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I would like to create an open atmosphere for our class to get to know each other
by using this Discussion page. Students and parents can post any personal thoughts, questions, or concerns for the class
to read and respond to throughout the unit.
Although as students, you all may think you know each other very well (as some of
you have grown up together since grade school), you might be surprised at how different one's perspective is regarding some
of the very complex topics covered in Shakespeare's Hamlet.
I would like all of you to think of the following quotes and post an initial thought
or reaction that relates to the content of the play. Then respond to a classmate's posting, as feedback will not only
be directly provided by me, but it will also be enhanced by your fellow peers.
I think it can be a very rewarding experience for you all to discuss these matters
in regards to modern time, since Hamlet was written hundreds of years ago, and yet many of the same tragedies are
still occuring today. Specifically keep in mind the themes of family, friendship, love, relationships or bonds, deception,
envy, wrath, death (murder, suicide), madness (insanity), and passion.
Polonius:
This above all: to thine own self be true... Hamlet Act 1, scene 3, 78–82
Polonius:
My liege, and madam, to expostulate
What majesty should be, what duty is,
What
day is day, night night, and time is time,
Were nothing but to waste night, day, and time;
Therefore, since brevity
is the soul of wit,
And tediousness the limbs and outward flourishes,
I will be brief. Your noble son is mad. . . .
Hamlet Act 2, scene 2, 86–92
Hamlet:
I do repent; but heaven hath pleas'd it so
To punish me with this, and this with
me,
That I must be their scourge and minister.
I will bestow him, and will answer well
The death I gave him. So again
good night.
I must be cruel only to be kind.
This bad begins and worse remains behind.
Hamlet Act 3, scene 4, 173–179
Hamlet:
Give me that man
That is not passion's slave, and I will wear him
In my heart's
core, ay, in my heart of heart,
As I do thee.
Hamlet Act 3, scene 2, 71–74
Polonius:
What is the matter, my lord?
Hamlet:
Between who?
Polonius:
I mean, the matter that you read, my lord.
Hamlet:
Slanders, sir; for the satirical rogue says here that old men
have grey beards,
that their faces are wrinkled, their eyes purging
thick amber and plum-tree gum, and that they have a plentiful
lack
of wit, together with most weak hams; all which, sir, though
I most powerfully and potently believe, yet I hold it not
honesty
to have it thus set down, for yourself, sir, shall grow old as I am, if
like a crab you could go backward.
Polonius:
[Aside] Though this be madness, yet there is method in't.
Hamlet Act 2, scene 2, 193–206
Hamlet:
Then saw you not his face.
Horatio:
O yes, my lord, he wore his beaver up.
Hamlet:
What, look'd he frowningly?
Horatio:
A countenance more
In sorrow than in anger.
Hamlet Act 1, scene 2, 229–232
King:
But now, my cousin Hamlet, and my son—
Hamlet:
A little more than kin, and less than kind.
King:
How is it that the clouds still hang on you?
Hamlet:
Not so, my lord, I am too much in the sun.
Hamlet Act 1, scene 2, 64–67
Hamlet:
O most pernicious woman!
O villain, villain, smiling, damnèd villain!
My tables—meet
it is I set it down
That one may smile, and smile, and be a villain—
At least I am sure it may be so in Denmark.
Hamlet Act 1, scene 5, 105–109
Hamlet:
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. To die—to sleep,
No more; and by a sleep to say we end
The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks
That
flesh is heir to: 'tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wish'd. To die, to sleep;
To sleep, perchance to dream—ay,
there's the rub:
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come,
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must
give us pause—there's the respect
That makes calamity of so long life.
For who would bear the whips and scorns
of time,
Th'oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely,
The pangs of dispriz'd love, the law's delay,
The insolence
of office, and the spurns
That patient merit of th'unworthy takes,
When he himself might his quietus make
With
a bare bodkin? Who would fardels bear,
To grunt and sweat under a weary life,
But that the dread of something after
death,
The undiscovere'd country, from whose bourn
No traveller returns, puzzles the will,
And makes
us rather bear those ills we have
Than fly to others that we know not of?
Thus conscience does make cowards of us
all,
And thus the native hue of resolution
Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought,
And enterprises of
great pitch and moment
With this regard their currents turn awry
And lose the name of action.
Hamlet Act 3, scene 1, 55–87 [Italics mine]
Probably the best-known lines in English literature, Hamlet's
Hamlet:
"To sleep, perchance to dream-
ay, there's the rub."
Hamlet (III, i, 65-68)
Hamlet:
What a piece of work is a man, how noble in reason, how
infinite in faculties,
in form and moving how express and
admirable, in action how like an angel, in apprehension how like
a god! the beauty
of the world, the paragon of animals—and yet,
to me, what is this quintessence of dust? Man delights not me—
nor
woman neither, though by your smiling you seem to say so.
Rosencrantz:
My lord, there was no such stuff in my thoughts.
Hamlet Act 2, scene 2, 303–312
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