Difference between revisions of "BM1 - Introduction to Literature - Assignment 2: Hamlet"

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1. Analyse the communicative situation in this dialogue. Concentrate on form, length of individual speeches, interruptions and the domination of one speaker or idea.
2. What do you find out about Hamlet's and Ophelia's characters in this passage? Identify different modes of characterisation and analyse their effect.
3. Discuss different options of accounting for Hamlet's behaviour in this scene in the light of your knowledge of the entire play.

Hamlet, Quarto Edition (London: 1603), E1 r-v/ cf. 3rd. Arden Edition: 3.3.102-148

    Ham.   Are you honest?
    Ofel.   What meanes my Lord?
    Ham.   That if you be faire and honest,
Your beauty should admit no discourse to your honesty.
    Ofel.   My Lord, can beauty haue better priuiledge than with honesty?
    Ham.   Yea mary may it; for Beauty may transforme
Honesty, from what she was into a bawd:
Then Honesty can transforme Beauty:
This was sometimes a Paradox,
But now the time giues it scope.
I neuer gaue you nothing.
    Ofel.   My Lord, you know right well you did,
And with them such earnest vowes of loue,
As would haue moou’d the stoniest breast aliue,
But now too true I finde,
Rich giftes waxe poore, when giuers grow vnkinde.
    Ham.   I neuer loued you.
    Ofel.   You made me beleeue you did.|<E1v>
    Ham.   O thou shouldst not a beleeued me!
Go to a Nunnery goe, why shouldst thou
Be a breeder of sinners? I am my selfe indifferent honest,
But I could accuse my selfe of such crimes
It had beene better my mother had ne’re borne me,
O I am very prowde, ambitious, disdainefull,
With more sinnes at my becke, then I haue thoughts
To put them in, what should such fellowes as I
Do, crawling between heauen and earth?
To a Nunnery goe, we are arrant knaues all,
Beleeue none of vs, to a Nunnery goe.
    Ofel.   O heauens secure him!
    Ham.   Wher’s thy father?
    Ofel.   At home my lord.
    Ham.   For Gods sake let the doores be shut on him,
He may play the foole no where but in his
Owne house: to a Nunnery goe.
    Ofel.   Help him good God.
    Ham.   If thou dost marry, Ile giue thee
This plague to thy dowry:
Be thou as chaste as yce, as pure as snowe,
Thou shalt not scape calumny, to a Nunnery goe.
    Ofel.   Alas, what change is this?
    Ham.   But if thou wilt needes marry, marry a foole,
For wisemen know well enough,
What monsters you make of them, to a Nunnery goe.
    Ofel.   Pray God restore him.
    Ham.   Nay, I haue heard of your paintings too,
God hath giuen you one face,
And you make your selues another,
You fig, and you amble, and you nickname Gods creatures,
Making your wantonnesse, your ignorance,
A pox, t’is scuruy, Ile no more of it,
It hath made me madde: Ile no more marriages,
All that are married but one, shall liue,
The rest shall keepe as they are, to a Nunnery goe,
To a Nunnery goe.|<E2>    exit