Homework over break!

Please finish reading the remainder of Hamlet. I strongly encourage you to watch a film/play version so that you can decide whether you agree or disagree with some of their interpretive decisions.

Due Tues/Wed

If you remembered to do your Act I marking the text that was posted Monday AND have read all of Act I, there is no additional homework for 9/18 or 9/19. If you have not finished reading Act I, please make sure you have finished reading it for next class. Act II will be due on Thurs/Fri, so you may want to get a head start on reading that.


However, if you did not do your marking the text, please do the passage below as a way of practicing those skills (and earning those points.)

Act I, scene ii, approx line 135

HAMLET
O, that this too too solid 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!
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!
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!
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
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
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!
It is not nor it cannot come to good:
But break, my heart; for I must hold my tongue.

Due Monday and Tues/Wed

Please read Act I of Hamlet for Monday and Tues/Wed. Please complete a "marking the text" activity for Claudius' speech in Act I scene ii printed below. We will most likely make it to the Claudius speech on Monday, so I'd recommend the following allocation of your time over the weekend:


-Read Act I up through the Claudius speech over the weekend.
-Print and complete the marking the text for the Claudius speech over the weekend.
-Finish reading the rest of Act I over the weekend (if you have time) or for class on Tuesday/Wednesday if you don't have enough time.

If we don't make it to Claudius' speech on Monday, at least it will already be done for the next class!

Marking the text instructions:

Please perform an analysis (mark the text with devices and "how" insights") for the following speech. As you are reading them, keep in mind the purpose of the speeches and what they reveal about the speakers and their attitudes towards their subject matter.

I recommend copying and pasting my text into a document of your choice and formatting it in such a way that you have margins sufficient for your marking the text techniques.


Act I, scene ii, approx line 94

KING CLAUDIUS
'Tis sweet and co
mmendable in your nature, Hamlet,
To give these mourning duties to your father:
But, you must know, your father lost a father;
That father lost, lost his, and the survivor bound
In filial obligation for some term
To do obsequious sorrow: but to persever
In obstinate condolement is a course
Of impious stubbornness; 'tis unmanly grief;
It shows a will most incorrect to heaven,
A heart unfortified, a mind impatient,
An understanding simple and unschool'd:
For what we know must be and is as common
As any the most vulgar thing to sense,
Why should we in our peevish opposition
Take it to heart? Fie! 'tis a fault to heaven,
A fault against the dead, a fault to nature,
To reason most absurd: whose common theme
Is death of fathers, and who still hath cried,
From the first corse till he that died to-day,
'This must be so.' We pray you, throw to earth
This unprevailing woe, and think of us
As of a father: for let the world take note,
You are the most immediate to our throne;
And with no less nobility of love
Than that which dearest father bears his son,
Do I impart toward you. For your intent
In going back to school in Wittenberg,
It is most retrograde to our desire:
And we beseech you, bend you to remain
Here, in the cheer and comfort of our eye,
Our chiefest courtier, cousin, and our son.

Monday's Greek Drama Notes

Notes from our discussion of Greek drama today are available here.

Due Tuesday 12/11; /Wednesday 12/12

For Tuesday/Wednesday, we will be discussing the play Oedipus (red book 896-936). Please note of moments when Oedipus displays behaviors or attitudes that reveal his pride.

Short Story Quiz

In addition to our discussion of Metamorphosis on Thursday/Friday, we will be taking a short, short story quiz on the following stories:

The Yellow Wallpaper Araby Very Old Man with Enormous Wings
Young Goodman Brown Good Country People Metamorphosis
Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber Recitatif


Please be prepared by knowing the authors of each story, main interpretive ideas we discussed, and evidence we used in supporting those interpretations.