Hamlet 3:1 Flashcards
Act 3, Scene 1 importance
- Act 3 is the “moving” act
- 3:1 is the “nunnery scene”
‘And can you by no drift…’
‘And can you by no drift of conference/ Get from him why he puts on this confusion,/ Grating so harshly all his days of quiet/ With turbulent and dangerous lunacy?’ - King
- trying to find an excuse to get rid of Hamlet (knows H resents him, why not Wittenberg?)
- fishing for bad news (‘turbulent and dangerous lunacy’)
Ros and Gil report to the King about H
- don’t tell the whole truth (‘from what cause ‘a will by no means speak’)
- fear of letting the king down plus loyalty to H
‘But from what…’
‘But from what cause ‘a will by no means speak.’ - Ros
‘But, with a…’
‘But, with a crafty madness, keeps aloof/ When we would bring him on to some confession/ Of his true state.’ - Guildenstern
‘but of our demands…’
‘but of our demands/ Most free in his reply.’ - Ros
- doesn’t seem accurate
‘Sweet Gertrude…’
‘Sweet Gertrude, leave us too’ - King
- the only other female voice is ushered away
’- lawful espials -‘
’- lawful espials -‘
- in parenthesis (off the cuff)
- trying to justify himself
‘Ophelia, I do wish…’
‘Ophelia, I do wish/ That your good beauties be the happy cause/ Of Hamlet’s wildness; so shall I hope your virtues/ will bring him to his wonted way again,/ To both your honours.’ - Queen
- thinks O will have a positive influence
- respectful and kind to O
‘And pious action…’
‘And pious action we do sugar o’er/ The devil himself.’ - Polonius
- make themselves look good, hide sins
‘[Aside] O, ‘tis…’
‘[Aside] O, ‘tis too true!/ How smart a lash that speech doth give my conscience!/’ - King
‘plast’ring art’ - K
‘O heavy burden!’ - K
- he has something to feel guilty over
Hamlet’s soliloquy in 3:1
- melancholia (in built even before he knew about the regicide)
- some directors have Hamlet aware that P and K are observing his interaction with O
- semantic field of violence, war
‘To be, or not…’
‘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 to take arms against a sea of troubles,/ And by opposing end them?’ - Hamlet 3:1 soliloquy
- questioning (inaction?)
- fate, change his destiny
- projectiles (‘slings’ ‘arrows’) show he is out of control
- existential
‘To die; to sleep’
‘To die; to sleep’ - Hamlet’s 3:1 soliloquy
- repeated later in the soliloquy
‘When we have shuffled…’
‘When we have shuffled off this mortal coil’ - Hamlet, 3:1 soliloquy
- existence and non-existence (avoids using ‘death’)
‘Thus conscience does…’
‘Thus conscience does make cowards of us all’ - Hamlet, 3:1 soliloquy
- reminiscent of the ‘am I a coward?’
- reason not emotion
‘I never gave you…’
‘I never gave you aught.’ - Hamlet to O
- antic disposition, cruelty, truth?
- what about the letter P read to the King
Hamlet-Ophelia conversation 3:1
- Ophelia is made a scapegoat for women’s sins (misogyny)
‘That if you be honest…’
‘That if you be honest and fair, your honesty should admit no discourse to your beauty.’ - Hamlet to O
- if Ophelia is chaste she should not entertain comments on her beauty
‘for the power of beauty…’
‘for the power of beauty will sooner transform honest from what it is to a bawd than the force of honesty can translate beauty into his likeness.’ - Hamlet
- “beauty can destroy chastity in a woman far more easily than chastity can make a beautiful woman honest”
‘You should not have…’
‘You should not have believ’d me; for virtue cannot so inoculate our old stock but we shall relish of it. I loved you not.’ - Hamlet to O.
- blames Ophelia
‘Get thee to a…’
‘Get thee to a nunnery.’ - Hamlet to O
- says this (or versions) 4 times within this conversation
- ‘nunnery’ was also a term for a brothel in elizabethan times
‘Why wouldst thou be…’
‘Why wouldst thou be a breeder of sinners? I am myself indifferent honest, but yet I could accuse me of such things that it were better my mother had not borne me’ - Hamlet to O
- telling her not to have a child to prevent more sinners being brought into the world
‘We are arrant knaves…’
‘We are arrant knaves, all; believe none of us. Go thy ways to a nunnery. Where’s your father?’ - Hamlet to O
‘If thou dost marry, I’ll…’
‘If thou dost marry, I’ll give thee this plague for thy dowry: be thou as chaste as ice, as pure as snow, thou shalt not escape calumny.’ - Hamlet to O
- marriage will not save her from a bad reputation
‘Or, if thou wilt needs…’
‘Or, if thou wilt needs marry, marry a fool; for wise men know well enough what monsters you make of them.’ - Hamlet to O
- wise men know that women cheat
‘I have heard of your paintings…’
‘I have heard of your paintings too, well enough; God hath given you one face, and you make yourselves another.’ - Hamlet to O
- ‘you’ refers to women, he is generalising
‘O, what a noble…’
‘O, what a noble mind is here o’er-thrown!’ - Ophelia
- Hamlet has changed (antic disposition or learning about his uncle?)
‘That unmatch’d form…’
‘That unmatch’d form and feature of blown youth/ Blasted with ecstasy’ - Ophelia about H
- antic disposition
‘Love! His affections…Nor what he spake…’
‘Love! His affections do not that way tend;/ Nor what he spake, though it lack’d form a little,/ Was not like madness.’ - Claudius after watching the H-O conversation
- Hamlet is not mad? at the least not due to love
‘There’s something in…’
‘There’s something in his soul/ O’er which his melancholy sits on brood;/ And I do doubt the hatch and the disclose/ Will be some danger’ - Claudius
- Hamlet is brooding on something that may have a wide fallout
- says he will send him ‘with speed to England’ to prevent the fallout (control)
‘Let his queen mother all…’
‘Let his queen mother all alone entreat him/ To show his grief. Let her be round with him;/ And I’ll be plac’d, so please you, in the ear/ Of all their conference’ - Polonius
- try to use H’s relationship with his mother
- spying and espionage again (‘in the ear’)
- this will lead to his death behind the arras
‘If she find him…’
‘If she find him not [gone mad from love],/ To England send him; or confine him where/ Your wisdom best shall think.’ - P
- plots again
- ‘confine him’ is reminiscent of H’s ‘Denmark is a prison’ earlier
‘It shall be so…’
‘It shall be so:/ Madness in great ones must not unwatch’d go.’ - King
