For Monday: Shakespeare, Hamlet (Act 1)

I couldn't leave you with just 4 questions for Act 1, so here are 5. But again, you only have to answer TWO. But think about all of them, since I want to address most if not all of them in class on Monday. There's so much going on in this first act, which is unusually crammed with incident for Shakespeare. However, think about Julius Caesar as you read Act 1, since there are many connections between the two plays, as Q1 discusses. 

Answer two of the following: 

Q1: Poole reminds us that in tragedy the living are haunted by the past, making them, in effect, the 'living dead.' Taken in this light, Hamlet has a lot in common with Brutus from Julius Caesar, and both open the play wracked with indecision. What else makes them similar characters? Why might we read Brutus as a trial run for Hamlet? 

Q2: How did David Tennant (in the 2009 production) portray Hamlet in a way that made him distinct from merely reading his words on the page? In other words, what did he add to the play that helped you 'see' Hamlet as you read the play? Where do you most 'hear' him when you read Act 1?

Q3: One of Hamlet’s most famous speeches occurs very early in the play: Act One, scene 2, which begins, “O, that is too, too sullied flesh would melt” (29). What is he complaining about in this soliloquy (poetic monologue)? Try to read this speech like a poem and find a metaphor that can help you interpret his complaint as a whole (for example, why should “sullied flesh” melt?). Since this is our first big moment with Hamlet, does this speech make us sympathetic for him? Or wary of him?

Q4: Why do Ophelia’s brother (Laertes) and father (Polonius) distrust Hamlet so much? Why don’t they encourage his attentions (and as she thinks, love) towards her? Wouldn’t it be a good match for her to marry a king’s son, the Prince of Denmark?

Q5: Hamlet and Ophelia have had some sort of romantic relationship prior to the events of Act 1, though Shakespeare doesn't give them a single scene together until Act 3, scene 1. How does Ophelia betray the depth of her relationship? Was it a deep, romantic one? Or one more like Romeo and Rosalind, a mere exchange of letters without any substance? In other words, is she in love with him...or is she merely the object of his affection?