Thursday, September 14 characters / connections

Hamlet character chart 

Coming up: vocabulary quiz on Wednesday, September 20 (another copy below)
                    power point review on Tuesday
Anyone LEGALLY absent yesterday has 10 days to make up the quiz; otherwise you have until tomorrow. This may be made up anytime during the day, with the exception of your class time. 
 In class: where Shakespeare is performed': see link below
               Characters and relations: image above and class handout.
                Text questions: 1.1 (class handout) based on Act 1, scene 1  watch film: act 1, scene 1 ramparts with ghost
                   


Four hundred years have passed since William Shakespeare penned his last play. Yet his prose, plots and characters are as alive today as they were when the plays were originally staged during the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries.Shakespearean works are required reading for high school English students and a course or two for college students who study writing or literature. The plays have been performed in almost every language, on stage and screen and at popular festivals around the world. Even in prisons, teachers find that Shakespeare offers contemporary connections that open pathways to learning for some of society’s most marginalized.
So who is reading and performing Hamlet today?
LINK: Who is reading and performing Shakespeare?
watch up to 2:32
 introducing the characters.

Today's learning target: I can analyze the impact of the author's choices regarding how to develop and relate elements of a story or drama (e.g., where a story is set, how the action is ordered, how the characters are introduced and developed).             

Main Characters:

Hamlet: Son of a murdered Danish king (who was also named Hamlet) and nephew of the present king, Claudius.  

Claudius: The new King of Denmark, Hamlet's uncle. He married Hamlet's mother, his brother's wife, within two months after the old King Hamlet's death.

Gertrude: Queen of Denmark, Hamlet's mother, and widow of the murdered king.  She marries Claudius, old King Hamlet's brother.

Ghost of Hamlet’s Father, old King Hamlet. 

Polonius: Bootlicking Lord Chamberlain of King Claudius; father to Laertes and Ophelia

Ophelia: Daughter of Polonius; sister to Laertes  She loves Hamlet

Laertes: Son of Polonius, brother of Ophelia.  

Horatio: Hamlet’s best friend.  

Marcellus, Horatio and Bernardo: Officers who are the first to see the ghost of Hamlet’s father.  


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Name_________________________  Hamlet text responses 1.1 These are both in your text and the film

1.       How many times have Bernardo and Marcellus seen “the dreaded sight”?

2.       How is the apparition attired?

3.       Why do Horatio, Marcellus and Bernardo think the apparition is offended?

4.       What “in the gross and scope” (1.1.69) of Horatio’s opinion does Horatio think that the apparition’s appearance bodes?

5.       What happened just before the apparition was about to speak?

6.       Answer the following by reading I.i.173-179)  To what season do the following lines refer?

Some say that ever 'gainst that season comes
Wherein our Saviour's birth is celebrated,
The bird of dawning singeth all night long:
And then, they say, no spirit dares stir abroad;
The nights are wholesome; then no planets strike,
No fairy takes, nor witch hath power to charm,
So hallow'd and so gracious is the time.

7.     What is the contemporary term for “the morn in russet mantle clad”?

8.     What does Horatio intend to do about the apparition?