not to follow Hamlet and the Ghost—Act 1, Sc4. This is prior to the murder being revealed.
Analysis: Rotten (decaying, decomposition) State (meaning condition AND royal family/King as manifestation of state AND country) In (at the core. Not superficial.)
The “thing” is the ghost—supernatural. King=Denmark
Themes/Topics: DECEPTION DISLOYALTY CORRUPTION CLAUDIUS TRUTH MORALITY CHAOS DISEASE NATURE
“chariest maid is prodigal enough”
Context:
Analysis
Themes/Topics:
Laertes - “chaste treasure open”
Context: This is Laertes’ reasoning behind cautioning his sister regarding her relationship with Hamlet. (one of a few reasons)
Analysis: Metaphor.
“chaste” - purity, virginity, innocence
Ophelia virginity as a valuable property. Without pureness, women somehow lose the most valuable piece of themselves.
Themes/Topics: MASCULINITY, FEMININITY, GENDER NATURE FAMILY DOUBLE STANDARDS HAMLET
Hamlet - “my father brother, no more like my mother, than I to hercules”
Context: First soliloquy at the banquet.
Analysis:
Hercules - greek god - connotation of exceptional strength and courage.
Comparison of himself shows that he sees himself as weak following the death of his father.
Glorifies his father as a god among men,
Themes/Topics: Maculinity, spirituality,
Hamlet - “plucks my beard and blows it in my face”
Third soliloquy
Context: Prompted and shamed by a visiting Players emotive monologue, Hamlet is quick to decry his own alleged lack of action
Analysis: pluck my beard - take his masculinity away. is not living up to his father by inaction.
Themes/Topics: thought vs action. masculinity.
Hamlet - “that i must like a whore unpack my heart with words”
Context:
Analysis:
SIMILIE
- motif of prostitution (equated with weakness, lying, deceit) in ‘like a whore’
– implies that he is overly feminine, sentimental, and incapable of action.
Audience: positioned to understand that Hamlet’s inaction is indeed a weakness as the imagery suggests a moral ineptitude – a notion Elizabethan audiences would feel more strongly than a modern one.
Themes/Topics: Gender / thoughts / supernatural
Hamlet - “I do not set my life at a pins fee”
Context: When the Ghost beckons Hamlet to follow it alone, the Prince dismisses Horatio’s misgivings by suggesting any mortal consequences would be meaningless, as the Prince’s life has no value.
Analysis: Hyperbole - Set (as is “set the value of”)
Pin’s fee (to the Elizabethans, cheap pin
Themes/Topics: GRIEF THOUGHT/ACTION HAMLET TRANSFORMATION SYMPATHY SUFFERING
Ghost - “the serpent that did sting thy fathers life. Now wears his crown”
✅
Context: Ghost to Hamlet,
Analysis: Serpentine imagery.
Serpent - a deceptive, sly creature or trickster, untrustworthy, dangerous.
Elizabethan knowledge of the Garden of Eden, the fall of paradise.
Poisoning caused by Claudius (snake) causes Denmark to fall.
Themes/Topics: serpents, deception, betrayal, degeneration of the state, poison.
Laertes - “virtue its escapes not calumnious strokes”
Context:
Analysis:
Themes/Topics:
“you speak like a green girl, unsifted and perilous circumstances”
Context:
Analysis:
Themes/Topics:
Hamlet - “I have heard of your painting… god hath given you one face and you make yourselves another”
✅
Context: After realising that Ophelia is being used to spy upon him, Hamlet lashes out at her supposed deceptive ways, and his true feeling regarding women are revealed.
Analysis: Paintings (constructed, effort, manufactured beauty) Make (crafted, intention) God (sacrilege, defying His intent) plural s (not about just one woman)
Themes/Topics: GENDER DECEPTION FEMININITY HAMLET OPHELIA GERTRUDE PRETENSE TRUTH, DISLOYALTY
“thus conscience does make cowards of us all”
Context:
Analysis:
Themes/Topics:
Polonius - “Your bait of falsehood takes this carp of truth”
✅
Context: Polonius is speaking to Renaldo. Sending him to France to spy on Laertes Giving instructions to Renaldo what to do when he gets to France
Analysis: Metaphor
“carp”: prize catch – truth is aligned with the object we are trying to catch
“bait”: lie/deceit
Put falsehood out into the world and you might catch prize you are looking for
Connotation - Lying to Polonius is as easy as a sport – fun/leisure activity – comes easy
Themes/Topics:
Deception, lying
Hamlet - Such dexterity to incestuous sheets
Act 1, Scene 2. Hamlet 1st soliloquy
✅
Context: When Hamlet comes back from Uni and finds out his mother married Claudius. Initial feelings of grief and betrayal.
Analysis:
Dexterity - skill in performing tasks, especially with the hands.
Incestuous sheets - G and C’s marriage is incest.
Audience - explicitly forbidden by the Catholic and Anglican faiths.
Themes/Topics: Family, Claudius as a catalyst for chaos. Hamlets moral degeneration with his treatment to women.
