Hamlet-Act 4 Questions
Scene 1 - Summarize this scene in your own words below.
Scene 2 – Summarize this scene in your own words below.
Scene 3
1. Read the conversation between Hamlet and Claudius (lines 19-42). Summarize each
person’s lines (paying particular attention to what Hamlet is saying).
2. In the above conversation Hamlet discusses how a king can “go a progress through the guts
of a beggar” (3.3.34). This is, in effect, describing a food chain. Draw a diagram illustrating
this food chain.
Scene 4
1. See soliloquy and answer questions (attached).
Scene 5
1. In what significant ways does Ophelia’s madness differ from Hamlet’s? What do these
differences imply about Hamlet’s madness?
Scene 6
1. The incident with the pirates seems very convenient… Do you think Hamlet somehow
planned the encounter before leaving for England? Why or why not? What does that say
about him if he did?
Scene 7
1. Hamlet sends a letter to Claudius and Gertrude, but we only get to read the one to Claudius.
Write the letter Hamlet would send his mother. It should be around the same length as the
one he sent to Claudius.
2. Gertrude provides some very specific details of Ophelia’s death. How would she be able to
acquire this information?
Hamlet Soliloquy 4.4
How all occasions do inform against me,
34
And spur my dull revenge! What is a man
If his chief good and market of his time
Be but to sleep and feed? A beast, no more.
Sure, he that made us with such large discourse,
Looking before and after, gave us not
That capability and god-like reason
40
To fust in us unused. Now, whether it be
Bestial oblivion, or some craven scruple
Of thinking too precisely on the event,
A thought which, quartered, hath but one part wisdom
And ever three parts coward - I do not know
Why yet I live to say 'This thing's to do;'
Sith I have cause and will and strength and means
To do it. Examples gross as earth exhort me:
Witness this army of such mass and charge
Led by a delicate and tender prince,
Whose spirit with divine ambition puffed
Makes mouths at the invisible event,
Exposing what is mortal and unsure
To all that fortune, death and danger dare,
Even for an egg-shell. Rightly to be great
Is not to stir without great argument,
But greatly to find quarrel in a straw
When honour's at the stake. How stand I then,
That have a father killed, a mother stained,
50
Excitements of my reason and my blood,
60
And let all sleep, while to my shame I see
The imminent death of twenty thousand men,
That, for a fantasy and trick of fame,
Go to their graves like beds, fight for a plot
Whereon the numbers cannot try the cause,
Which is not tomb enough and continent
To hide the slain? O, from this time forth
My thoughts be bloody, or be nothing worth!
_____________________________________
1.
What event spurs this soliloquy?
2.
Hamlet’s question in lines 35-37 implies what?
3.
Why does Hamlet call his revenge “dull”?
4.
What does “thing” in line 46 refer to?
5.
What is the overall tone of this soliloquy? Cite specific words/phrases that convey tone.
6. Why would Shakespeare write Hamlet’s final soliloquy in this manner?