In-Class Activity

Soliloquy Analysis
Group Activity

Each group will be assigned one of the following soliloquies (all delivered by Hamlet in the first three acts):

Act I, scene 2 (p. 1594): “O that this too too sullied flesh should melt...”
Act I, scene 5 (1605): “O that you host of heaven!  O earth!...”
Act II, scene 2 (p. 1624): “Ay so, God, bye to you, now I am alone...”
Act III, scene 1 (p. 1627): “To be or not to be, that is the question...”

As a group, answer the following questions, noting your ideas and answers in your journal:

1. Go through the passage line by line and figure out exactly what it’s saying.

2. What unanswerable questions does Hamlet raise in this passage?

3. Identify images and word choices that are particularly powerful, memorable, or effective.  Note, especially, Shakespeare’s use of verbs.

4. Identify Hamlet’s state of mind and what the soliloquy reveals to us about his relationship(s) with those around him.

5. Reflect on the insight this soliloquy gives you into Hamlet, the play, and some of your reading journal questions.

THEN (still as a group), examine Claudius’s soliloquy in Act III, scene 3 but substitute Claudius for Hamlet in each of the above questions.