Tuesday, October 6 Ac2.2: the players and Hamlet's "O What a Rogue and peasant slave am I" soliloquy

Please turn in yesterday's writing assignment.
Coming up: Wednesday- vocabulary review
                    Thursday- vocabulary quiz and handout for new words
In class: film - Hamlet meets the players
                        "O, what a rogue and peasant slave am I" soliloquy graphic organizer / class handout / copy below

If you are absent from class, you may watch the following, episode (10)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J8C4gPU_hEU&index=10&list=PL8653490E2C680C5C

 When Rosencrantz and Guildenstern announce to Hamlet that the players are arriving.
from minute 6:37 until the end and then begin with the next episode (11) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FnrKScWFR3M&list=PL8653490E2C680C5C&index=11
AND Hamlet's "O what a rogue and peasant slave am I" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dyB4ktn7AIE&list=PL8653490E2C680C5C&index=12

Review: The time is out of joint: O cursed spite 
               That ever I was born to set it right!
 From the clip when just below the players arrive:
What does Hamlet mean when he says: "I am but mad-northwest?"

From after the clip when Hamlet has watched the players perform:
What does Hamlet wish the players to do?

Name____________________________

Hamlet's Soliloquy: O, what a rogue and peasant slave am I! (2.2)

Now I am alone. O, what a rogue and peasant slave am I! (560)

Is it not monstrous that this player here,                   But in a fiction, in a dream of passion,

Could force his soul so to his own conceit

That from her working all his visage wann'd,

Tears in his eyes, distraction in's aspect,

A broken voice, and his whole function suiting

With forms to his conceit? and all for nothing!

For Hecuba!

What's Hecuba to him, or he to Hecuba, (569)

That he should weep for her? What would he do,

Had he the motive and the cue for passion                         

That I have? He would drown the stage with tears

And cleave the general ear with horrid speech,

Make mad the guilty and appall the free,

Confound the ignorant, and amaze indeed

The very faculties of eyes and ears. Yet I,                                    

A dull and muddy-mettled rascal, peak,

Like John-a-dreams, unpregnant of my cause, (578)

And can say nothing; no, not for a king,

Upon whose property and most dear life

A damn'd defeat was made. Am I a coward?

Who calls me villain? breaks my pate across?

Plucks off my beard, and blows it in my face?

Tweaks me by the nose? gives me the lie i' the throat,

As deep as to the lungs? who does me this?

Ha!

'Swounds, I should take it: for it cannot be                                                                               

But I am pigeon-liver'd and lack gall (588)                                                                   

To make oppression bitter, or ere this                                                                              

I should have fatted all the region kites

With this slave's offal: bloody, bawdy villain!

Remorseless, treacherous, lecherous, kindless villain!

O, vengeance!

Why, what an ass am I! This is most brave, (593)

That I, the son of a dear father murder'd,

Prompted to my revenge by heaven and hell,

Must, like a whore, unpack my heart with words,

And fall a-cursing, like a very drab, (597)

A scullion!

Fie upon't! foh! About, my brain! I have heard

That guilty creatures sitting at a play

Have by the very cunning of the scene

Been struck so to the soul that presently

They have proclaim'd their malefactions;

For murder, though it have no tongue, will speak

With most miraculous organ. I'll have these players        

Play something like the murder of my father

Before mine uncle: I'll observe his looks; (607)

I'll tent him to the quick: if he but blench,

I know my course. The spirit that I have seen

May be the devil: and the devil hath power

To assume a pleasing shape; yea, and perhaps

Out of my weakness and my melancholy,

As he is very potent with such spirits, (613)

Abuses me to damn me: I'll have grounds

More relative than this: the play's the thing

Wherein I'll catch the conscience of the king.

1.       What is the image created when Hamlet

       refers to himself as a “rogue and peasant slave?”

2.       (Lines 561-570) Hamlet describes himself to the player who earlier recited a speech earlier in the scene. How does Hamlet describe this player? Use text

3.       What would the actor do if he was as passionate as Hamlet’s situation in having to kill King Claudius? Give 3 textual examples.

4.       What type of figurative language device is

“drown the stage with tears?”

5.       What does the simile “Like a John-a-dreams, unpregnant of my cause” imply about Hamlet’s behavior?

6.       And how does Hamlet actually perceive himself as behaving? Give three textual examples


7. Paraphrase lines 605-616.