HAMLET: A02
Rhetoric: Persuasive speaking
Hamlet is heavily composed with soliloquys -> psychologizes characters
Act 1 Scene 1: Ghost is seen by guards
- ‘Tis now struck twelve’: Stereotypical ‘Ghost hour’
- Pathetic Fallacy: ‘Tis bitter cold’
- Hyperbole: ‘Not a mouse stirring’: Lack of life in Denmark
- ‘It harrows me with fear and Wonder’: Horatio religious + Philosophical perspective?
- Simile: ‘Is it not like the king?’
- Foreshadowing: ‘Such was the very armour he had on when he th’ambitious Norway
combatted’. Hamlet could not live up to his father, Norway defeated him, Denmark is
now unprotected.
- Alliteration: ‘Main motive of our preparations’ – Fortinbras proses a real threat
- Contrast: ‘Time be thine’; Laertes has all the time in the world / control over time.
- Foreshadowing: ‘Young Fortinbras, of unimproved mettle, hot and full’.
- Costume: A little month, or ere those shoes were old
With which she follow'd my poor father's body’ (Same shoes funeral
and wedding)
- Kairos (perfect timing) Horatio’s presence
Act 1, Scene 2: C’s address to the Danish court, audience meet Hamlet
- Stage directions: ‘Hamlet, dressed in black’. He is still mourning.
- Foreshadowing ‘they are actions that a man might play: But I have that within which
passeth show’: Hamlet’s clothing is not only an outer symbol but also an inner reflection.
- Metaphor: ‘Unweeded garden’: Denmark is overgrown with corruption
- Contrast: ‘Dear brother’s death’ ‘memory be green’ (symbolic of new life, quick
moving on)
- Metaphor: ‘Contracted in one brow of woe’: trying to present Denmark as a united
nation
- Juxtaposition: ‘Sometimes sister, now our queen’.
- Foreshadowing: ‘Young Fortinbras, holding a weak supposal of our worth’.
- Metaphor: ‘The head is not more native to the heart’. C closer to L than to H, great chain
of being truly corrupted.
- Personification: ‘My thoughts and wishes bend again towards France’. Laertes has
agency, he can leave
- Pun: ‘A little more than kin, and less than kind’. Hamlet’s opening line.
- Pun: ‘I am too much in the sun’. Foreshadow of how he will find out the truth? Double
entendre of ‘sun’.
- Simplicity: ‘All lives must die’. No sympathy for her son.
- Anaphora: ‘Nor,… x5)
- Gender roles: ‘Tis Unmanly Grief’.
- Parapraxes: ‘You are the most immediate to our throne’.
- Contrast: ‘It is most retrograde to our desire’. But C allows Laertes to return to school:
surely it is less of a threat to have Hamlet away? Perhaps he already has murderous
intent.
, - Manipulative language: ‘Let not thy mother lose her prayers’
- Audience context: ‘Two months dead, nay not so much, not two’
- Allusion: ‘Hyperion to a Satyr’ (God to a woodland creature, part beast) Comparing old
King H to C
- Personification: ‘Frailty thy name is woman!’
- Mythological simile: ‘Like Niobe, all tears’. Niobe’s excessive price / arrogance (hubris)
caused he gods to kill all her children. A scary foreshadow of how Gertrudes inability to
give up her Queen position led to Hamlet’s death.
- Mythological simile: ‘No more like my father than I to Hercules’.
- Euphemism: ‘Incestous sheets’
- Foreshadowing: ‘All is not well. I doubt some foul play’.
- Synecdoche: ‘O’ this too sullied flesh would melt’
- ‘Grown’ ‘groan’ (sexual phonology)
Act 1, Scene 3: Polonius family interaction
- Parallel: ‘Perhaps he loves you now’… ‘but he is subject to his own birth’.
- Contrast: ‘To thine own self be true’. P is accepting of L in aways that G was not to H.
- Possessive Language: ‘My daughter and your honour.’ ‘Be something scanter of your
maiden presence’.
- Metaphor: ‘Green girl’. Inexperienced and new.
Act 1, Scene 4 Hamlet meets ghost
- Repetition: ‘It is very cold’
- Religious imagery: ‘Be thou a spirit of health or goblin damned’
- Suicidal ideology: ‘I do not set my life at a pin’s fee’
- Foreshadowing: ‘Something is rotten in the state of Denmark’
Act 1, Scene 5: Ghost informs H of his father’s murder
- Double Entendre: ‘Whither wilt thou lead me?’ Physical location vs to death
- Instruction: ‘So art thou to revenge when thou shalt hear’ ‘Revenge his foul and most
unnatural murder’
- Allusion: ‘A serpent stung me’ (Garden of Eden) ‘Now wears his crown’
- Zoomorphism: ‘Incestuous, that adulterate beast’
- Metaphor: ‘Sleeping within my Orchard’
- Analogy: ‘Let not the royal bed of Denmark be A couch for luxury and damned incest’.
- ‘Leave her to heaven’: Paints Claudius as extremely corrupt.
- Alliteration: ‘Wild and whirling words’. Indicates Horatio believes Hamlet has already
lost some sanity.
- Calculated language: ‘To put an antic disposition on’
Act 2, Scene 1 Polonius spends a spy on Laertes, Ophelia reports H’s madness
- Ambiguity: ‘You must not put another scandal on him’. Causes audience to question
Laertes character.
- Simile: ‘As if he’d been loosed out of hell’. Ironic, hell / heaven has caused this madness
- ‘Mad for thy love?’ A femine trait painted on Hamlet
- Gender roles: ‘As you did command, I did repel his letters and denied his acess to me’.
Ophelia cannot win between males.
Act 2, Scene 2 Hamlet sets up the play.
- ‘Hamlet’s transformation’
Rhetoric: Persuasive speaking
Hamlet is heavily composed with soliloquys -> psychologizes characters
Act 1 Scene 1: Ghost is seen by guards
- ‘Tis now struck twelve’: Stereotypical ‘Ghost hour’
- Pathetic Fallacy: ‘Tis bitter cold’
- Hyperbole: ‘Not a mouse stirring’: Lack of life in Denmark
- ‘It harrows me with fear and Wonder’: Horatio religious + Philosophical perspective?
- Simile: ‘Is it not like the king?’
- Foreshadowing: ‘Such was the very armour he had on when he th’ambitious Norway
combatted’. Hamlet could not live up to his father, Norway defeated him, Denmark is
now unprotected.
- Alliteration: ‘Main motive of our preparations’ – Fortinbras proses a real threat
- Contrast: ‘Time be thine’; Laertes has all the time in the world / control over time.
- Foreshadowing: ‘Young Fortinbras, of unimproved mettle, hot and full’.
- Costume: A little month, or ere those shoes were old
With which she follow'd my poor father's body’ (Same shoes funeral
and wedding)
- Kairos (perfect timing) Horatio’s presence
Act 1, Scene 2: C’s address to the Danish court, audience meet Hamlet
- Stage directions: ‘Hamlet, dressed in black’. He is still mourning.
- Foreshadowing ‘they are actions that a man might play: But I have that within which
passeth show’: Hamlet’s clothing is not only an outer symbol but also an inner reflection.
- Metaphor: ‘Unweeded garden’: Denmark is overgrown with corruption
- Contrast: ‘Dear brother’s death’ ‘memory be green’ (symbolic of new life, quick
moving on)
- Metaphor: ‘Contracted in one brow of woe’: trying to present Denmark as a united
nation
- Juxtaposition: ‘Sometimes sister, now our queen’.
- Foreshadowing: ‘Young Fortinbras, holding a weak supposal of our worth’.
- Metaphor: ‘The head is not more native to the heart’. C closer to L than to H, great chain
of being truly corrupted.
- Personification: ‘My thoughts and wishes bend again towards France’. Laertes has
agency, he can leave
- Pun: ‘A little more than kin, and less than kind’. Hamlet’s opening line.
- Pun: ‘I am too much in the sun’. Foreshadow of how he will find out the truth? Double
entendre of ‘sun’.
- Simplicity: ‘All lives must die’. No sympathy for her son.
- Anaphora: ‘Nor,… x5)
- Gender roles: ‘Tis Unmanly Grief’.
- Parapraxes: ‘You are the most immediate to our throne’.
- Contrast: ‘It is most retrograde to our desire’. But C allows Laertes to return to school:
surely it is less of a threat to have Hamlet away? Perhaps he already has murderous
intent.
, - Manipulative language: ‘Let not thy mother lose her prayers’
- Audience context: ‘Two months dead, nay not so much, not two’
- Allusion: ‘Hyperion to a Satyr’ (God to a woodland creature, part beast) Comparing old
King H to C
- Personification: ‘Frailty thy name is woman!’
- Mythological simile: ‘Like Niobe, all tears’. Niobe’s excessive price / arrogance (hubris)
caused he gods to kill all her children. A scary foreshadow of how Gertrudes inability to
give up her Queen position led to Hamlet’s death.
- Mythological simile: ‘No more like my father than I to Hercules’.
- Euphemism: ‘Incestous sheets’
- Foreshadowing: ‘All is not well. I doubt some foul play’.
- Synecdoche: ‘O’ this too sullied flesh would melt’
- ‘Grown’ ‘groan’ (sexual phonology)
Act 1, Scene 3: Polonius family interaction
- Parallel: ‘Perhaps he loves you now’… ‘but he is subject to his own birth’.
- Contrast: ‘To thine own self be true’. P is accepting of L in aways that G was not to H.
- Possessive Language: ‘My daughter and your honour.’ ‘Be something scanter of your
maiden presence’.
- Metaphor: ‘Green girl’. Inexperienced and new.
Act 1, Scene 4 Hamlet meets ghost
- Repetition: ‘It is very cold’
- Religious imagery: ‘Be thou a spirit of health or goblin damned’
- Suicidal ideology: ‘I do not set my life at a pin’s fee’
- Foreshadowing: ‘Something is rotten in the state of Denmark’
Act 1, Scene 5: Ghost informs H of his father’s murder
- Double Entendre: ‘Whither wilt thou lead me?’ Physical location vs to death
- Instruction: ‘So art thou to revenge when thou shalt hear’ ‘Revenge his foul and most
unnatural murder’
- Allusion: ‘A serpent stung me’ (Garden of Eden) ‘Now wears his crown’
- Zoomorphism: ‘Incestuous, that adulterate beast’
- Metaphor: ‘Sleeping within my Orchard’
- Analogy: ‘Let not the royal bed of Denmark be A couch for luxury and damned incest’.
- ‘Leave her to heaven’: Paints Claudius as extremely corrupt.
- Alliteration: ‘Wild and whirling words’. Indicates Horatio believes Hamlet has already
lost some sanity.
- Calculated language: ‘To put an antic disposition on’
Act 2, Scene 1 Polonius spends a spy on Laertes, Ophelia reports H’s madness
- Ambiguity: ‘You must not put another scandal on him’. Causes audience to question
Laertes character.
- Simile: ‘As if he’d been loosed out of hell’. Ironic, hell / heaven has caused this madness
- ‘Mad for thy love?’ A femine trait painted on Hamlet
- Gender roles: ‘As you did command, I did repel his letters and denied his acess to me’.
Ophelia cannot win between males.
Act 2, Scene 2 Hamlet sets up the play.
- ‘Hamlet’s transformation’
