Hamlet Study Guide With Answers
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. Hamlet Study Guide Questions Act I 1. Identify Bernardo, Francisco, Marcellus, Horatio, and King Hamlet. What had Bernardo seen at a prior watch?
Archive; RSS; 10 notes. September 3, 2011 Hamlet Study Guide Answers (Act 1 & Act 2) Act One. Bernardo, Francisco and Marcellus are guard soldiers at Elsinore. HAMLET STUDY GUIDE (ACT I - ACT V) Hamlet Important Quotes; We will write a custom essay sample on. Hamlet Study Guide Act 1 with Answers specifically.
Peoplesoft system administrator training guide. Why does Marcellus think Horatio should speak to the ghost? What does young Fortinbras want to do? Who do the soldiers/guards want to tell about the ghost? Identify King Claudius, Queen Gertrude, Laertes, and Polonius.
Where does Claudius send Cornelius and Voltimand? What does the King tell Hamlet? Hamlet is upset for two reasons. What are they? What news does Horatio bring Hamlet? What does Hamlet decide to do after he hears Horatio’s news? What is Laertes’ advice to Ophelia?
What is Polonius’ advice to Laertes? At the end of Scene III, Ophelia agrees to “obey.” What will she do? What does the ghost tell Hamlet? Hamlet swears Horatio to two things.
What are they? Where does Polonius send Reynaldo? Why does Polonius think Hamlet is “mad”?
Why have Rosencrantz and Guildenstern come to the castle? What is Polonius’ plan for testing his theory that Hamlet is love-crazy? Rosencrantz and Guildenstern finally meet with Hamlet, and Hamlet discovers they were sent for by the King. How does Hamlet describe his personal problems to them? What does he tell them?
What arrangement does Hamlet make with Player 1? After Rosencrantz and Guildenstern leaven Hamlet, what does he basically say in his soliloquy? What message do Rosencrantz and Guildenstern carry to the King? What is the King’s response? Hamlet’s famous “To be or not to be” soliloquy is in scene one. In a sentence or two paraphrase his main points. Describe Hamlet’s tone when he speaks to Ophelia.
What do the King and Polonius decide about Hamlet’s condition after eavesdropping on Hamlet and Ophelia? Why does Hamlet give instructions to the players? What was the King’s reaction to the play, and what did Hamlet and Horatio decide his reaction meant? What message does Rosencrantz deliver from the Queen? The King has Rosencrantz and Guildenstern prepare to do what?
Why doesn’t Hamlet kill the King when the King is kneeling? How does Polonius die? What would Hamlet have his mother do? What does Hamlet think of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern?
Why must the King “not put the strong arm on” Hamlet? When the King asks Hamlet where Polonius is, what is Hamlet’s answer? What is the content of the letters the King sends with Rosencrantz and Guildenstern to England with Hamlet? What prompts Hamlet to say, “My thoughts be bloody or be nothing worth!”?
What has happened to Ophelia? Why does Laertes force his way in? What does he want? What is the content of Hamlet’s letter to Horatio?
What plan do the King and Laertes discuss to kill Hamlet? What news does the Queen bring Laertes? Laertes thinks that Ophelia should have a better funeral service. What is the priest’s answer? Why does Hamlet jump into Ophelia’s grave? What does the King say to Laertes to console him after Laertes and Hamlet are separated?
What did Hamlet do to Rosencrantz and Guildenstern? What news does Osric bring Hamlet? What happens to the King, Hamlet, Laertes, and the Queen? Who does Hamlet recommend to the throne?
Shakespeare includes characters in who are obvious foils for Hamlet, including, most obviously, Horatio, Fortinbras, and Laertes. Compare and contrast Hamlet with each of these characters. How are they alike? How are they different?
How does each respond to the crises with which he is faced? Horatio’s steadfastness and loyalty contrasts with Hamlet’s variability and excitability, though both share a love of learning, reason, and thought.
Claudius’s willingness to disregard all moral law and act decisively to fulfill his appetites and lust for power contrasts powerfully with Hamlet’s concern for morality and indecisive inability to act. Fortinbras’s willingness to go to great lengths to avenge his father’s death, even to the point of waging war, contrasts sharply with Hamlet’s inactivity, even though both of them are concerned with avenging their fathers. Laertes’ single-minded, furious desire to avenge Polonius stands in stark opposition to Hamlet’s inactivity with regard to his own father’s death. Finally, Hamlet, Laertes, and Fortinbras are all in a position to seek revenge for the murders of their fathers, and their situations are deeply intertwined. Hamlet’s father killed Fortinbras’s father, and Hamlet killed Laertes’ father, meaning that Hamlet occupies the same role for Laertes as Claudius does for Hamlet. Many critics take a deterministic view of Hamlet’s plot, arguing that the prince’s inability to act and tendency toward melancholy reflection is a “tragic flaw” that leads inevitably to his demise.
Is this an accurate way of understanding the play? Why or why not?
Given Hamlet’s character and situation, would another outcome of the play have been possible? The idea of the “tragic flaw” is a problematic one in Hamlet.
It is true that Hamlet possesses definable characteristics that, by shaping his behavior, contribute to his tragic fate. But to argue that his tragedy is inevitable because he possesses these characteristics is difficult to prove. Given a scenario and a description of the characters involved, it is highly unlikely that anyone who had not read or seen Hamlet would be able to predict its ending based solely on the character of its hero. In fact, the play’s chaotic train of events suggests that human beings are forced to make choices whose consequences are unforeseeable as well as unavoidable. To argue that the play’s outcome is intended to appear inevitable seems incompatible with the thematic claims made by the play itself. Throughout the play, Hamlet claims to be feigning madness, but his portrayal of a madman is so intense and so convincing that many readers believe that Hamlet actually slips into insanity at certain moments in the play. Do you think this is true, or is Hamlet merely play-acting insanity?
What evidence can you cite for either claim? At any given moment during the play, the most accurate assessment of Hamlet’s state of mind probably lies somewhere between sanity and insanity. Hamlet certainly displays a high degree of mania and instability throughout much of the play, but his “madness” is perhaps too purposeful and pointed for us to conclude that he actually loses his mind. His language is erratic and wild, but beneath his mad-sounding words often lie acute observations that show the sane mind working bitterly beneath the surface. Most likely, Hamlet’s decision to feign madness is a sane one, taken to confuse his enemies and hide his intentions. On the other hand, Hamlet finds himself in a unique and traumatic situation, one which calls into question the basic truths and ideals of his life. He can no longer believe in religion, which has failed his father and doomed him to life amid miserable experience.
Hamlet Study Guide Answers Act 5
He can no longer trust society, which is full of hypocrisy and violence, nor love, which has been poisoned by his mother’s betrayal of his father’s memory. And, finally, he cannot turn to philosophy, which cannot explain ghosts or answer his moral questions and lead him to action. With this much discord in his mind, and already under the extraordinary pressure of grief from his father’s death, his mother’s marriage, and the responsibility bequeathed to him by the ghost, Hamlet is understandably distraught. He may not be mad, but he likely is close to the edge of sanity during many of the most intense moments in the play, such as during the performance of the play-within-a-play (III.ii), his confrontation with Ophelia (III.i), and his long confrontation with his mother (III.iv).