Hamlet In Review act 1

ACT 1: scene 1 Describe the atmosphere and how it is created in this scene. What reasons are suggested by Horatio for the appearance of the late King’s ghost? How is the host made impressive and awe inspiring?

ACT 1: scene 1 Scene 1 provides very little information and does not introduce the major figures of the play. It does set the atmosphere and introduces us to the “world” in which the action is to occur.

ACT 1: scene 1 Horatio: “What, has this thing appeared again tonight?” (26) -We do not know what he is talking about. There is a mysterious tone to what he says. Marcellus: “Horatio says ‘tis but our fantasy/ And will not let belief take hold of him/ Touching his dreaded sight twice seen of us./ Therefore I have entreated him along/ With us to watch the minutes of this night, / That, if again this apparition come,/ He may approve our eyes and speak to it.” - We know they are reliable because they are self-doubting, yet seek approval. We are still not aware of what they are talking about, increasing the mysterious tone. We get the sense of a forbidden secret that only appears late at night.

ACT 1: scene 1 Horatio: “Most like. It harrows me with fear and wonder” Bernardo: “ How now, Horatio, you tremble and look pale. / Is not this something more than fantasy? / What think you on ‘t?” Horatio: “Before my God, I might not this believe/ Without the sensible and true avouch/ Of mine own eyes.” (63-68) We discover from Bernardo’s comment that Horatio, the scholar, is so affright from the “apparition” that he suddenly is trembling and becomes pale once faced with the vision that he was first skeptical about. This mysterious and supernatural atmosphere continues as the ghost leaves without speaking, despite Horatio’s attempts at questioning the figure.  The ghost disappears without a reply, leaving the audience to wonder if the image truly was the ghost of an unknown character.

ACT 1: scene 1 Marcellus: “Is that not like the King?” Horatio: “ As thou art to thyself. / Such was the very armor he had on / When he the ambitious Norway combated. / So frowned he once when, in an angry parle, / He smote the sled polacks on the ice./ Tis strange/ … In hat particular thought to work I know not, / But in the gross and scope of mine opinion / This bodes some strange eruption to our state.” Following these lines is a discussion that Horatio has with Bernardo, where he explains the events of the battle prior to the late King’s death. (69-137)

What do you think of the contrast of these two scenes? ACT 1: scene 2 In the second scene, the action shifts from the dark battlements to the brilliant center of the Danish court, the King’s council chamber. What do you think of the contrast of these two scenes?

ACT 1: scene 2 It has often been remarked that Claudius is an exceptionally capable king and politician. How does this impression of Claudius emerge in his first long speech? Take into account not only the way he deals with problems but the style of his speech (diction, images and rhythms).

ACT 1: scene 2 “ Though yet of Hamlet our dear brother’s death / the memory be green, and that it us befitted/ To bear our hearts in grief, and our whole kingdom / To be contracted in one brow of woe, / Yet so far hath discretion fought with nature / That we with wisest sorrow think on him / Together with remembrance of ouirselves. / Therefore our sometime sister, now our queen, / Th’ imperial jointress to this warlike state, / Have we (as ‘twere with a defeated joy,/ With an auspicious and dropping eye, / With mirth in funeral and with dirge in marriage, / In equal scale weighting delight and dole)/ Taken to wife. Nor have we herein barred / Your better wisdoms , which have freely gone / With this affair long…

Act 1: scene 2 For all, our thanks. / Now follows that you know. Young Fortinbras, Holding a weak supposal o four worth / Or thinking by our late dear brother’s death / Our state to be disjoint and out of frame, / Colleagued with this dream of his advantage, / He hath not failed to pester us with message / Importing the surrender of those lands / Lost by his father, with all bonds of law, / To our most valiant brother - so much for him. / Now for ourself and for this time of meeting. /

Farewell, and let your haste commend your duty.” Act 1: scene 2 Thus much the business is: we have here writ / To Norway, uncle of young Fortinbras, / Who, impotent and bedrid, scarcely hears/ Of this his nephew’s purpose, to suppress/ His further gait herein, in that the levies, / The lists, and full proportions are all made / Out of his subject; and we here dispatch / You, good Cornelius, and you, Voltemand, / For bearers of this greeting to old Norway, / Giving to you no further personal power / To business with the King more than the scope / Of these dilated articles allow. [Giving them a paper] Farewell, and let your haste commend your duty.”

Act 1: scene 2 Claudius offers Hamlet some perfectly sound advice about how to take the death of a father, but it does not seem genuine. What is it about his way of delivering these truiums that rings false?

“A little more than kin and less than kind” Act 1: scene 2 “A little more than kin and less than kind” our first impression of Hamlet, as well as the first true comment to Claudius’ character by someone else other than what he says “ ‘Tis sweet and commendable in your nature,/ Hamlet, / To give these mourning duties to your father, / But you must know your father lost a father, / That father lost, lost his, and the survivor bound / In filial obligation for some term / To do obsequious sorrow. But to persever / To obstinate condolement is a course / Of impious stubborness. ‘Tis unmanly grief. / It shows a will most incorrect to heaven,/ A heart unfortified, a mind impatient, / An understanding simple and unschooled. / For what we know must be an is as common / As any the most vulgar thing to sense, / Why should we in our peevish opposition / take it to heart?

Act 1: scene 2 … Fie, ‘tis a fault to heaven, / A fault against the dead, a fault to nature, / To reason most absurd, whose common theme/ Is death of fathers, and who still hath cried, / From the first corse till he that died today, / “This must be so.” We pray you, throw to earth/ This unprevailing woe and think of us/ As of a father ; for let the world take note, / You are the most immediate to our throne,/ And with no less nobility of love / That that which dearest father bears his son/ Do I impart toward you. For your intent/ In going back to school in Wittenberg, / It is most retrograde to ouru desire, / And we beseech you, bend you to remain / Here in the cheer and comfort of our eye, / Our chiefest courtier, cousin, and our son.”

Act 1: scene 2 Soliloquy #1… To be analyzed.

Act 1: scene 2 What do we learn about King Hamlet based on the conversation that occurs between Hamlet and Horatio, and what he tells us himself (directly, in his style of speaking and image)? Compare him to Claudius, the new king; and to Hamlet, his son.

Act 1: scene 3 Scene 3 offers a good picture of Polonius’ family, which is to play a prominent par in the coming events. Look carefully at all of the advice Laertes and Polonius offer on various subjects and describe their approach to the world and their understanding of human nature. Would you call them sensitive or practical? What does this scene gain in meaning by being placed between two scenes involving a ghost come back from another world to speak of the corruption in this one? How does Laertes’ advice to Ophelia resemble Polonius’ advice to Laertes? Polonius’ advice to Ophelia? How is sympathy created in this scene for Ophelia? Hamlet?