Woden’MoonmTyrTyr’s Day, September 18: “Words, Words, Words”
EQ: What do “words” “really” “mean”?
· Welcome! Gather pen/pencil, paper, wits!
· Opening Freewrite: Words, Words, Words
· Reading: Hamlet II
· Reading Project
o Proposals returned
o Journals assigned
ELACC12RI3: Analyze and explain how individuals, ideas, or events interact and develop
ELACC12RL4-RI4: Determine the meaning of words and phrases as they are used in text
ELACC12RL5: Analyze an author’s choices concerning how to structure specific parts of a text
ELACC12RI5: Analyze and evaluate effectiveness of the structure an author uses
ELACC12RI6: Determine an author’s point of view or purpose in a text
ELACC12RI7: Integrate and evaluate multiple sources to address a question or solve a problem
ELACC12RI8: Delineate and evaluate the reasoning in seminal British texts
ELACC12W2: Write informative/explanatory texts to examine and convey complex ideas
ELACC12W4: Produce clear and coherent writing appropriate to task, purpose, and audience
ELACC12W10: Write routinely over extended and shorter time frames
ELACC12L1: Demonstrate standard English grammar and usage in speaking and writing.
ELACC12L6: Acquire and use general academic and domain-specific words and phrases
Freewrite 100 words:
Sticks and stones
May break my bones,
But words
Will never hurt me.
– True or False?
cliché
Reading Guide: William Shakespeare, Hamlet
II, i: “What Forgeries You Please” – What sort of man, and dad, is Polonius?
Remember that in I, iii Polonius sent his son Laertes to France with a “few precepts” of fatherly advice, like “This above all: to thine own self be true.” Now Polonius gives his assistant a mission.
1. Polonius tells Reynaldo to find “Danskers” in Paris who know Laertes, and to tell them that Laertes is “very ______, / ______so and so,” and then to tell these Danskers “what ______you please – marry, none so ______/ As may ______him,” about Laertes. Such “As gaming, my lord,” says Reynaldo; Polonius adds “Ay, or ______, ______, ______, ______, ______.” What is that last one?
2. How, according to Reynaldo, does this command contradict Polonius’ instructions earlier?
3. After a moment where he appears to forget what he was going to say, Polonius tells Reynaldo his reason for spreading lies about his son. Put this reason in your own words:
4. After Reynaldo leaves, Ophelia comes in, “affrighted.” Briefly describe what Hamlet did:
5. Polonius assumes “the very ecstasy of ______” has made Hamlet “______” (he uses the word several times in this scene).
6. He says they must tell whom, and why?
7. Polonius apologizes to Ophelia for underestimating the situation: “I feared he did but trifle / And meant to ______thee.” What seems to us odd about calling that a “trifle”?
Reading Guide: William Shakespeare, Hamlet
II, ii: “The Soul Of Wit” – How do characters assess causes and effects of Hamlet’s behavior?
1. Hamlet’s childhood friends, ______and ______, are recruited to discover the reason for what the King calls “Hamlet’s ______.”
2. According to Claudius, Hamlet is upset because of ______.
3. After these friends leave, Polonius tells the King that he has two sorts of news:
- “Th’ ambassadors from ______… are joyfully returned”; and
- “I have found / The very cause of ______.”
4. Which of these does the King want to hear about first – and what does this tell you about him?
5. Gertrude says that she believes Hamlet’s “distemper” to be caused by two things: “His ______and our ______.”
6. Polonius gives the King a letter in which Norway’s king swears that Fortinbras will leave Denmark’s borders and return to Norway if Denmark will let Fortinbras and his army do what?
7. The King says he will read this letter “At our ______.” What does this tell you about him?
8. Saying that he does not wish “to waste ______, ______, and ______,” and that “______is the soul of wit,” Polonius promises that he “will be ______.” What is ironic about his saying all of this this way?
9. He says that Hamlet “is ______,” and that “to define true ______” is “to be nothing else but ______.”
10. The Queen has a request: “More ______with less ______.” What does she mean?
11. Polonius says that he believes Hamlet’s madness has been caused by ______.
12. So – how many different explanations for Hamlet’s madness have we so far in this scene?
Reading Guide: William Shakespeare, Hamlet
II, ii (continued): “The Soul Of Wit” –causes and effects of Hamlet’s behavior
13. The King wants to “try it further,” so Polonius suggests that he and the King hide behind an arras to watch how ______and ______interact.
The exchange that follows is too awesome for fill-in-the-blank; instead, note“text” and “subtext.”
LORD POLONIUS Do you know me, my lord?HAMLET Excellent well; you are a fishmonger.
LORD POLONIUS Not I, my lord.
HAMLET Then I would you were so honest a man.
LORD POLONIUS Honest, my lord!
HAMLET Ay, sir; to be honest, as this world goes, is to be one man picked out of ten thousand.
LORD POLONIUS That's very true, my lord.
HAMLET For if the sun breed maggots in a dead dog, being a god kissing carrion,--Have you a daughter?
LORD POLONIUS I have, my lord.
HAMLET Let her not walk i' the sun: conception is a blessing: but not as your daughter may conceive. Friend, look to 't.
LORD POLONIUS [Aside] How say you by that? Still harping on my daughter: yet he knew me not at first; he said I was a fishmonger: he is far gone, far gone: and
truly in my youth I suffered much extremity for love; very near this. I'll speak to him again. What do you read, my lord?
HAMLET Words, words, words.
LORD POLONIUS What is the matter, my lord?
HAMLET Between who?
LORD POLONIUS I mean, the matter that you read, my lord.
HAMLET Slanders, sir: for the satirical rogue says here that old men have grey beards, that their faces are wrinkled, their eyes purging thick amber and plum-tree gum and that they have a plentiful lack of wit, together with most weak hams: all which, sir, though I most powerfully and potently believe, yet I hold it not honesty to have it thus set down, for yourself, sir, should be old as I am, if like a crab you could go backward.
LORD POLONIUS [Aside] Though this be madness, yet there is method in 't. Will you walk out of the air, my lord?
HAMLET Into my grave.
LORD POLONIUS Indeed, that is out o' the air. Aside How pregnant sometimes his replies are! …My honourable
lord, I will most humbly take my leave of you.
HAMLET You cannot, sir, take from me any thing that I will
more willingly part withal: except my life, except
my life, except my life.
Reading Guide: William Shakespeare, Hamlet
II, ii (continued): “The Soul Of Wit” –causes and effects of Hamlet’s behavior
14. After Polonius leaves, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern enter. They joke with Hamlet, who tells them that he believes “Denmark’s a ______.”
15. Rosencrantz says this is not true, and Hamlet replies, “Why then … there is nothing either ______nor ______but ______makes it so.”
16. Rosencrantz says that Hamlet thinks this because his “______makes it one.”
17. Hamlet replies, “I could be bounded in a ______and count myself a ______of ______, were it not that I have had ______.”
Put this idea into your own words:
18. After a bit, Hamlet confronts them with his suspicion that they were “sent for,” meaning:
19. He warns his friends that they are “deceived….I am but ______north-north-west. When the wind is southerly, I know a ______from a ______” – meaning what?
20. After the actors come in and audition, Hamlet takes one aside and makes what request?
21. Because he has “heard / That ______creatures sitting at a ______” have been known to suddenly confess their crimes, he hits upon a plan to “have these players / Play something like the ______of my ______/ Before mine uncle ….If he do ______, / I’ll know my course.” Summarize his plan:
22. He will try this because, he says, “The ______that I have seen / may be the ______.”
23. He concludes, “The ______the ______/ Wherein I’ll catch the ______of the ______.”
Reading Guide: William Shakespeare, Hamlet
III, i: “A crafty madness” – What sort of man, and dad, is Polonius?
1. Guildenstern calls Hamlet’s behavior “a ______madness” that “keeps aloof / When we would bring him on to some confession / Of his true state” – meaning what?
2. Referring to their plan to spy on Hamlet and Ophelia, King Claudius calls himself and Polonius “______espials.” What’s his point?
3. Claudius, in a secret aside (soliloquy), confesses a “heavy ______.” What is it?
4. While Claudius and Polonius hide behind a curtain, Hamlet speaks his famous soliloquy, about which you will freewrite. Then he speaks to Ophelia, who gives him what?
5. He replies, “I never ______you ______.”
6. When she persists, he asks, “Are you ______?”, then, “Are you ______?”
7. When she asks what he means, he says what about these two qualities?
8. He says, “I did ______you once.” She says, “Indeed, my lord, you made me ______so.” He then says, “You should ______have ______me …. I ______you ______.”
9. He tells her, “Get thee to a ______; why wouldst thou be a ______of sinners?....We are arrant ______all; ______of us.”
10. He asks where her ______is; she replies, “At ______.” He then promises that if she gets married, he’ll give her “this ______for thy ______: be thou as ______as ice, as pure as ______, thou shalt not escape ______.” What made him angry?
11. What “paintings” does Hamlet complain “hath made me ______”?
12. After viewing this scene, Claudius expresses two doubts: that Hamlet’s “thoughts” do not “tend” toward ______, or that it is really ______at all.
13. “There’s something in his ______,” says Claudius, “O’er which his ______sits on ______”; so he decides to send Hamlet where?
14. Polonius tells Ophelia, “You need not tell us what Lord Hamlet said; / We ______.” THINK: If you were Ophelia, would this comfort you?