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HAMLET REVIEW AND DISCUSSION: ACT 3 Part 1. Each person in your group is responsible for completely and thoroughly answering ONE of the following questions. 1. Is Claudius’s reaction to “The Mousetrap” play evidence enough for Hamlet to take action? Why or why not? Consider: Reread Hamlet’s description of the characters in the play. How accurate a reenactment of the king’s murder is the play? 2. Is Hamlet’s indecisiveness entirely responsible, partially responsible, or not responsible at all for his failure to kill Claudius by this point? Justify your answer with 2 or more examples from the text. 3. Is Hamlet’s treatment of Polonius, Rosencrantz, and Guildenstern unfair? It is disrespectful, mean-spirited, etc., or is it justified? Justify your answer with descriptions of each character’s behavior toward Hamlet. 4. Does Hamlet’s treatment of Ophelia prove that Polonius and Laertes were justified in their fears about Hamlet? Explain how he could have treated Ophelia differently with specific references to his interactions with her in Acts 2-3, or explain why he could not have acted differently. Part 2. Each person in your group is responsible for analyzing ONE of the following soliloquies in detail. Include in your analysis: Who is speaking, what is the setting, and what is this character talking about. A. 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 heartache, and the thousand natural shocks 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; B. O, my offense is rank, it smells to heaven; It hath the primal eldest curse upon't, A brother's murder. Pray can I not, Though inclination be as sharp as will. My stronger guilt defeats my strong intent, And like a man to double business bound I stand in pause where I shall first begin, And both neglect. What if this cursed hand Were thicker than itself with brother's blood, Is there not rain enough in the sweet heavens To wash it white as snow? C. ‘Tis now the very witching time of night, When churchyards yawn, and hell itself breathes out Contagion to this world: now could I drink hot blood, And do such bitter business as the day Would quake to look on. D. Angels and ministers of grace defend us! Be thou a spirit of health or goblin damn'd, Bring with thee airs from heaven or blasts from hell, Be thy intents wicked or charitable, Thou comest in such a questionable shape That I will speak to thee: I'll call thee Hamlet, King, father, royal Dane: O, answer me! Let me not burst in ignorance; but tell Why thy canonized bones, hearsed in death, Have burst their cerements; why the sepulchre, Wherein we saw thee quietly inurn'd, Hath oped his ponderous and marble jaws, To cast thee up again.