To view the excerpt through a historical lens, which questions should the reader ask? Select 2 options.
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Read the excerpt from Act III of Hamlet.Hamlet: 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 pith and moment With this regard their currents turn awry, And lose the name of action.
Read the excerpt from Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead by Tom Stoppard.GUIL (musing) The law of probability, it has been oddly asserted, is something to do with the proposition that if six monkeys (he has surprised himself) . . . if six monkeys were . . .ROS Game?GUIL Were they?ROS Are you?GUIL (understanding) Game. (Flips a coin.) The law of averages, if I have got this right, means that if six monkeys were thrown up in the air for long enough they would land on their tails about as often as they would land on their—ROS Heads. (He picks up the coin.)GUIL Which even at first glance does not strike one as a particularly rewarding speculation, in either sense, even without the monkeys. I mean you wouldn’t bet on it. I mean I would, but you wouldn’t. . . .ROS Heads. . . .. . . (He looks up at Guil—embarrassed laugh.) Getting a bit of a bore, isn’t it?
Read the excerpt from an analysis of Hamlet’s "To be or not to be” speech in Act III of Hamlet.Shakespeare begins the speech with the line "To be, or not to be: that is the question” and then proceeds to ask multiple questions throughout the speech.
Read the excerpt from Hamlet. Hamlet: O! that this too too solid flesh would melt, Thaw and resolve itself into a dew; Or that the Everlasting had not fix’dHis canon ’gainst self-slaughter! O God! O God! How weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable Seem to me all the uses of this world. Fie on ’t! O fie! ’tis an unweeded garden, That grows to seed; things rank and gross in naturePossess it merely. That it should come to this!
Read the excerpt from Act IV of Hamlet.Claudius: I ha ’t: When in your motion you are hot and dry,— As make your bouts more violent to that end,— And that he calls for drink, I’ll have prepar’d him A chalice for the nonce, whereon but sipping,If he by chance escape your venom’d stuck, Our purpose may hold there.
Read the excerpt from Act V of Hamlet.Gertrude: Sweets to the sweet: farewell! [Scattering flowers.] I hop'd thou shouldst have been my Hamlet's wife;I thought thy bride-bed to have deck'd, sweet maid, And not have strew'd thy grave.
Read the excerpt from Hamlet.Hamlet: Follow him, friends: we’ll hear a play to-morrow. [Exit POLONIUS, with all the Players but the First.] Dost thou hear me, old friend; can you play the Murder of Gonzago?First Player: Ay, my lord.Hamlet: We’ll ha ’t to-morrow night. You could, for a need, study a speech of some dozen or sixteen lines, which I would set down and insert in ’t, could you not?First Player: Ay, my lord.
Read the excerpts from Hamlet by William Shakespeare and Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead by Tom Stoppard.Excerpt 1HAMLET. To be, or not to be: that is the question:Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to sufferThe 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 endThe heart-ache and the thousand natural shocksThat flesh is heir to, ’tis a consummationDevoutly to be wish’d.Excerpt 2HAMLET comes down to footlights and regards the audience. The others watch but don’t speak. Hamlet clears his throat noisily and spits into the audience. A split second later he claps his hand to his eye and wipes himself. He goes back upstage.ROS A compulsion towards philosophical introspection is his chief characteristic, if I may put it like that. It does not mean he is mad. It does not mean he isn’t. Very often, it does not mean anything at all. Which may or may not be a kind of madness.
Read the excerpt from Act III of Hamlet.Hamlet: 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 pith and moment With this regard their currents turn awry, And lose the name of action.
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Read the excerpt from Hamlet.Hamlet: My fears forgetting manners—to unsealTheir grand commission; where I found, Horatio, O royal knavery! an exact command, Larded with many several sorts of reasons Importing Denmark’s health, and England’s too, With, ho! such bugs and goblins in my life, That, on the supervise, no leisure bated, No, not to stay the grinding of the axe, My head should be struck off.
Read the excerpt from Hamlet.Claudius: Why to a public count I might not go, Is the great love the general gender bear him; Who, dipping all his faults in their affection, Would, like the spring that turneth wood to stone, Convert his gyves to graces; so that my arrows,Too slightly timber’d for so loud a wind, Would have reverted to my bow again, And not where I had aim’d them.
Read the excerpt from Hamlet.Hamlet: Follow him, friends: we’ll hear a play to-morrow. [Exit POLONIUS, with all the Players but the First.] Dost thou hear me, old friend; can you play the Murder of Gonzago?First Player: Ay, my lord.Hamlet: We’ll ha ’t to-morrow night. You could, for a need, study a speech of some dozen or sixteen lines, which I would set down and insert in ’t, could you not?First Player: Ay, my lord.
Read the excerpt from Act V of Hamlet.Gertrude: Sweets to the sweet: farewell! [Scattering flowers.] I hop'd thou shouldst have been my Hamlet's wife;I thought thy bride-bed to have deck'd, sweet maid, And not have strew'd thy grave.
Read the excerpt from Hamlet.Claudius: Why to a public count I might not go, Is the great love the general gender bear him; Who, dipping all his faults in their affection, Would, like the spring that turneth wood to stone, Convert his gyves to graces; so that my arrows,Too slightly timber’d for so loud a wind, Would have reverted to my bow again, And not where I had aim’d them.
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Read the excerpt from Act IV of Hamlet.Hamlet: Rightly to be great Is not to stir without great argument, But greatly to find quarrel in a straw When honour’s at the stake.
Read the excerpt from Hamlet.Hamlet: No, faith, not a jot; but to follow him thither with modesty enough, and likelihood to lead it; as thus: Alexander died, Alexander was buried, Alexander returneth into dust; the dust is earth; of earth we make loam, and why of that loam, whereto he was converted, might they not stop a beer-barrel?Imperious Caesar, dead and turn’d to clay,Might stop a hole to keep the wind away
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