Hamlet: A Study Commentary - Contents and Sample Section

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CONTENTS

 

Act One Scene One             

 Commentary   1

Overview

   7

Student Response

   9

 

    

Act One Scene Two        

 Commentary   10

                                               

 Overview   21

                                               

 Student Response   21

 

Act One Scene Three        

 Commentary  23

                                               

 Overview  28

                                               

 Student Response  28

  

Act One Scene Four          

 Commentary  30

                                               

 Overview  33

                                                           

Student Response  34

            

            Act One Scene Five          

Commentary  36
                                                            Overview  44
                                                            Student Response  45

Commentary Practice – General

  46 

Practice Commentary 1

  47

Model Commentary

  50

Commentary – Further Suggestions 

  52

Additional Essay Questions (A Level) 

  52

Additional Essay Question (AP)

  52  
     

Act Two  Scene One              

 Commentary  53

                                                 

 Overview  58

                                                 

 Student Response  58

Act Two Scene Two               

 Commentary  59

                                                

 Overview  87

                                                 

 Student Response  88

Additional Essay Questions (A Level)

  91

Additional Essay Question (AP)

  91  

Act Three Scene One             

 Commentary  92
Overview  107

                                               

 Student Response 108

Act Three Scene Two             

 Commentary 109

                                                

 Overview 124

                                                

 Student Response 125

Act Three Scene Three         

 Commentary 128

                                                

 Overview 131

                                                 

 Student Response 131

Act Three Scene Four            

 Commentary 132

                                                

 Overview 143

                                                

 Student Response 144

Practice Commentary 3                                              

 146

Additional Essay Question (A Level) 

 147

Additional Essay Question (AP) 

 147
     

Act Four Scene One              

 Commentary 148

                                                

 Overview 150

                                                

 Student Response 150

Act Four Scene Two              

 Commentary 152

                                                 

 Overview 153

                                                

 Student Response 153

Act Four Scene Three          

Commentary 154

                                                 

 Overview 156

                                                

 Student Response 156

Act Four Scene Four          

Commentary 157

                                                 

 Overview 160

                                                

 Student Response 160
       

Act Four Scene Five         

Commentary 161

                                                 

 Overview 167

                                                

 Student Response 167
       

Act Four Scene Six         

Commentary 169

                                                 

 Overview 170

                                                

 Student Response 170
       

Act Four Scene Seven        

Commentary 171

                                                 

 Overview 179

                                                

 Student Response 180
       

Practice Commentary 4

   181  

Additional Essay Question (A Level) 

 182

Additional Essay Question (AP) 

 182
       

Act Five Scene One              

Commentary 183

                                                 

 Overview 193

                                                

 Student Response 194

Act Five Scene Two               

 Commentary 196

                                                 

 Overview 217

                                                

 Student Response 218

Practice Commentary 5

 220

Additional Essay Question (A Level)

 221

Additional Essay Question (AP)

 221
     

Further Essay Questions (International Baccalaureate)

 222

Further Essay Questions (A Level) 

 223

Advanced Placement Free-Response Questions 

 224

Commentary ‘Help’ Pages 

 225

Appendix A

 227  

Appendix B

 228  

Appendix C

 228  

                             

Act Four Scene Two 

Commentary   

 

 

  

There’s more fun in this scene, most of it had by Hamlet. His opening phrase, with its alliteration and the 

1

   disrespectful ‘stowed’ (outdoing Claudius’ ‘shipped’ in the previous scene), sets the tone.

 

    

 

   Is there an opportunity for the actor, in the opening lines (‘But soft!…Hamlet?’), to start as if Hamlet fears the

2

   Ghost may be about to reappear? If so there’ll be an opening for comic anticlimax in ‘O, here they come’; and

 

   his pursuers could enter comically (thus preparing us for one of the possible endings to the scene).

 

    

 

   The fun in this scene for the audience lies in watching how Hamlet deals with these over-zealous lackeys of

 

   Claudius. Analyse his methods.

 

  

 

  • Rosencrantz’ question is bald and direct, all monosyllables; Hamlet’s tri-syllabic ‘Compounded’, followed by a touch of philosophising, is designed to stop Rosencrantz in his tracks.

  • Rosencrantz persists, however (still largely in monosyllables) and Hamlet comes at him from a different direction, wit the ambiguous ‘it’, which forces Rosencrantz onto the back foot: he has to ask what Hamlet is talking about.

  • He threatens them, subtly, implying that he knows their secrets (‘counsel’ – perhaps referring back to their forced confession that they were ‘sent for’, Act Two Scene Two line 292 )…and rebuffs them (he will keep his ‘own’ counsel).

  • He insults them, not so subtly (‘sponge’), and reminds them of his status (partly in the formality of ‘replication’).

  • When Rosencrantz, incensed, unwisely asks for an explanation, he gives one, accusing them directly of greed (there’s no implication in the sponge image that they ‘suck up’ to Claudius, although of course they do that as well as soak up his favours).

  • ‘Such officers’: Disparaging in tone

  • ‘In the end’: Implies they will come to a bad one: once the king has squeezed them dry of the information they have gleaned for him, he will also squeeze them dry of the favours they have taken from him (ie he’ll take them back). There’s also a possible reference to the digestive process: the ape king (Claudius, who is ‘aping’ Hamlet’s father) will swallow them and when he has taken all their goodness will excrete them ‘in the [through his] end’

  • He now mocks their lack of understanding, and he does it with an ambiguity (‘a knavish speech sleeps in a foolish ear’) which will further confuse them: either

‘sarcasm is wasted on fools like you’, or

‘it would be a bad (‘knavish’) speech which was comfortable in a fool’s ear’.

  • Rosencrantz tries plainness (‘My lord, you must…to the King’); Hamlet responds with a riddle (solve it for yourself – if you can).
     
27-28   ‘Hide, fox, and all after’: (The reference is missing in some editions.) Who might the fox be, and how would
    Hamlet exit in each case?
     
   

 

  • Claudius: Hamlet will lead them off enthusiastically in pursuit of the fox he has driven from its hole.

  • Polonius: Hamlet in leaving will call out to the body wherever it is hidden (presuming that’s somewhere on stage).

  • Hamlet himself: He will run off (cackling again?), forcing them to give chase.
     
   

Overview:  other things to note

     

 

 

Setting

  • Rottenness (corruption) in Denmark once more:  the ‘sponge’ image

 

 

Character

 

 

  • Hamlet:  His irrepressible urge to philosophise, satirise, riddle. His pretended madness is also real self-indulgence.

  • Rosencrantz and Guildenstern: Hamlet is harsher towards them than hitherto. Has he gained some inkling of their part in a plot against him? He has just described them as ‘adders fang’d’.

   

Action

   

  • The pace (brevity) of this scene. Hamlet is on the move verbally throughout it; is he on the move physically?

 

 

Style

   

  • Two opposite uses of language – to clarify and to obscure

 

 

Themes

   

  • The transience of Man’s life (he is ‘kin’ to dust)

  • How we use each other

 

 

Student Response

     
    ‘What does Hamlet mean when he says he’s compounded Polonius’ body with dust? Isn’t “compounded it
    with” the same as “mixed it with”?’ (Phillipa). ‘He has hasn’t had time to bury it, has he?’
     
    We look at other references in this and the next scene. Hamlet says here that he’s going to ‘lug the guts into the
    neighbour room’. In the next scene he tells Claudius it’s under, or near, the stairs up to the lobby, but also that
     it’s being eaten by worms. So there’s some confusion.
     
   

‘Why would we expect otherwise? Isn’t that one of Hamlet’s tactics?’ (Edward).

     
    ‘Why did Hamlet hide the body anyway? Did he think Gertrude wouldn’t tell anybody what he’d done?’ (Amit).
     
    ‘Maybe it’s because there’s no sense in doing it that he did it’ (Edward). Good answer.
   

 

   

*****

     
   

 ‘How can anyone enjoy being mad?’ (Aneesha).

     
    ‘We haven’t decided that he’s really mad. That’s for later. And even if he were…“There is a pleasure sure in
    being mad which none but madmen know.”’
     
   

*****

     
   

The scene, short though it is, could be useful in answering two essay questions. One is about madness, the other

    deals with the concept of comic relief (in tragedy). The comic relief one first:
   

'Comedy is both a theatrical device and a way in which we try to deal with our hopelessness.'

   

Discuss both of those aspects of comedy, using material from plays you have studied.

     
 

 

The question on madness:

   

‘The representation of madness is one of the greatest challenges a playwright may face; and it is

   

one of the most chilling theatrical experiences a playgoer can be subjected to.’

   

Discuss a play or novel in which the derangement of a major character plays an important part.

   

 

    As it stands that’s more of an Advanced Placement question. The IB Drama equivalent would be more general
    in its second part:
 

 

Discuss two plays in which characters, in one way or another, lose a sense of reality, and show

   

how that can be a ‘chilling experience’ for the audience.

     
    The second part of a GCE A Level essay would be more precise:
   

Consider Shakespeare’s dramatisation of Hamlet’s and Ophelia’s madnesses in light of the above comment.

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