Soliloquies

Question 1

Hamlets first soliloquy

Answer 1

Not blank verse - broken caesura- distressed and honest not rehearsed

3 apostrophes
‘O God’ - direct address and desperation

‘Frailty thy name is woman’
Down fall
Mum corrupt him

‘Wicked speed…incestuous sheets’
-sibilance, disgust

‘But break my heart for I must hold my toungue’ - monosyllabic

Niobe - Greek myth - addled deaths of children

Question 2

Hamlet second soliloquy

Answer 2

Blank verse= fragmented and ? And ! And O -> disturbed by troubled news

‘O villain, villain, smiling damned villain!’
Apostrophe - venom
Repetition - emphasis extent of anger
!- out of frustration scream

‘Woman’ - epitomises Women, loss of respect, misogyny

‘Wipe away’ ‘all’ booms etc - passion, smth to life for

‘Remember thee?’ X2 - has his madness kicked in

Question 3

Hamlets third soliloquy

Answer 3

Blank verse- his nobility is a barrier

Hyperbole ‘He would drown the stage with tears’

‘O what rogue and peasant slave am I!’
Frustration
Peasant - not king

‘The spirit I have seen/ May be a devil’

Question 4

Hamlets 4th soliloquy

Answer 4

Blank verse

‘To Be Or not to be’ - monosyllabic

‘To die… to sleep’

Absense of I/we - universal

Is solil a distraction

‘Lose the name of action’ - can’t even kill self

Newall ‘entirely motivated by reason, untouched by grief’

Question 5

Ophelia soliloquy

Answer 5

Blank verse despite hamlet talking to her in pros - nunnery scene - Noble character

2 apastrophe loss of ‘noble mind’

‘Quiet down’ - hamlet has fallen

‘Observed of all observers’ - paranoid state of Denmark

Question 6

Hamlets fifth soliloquy

Answer 6

‘Bigger business’ - plosives alliteration

‘I will speak daggers to her but she none’ - foreshadow, not true

Question 7

Claudius soliloquy

Answer 7

Blank verse- nobility regardless

‘O bosom black as death’
‘Limed soul’

‘Pray can I not’- monosyllabic emphasises
Annoyance - hamlet X kill

‘My crown, mine own ambition and my Queen’
List of 3 priority
Ambition - Macbeth

‘Try what repentance can - what can It not?’

Question 8

Hamlets 6 soliloquy

Answer 8

Blank verse

Dr Johnson: Hamlets desire to send Claudius to Hell is ‘too horrible to read’

‘Now might I do it pat’ monosyllabic focussed

I’ll do it - and so he goes to heaven’ - prevarication

Question 9

Hamlets 7 soliloquy

Answer 9

Oliver 1948 cut it out expendable

Blank verse

‘God-like’ man is not beast

‘Coward’

End on rhyming couplet - rings determination but words contrast actions ‘forth’ ‘worth’