Idea From The Text
1. Horatio Horatio says this after he has the ghost of King
A mote it is to trouble the mind's eye.
In the most high and palmy state of Rome,
A little ere the mightiest Julius fell,
The graves stood tenantless and the sheeted dead
Did squeak and gibber in the Roman streets –
As stars with trains of fire and dews of blood,
Disasters in the sun; and the moist star
Upon whose influence Neptune's empire stands
Was sick almost to Doomsday with eclipse.
And even the like precurse of feared events,
As harbingers preceding still the fates
And prologue to the omen coming on,
Have heaven and earth together demonstrated
Unto our climatures and countrymen.
(I. i. 112-125)
2. KING
Take thy fair hour, Laertes. Time be thine;
And thy best graces spend it at thy will.
But now, my cousin Hamlet, and my son –
HAMLET
(aside)
A little more than kin, and less than kind!
KING
How is it that the clouds still hang on you?
HAMLET
Not so, my lord. I am too much in the sun.
(I. ii. 62-67)
Reaction/Connection
Hamlet. Here he is saying how the dead rose in
Rome before Julius Caesar died. Since the dead is
also rising in Denmark, this is foreshadowing that
something terrible will happen to this country and
the people in it. The diction in this passage is
beautiful, even though it is morbid.
Does this foreshadowing mean the ruler of
Denmark will die?
We have just learned that Hamlet’s uncle married
Hamlet’s mom and they are the new king and
queen of Denmark. It is apparent from the language
that Hamlet uses that he does not approve his uncle
acting as his father now. When Hamlet answers this
uncle/dad’s question, he says he is too much in the
sun. One could interpret this as a pun. By “sun” he
could mean “son.” That would mean that Hamlet
thinks in this new relationship between him and his
uncle/ dad he is too much like his son now which he
does not like since Hamlet says he is “too much in
the sun”(67). How will their new relationship affect
the play?
 3. HAMLET
O that this too too sullied flesh would melt,
Thaw, and resolve itself into a dew;
Or that the Everlasting had not fixed
His canon 'gainst self-slaughter. O God, God,
How weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable
Seem to me all the uses of this world!
Fie on't, ah, fie, 'tis an unweeded garden
That grows to seed. Things rank and gross in nature
Possess it merely. That it should come to this –
But two months dead, nay, not so much, not two!
So excellent a king, that was to this
Hyperion to a satyr; so loving to my mother
That he might not beteem the winds of heaven
Visit her face too roughly. Heaven and earth,
Must I remember? Why, she would hang on him
As if increase of appetite had grown
By what it fed on. And yet within a month –
Let me not think on't. Frailty, thy name is woman.
A little month, or e'er those shoes were old
With which she followed my poor father's body
Like Niobe, all tears, why she, even she –
O God, a beast that wants discourse of reason
Would have mourned longer – married with my
uncle,
My father's brother, but no more like my father
Than I to Hercules. Within a month,
Ere yet the salt of most unrighteous tears
Had left the flushing in her galled eyes,
She married. O, most wicked speed, to post
With such dexterity to incestuous sheets!
It is not, nor it cannot come to good.
But break, my heart, for I must hold my tongue.
(I. ii. 129-159)
4. OPHELIA
I shall the effect of this good lesson keep
As watchman to my heart. But, good my brother,
Do not, as some ungracious pastors do,
Show me the steep and thorny way to heaven
Whiles like a puffed and reckless libertine
Himself the primrose path of dalliance treads
And recks not his own rede.
(I. iii. 45-51)
This is the first soliloquy in the play. What makes
soliloquies so important is that person delivering
the soliloquy is that they are speaking what is on
their mind because they are alone or believe to be
alone. Hamlet’s soliloquy allows the audience to see
the inner workings of his mind. The first thing we
see is that Hamlet is suicidal and he would commit
suicide if it weren’t against God’s law. Since he is
suicidal, it’s not a far stretch to say that Hamlet is
not in a healthy mindset and maybe everything he
says should be taken with a grain of salt. We can
see how opposed Hamlet is to the union of his
uncle and mom. He can also see how much he loved
his father and saw him as godlike. It is also revealed
how much Hamlet feels betrayed by his mother
sudden marriage to his uncle saying that “Frailty thy
name is woman” (146). He probably thinks his mom
was too afraid of being unmarried so she just
married the first man she could. He also denies his
uncle as his father by saying “My father’s brother,
but no more like my father/ Than I to Hercules.” It is
interesting that he uses a mythical figure because
he could imply that like a mythical figure, his new
father does not exist like a mythical figure.
How will Hamlet react to seeing his father’s ghost?
I find this quote interesting because of just being a
submissive woman and saying yes brother, Ophelia
talks back which is unheard of in this period. Her
also criticizing pastors shows that she is aware of
the corruption in the church and hints to her level
of intelligence. Shakespeare could have given
Ophelia these lines because he wants to showcase
that women can be smart and aware of the world
they live in.
Will Ophelia be able to stay away from Hamlet?

5. HAMLET
Rest, rest, perturbed spirit! So, gentlemen,
With all my love I do commend me to you,
May do t' express his love and friending to you,
God willing, shall not lack. Let us go in together,
And still your fingers on your lips, I pray.
The time is out of joint. O, cursed spite,
That ever I was born to set it right!
Nay, come, let's go together.
Exeunt
(I. v. 182-190)
What I found curious about this scene is that only
Hamlet heard the ghost, his father, talking. None of
the other characters did. To me, this raises an
important question: Did Hamlet hear the spirit
speak or is he going crazy and thought he heard the
ghost talk? Shakespeare leaves this ambiguous, and
the audience cannot tell if Hamlet decides to act
insane or is already insane from mourning his
father’s death. It was already established earlier in
this journal that Hamlet might not be in the right
state of mind because he is thinking of killing
himself. One could argue that Hamlet has gone
insane and just imagined the ghost talking to him to
kill his uncle. The dialogue here shows that Hamlet
is already acting a bit strange anyway and seems
convinced it was his birthright to kill his uncle.