Tuesday, 3/12 - Hamlet THICE (Take Home In Class Essay)

• P&P

• Begin getting ready for your Hamlet THICE (4 or 5 paragraphs). You may choose your prompt, write a thesis, snag some topic sentences, compile your support, which should include quotes (from Hamlet--and Julius Caesar if applicable--not from Leithart), and bring your heavy artillery (outline) to class Thursday. Please do NOT go online to scour secondary sources; I will be double-checking anything that feels like an internet oil slick. Here are your prompts:

1. Hamlet or Brutus? Who is the more tragic character and why?

2. What theme is Shakespeare developing about “acting”? In other words, what is Shakespeare saying about the nature of “drama”?

3. Examine how and why Shakespeare develops one of his key image clusters: A) poison-venom, B) death-decay-rottenness, or C) any other you find revealing. What is he saying with these images?

4. Throughout Hamlet, Shakespeare uses body imagery, real bodies, and the body politic. Consider the nature of these different "bodies" and try to figure out what the bard is saying.

5. Shakespeare wrote Hamlet just after Julius Caesar. That said, what is Shakespeare saying about women with his Gertrude-Ophelia and Calpurnia-Portia duos? Does he reduce women to one lowest common denominator, or is he multi-perspectival? If extremely different, why the differences? For what purpose?

6. If you have a thesis/prompt that you think you'd like to pursue that is not here, please run it by me first and I'll consider letting you pursue it with a vengeance ; )