Learning Target: I can paraphrase key soliloquies in Hamlet and note the stylistic/rhetorical devices Shakespeare employs to give make them so rich in both sound and sense.

"O' What a Rogue!" soliloquy

2.2.576-634

Pigeon Livered and Lacking Gall! What do these crazy words mean?

In pairs, alternate reading (5 to 10 lines at a time) and paraphrasing sections.  Discuss paraphrase of every 5 to 10 lines and then move on to the next five or ten. (ten minutes)

After you complete your paraphrase exercise, do the following:

• Do any of these lines seem like they might inspire or inform your essay?  Mark them in your book so that you may find them again if you decide to include them in an essay.
• With your partner, go through the soliloquy again, and mark literary and stylistic devices (e.g., metaphors/similies, extended metaphors, alliteration, parallelism, juxtaposition, repetition, rhyme, classical allusions, sentence reversal, selection of details/content/imagery, diction,).

While reading, students can note unfamiliar words.  Discuss the meanings, paraphrase troublesome lines:

• Why is the Prince calling himself a rogue and a peasant slave?
• Hamlet compares himself to the player.  What does his comparison reveal about Hamlet's self-perception?
• Throughout Hamlet, much violence is done to the ears. How does Hamlet's "cleave the general ear" relate to other "ear" references?
• Shakespeare uses the word ear twenty-seven times in the play.  Pay attention to these occurrences.  Do any of them resonate with you?
• Hamlet uses a lot of theatrical terminology in his speech.  Find some examples.  Why might Hamlet be thinking in theatrical terms?
• Find lines or phrases that explain why Hamlet thinks himself a coward.  Do you think he is a coward, or is he acting cautiously by looking for external evidence to prove Claudius's guilt?

"To be or not to be"...reading it aloud as an internal debate

Homework: 

Paraphrase "To be or not to be..." speech and annotate for style/rhetorical elements and for essay ideas.

Study for language quiz (40-50 points)..Will assess pp. xiv-xxiii

on Shakespeare's language, wordplay and sentence structure (preface of Hamlet book) as applied to the following passages: 

• 2.2.295-338 ("Were you not sent for" to "man delights not me");
• 2.2.575-640 (O' what a rogue am I!)
• 3.1.64-96 (To be or not to be)