Which question is most likely asked by a reader analyzing a text through a formalist lens?
Read the excerpt from an analysis of the end of Act V of Hamlet.A duel takes place between Laertes and Hamlet. But due to treachery, Laertes and Hamlet are poisoned, as are Claudius and Gertrude, and they all die.
Read the excerpt from Act III of Hamlet.Gertrude: O! speak to me no more; These words like daggers enter in mine ears; No more, sweet Hamlet!Hamlet: A murderer, and a villain; A slave that is not twentieth part the tithe Of your precedent lord; a vice of kings; A cut-purse of the empire and the rule, That from a shelf the precious diadem stole, And put it in his pocket! Gertrude: No more!
To analyze tone, the reader should study word choice, which is also called
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In Shakespeare’s Hamlet, what plot event prompts Hamlet to become suspicious and resentful?
Read the excerpt from Act IV of Hamlet.Danes: [Within.] Let her come in.Laertes: How now! what noise is that?Re-enter OPHELIA.O heat, dry up my brains! tears seven times salt, Burn out the sense and virtue of mine eye! By heaven, thy madness shall be paid by weight, Till our scale turn the beam. O rose of May! Dear maid, kind sister, sweet Ophelia! O heavens! is 't possible a young maid's wits Should be as mortal as an old man’s life? Nature is fine in love, and where 'tis fine It sends some precious instance of itself After the thing it loves.
Read the excerpt from Act III of Hamlet.Hamlet:Now might I do it pat, now he is praying; And now I’ll do ’t: and so he goes to heaven; And so am I reveng’d. That would be scann’d: A villain kills my father; and for that, I, his sole son, do this same villain send To heaven. Why, this is hire and salary, not revenge. He took my father grossly, full of bread, With all his crimes broad blown, as flush as May; And how his audit stands who knows save heaven? But in our circumstance and course of thought ’Tis heavy with him. And am I then reveng’d, To take him in the purging of his soul, When he is fit and season’d for his passage? No.
Which statements describe Elizabethan drama? Select two answers.
Read the excerpt from Act II of Hamlet.Guildenstern: Happy in that we are not over happy; On Fortune’s cap we are not the very button.Hamlet: Nor the soles of her shoe?Rosencrantz: Neither, my lord.
Take a look at this image from Jonathan Price’s adaptation of Hamlet.Take a look at this image from Sir Laurence Olivier’s adaptation of Hamlet.

Read the excerpt from Act IV of Hamlet.Claudius: Not that I think you did not love your father, But that I know love is begun by time, And that I see, in passages of proof, Time qualifies the spark and fire of it . . . That we would do, We should do when we would, for this 'would' changes, And hath abatements and delays as many As there are tongues, are hands, are accidents; And then this 'should' is like a spendthrift sigh, That hurts by easing. But, to the quick o' the ulcer; Hamlet comes back; what would you undertake To show yourself your father's son in deed More than in words?
Read the passage from Hamlet, Act I, Scene iii.Polonius: Beware Of entrance to a quarrel, but, being in, Bear ’t that th’ opposed may beware of thee. Give every man thine ear, but few thy voice; Take each man’s censure, but reserve thy judgment. Costly thy habit as thy purse can buy, But not express’d in fancy; rich, not gaudy ...
Read the excerpt from Act II of Hamlet.Hamlet: Am I not i’ the right, old Jephthah?Polonius: If you call me Jephthah, my lord, I have a daughter that I love passing well.
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