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Hamlet
Includes questions specifically asking about this Shakespeare play. Questions about the movie version should be placed under "Movies." Questions about Shakespeare should be placed under his category under Authors and Poets.
2,117 Questions
How was act you of Hamlet from first to last based on when they occur in the story?
Hamlet gives his "To be, or not to be" soliloquy.
Hamlet tells Ophelia, "Get thee to a nunnery!"
Hamlet decides not to kill Claudius while he prays.
Hamlet kills Polonius.
What does it mean when Hamlet says what is this quintessence of dust?
In order to understand this quotation, you must do three things. First you must go to a dictionary and look up "quintessence". Go ahead. I'll wait.
OK, now you know what the word means, you need to know that according to Christian teachings, the first man was made from dirt. And essentially, according to Christian thought, people are nothing more than animated bags of dust. And after we die, we go back to being dirt, hence the line from the funeral service "ashes to ashes; dust to dust".
Now read the whole passage the quotation is taken from, starting with the words "What a piece of work is a man?" (It's about halfway through the immensely long Act 2 Scene 2 of Hamlet, if you are looking) What does that first bit mean? "What a piece of work is a man; how noble in reason, how infinite in faculties, in form and moving, how express and admirable, in action how like an angel, in apprehension how like a god; the beauty of the world, the paragon of animals . . ." Yes, you may have to look up "paragon", but even if you don't you should get what Hamlet is talking about here. He's praising the human race. In fact he's heaping praise on humanity, saying how wonderful people are as a species. And then he drops the other shoe: "and yet, to me, what is this quintessence of dust?" Hamlet doesn't care how great the human race appears to be. To him it's just the "quintessence of dust." And you know what that means.
As always, however, when looking at lines from a play, it is not enough just to understand the words and how they fit into the context of the sentence, but we have to look at the character who is saying them, and who he is saying them to. At this point in the play, two of Hamlet's schoolfellows, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, have been hired by the King to spy on Hamlet. But Hamlet has outed them and is messing with their minds so they will tell the King what Hamlet wants the King to hear. Therefore he tells them that he is terribly depressed, that he has "foregone all custom of exercise" (which we know to be a lie--he tells us in Act 5 that he has "kept in continual practice") and that "Man delights not me", which is the line immediately after "What to me is this quintessence of dust?" Basically this is all a show for the benefit of Ros and Guil.
Oh, yes, he loves it. He wilfully misunderstands them and leads them off on tangents just to baffle them. Eventually, in this scene, he gets tired of fencing with them and outright accuses them of attempting to manipulate him so as to find out more about him (which, of course, is exactly what they are doing). Guildenstern gives the mealy-mouthed answer "Oh, my lord, if my duty be too bold, my love is too unmannerly" which is to say "We're only doing this because we care about you." and Hamlet gets really mad at them and compares what they are doing to playing a musical instrument. Basically, by the end of the scene he tells them to get lost, and for the rest of the play he holds them in utter contempt (see the next time they meet when Hamlet calls Rosencrantz a sponge)
Instead of Hamlet being killed by the king's orders who is killed instead?
Rosencrantz and Guildenstein. Which are two of the courtiers in Fortinbras of Denmark.
What did Claudius grandmother do?
claudius's grandmother was usually poisoning people who get in the way of herself and her own family
Song about Gertrude in Hamlet?
There is no song about Gertrude in Hamlet. The songs are: songs sung by Ophelia in her madness, mostly about death and loss of virginity, and the song sung by the gravedigger, which is a love song. None of them could possibly refer to Gertrude.
act madly, when really he is not mad.
Are rosencrantz and guildenstern reluctant and unwilling to obey the king?
No; they are more than happy to serve the king.
What is it that seems to chase the ghost away in hamlet?
A cock (rooster) crowing. Roosters are, of course, supposed to crow at dawn, and the ghost says he must return to Purgatory before then.
In Hamlet what line is the quote all men are liars and what act and scene is it in?
Perhaps the line you are thinking of is Hamlet's line in Act III Scene 1: "We are arrant knaves all; believe none of us."
What is the adaptation of Hamlet on Disney?
Disney based the Lion King loosely around the plot of Hamlet- missing some vital plot points nevertheless.
Why would you read hamlet in class?
It is an epic masterpiece of our time, and far by Shakespeare's most popular peace. It teaches readers many things in literature important to our time.
How do you learn in the first scene that something is wrong in Denmark?
When you approach a guard, the guard's job is to challenge you and ask who you are. But the first line of the play "who's there?" are not delivered by the guard on duty. Instead it is delivered by Bernardo, who has come to replace the guard. He knows there's a guard there, because he has come to replace him. So why is he not sure who is there? (We find out later, it's because he's not sure whether it might be a ghost)
In the first two words of the play, Shakespeare tells us that something is not right, just by putting them in the wrong character's mouth.
Ophelia belongs to many people. Ophelia is when a person can not think independently.
True or false Claudius never admits his guilt to the audience?
False. He admits it twice, once in a remark just before Hamlet's To Be or Not To Be speech and again in his soliloquy "Oh, my offence is rank, it smells unto heaven."
How does Gertrude not know how king Hamlet died?
She's not a doctor. Claudius claimed that Hamlet Sr. died of a snakebite, and she had no reason to believe otherwise. The key line is her response to Hamlet's "Almost as bad, dear mother, as to kill a king and marry with his brother." Hamlet is accusing her of the murder, but her response "To kill a king?" shows that to Gertrude the real shocker in Hamlet's statement is that his father was murdered at all. She had no idea.
