Hamlet IB
Directions:
- Write an IB on Hamlet.
- Your main claim should be one of the following themes. Your three sub-claims can be anything else from the play but be sure your first sub-claims can be support by a quote from either of the two soliloquy’s we studied.
- The IB outline and soliloquies are provided below.
- In-text citation needs to be act, scene, and lines, like this:
- Hamlet states, “To be, or not to be” (Shakespeare 3.1.90-91).
- Shakespeare writes, “Now might I do it pat” (3.3. 80-83).
- Due: Wednesday, February 26, 2020, 9am
Themes:
- Appearances
- Revenge
- Surveillance
- Corruption
- Mirroring
- Madness
- Power
- Tragic Hero (not a theme)
IB Outline:
- One Introduction
- Author, title, & very brief summary
- Background and/or set up
- Thesis with main claim and three sub-claims
- One Body Paragraph
- Claim (topic sentence)
- Set Up (transition from claim to evidence)
- Evidence (quote)
- Support (explain how the evidence supports the claim)
- With quote
- That idea could lead to other parts of the play
- Conclusion/Transition (Close out your analysis and/or transition to next point)
Soliloquies:
Hamlet’s “To be, or not to be” Soliloquy
To be, or not to be: that is the question:
Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them? To die: to sleep;
No more; and by a sleep to say we end
The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks (70)
That flesh is heir to, ’tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wish’d. To die, to sleep;
To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there’s the rub;
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause: there’s the respect
That makes calamity of so long life;
For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,
The oppressor’s wrong, the proud man’s contumely,
The pangs of despis’d love, the law’s delay, (80)
The insolence of office and the spurns
That patient merit of the unworthy takes,
When he himself might his quietus make
With a bare bodkin? who would fardels bear,
To grunt and sweat under a weary life,
But that the dread of something after death,
The undiscover’d country from whose bourn
No traveller returns, puzzles the will
And makes us rather bear those ills we have
Than fly to others that we know not of? (90)
Thus conscience does make cowards of us all;
And thus the native hue of resolution
Is sicklied o’er with the pale cast of thought,
And enterprises of great pitch and moment
With this regard their currents turn awry,
And lose the name of action.– Soft you now!
The fair Ophelia! Nymph, in thy orisons
Be all my sins remember’d.
Hamlet’s “Now might I do it pat” – Soliloquy
Now might I do it pat, now he is praying;
And now I’ll do’t. And so he goes to heaven;
And so am I revenged. That would be scann’d:
A villain kills my father; and for that, (80)
I, his sole son, do this same villain send
To heaven.
O, this is hire and salary, not revenge.
He took my father grossly, full of bread;
With all his crimes broad blown, as flush as May;
And how his audit stands who knows save heaven?
But in our circumstance and course of thought,
‘Tis heavy with him. And am I then revenged,
To take him in the purging of his soul,
When he is fit and season’d for his passage? (90)
No!
Up, sword; and know thou a more horrid hent:
When he is drunk asleep, or in his rage,
Or in the incestuous pleasure of his bed;
At game, a-swearing, or about some act
That has no relish of salvation in’t;
Then trip him, that his heels may kick at heaven,
And that his soul may be as damn’d and black
As hell, whereto it goes. My mother stays:
This physic but prolongs thy sickly days.