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Hamlet

Hamlet

What a Difference a Word Makes

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If Hamlet’s first words in the play, “A little more than kin and less than kind,” are an aside, as most editors indicate by prefacing the line with the stage direction, “aside,” then this line would be Hamlet’s first and shortest soliloquy. At the very least, it would be the first time any character in the play spoke directly to the audience,
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The Forms of Things Unknown

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For all the power of his poetry, volume of his vocabulary and sheer prolific output, Shakespeare seemed intent on telling us that we cannot know, truly know, what we most want to know, or even think we already know. We know this on several levels.

We’re frustrated enough that he left no correspondence, no diary, no memoir, no hand-written manuscripts.
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Video: To Be Or Not To Be

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David Tennant as Hamlet in a film of the Royal Shakespeare Company’s award-winning production of Shakespeare’s greatest play.
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Hamlet’s First Soliloguy

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This is Hamlet’s first extended soliloquy.
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Birds — Martial and Marital

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In Hamlet (1.1.432), a cock trumpets in the morn, a bird more fitting to the combative nature of Hamlet than the lark that heralds the morn after the first night of marital bliss in Romeo and Juliet (3.5.6).
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Hamlet’s Last Soliloquy

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Hamlet’s final soliloquy appears in earlier quarto versions of the play but is omitted from the First Folio. Scholars continue to debate reasons for this.
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Seasons, Elements and Humors

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The four seasons, the four elements and the four humors were all related. The four seasons spring, summer, autumn and winter paralleled the four humors blood/sanguine, yellow bile/choleric, phlegm/phlegmatic and black bile/melancholic, which in turn paralleled the four elements air, fire, water and earth. Good health and good disposition of character or personality were believed to be a matter of keeping one’s humors in proper balance.
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But now, my cousin Hamlet and my son

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King
But now, my cousin Hamlet and my son—
Hamlet, aside
A little more than kin and less than kind.Paronomasia
King
How is it that the clouds still hang on you?
Hamlet
Not so, my lord; I am too much in the sun.

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O that this too too solid flesh would melt

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O, that this too too sullied flesh would melt,
Thaw, and resolve itself into a dew!Epizeuxis & Metaphor

Or that the Everlasting had not fix’d
His canon ‘gainst self-slaughter!Metonymy
O God, God,
How Synonymiaweary, stale, flat, and unprofitable
Seem to me all the uses of this world!

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Thrift, thrift, Horatio

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Hamlet 
Thrift, thrift, Horatio.Epizeuxis The funeral baked meats
Did coldly furnish forth the marriage tables.Alliteration
Would I had met my dearest foe in heaven
Or ever I had seen that day, Horatio!
My father—methinks I see my father.

He was a man. Take him for all in all,
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Source:
Act 1
Scene 2
Line 187

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But, to my mind, though I am native here

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But, to my mind, though I am native here
And to the manner born, it is a custom
More honor’d in the breach than the observance.
This heavy-headed revel east and west
Makes us traduc’d and tax’d of other nations.
They clepe us drunkards, and with swinish phrase
Soil our addition. And, indeed, it takes
From our achievements,
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Source:
Act 1
Scene 4
Line 16

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It will not speak. Then I will follow it

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Hamlet
It will not speak. Then I will follow it.
Horatio
Do not, my lord.
Hamlet
Why, what should be the fear?
I do not set my life at a pin’s fee.
And for my soul, what can it do to that,
Being a thing immortal as itself?
It waves me forth again.
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Source:
Act 1
Scene 4
Line 70

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I am thy father’s spirit

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Ghost
I am thy father’s spirit,
Doomed for a certain term to walk the night
And for the day confined to fast in fires
Till the foul crimes done in my days of nature
Are burnt and purged away. But that I am forbid
To tell the secrets of my prison house,
I could a tale unfold whose lightest word
Would harrow up thy soul,
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Source:
Act 1
Scene 5
Line 14

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Adieu, adieu, adieu. Remember me

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Ghost
Adieu, adieu, adieu.Epizeuxis Remember me.
 He exits.
Hamlet
O all you host of heaven! O Earth!Anapodotons & Apostrophes What else?
And shall I couple hell?Pysma
O fie! Hold, hold, my heart,
And you, my sinews, grow not instant old,

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O day and night, but this is wondrous strange!

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Horatio
O day and night, but this is wondrous strange.
Hamlet
And therefore as a stranger give it welcome.
There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy. But come.

There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy

Here,
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Source:
Act 1
Scene 5
Line 185

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Words, words, words

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Hamlet
Words, words, words.Epizeuxis
Polonius
What is the matter, my lord?
Hamlet
Between who?
Polonius
I mean the matter Antanaclesis
that you read, my lord.

Though this be madness, yet there is
method in ‘t.

Hamlet
Slanders,
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Source:
Act 2
Scene 2
Line 210

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My excellent good friends! How dost thou

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Hamlet
My excellent good friends! How dost thou,
Guildenstern? Ah, Rosencrantz! Good lads, how do
you both?

Why, then, ’tis none to you, for there is nothing
either good or bad but thinking makes it so.

Rosencrantz
As the indifferent children of the earth.
Guildenstern
Happy in that we are not overhappy.
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Source:
Act 2
Scene 2
Line 242

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Connected Notes:
What a Difference a Word Makes