This is to help you decipher the more difficult passages in HAMLET. When all else fails, check the footnotes at the bottom of the page, or in the Folger's edition, check the opposite page. Please scroll down after this, and check this coming week's agenda (November 13th). Remember, you are to read Act 1 and to underline any difficult passages or phrases you did not understand.
Hamlet
Act 1, Scene 2
Horatio:
Two night together had these gentlemen (line 203)
Marcellus and Barnado, on their watch
In the dead waste and middle of the night (line 205)
Been thus encountered: a figure like your father
Armed at point exactly, cap-a-pe,
Appears before them, and with solemn march
Goes slow and stately by them; thrice he walked
By their oppressed and fear-surprised eye
Within his truncheon’s length, whilst they, distilled
Almost to jelly with the act of fear,
Stand dumb and speak not to him. This to me
In dreadful secrecy impart they did,
And I with them the third night kep the watch, (line 215)
Where, as they had delivered, both in time,
Form of the thing, each word true and good,
The apparition comes. I know your father;
These hands are not more like,
Questions
In lines 201 - 206, identify the subjects.
What are the verbs in lines 201 - 206?
Identify the three prepositional phrases?
What information do the prepositional phrases convey?
“Been thus encountered” is in active or passive voice?
What or who encounters them?
Reorder the words in the sentence in contemporary speech.
Cap-a-pe means from head (cap) to pe (pied - French for foot) so line 207 means he was armed from head to foot.
When in doubt always check the footnotes at the bottom of the page or in the excellent Folger’s editon, check the opposite page.
Thrice means three times.
Truncheon is a military staff so he walked within the length of his military staff.
In line 211, who are “they” ? What is the participial phrase (distilled almost to jelly....) modifying?
Did you know that jelly is distilled? Yup, it’s made, like whiskey, in pressurized heat. Just how scared do you have to be before you are turned to jelly?
Reorder the words in lines 213. What is the “this” that they (who?) did impart (which means to convey) to me? And how: “In dreadful secrecy?”
Reorder the words in lines 215. “Kept the watch” means stand guard.
“As they had delivered” - what was it they “delivered”? A hint might be “both in time” and “form of the thing”.
Apparition means ghost.
What comparison is Horatio making with his hands?
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