Daily Reflection for Monday, October 28, 2013
Period 2: Manuel's group, Rebecca Segovia, Emeli Castillo, Casey Cortez, Kobe Martinez

On this day we viewed scenes Act II.ii and the Nunnery Scene. It was interesting to see how the people who played the same character as someone else took a different approach to the way they interpreted said character. For example, in the Nunnery scene the character of Hamlet had two actors. Both actors did a very good job at displaying Hamlet's emotions. One actor(Deisy) came off as nice and calm, while the other was more demanding when she(Aran) confronted Ophelia(Eric). I appreciated these two different perspectives because just as each actor has a distinct way of looking at a character, each reader has a distinct way of looking at the play or maybe even characters as well. Some people say that Hamlet is insane, while others say he is so intelligent that the people around him mistake his intellectuality for madness. We also found it interesting how in Act II.ii Hamlet speaks to Polonius in a degrading manner. The way Hamlet speaks to Polonius is demeaning and displays Polonius' blindness. The irony in this scene demonstrates Hamlet's wit. This brought me and my group members to question some things:
1) Did Hamlet kill Polonius knowingly?
2)What is the significance on "honesty" in these two scenes?
3) Does Hamlet insult Polonius and his children by calling him a "breeder of sins"?
4) Why does Hamlet repeat the topic of producing "sinned" offspring?

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Daily Reflection for October 20, 2013
Period 1: Manuel's group...Rebecca Seg, Emeli Castillo, Casey Cortez, Kobe Martinez

We were assigned the "Mouse trap" scene(III.ii). When we realized we would have to perform this scene most of us thought it would be a simple read out loud and act exercise. We were wrong. We quickly realized that in order to act the scene out we had to understand the situation and thoughts that went on in the characters' minds. Hamlet was a handful. This scene is filled with sexual innuendos towards Ophelia, remarks against his mother and uncle, and mixed objectives. In order to understand the significance of Hamlet's innuendos we had to pay close attention to the way he acted towards Ophelia, upon doing so we realized that the innuendos' true purpose was to insult and possibly arouse Ophelia. The remarks Hamlet made towards his mother were simply a way of him trying to make her realize her actions and wrong doings. Hamlet's attitude towards Claudius starts as a sarcastically joyful tone, however, Hamlet uses this tone to give Claudius comfort so that when Mouse Trap goes on his reaction will be all the more shocking. Hamlet's objective in this scene seems to be to capture Claudius' conscience through guilt, however, his references towards Ophelia and words towards his mother make his objective turn into objective(s). Hamlet makes an attempt at seizing this opportunity to pin the top three people who have wronged him the most: Ophelia, Gertrude, and of course, Claudius. So, in a way this Mouse Trap is more like a... MICE TRAP!!!

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Act V Scene i - Diana

 Our group: Rosalind, Jasmin, Emily, Christopher, Hernan and myself, are assigned to Act V scene I or the gravediggers scene. Interestingly enough the gravediggers do play significant roles as providing an age for our beloved Hamlet and such. At first reading of the scene we encountered the problem of different translations referring to the gravediggers as clowns. We quickly knew clowns and gravediggers were complete opposites in that "gravediggers" has a more negative connotation and seems to fit the mood of a funeral rather than clowns. But as we read, what these clowns/gravediggers were saying was pretty humorous and caused some good laughs between our group.

"Here lies the water - good.  Here stands the man - good. If the man go to this water and drown himself, it is, will he, nill he, he goes. Mark you that. But if the water come to him and drown him, he drowns not himself. Argal, he that is not guilty of his own death shortens not his own life."

This remark seems to make no sense but the gravedigger/clown has a point on the occasion.

In this scene, Hamlet has returned with Horatio and sees this gravedigger/clown singing as he digs a hole for a corpse and throws out skulls.

Hamlet then breaks out into noble speeches of what these skulls were before "this rude nave now to knock him about the sconce with a dirty shovel".

While working on the scene we noted that Hamlet speaks and receives short answers from Horatio, as our group discussed he was just there to stand pretty and nod, likely being an indifferent Horatio. But as Ms. Barrios noted it makes no sense for Horatio to not care when in the end he is willing to die alongside Hamlet. Perspective.

Another important topic was Hamlet's supposed madness deceiving love. In Act III Scene I, specifically the "get thee to a nunnery" scene, Hamlet puts off this I never loved you, Ophelia stunt which arose questions of: Did Hamlet really love Ophelia or not? Hmmm. When Hamlet discovers it is Ophelia's body who is to be buried and Laertes leaps into the grave, Hamlet and Laertes quarrel about whose grief is bigger.

"I loved Ophelia. Forty thousand brothers/ Could not, with all their quantity of love,/ Make up my sum." -Hamlet

 We learned he did love Ophelia, question answered.

As a group, we reviewed different adaptations of our scene to get a feel of it and discussed it so we all had a sense of what we were saying, even Horatio although it did not seem Horatio knew what he himself was talking about.

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Soliloquys Rhetorical Diagrams!

Day 1 with Mentors from Professor Werlin's class consisted of working on close reading of four soliloquys which I copy below.  Students examined the context and content of the works, and plotted the rhetorical arc of the text in diagrams.

Some strategies for soliloquy study in performance:

*paraphrasing

*noting antitheses, repetitions, alliteration, assonance, operative words

*Actioning the Text (unit, objectives and actions)

*Physicalizing the soliloquy (props, staging)

*Uta Hagen's 9 questions

Act 1: Sc.2

HAMLET:

O, that this too too sullied flesh would melt,

Thaw and resolve itself into a dew,

Or that the Everlasting had not fix'd

His canon 'gainst self-slaughter! O God! God!(135)

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!(140)

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!(145)

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 ere those shoes were old(150)

With which she follow'd my poor father's body

Like Niobe, all tears—why she, even she—

O God! a beast that wants discourse of reason

Would have mourn'd longer—married with my uncle,

My father's brother, but no more like my father(155)

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!(160)

It is not, nor it cannot come to, good.

But break, my heart, for I must hold my tongue!

*what are signals in the language of this soliloquy that give clues to Hamlet’s innermost thoughts? (Word choice, Construction of Phrases, Sequence of Thought) *Does he hide puns as he does with Claudius? *What does the antithesis reveal

Act 2: Sc. 2

HAMLET:

Ay, so, God be wi' ye!

Now I am alone.

O, what a rogue and peasant slave am I!

Is it not monstrous that this player here,

But in a fiction, in a dream of passion,(545)

Could force his soul so to his own conceit

That from her working all his visage wann'd,

Tears in his eyes, distraction in's aspect,

A broken voice, and his whole function suiting

With forms to his conceit? And all for nothing!(550)

For Hecuba!

What's Hecuba to him, or he to Hecuba,

That he should weep for her? What would he do,

Had he the motive and the cue for passion

That I have? He would drown the stage with tears(555)

And cleave the general ear with horrid speech;

Make mad the guilty and appal the free,

Confound the ignorant, and amaze indeed

The very faculties of eyes and ears.

Yet I,(560)

A dull and muddy-mettled rascal, peak

Like John-a-dreams, unpregnant of my cause,

And can say nothing! No, not for a king,

Upon whose property and most dear life

A damn'd defeat was made. Am I a coward?(565)

Who calls me villain? breaks my pate across?

Plucks off my beard and blows it in my face?

Tweaks me by the nose? gives me the lie i' the throat,

As deep as to the lungs? Who does me this? Ha!

Ha! 'Swounds, I should take it! for it cannot be(570)

But I am pigeon-liver'd and lack gall

To make oppression bitter, or ere this

I should have fatted all the region kites

With this slave's offal. Bloody, bawdy villain!

Remorseless, treacherous, lecherous, kindless villain!(575)

O, vengeance!

Why, what an ass am I! This is most brave,

That I, the son of a dear father murder'd,

Prompted to my revenge by heaven and hell,

Must, like a whore, unpack my heart with words(580)

And fall a-cursing like a very drab,

A scullion! Fie upon't! Foh!

About, my brain! Hum, I have heard

That guilty creatures, sitting at a play,

Have by the very cunning of the scene(585)

Been struck so to the soul that presently

They have proclaim'd their malefactions;

For murder, though it have no tongue, will speak

With most miraculous organ, I'll have these players

Play something like the murder of my father(590)

Before mine uncle. I'll observe his looks;I'll tent him to the quick. If he but blench,

I know my course. The spirit that I have seen

May be a devil; and the devil hath power

T' assume a pleasing shape; yea, and perhaps(595)

Out of my weakness and my melancholy,

As he is very potent with such spirits,

Abuses me to damn me. I'll have grounds

More relative than this. The play's the thing

Wherein I'll catch the conscience of the King.(600)

*Significance of beginning phrase, now I am alone? ,  why does Hamlet call himself a rogue and peasant slave? *What does comparison to the player reveal about Hamlet’s self perception? *”cleave the general ear”—how does this line connect to the 27 other “ear” references in this play? *theatrical terminology *lines dealing with Hamlet’s cowardice—judge..is he a coward or not?

Act 3: Sc. 1

HAMLET:

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(65)

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(70)

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(75)

That makes calamity of so long life.

For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,

The oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely,

The pangs of disprized love, the law's delay,

The insolence of office, and the spurns(80)

That patient merit of the unworthy takes,

When he himself might his quietus make

With a bare bodkin? Who would fardels bear,

To grunt and sweat under a weary life,

But that the dread of something after death(85)

The undiscover'd country, from whose bourn

No traveller returns, puzzles the will,

And makes us rather bear those ills we have

Than fly to others that we know not of?

Thus conscience does make cowards of us all,(90)

And thus the native hue of resolution

Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought,

And enterprises of great pitch and moment

With this regard their currents turn awry

And lose the name of action. Soft you now!(95)

The fair Ophelia! Nymph, in thy orisons

Be all my sins remembered.

  

*Most of Hamlet’s major  soliloquys are debates, arguments, discussions and/or discovereies between the self.  Convert the speech into two voices. How does separating the soliloquys into a debate of two voices add to your understanding of the monologue? What are the antitheses in this monologue?

HAMLET:

I'll be with you straight. Go a little before.

How all occasions do inform against me

And spur my dull revenge! What is a man,(35)

If his chief good and market of his time

Be but to sleep and feed? A beast, no more.

Sure, he that made us with such large discourse,

Looking before and after, gave us not

That capability and godlike reason(40)

To fust in us unused. Now, whether it be

Bestial oblivion, or some craven scruple

Of thinking too precisely on the event—

A thought which, quarter'd, hath but one part wisdom

And ever three parts coward—I do not know(45)

Why yet I live to say 'This thing's to do,'

Sith I have cause, and will, and strength, and means

To do't. Examples gross as earth exhort me.

Witness this army, of such mass and charge,

Led by a delicate and tender prince,(50)

Whose spirit with divine ambition puff'd,

Makes mouths at the invisible event,

Exposing what is mortal and unsure

To all that fortune, death, and danger dare,

Even for an eggshell. Rightly to be great(55)

Is not to stir without great argument,

But greatly to find quarrel in a straw

When honour's at the stake. How stand I then,

That have a father kill'd, a mother stain'd,

Excitements of my reason and my blood,(60)

And let all sleep, while to my shame I see

The imminent death of twenty thousand men

That for a fantasy and trick of fame

Go to their graves like beds, fight for a plot

Whereon the numbers cannot try the cause,(65)

Which is not tomb enough and continent

To hide the slain? O, from this time forth,

My thoughts be bloody, or be nothing worth

*How does the tones of this soliloquy compare to the others? What do the arguments in previous soliloquys contribute to the argument here?

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