APEnglish–Los Al

Period 4

Hola Period 4,
Today we discussed a Hamlet speech with our groups today. Near the end of the period, two groups presented their speeches. Big Krig and the Blonde Bombshells presented Act I scene 2 lines 87-128. The King’s audience in this speech consists of Hamlet and Gertrude. His goal is to establish confidence with them. He does this by twisting his words to match the occasion. In the second speech, Hamlet seeks to convince himself to go through with the act that “examples gross as earth” exhort him to commit.He largely uses logos, especially in lines 33- 39. Mr. Eldridge also pointed out that Hamlet constantly shifts his thinking in his soliloquies. For example, when he considers the actions of Fortinbras, he immediately applies it to his own situation, which shows a remarkable amount of thought. The ability to do this makes him almost as smart as the Ridiculously Smart Nadir Bilici. Interesting side note: today at lunch we were talking about who was the best composer. Steven Jones said that Brahms was the best, while Norman Cahn thought it was Tchaikovsky. For me, Bach is the most perfect composer, because of his immense ability to compose the most complex pieces. But most of us can agree that Wagner is the composer that is the most fun, as evidenced by this video. They don’t make cartoons like that anymore (sigh). Kill da Wabbit!

Period 5

Heeeelllloooo Period 5!! We started out the day by analyzing a particularly interesting line from Hamlet in which Shakespeare seems to be mocking the ridiculousness of his contemporaries. When, during the play-within-a-play, Hamlet remarks: “Come, the croaking raven doth bellow for revenge”, which appears to be an allusion to The Tragedy of Richard III, another play about revenge in production about the same time as Hamlet just down the street. Mr. Eldridge put up the line from that play which Hamlet was referring to, and we proceeded to analyze how overly excessive and blunt it was, thus making Shakespeare’s mocking very appropriate. We contrasted this to a line from Hamlet that is complicated and intelligent to show how much of a difference subtlety and psychological intrigue can make. Eldridge pointed out the allusion to Nero in the line from Hamlet, which led to a description of how Nero attempted to kill his wife 10 times while making it look like an accident before giving up and just kicking her to death. How pleasant. Eldridge then told us that not all of Shakespeare’s work is good, and that there is one particularly horrifying play in which a woman’s tongue and arms are cut off, leaving her mute and armless (yet she gets a good amount of stage-time, shockingly), and at one point two people each cut off their arms as a sign of loyalty for basically no reason. Again, how pleasant.

Then, each group worked on the questions for their speech from Hamlet, with each group answering the following questions for their speech:

1. Who is the speaker? What are his/her goals?
2. Who is the audience(s)?
3. What will persuade the audience?
4. What technique is used?
5. Is it successful and why?

At some point during this time, my group (Wazoo, consisting of Will and Dessouky), started up a strange but hilarious conversation in which we imagined Eldridge as a woodsman living in solitude amongst nature, building a log cabin and discussing Shakespeare and Emerson with the trees and squirrels. Ah, good times.

Then the groups began presenting their analyses of the speeches, but we only got through two. The first group talked about Claudius’s speech to Hamlet in which he tries to convince Hamlet to get over his father’s death and at the same time prove to Gertrude he is a worthy father, husband, and king. He uses pathos in showing sympathy for Hamlet, and logos in his reasoning that everyone at some point loses their family, so stop whining (in this situation I happen to agree with the King, Hamlet really does need to stop whining, all he does is complain and feel sorry for himself, it’s really quite annoying). Claudius also uses ethos when he appeals to Gertrude and the public by showing his credibility. Ultimately he is successful in winning over Gertrude, but not Hamlet.

The next group went over Laertes’ speech to Ophelia in which he warns her to stay away from Hamlet. In doing so, he is also trying to prove to Polonius that he is a responsible son. He argues that Hamlet is motivated only by lust and political gain, and her virginity is more important than his love. He is successful in the short term, but in the end his speech lacks sympathy and pathos, like Polonius’ speeches.

Well that’s just about it. Remember, Act 5 is due tomorrow, Friday we write an essay on Hamlet, and Monday is our Hamlet final exam

-Zach Glasser

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