Grey Clawson
B. Vogt
AP Literature
5 October 2010
Hamlet Analysis Guide Act 1
Questions
1. Modern English
Setting
1. a) The opening scene establishes an ominous tone.
b) The cold atmosphere and the night reinforce the scene of terror.
c) The significance of midnight represents the witching hour, the hour when spirits are
thought to roam the Earth.
2. a) Hamlet – prince of Denmark
b) Horatio – Hamlet’s best friend
c) Laertes – Polonius’s son and Ophelia’s brother
d) Polonius – counsel to Claudius, Father to Laertes and Ophelia
e) Claudius – brother to King Hamlet, husband to Gertrude, and uncle to Prince Hamlet
f) Gertrude – Prince Hamlet’s mother, widow of King Hamlet, wife of Claudius
g) Ophelia – daughter of Polonius, sister of Laertes, ‘girlfriend’ of Hamlet
Plot
1. Strife between Denmark and Norway is the reason for Denmark’s military state of
readiness.
2. Provides necessary information without interrupted the flow of the text.
3. Fortinbras
Plot
1. Meteors, disasters in the sun, and he also interprets the appearance of the ghost as a
bad omen.
2. Generally, disturbances in human affairs. The death of King Hamlet affects everyone
in the grand scheme of things.
Imagery
1. Cock – metaphor for the trumpet of the morn
2. Personification – dawn walks
3. Dawn – “in russet mantle clad”. Russet – formerly name of rough homespun used
for the clothing of country folk
4. By direct contrast. Birth vs. Death, Good vs. Evil
5. No, it is the opposite. The king has just died and they are in a military state of
awareness.
Grey Clawson
B. Vogt
AP Literature
5 October 2010
Suspense
1. To grab the attention of the audience and presents foreshadowing of evil and unrest to
create suspense.
2. To Elizabethans it is a symbol of unrest.
3. The guard’s fear adds to the suspense.
Characterization: Claudius
1. Majestic sentences containing many subordinate clauses that qualify his meaning.
2. The Danish customs of royal elections was chosen rather than hereditary succession.
3. Scene 8: Lines 10-13
4. Leadership and power
Characterization: Hamlet
1. -Resentment of his uncle. “A little more than kin…” 10: 68-69
-Hamlet still grieves for his father while other have moved on a little more quickly.
“Ay, madam, it is common.” 10: 78
-Recoils from the falsity he sees around him. “I know not ‘seems’” 10: 81
2. He speaks of kind, sun, and the common.
3. Hamlet’s intelligence and his highly developed sense of ambiguity.
Theme
1. Mortality of all human kind.
2. Claudius says that all fathers die so he sees it as not so much of a big deal.
Theme
1. Appearance and reality.
2. The hero is forced to hide his true thoughts.
3. He ironically tells Gertrude that he “knows not ‘seems’”.
4. Yes, Hamlet proves to be so good an actor that his performance in feigning madness is
so intense that he actually transcends the boundary of sanity.
5. Grief
Soliloquy
1. He is beginning to confront his inevitable dilemma.
2. To either live or die.
Theme
1. Hamlet’s morbid wish reflects the theme of mortality in the form of suicide.
2. Suicide is unforgivable.
3. Corruption, particularly in the kingdom.
4. Claudius’s crimes.
Grey Clawson
B. Vogt
AP Literature
5 October 2010
5. Marcellus’ famous line, “Something is rotten in the state of Denmark”.
6. -“Hyperion to a satyr”
-Satyr
-“but no more like my father/Than I to Hercules”
Characterization: Hamlet
1. -Develops contrasting sides of his character
-Reveals his determination to speak to the ghost that resembles his father shows that
he is capable of courage and decisiveness in contrast to his melancholy mood
-Concluding lines reveal that he might have harbored suspicions about the death of his
father
Characterization: Laertes
1. -At the moment his warning is without foundation
-Will shortly see that his excessive moralizing parallels that of his father, Polonius
-Laertes’ speech suggest that he, not Hamlet, has misled young ladies
Characterization: Ophelia
1. Yes.
2. 19: 48-54
3. Elizabethan women were taught to obey their fathers and brothers, and so such
obedience would seem natural to her
She loves and respects her brother and is sure he has her best interests in mind
She is innocent and inexperience
Oedipus Complex
A son's amorous obsession with his mother.
The phrase is derived from the story of the ancient Theban hero Oedipus, who
unknowingly killed his father and married his mother.
Literary occurrences of the Oedipus complex include Andre Gide's Oedipe and Jean
Cocteau's La Machine infernale, as well as the most famous, Sophocles' Oedipus Rex.
Electra Complex
A daughter's amorous obsession with her father.
The term Electra complex comes from the plays of Euripides and Sophocles entitled
Electra, in which the character Electra drives her brother Orestes to kill their mother and
her lover in revenge for the murder of their father.
Characterization: Polonius
1. Concern for both his son and daughter.
2. Pompous, meddlesome and domineering.
3. Laertes’ advice to his sister.
4. Polonius’s actions are exactly opposite to the advice he gives to Laertes.
Grey Clawson
B. Vogt
AP Literature
5 October 2010
Theme
1. Claudius’ revelry (festivities, celebrations), but Hamlet goes beyond the indictment of
one man’s drinking to condemn the deterioration of the Danish character.
2. Essential nobility
3. Deep intelligence and sensitivity.
Plot
1. Horatio’s fears that the spirit may lure him to madness and a violent death
2. Elizabethan willingness to take ghosts seriously
Hamlet’s exit leaves the audience in a high state of tension
3. Nemian lion’s nerve 25:93
Theme
1. Horrified.
2. At having been killed without a chance to cleanse his soul in preparation for death
Theme
1. And duller shouldst thou be than the fat weed
That roots itself in ease on Lethe wharf,
Wouldst thou not stir in this.
So lust, though to a radiant angel link'd,
Will sate itself in a celestial bed,
And prey on garbage.
With juice of cursed hebenon in a vial,
And in the porches of my ears did pour
The leperous distilment
And curd, like eager droppings into milk,
The thin and wholesome blood: so did it mine;
And a most instant tetter bark'd about,
Most lazar-like, with vile and loathsome crust,
2. They reinforce the picture of Denmark as a decaying country led by a corrupt king,
Claudius.
Plot
1. His swift decision to feign madness in order to conceal his plans to avenge his father’s
murder.
2. 32:196-197
3. For every man has business and desire,
Such as it is; and for mine own poor part,
Look you, I'll go pray.
Never make known what you have seen to-night.
Grey Clawson
B. Vogt
AP Literature
5 October 2010
And what so poor a man as Hamlet is
May do, to express his love and friending to you,
God willing, shall not lack
Overall Question
1. Less than two months
2. Claudius poured poison into his ear while he was sleeping.
3. His defensiveness suggests that he feels guilty
4. Most critcs agree that Hamlet indulges in deliberately strange behavior in order to
conceal his knowledge of the ghost’s revelations. Given his situation, he feels he must
proceed with the utmost caution at court lest Claudius learn of his plans for revenge.
5. Base answers on the details that Hamlet reveals in his first soliloquy
His apparently deep melancholy, which stems for his father’s death, was compounded by
his mother’s hasty remarriage to her brother-in-law.