Thursday, October 22 Act 4- Ophelia's madness; Laertes is back in town

Coming up: vocabulary quiz Hamlet 6 tomorrow.
In class: Power Point vocabulary review
            Act 4; if you are absent, here is the links: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5a1ks-S4UNU&list=PL8653490E2C680C5C&index=20

Learning targets: I can determine two or more themes or central ideas of a text and analyze their development over the course of the text, including how they interact and build on one another to produce a complex account; provide an objective summary of the text.

I can propel conversations by posing and responding to questions that probe reasoning and evidence, so as to promote divergent and creative perspectives.

Essential question: How do moral perspectives impact the development of character and plot?

We left off on Tuesday with Hamlet dragging out the body of Polonius from Gertrude's "closet."

Act 4, scene 1  
 
           Claudius enters Gertrude's chamber and inquires after Hamlet. She replies that he is "Mad as the sea and wind when both contend / Which is the mightier" (4.1.7-8).
                 Explain the simile.

Claudius realizes that if either he or Gertrude had been behind the arras, they would have been killed. It is clear now that Hamlet's "liberty is full of threat to all" (4.1.14).

Where does Claudius ask Rosencrantz and Guidenstern to bring Polonius' body?

Act 4, scene 2

Rosencrantz and Guidenstern find Hamlet and ask him where he has body, to which Hamlet says Rosencrantz is a "sponge".  Explain this metaphor.

   15 Ay, sir, that soaks up the king's countenance, his
 16   rewards, his authorities. But such officers do the
 17   king best service in the end: he keeps them, like
 18   an ape, in the corner of his jaw; first mouthed, to
 19   be last swallowed: when he needs what you have
 20   gleaned, it is but squeezing you, and, sponge, you
 21   shall be dry again.

Why cannot Claudius simply have Hamlet arrested?

According to Hamlet, with to what does man "fat" himself?

 Act 4, scene 4
Claudius' goal of sending Hamlet to England

What will happen to Hamlet in England?

Act 4, scene 5

 Gertude agrees to speak with Ophelia, as "Her speech is nothing /   Yet the unshaped use of it doth move / The hearers to collection" (4.5.6-8). 

From Ophelia's song, what two reasons may be deduced as to the reason for her madness? 

In case we need a plot reminder, Claudius get us back on track:
                                 
        When sorrows come, they come not single spies
 79   But in battalions. First, her father slain:
 80   Next, your son gone; and he most violent author
 81   Of his own just remove: the people muddied,
 82   Thick and unwholesome in their thoughts and whispers,
 82   For good Polonius' death; and we have done but                          greenly,
 83   In hugger-mugger to inter him: poor Ophelia
 84  Divided from herself and her fair judgment

Now here come Laertes back from France and the people want him to be king.

           Note he not only angry at his father's death, but that some are calling Laertes a bastard and that his father was cuckold.
                    What does he mean and why in this regimented, patriarchal society of the Shakespeare's time would this have resonated deeply?