madness and death

Question 1

Horatio: These are but wild and whirling words my lord

Answer 1

Horatio tells Hamlet he’s speaking crazy after the ghost

Question 2

Hamlet: To put an antic disposition on

Answer 2

Hamlet says he will pretend to be mad to help his revenge, but does he not really go mad anyway?

Question 3

Polonius: I have found the very cause of Hamlets lunacy

Answer 3

Polonius is foolish and believes he knows that hamlet is crazy in love with ophelia, dramatic irony

Question 4

Hamlet: Get thee to a nunnery: why wouldst thou be a breeder of sinners

Answer 4

Arguably what drives ofelia into absolute madness, she shouldn’t have children or sex and lock herself away.

Question 5

Ofelia: O woe is me to have seen what i have seen, see what i see

Answer 5

Sorrow and despair for hamlets descent into madness, but also the foreshadowing of her own madness

Question 6

Hamlet: The body is with the king, but the king is not with the body. The king is a thing.

Answer 6

Sounds like crazy talk to rosencrantz and guildenstern, but actually makes sense. The king is a principle not a person.

Question 7

Ofelia: He is dead and gone, lady, he is dead and gone.

Answer 7

Ofelia has descended into full madness, constantly let down and controlled by men, she mourns hamlet and polonius

Question 8

Ofelia: young men will do it if they come to it. By cock they are to blame.

Answer 8

sexually explicit song, implies hamlet and ofelia is sexual relationship, echoes the exploitation and oppression of women at the hands of men

Question 9

ofelia: I would give you some violets, but they withered all when my father died.

Answer 9

the flowers represent ofelia mental state, broken and fragile

Question 10

Her clothes spread wide, and mermaid luke, awhile they bore her up;

Answer 10

Gertrude’s description of ofelias death, simile, accidental drowning?