Value of learning/ value of life

 Hamlet's Soliloquy Activities

• Activity 1

To me, being alive is actually doing something with your life. Not just sitting around letting things come to you but being a go getter. Being alive is a person looking for something to do, to be a change, looking for every opportunity that they can get. Life is made worth while when you are setting goals for yourself to achieve. Not just simple goals that can be obtained with no effort but something that you will have to work for in order to achieve.

• Activity 2

The word "Life" has different meanings to people. To one person life can mean physical life. An example is how a person looks at there well-being or the how people physically live. To others it can mean showing signs of thought or an indication of hope. The word can be interpreted in many different ways to show different meaning.

• Activity 3

1. I've only been to one play in my life and it was for my sister. I couldn't stand all the singing.
2. I noticed that it really doesn't rhyme and each line isn't end just because it goes down a line.
3. The text is written in iambic pentameter which Shakespeare is known to use a lot.

• Activity 4

1. Tragedy usually means something very disastrous happened. So in this case know Hamlet is a tradgedy, you know that it isn't going to end well.
2. Normally Shakespeare has very difficult plays to understand. Mostly because no one ever talks that way so it's hard to pull meaning out of what's said.
3. Normally I would just look up a summary on the reading because I had no way of understanding it myself.
4. Hamlet is deciding if he will kill his uncle or not. He has already made up his mind that it has to be done but now he's afraid to do it. He is scarred of the unknown that comes afterwards.

• Activity 5

opposition- support
action- stand by
endurance- unconditioned
mystery- solved
life- death

action- attack, commit, react, offensive
thought- hesitation, second-guessing, regret, uncertain
suffering- hurt, emotions, conflicted
mortality- short, unexpected, death
fear- unknown, death, nervous, confidence

• Activity 6

I would say that Hamlet is more of a pessimist just because the fact that he is hesitant. He knows that he must kill his uncle but is unsure of himself. He s scared of what might happen to him but also scared of what will happen if he doesn't. Nothing is looked at in a positive way.

• Activity 7

1. The main question is asked in line one when he says, "To be, or not to be."
2. Immediately after Hamlet asks the question, he begins describing what he means by the initial question.
3. Hamlet never does answer his own question but continues on and on about how he feels about it.
4. He also talks about death and wondering what it would be like if he was gone.
5. I don't think Hamlet actually ever finished his speech because it seemed like he would physic himself out when it seemed that he was coming to a conclusion.

• Activity 8

"For in that sleep of death what dreams may come/ when we have shuffled off this mortal coil/ must give us peace."
Death is the subject and shuffled is the verb.

• Activity 9

Whether 'tis Nobler in the mind to suffer

The Slings and Arrows of outrageous Fortune,

Or to take Arms against a Sea of troubles

 

 

For who would bear the Whips and Scorns of time,
The Oppressor's wrong, the proud man's Contumely

 

 

Thus Conscience does make Cowards of us all

 

• Activity 10

  ...take Arms against a Sea of troubles- go against life's struggles

That makes Calamity of so long life- living with disasters makes like seem longer

But that the dread of something after death,
The undiscovered Country, from whose bourn- Scared of what happens when you die
No Traveller returns

Thus Conscience does make Cowards of us all- everyone is intimidated by there thoughts

Shakespeare talks in this weird way because the meaning isn't given away so clearly making the reader try to interpret their own meanings.