Tuesday, 8 April 2014

Hamlet Act One Summary

1. Barnardo and Francisco are patrolling separately around the castle and don't recognize each other straight away. Horatio and Marcellus enter, Franisco leaves and they talk about the ghost they have seen. The ghost enters.

Barnardo: Looks a not like the King?

Horatio: What art thou that usurp'st this time of night,/Together with that fair adn warlike form/In which the majesty of buried Denmark/Did sometimes march?

The Ghost leaves without answering, and they talk about Old Hamlet's militaryness and how his ghost has come before, and how the Kingdom was preparing for war with Old Fortinbras and how they had fought in single combat.

Horatio: This bodes some strange eruption to our state

Barnardo: Well may it sort that this portentous figure/Comes armed through our watch so like the king/That was and is the question of these wars

Ghost enters again

Horatio: Stay illusion

Ghost leaves again after Horatio asks it if if has a message or unfinished business

2. All the court is on stage and Claudius addresses everyone, telling them to move on and embrace his reign and his marriage to the old king, his brother's, wife, and comes up with plan to end war with young Fortinbras.

Claudius: by thinking of our late dear brother's death/our state to be disjoint and out of frame

Talks to Laertes who wants to return to Paris, then turns to speak to Hamlet, with Getrude joining him in urging Hamlet to 'cast [his] nighted colour off']

Hamlet: Seems madam? nay it is, I know not seems./ 'Tis not alone my inky cloak, good mother...these indeed seem for they are actions that a man might play

Claudius: 'tis unmanly grief

Claudius tells Hamlet he is his father now and not to go back to Wittenberg, with Getrude's beseeching persuading

Claudius: Be as ourself in Denmark

Every leaves and Hamlet begins his first soliloquy

  • o that this too too solid flesh would melt
  • that the everlasting had not fixed his canon 'gainst self-slaughter
  • How weary, stale, flat and unprofitable/seem to me all the uses of this world
  • things rank and gross in nature posess it merely
  • this hyperion to a satyr
  • frailty, thy name is woman
  • a beast that wants discourse of reason would have mourned longer
  • no more like my father than I to hercules
  • post with such dexterity to incestuous sheets
  • it cannot come to good/but break, my heart, for I must hold my tongue
Horatio Marcellus and Barnardo enter and tell Hamlet about the ghost who is very interested and says he will join them tonight in the hopes of seeing it again.

3. Laertes talks to Ophelia about leaving and warns her not to get to attached to Hamlet

Laertes: he himself is subject to his birth./He may not, as unvalued persons do,/ Carve for himself, for on his choice depends/The sanctity and health of this whole state

Laertes: your chaste treasure open to his unmastered importunity... the chariest maid is prodigal enough/if she unmask her beauty to the moon

Ophelia listens to his lesson but thinks that he is being a little hypocritical. Polonius enters and starts advising Laertes.

Polonius: Give thy thoughts no tongue/Nor any unproportioned thought his act... Give every man they ear, but few thy voice... This above all, to thine own self be true

Laertes leaves and Polonius quizzes Ophelia on what they were talking about before his arival. She tells him about Halet and he tells her off

Ophelia: He hath my lord of late made many tenders of his affection to me

Polonius: Think yourself a baby/that you have tane these tenders for true pay/which are not sterling
Ophelia: My lord he hath importuned me with love in honourable fashion

Polonius: When the blood burns, how prodigal the soul/lends the tongue vows

He tells her to keep away from Hamlet and she says she shall obey.

4. Hamlet Horatio and Marcellus are watching out for the ghost, they hear a flourish as apparently Claudius like to partay. The ghost enters and Hamlet is amazed/confounded.

Hamlet: Thou com'st in such a questionable shape/that I will speak to thee. I call thee Hamlet/King, father, royal Dane

Ghost beckons Hamlet and Horatio and Marcellus warn him not to go but he does.

Marcellus: Something is rotten in the state of Denmark

5. Now Hamlet and the Ghost are alone together the Ghost speaks, describing his living situation in the afterlife

Ghost: I am thy Father's spirit/doomed for a certain term to walk the night/And for the day confined to fast in fires,/Till the foul crimes done in my days of nature/are burnt and purged away

Ghost: If thou didst ever thy dear father love-
Hamlet: Oh God!
Ghost: Revenge his foul and most unnatural murder

Hamlet: Haste me to know't, that I with wings as swift/ as meditation or the thoughts of love/may sweep to my revenge
Ghost: I find thee apt... so the whole ear of Denmark is by a forged process of my death rankly abused, they serpent that did sting thy father's life now wears his crown
Hamlet: O my prophetic soul/ My Uncle?
Ghost: Ay, that incestious, that adulterate beast... won to his shameful lust the will of my most seeming virtuous queen

Ghost: taint not thy mind, nor let thy soul contrive/Against thy mother aught

Ghost describes his murder and demands revenge, exiting and leaving Hamlet to solioquoise his anguish, swearing only to remeber revenge

  • and thy commandment all alone shall live/Within the book and volume of my brain/unmixed with baser matter
  • O most pernicious woman
  • one may smile, and smile, and be a villian; At least I'm sure it may be so in Denmark [writing]
Horatio and Marcellus come back and he makes them swear four times not to tell anyone whats happened and that he will pretend to be mad

Hamlet: There's ne'er a villian dwelling in all Denmark/But he's an arrant knave
Horatio: There needs no ghost, my lord, come from the grave,/to tell us this

Hamlet: There are more things in heaven and earth Horatio/than are dreamt of in your philosophy

Hamlet: As I perchance hereafter shall think meet/to put an antic disposition on

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