THEME: Apperance and Reality Flashcards
HAMLET (ACT 1 SCENE 2)- SEEMS
“Seems, madam? Nay, it is. I know not ‘seems’. - When Gertrude asks Hamlet why he still seems so upset about his father’s death, Hamlet takes offence at her use of the word “seems.” He describes his clothes and appearance at some length before agreeing—strangely—that everything he’s said so far could indeed be an actor’s performance. “But,” he adds, “I have that within which passes show” (I.ii.). Both Hamlet and the audience will have to wrestle with the difficulty of telling pretend or performed feelings from the real feelings which characters cannot “show”.
HAMLET (ACT 1 SCENE 2)-SOLILOQUY
“How weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable/ Seem to me all the uses of this world!/ Fie on’t,ah, fie, ‘tis an unweeded garden/That grows to seed.”
HAMLET (ACT 1 SCENE 2)
“…methinks I see my father…/In my minds eye, Horatio.”
HAMLET (ACT 1 SCENE 4)- GOBLIN
“Be thou a spirit of health or goblin damned.”
HAMLET (ACT 2 SCENE 2)
“…there is nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so.”
HAMLET (ACT 2 SCENE 2)- PLAY
“The plays the thing Wherein i’ll catch the conscience of the King”. - When the Players arrive, Hamlet decides to stage a play in which Claudius’s crime is represented, because Hamlet has heard that seeing their own crimes on stage sometimes makes people reveal their guilt. Hamlet believes very strongly in the power of theatre to touch people’s innermost feelings. Nevertheless, Hamlet’s decision to stage a play is a strange one. He has struggled over and over with the difficulty of discovering a person’s real feelings from their outward presentation, and yet he seems to believe he will be able to discover Claudius’s guilt by watching his face at the play. This line suggests that Hamlet is not being entirely honest with himself. The play may be just another delaying tactic.
HAMLET (ACT 2 SCENE 2)- HECUBA
“What’s Hecuba to him or he to her, that he should wept for her”. - As Hamlet watches the First Player perform a speech about the legendary Queen Hecuba, Hamlet is amazed to see the Player begin to weep. Hamlet compares himself to the Player: while the Player weeps for a person he never knew, Hamlet has so far done nothing to avenge his own murdered father. This contrast creates a whole new layer of doubt for Hamlet. Can his feelings about his father be real if they are not making him act? When performed feelings are so convincing, how can he tell between a performance and reality?
HAMLET (ACT 3 SCENE 1)- ONE FACE
“God hath given you one face and you make yourself another”.
FORTINBRAS (ACT 5 SCENE 2)- AUDIENCE
“Call the noblest to the audience” - In the play’s final moments, the new King, Fortinbras, agrees to Hamlet’s dying request—relayed by Horatio—that Hamlet’s story should be told again. Fortinbras gives the necessary orders in strikingly theatrical language, creating a sense that although Hamlet is ending, another play is about to begin. Hamlet’s body will be carried “to the stage” (V.ii.) and a new audience will try to decide the truth of Hamlet’s story. The last moments of the play suggest that in the world of Hamlet, there is no end to uncertainty, and no end to performance
BARNANRDO (ACT 1 SCENE 1)
“Who’s there?”
LAERTES (ACT 1 SCENE 3)-FASHION
“For Hamlet, and the trifling of his favour, hold it in a fashion, and a toy in blood.”
HAMLET (ACT ONE SCENE 2)-KIND
“A little more than kin and less than kind.”
GERTRUDE (ACT 4 SCENE 7)-BROOK
“There is willow grows ascent a brook… there with fantastic garlands did she make of crow flowers, nettles, daisies and long purples… but long it could not be till that her garments, heavy with their drink pulled the poor wretch from her melodious death.”
