HAMLETACT ONE

Thematic ideas REVENGE APPEARANCE/REALITY

“Why seems it so particular with thee?”

“My most seeming virtuous queen”

Villain, smiling villain” “Perchance I shall think meet

to put an antic disposition on.” Hamlet’s “tenders” of

affection are “brokers”

Fortinbras wants to avenge and regain loss of his father and lands

Ghost urges Hamlet to get revenge for his murder

Fortinbras has “sharked up a list of lawless resolutes”

“Revenge his foul and most unnatural murder”

“Thy commandment all alone shall live within the book and volume of my brain”

Act OneClaudius: Present King of Denmark“How is it that the clouds still hang on

you?”“ ‘Tis unmanly grief. It shows a will most

incorrect to heaven.”“Throw to earth this unprevailing woe and

Think of us as of a father”

Act One Hamlet: Prince of Denmark “A little more than kin and less than kind” “I have that within that passes show/These

but the trappings and the suits of woe” Appearance/Reality

“Oh that this too, too, sullied flesh would melt, thaw and resolve itself into a dew” Suicide

“Frailty, thy name is woman”

Act One “Thrift, thrift, Horatio. The funeral baked meats did coldly

furnish forth the marriage tables.” characterization: Hamlet’s wit

“ The world is an unweeded garden that grows to seed things rank and gross in nature” Decay

“Or that the Everlasting had not fixed his canon against self slaughter.” Suicide

“Thy commandment all alone shall live within the book and volume of my brain.” revenge

“The time is out of joint/Oh, cursed spite. That ever I was born to put it right.”

Thematic Motifs POISON “and in the porches

of mine ear did pour the leprous distilment “

MADNESS “Which might deprive

you of your sovereignty and draw you into madness.”

“I hereafter shall think meet to put an antic disposition on.”

Thematic Motifs Decay and Corruption “The canker galls the

infants of the spring too oft before their buttons be disclosed.”

Poison motif established in Act I, scene iv

“Something is rotten in the state of Denmark” - Marcellus

Entrapment “Springes to catch

“woodcocks” Polonius