Hamlet

"They made love to this employment." Hamlet says that R & G chose to be spies, so he is not responsible if they meet a spy's death. It's a bit of sophistry, really, since even were that true, Hamlet didn't have to add "no shriving time allowed" so their souls would have to go to Purgatory rather than Heaven.

Yes, in Act 5, Scene 2. "He that hath kill'd my king and whored my mother, popp'd in between the election and my hopes . . ." The lines do not appear in all versions of the play.

The skull of Yorick

When King Claudius takes a drink, he orders the cannons and trumpets to sound. It was a custom in Denmark apparently. Hamlet says "it is a custom more honoured in the breach than in the observance." In other words, it is a custom which it is more honourable not to follow. Hamlet's dislike of this custom is probably brought on by Claudius's love of doing it (he does it again in Act 5 at the contest between Hamlet and Laertes); anything Claudius likes, Hamlet feels bound to hate.

To haunt them.

It is a sign of strange violence which is about to take place.

The soliloquy itself tells us why. "Is it not monstrous that this player here, in a fiction, in a dream of passion, could force his soul so to his own conceit that from her working all his visage wanned, tears in his eyes, distraction in his aspect, a broken voice, and his whole function serving with forms to his conceit. And all for nothing! For Hecuba! What's Hecuba to him or he to Hecuba that he should weep for her?"

The player presents the image of a man in the grip of a great emotion. But it is all false--he is an actor, not the real Aeneas. But Hamlet is the real Hamlet and so he asks, "What would he do had he the motive and the cue for passion that I have?" If the actor had Hamlet's troubles, wouldn't he be even more passionate? But Hamlet upbraids himself for peaking like John a' Dreams and saying nothing. He should be screaming! He should be cursing like a very drab! He should call Claudius a villain, a bloody, bawdy villain, a lecherous, treacherous, kindless villain! He should scream out for vengeance!

"Springes" (not springs) are traps. Hamlet is all about people trying to trap other people. First we have Claudius and Polonius trying to trap Hamlet into making some admission about the cause of his apparent lunacy. The bait they use in these traps is Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, then Ophelia, and finally Gertrude. Meanwhile Hamlet sets a trap "The Mousetrap" to get a confession of guilt out of Claudius and it works. By the end of act three, Hamlet and Claudius no longer need to set traps for information. Claudius sends Hamlet to England to collect Danegeld, but it is really a trap to kill Hamlet. Hamlet is not caught, but Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are "hoist with their own petard" and die. Claudius and Laertes set new traps for Hamlet, but these end up killing Laertes and Gertrude and exposing Claudius, enabling Hamlet to kill him without opposition from whoever is left alive at that point.

Bernardo. He says, "Who's there?"

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Hamlet's childhood friends. Claudius sends them to spy on Hamlet.

Yes (apex)

nunnery

She is in Act 1 Scene 2 ("Hamlet, cast thy nighted colour off."), Act 2 Scene 2 ("I doubt it is no other but the main: his father's death and our o'erhasty marriage"), Act 3 Scene 1 ("And for your part, Ophelia, I wish that your good beauties be the happy cause of Hamlet's wildness"), Act 3, Scene 2 ("The lady doth protest too much methinks"), Act 3, Scene 4 (The Closet Scene, her big scene "O Hamlet thou hast cleft my heart in twain!"), Act 4, Scene 1 ("Mad as the sea and wind when both contend"), Act 4 Scene 5 ("So full of artful jealousy is guilt it spills itself in fearing to be spilt"), Act 4 Scene 7 ("There is a willow grows aslant the brook"), and Act 5 Scene 2 ("No, no, the drink, the drink!")

That's nine of the twenty scenes--she's on stage a lot.

Claudius sent with Rosencrantz and Guildenstern an order to the king of England to have Hamlet put to death. I assume this is the "murderous commission" you are talking about. Hamlet finds it and substitutes another which is worded just the same, except it is Rosencrantz and Guildenstern who are to be killed, not Hamlet.

Yes in his night club acts and on record

They don't really change his attitude, but perhaps help to focus it. As he explains in his soliloquy "How all occasions do inform against me" you don't have to have thought a thing through consistently to do it. He looks at the soldiers who are happy to risk their lives for no good reason, "for an eggshell" and realizes that if he is going to do something about his problems, he has to spend less time thinking about them and more time doing something about them. He has already partially realized this when he acted spontaneously in stabbing the spy in his mother's bedroom, but as the play progresses he will increasingly take the initiative and grasp at opportunities as they arise: the chance to change the orders carried by Ros and Guil, the opportunity of boarding the pirate ship, and the proposed duelling match with Laertes, which puts him feet away from Claudius with a deadly weapon in his hand. He becomes a fatalist, and things work out a lot better for him when they do.

The final paragraph of Baines's document reads: These thinges, with many other shall by good & honest witnes be approved to be his opinions and Comon Speeches

Yes. They are both completely privy to the plot to spy on Hamlet in Act III Scene 1. Gertrude is also privy to the plan to set Rosencrantz and Guildenstern and Polonius as spies on Hamlet.

Claire Bloom played Gertrude opposite Stewart when he played Claudius in 1982 in the BBC production starring Sir Derek Jacobi. Penny Downie played her in the 2009 production which starred David Tennant.

This is a misquotation of Gertude's line in Hamlet, "The lady doth protest too much, methinks." She is watching a play in which a woman swears up and down she will never remarry and does so immediately on her husband's death. The line is ironic since Gertrude herself did exactly what the woman in the play did. The line has come to be quoted (or as often or not, misquoted) to describe someone who is a little too insistent, and so is not believable.

Gertrude and Claudius were in-laws before the murder of King Hamlet. When they married afterwards, it was considered incest.

Hamlet was upset by his mother's speedy marriage because it suggests she didn't mourn for her husband properly. Also, the idea of marrying her husband's brother disgusts and angers Hamlet, particularly since Gertrude is getting old and "The heyday in the blood is tame".

Hamlet disapproves of the marriage which is why he's always thinking about it.

It is man vs. self.

Hamlet calls Rosencrantz a "sponge" because he always does as Cladius pleases. He obeys him no matter what. He has no thoughts of his own--he just sucks up the thoughts and plans of the king and they come out when he is squeezed. Hamlet says that like a sponge once Claudius is done with him, he will get rid of him.

Because Hamlet says to Ophelia "Get thee to a nunnery: why wouldst thou be a

breeder of sinners?"

It's just a convenient term to identify the scene because it's such a memorable and striking line. It could just as easily be called the "To be or not to be" scene but that's more of a mouthful.

He says as much. "I loved Ophelia! Forty thousand brothers with all their quantity of love could not make up my sum." Of course, whether he really believes it or is trying to make fun of Laertes' pomposity is another matter.

Willow