Hamlet+4

__**Hamlet 4**__ __6. Relationships and Character Development__ __4. Quotations__ __3. Questions__ __8. Ambiguity__
 * Claudius (to Hamlet)
 * He is afraid to reveal the truth and uses Hamlet to protect himself
 * "His liberty is a threat to all" (4.1.15). "It will be laid to us, whose providence/should have kept short, restrained, and out of haunt/this mad young man. But so much was our love/we would not understand what was most fit" (4.1.18-21). Claudius makes Hamlet's insanity out to be dangerous and acts like he has his best interest at heart. He says it is their duty (from God) to take care of him and stop his madness.
 * Shipping Hamlet off "transports his poisonous shot, may miss our name/and his the woundless air" (4.1.44-5). This reveals that Claudius is really just looking out for his own reputation and position.
 * "Hamlet, this deed, for thine especial safety/(which we do tender, as we dearly grieve/for that which though hast done) must send thee/hence" (4.3.44-7). Claudius puts on a act to deceive others that he is really a good person.
 * "The present death of Hamlet" (4.3.74). Claudius reveals his true motives and plan.
 * Hamlet sees the truth
 * "I see a cherub that sees them" (4.3.56). Hamlet knows that Claudius is sending him to his death.
 * Claudius, "Revenge should have no bounds" (4.7.146).
 * Hamlet is under Ambiguity
 * relationship with R and G
 * Hamlet tells them they are being used, calls them a sponge that will be twisted dry when the king is done with them (4.2.15-21).
 * Ophelia and others
 * others believe she is mad
 * "Her speech is nothing,/yet the unshaped use of it doth move/the hearers to collection" (4.5.9-11). This also connects insanity to prose, or unstructured language!
 * Laertes and King
 * Laertes is consumed with revenge and anger, much like Hamlet, but even more so
 * "But my revenge will come" (4.7.31).
 * "It warms the very sickness in my heart/that I shall live and tell him to his teeth/'thus didst thou'" (4.7.61-3).
 * "To cut his throat in the church" (4.7.144). Laertes is worse than Hamlet, because Hamlet did not want to kill Claudius when he was praying, or is it rather that Laertes is blinded with his rage more?
 * "Too much of water hast thou, poor Ophelia,/and therefore I forbid my tears...I have a speech o' fire that fain would blaze,/but that this folly drowns it" (4.7.211-2, 216-7). Even his sister's death does not pause his rage, which would be more acceptable if he had grieved at all.
 * Laertes agrees to stay under the king as long as he can kill Hamlet and avenge his fathers murder
 * "Will you be ruled by me?" "Ay, my lord,/so you will not o'errule me at a peace" (4.7.66-7). Obedience.
 * "My lord I will be ruled,/the rather if you could devise it so/that I might be the organ" (4.7.77-9). In exchange to help murder Hamlet.
 * The King saves his butt and is prepared to let Laertes hang to dry
 * "That I am guiltless of your father's death,/and am most sensibly in grief for it" (4.7.172-3). Mot necessarily the truth because it his his fault that Hamlet wanted to kill him.
 * "How much I had to do to calm his rage!/Now I fear this will give it start again" (4.7.219-20). Claudius lies about Laertes' anger to cover his own skin in to leave L on his own once he kills Hamlet.
 * things are God-given
 * "Sure He that made us with such large discourse,/looking before and after, gave us not/that capability and godlike reason/to fust in us unused (4.4.38-41). Hamlet believes revenge is a right to man.
 * Claudius pulls this out to justify how he plans to handle Hamlet.
 * When the king is threatened by an uprising with Laertes. "There's such divinity doth hedge a king/that treason can but peep to what it would,/acts little of his will" (4.5.138-40). Divinity of kings protect them from usury...ironic.
 * Who is loved Hamlet or Polonius?
 * "He's loved of the distracted multitude,/who like not in their judgement, but their eyes" (4.3.4-5). Unwise people and those with good judgement like //him//, because they do not see //his// true colors.
 * "The other motive/why to the public count i might not go/is the great love the general gender bear him" (4.7.18-20)
 * Is Ophelia mad? or do her chantings mean more?
 * What is the uprising going on? What are they saying about Laertes' mother? (4.5.108-18,130-4)
 * Hamlet's madness:
 * switches from prose back to iambic pentameter when he is speaking about Fortinbras
 * he is still witty and intelligent when speaking about death
 * "Not where he eats, but where he is eaten. A certain convocation of politic worms are e'en at him" (4.3.22-4). this could also be taken as madness because it is graphic and disturbing, but then again Hamlet is acting mad.
 * Hamlet still gives a jab at Claudius, basically telling him to go to hell. Hamlet says someone can check heaven to see if Polonius is there, but to Claudius he says, "seek him i' th' other place yourself" (4.3.38-9).
 * I still believe that he is merely consumed with revenge and anger
 * "And spur my dull revenge" (4.4.35).
 * "How stand I, then,/that have a father killed, a mother stained,/excitements of my reason and my blood,/and let all sleep, while to my shame I see/the imminent death of twenty thousand men/that for a fantasy and trick of fame/go to their graves like beds" (4.4.59-65). "Excitements of my reason" implies that he is loosing his mind or that he is so consumed with revenge that he cannot make rational decisions, which i do not think is yet insanity. Again he connects death to sleep and the idea of ambition arises.
 * "O, from this time forth/my thoughts be bloody or be nothing worth" (4.4.68-9). Heroic couplet!
 * Ophelia's madness
 * Are her chantings about Polonius or Hamlet? what caused her to go mad? is she mad?