Hamlet Act 1 scene 2

1. Hamlet Act 1 scene 2 Notes

2. The second part of scene two • After the court with Claudius and Gertrude • Deals with Hamlet's reactions, his melancholy, and its causes:

3. Hamlet’s reactions, his melancholy and its causes: • Frustrated: can’t do anything about the marriage • “O God, O god heaven and earth must I remember.”

4. Confused • Doesn’t know how much time has passed since his father died • ( two months, within a month)

5. Feeling Useless • Wishes his “sullied flesh would melt.” • Suicidal • His flesh is sullied because he carries his mother’s blood

6. Hateful and Revolted • Hateful towards Claudius • Revolted by mother • She didn’t mourn long enough • She is behaving lustfully • She is behaving incestuously with Claudius

7. Disillusioned • Hamlet thought his parents wildly in love • “she would hang on him as if increase of appetite of appetite grown/by what it fed on.”

8. Progressively More Emotional • His speech gets choppier as the scene progresses.

9. Feels His World has Collapsed • Because his father is dead, and his mother remarried very quickly, he has lost both a mother and a father. • This world is rank (disease imagery): an “unweeded garden that grows to seed”

10. Changeable • He then very quickly becomes affectionate and polite to Horatio, the soldiers Marcellus and Bernardo

11. Suspicious • Aware of the foul situation • “foul deeds will rise/Though all the earth o’erwhelm them to men’s eyes.”