Hamlet Study Guide – English IV - Dennis

• Be familiar with the plot of the play (i.e. who kills who, where major events take
place, what the motivation is for major characters, etc.)

• Be prepared to discuss the characters. That is what kind of people they are.
Whether or not they are decent or evil. Be prepared to defend yourself with
examples from the play.

• Be prepared to discuss how things “seem” in the play. Appearance vs. Reality.

• If you have been paying attention, the test is not terribly difficult. The test will be
100% Hamlet.

• Be prepared to analyze the 21 quotes we noted during our study of the play. They
are all listed below. If they end with “ETC,” this means that you should know the
ENTIRE passage, and not just the part that is on the study guide. Remember, I am
NOT asking you to memorize these passages. I am simply asking you to know who
says them, what they mean, and what is happening in the play when they are said.

Quotes:

Act I, Scene II

Hamlet: O, that this too too sullied flesh would melt,

Thaw and resolve itself into a dew,

Or that the Everlasting had not fix’d

His canon ‘gainst self-slaughter! O God! God!

Act I, Scene III

Polonius: And these few precepts in thy memory

Look thou character. Give thy thoughts no tongue,

Nor any unproportion’d thought his act. ETC.

Act I, Scene IV

Marcellus: Something is rotten in the state of Denmark.

Act I, Scene V

Hamlet: There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,

Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.

Act II, Scene II

Hamlet: … for there is nothing either good or

 bad but thinking makes it so.

Act II, Scene II

Hamlet: What a piece of

Work is a man! How noble in reason, how infinite in

Faculty, in form and moving how express and admirable, in

Action how like an angel, in apprehension how like a

God –

Act II, Scene II

Hamlet: The play’s the thing

Wherein I’ll catch the conscience of the King.

Act II, Scene I

Hamlet: To be, or not to be, that is the question:

Whether ‘tis nobler in the mind to suffer

The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,

Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,

And by opposing end them. ETC.

Act III, Scene I

King: Madness in great ones must not unwatch’d go.

Act III, Scene II

Gertrude: The lady doth protest too much, methinks.

Act III, Scene II

Hamlet: What, frighted with false fire?

Act III, Scene III

Hamlet: Let me be cruel, not unnatural.

I will speak daggers to her, but use none.

Act III, Scene III

King: O, my offence is rank, it smells to heaven.

Act III, Scene III

 King: My words fly up, my thoughts remain below.

Words without thoughts never to heaven go.

Act III, Scene IV

Hamlet: I must be cruel, only to be kind.

This bad beings, and worse remains behind.

Act IV, Scene V

Hamlet: O, from this time forth,

My thoughts be bloody , or be nothing worth.

Act IV, Scene VII

King: Revenge should have no bounds.

Act V, Scene I

Hamlet: Alas, poor Yorick. I knew him, Horatio: a fellow of infinite jest,

Of most excellent fancy. He hath borne me on his back a

Thousand times; and now, how abhorred in my imagination

It is! My gorge rises at it. ETC.

Act V, Scene I

Queen: Sweets for the sweet. Farewell.

Act V, Scene II

Hamlet: The cat will mew, and dog will have his day.

Act V, Scene II

Horatio: Now cracks a noble heart. Good night, sweet prince,

And flights of angels sing thee to thy rest.