Finish reading all of Act 2. Then complete all of the questions that follow.
2.2 Questions
1) Find a place or places in scenes one or two when Hamlet seems to have stopped playing with Polonius or Rosencrantz and Guildenstern and talks straight from the heart.
The following questions correspond to Hamlet’s “O, what a rouge” soliloquy (2.2.576-634) :
a) Is it obvious to the audience or reader that Hamlet is alone onstage? What else could he mean when he begins, “Now I am alone”?
b) Why is the Prince calling himself a “rouge” and a “peasant slave”?
c) Hamlet compares himself to the player. What does this comparison reveal about Hamlet’s self-perception?
d) Throughout Hamlet, Shakespeare uses the word ear twenty-seven times. Have you noticed this? What symbolic possibilities do you think are contained in this fact?
e) Find lines or phrases that explain why Hamlet thinks himself a coward.
f) Do you think Hamlet is a coward, or is he acting cautiously by looking for external evidence to prove Claudius’s guilt?
Reminder Test on Acts II and III will be Monday, January 26!
