Hamlet Flashcards
Horatio’s goodbye to Hamlet in act 5 scene 2
‘Now cracks a Nobel heart. Good night sweet prince, and flights of angels sing thee to thy rest’
Horatio implies he is off to heaven - absolved? Final image of hMALET as a hero / without his mad revenging side
Hamlet’s final line
‘[Fortinbras] has my dying voice…the rest is silence’
What Hamlet called Claudius before murdering him
‘Thou incestuous, murderous, damnéd Dane
HAMLET condemning CLAUDIUS - incest more important than murdering to him? Able to kill CLAUDIUS in the wake of his mothers death - more important to him than father?
In act 5, scene 2; HAMLETS’ sense of acceptance of fate - what will be will be is opposition to be or not to be - character development - gospel of Matthew / religious biblical text - everything is predetermined by God (providential universe). Idea of FATE / pre ordained death
‘There’s a special providence in the fall of a spareow. If it be now, ‘tis not to come; if it be not to come, it will be now; if it be not now, yet it will come’
Hamlet’s CONSCIENCEless logic, no longer passive - angry - see it as hid DUTY to kill Claudius in act 5 scene 2
‘He that hath killed my king, and whored my mother, popped in between th’election and my hopes…is’t not perfect conscience to quit him with this ar? And is’t not to be damned to let this canker of our nature come in further evil
Hamlet at Ophelia’s funeral
What is he whose grief bears such an emphasis?…This is I, Hamlet the Dane…i loved Ophelia; forty thousand brothers could not with all their quantity of love make up my sum’
inward looking, self entitled, pretence that his grief is so large when in this play he has shown Ophelia no love - first emphatic announcement of self - men taking the spotlight from OPHELIA even at her funeral - insensitive / in genuine word to LAERTES, Hamlet as ‘being the main character’ / example of empassioned madness which hamlet in the next scene calls ‘a towering passion’- makes HAMLET look bad (question his antic disposition?). SYMBOLIC / DRAMATICALLY SIGNIFICANT image of youths all standing in a grave with elders / Claudius on-looking - foreshadowing
Mental self-flagellation in 2nd extended soliloquy
O what a rogue and peasant slave am i!…what would he do had he the motive and the cue for passion that i have?… cleave the general ear with horrid speech, make mad the guilty and appal the free…a dull and muddy-mettled rascal…am i a coward?’
Gertrude described Hamlet in 2.2
‘My too much changèd son’
… Claudius calls it ‘Hamlet’s transformation - so call it’
Hamlet’s inaction 1.5
‘with wings as swift as meditation’
1.4
“My fate cries out’
Inaction represented by players 3.2
‘What to ourselves in passion we propose tha passion ending, doth the purpose lose’
4th extended soliloquy
‘how all occasions do inform against me, and spur my dull revenge…A thought which, quarter’d, hath but one part wisdom And ever three parts coward…‘I have cause and will and strength and means…‘O, from this time forth, My thoughts be bloody, or be nothing worth!’
