Hamlet

The College Board, Advanced Placement Examination, English Literature and Composition, 1997. Section II, Question 1. Total time: 2 hours. Suggested time: 40 minutes. This question counts as one-third of the total essay section score.

Read the following soliloquy from Hamlet carefully. Then write a well-organized essay in which you explain how formal elements such as structure, syntax, diction, and imagery reveal the speaker’s attitude toward his own situation.

O that this too, too sullied¹ flesh would melt,
Thaw, and resolve itself into a dew,
Or that the Everlasting had not fixed
His canon² ’gainst self-slaughter! O God! God,
How weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable
Seem to me all the uses of this world!
Fie on’t! ah, fie! ’Tis an unweeded garden
That grows to seed. Things rank and gross in nature
Possess it merely. That it should come to this:
But two months dead—Nay, not so much, not two.
So excellent a king, that was to this
Hyperion to a satyr³; so loving to my mother
That he might not beteem⁴ the winds of heaven
Visit her face too roughly. Heaven and earth,
Must I remember? Why, she would hang on him
As if increase of appetite had grown
By what it fed on. And yet, within a month
(Let me not think on’t! Frailty, thy name is woman!)
A little month, or ere⁵ those shoes were old
With which she followed my poor father’s body,
Like Niobe⁶, all tears—why she, even she
(O God, a beast that wants discourse of reason⁷
Would have mourned longer) married with my uncle,
My father’s brother, but no more like my father
Than I to Hercules⁸. Within a month,
Ere yet the salt of most unrighteous tears
Had left the flushing in her gallèd eyes⁹,
She married. O, most wicked speed, to post¹⁰
With such dexterity to incestuous sheets!
It is not, nor it cannot come to good.
But break my heart, for I must hold my tongue!

Hamlet, 1.2.133-164

¹ sullied stained, defiled
² canon law
³ Hyperion to a satyr like the sun god as compared to a goatlike satyr
⁴ beteem would not allow
⁵ ere before
⁶ Niobe In Greek mythology, Niobe, so grief-stricken at the loss of her children that she could not cease crying, was transformed into a stone from which water continually flowed.
⁷ discourse of reason the ability to reason
⁸ Hercules in Greek mythology, a hero of extraordinary strength and courage
⁹ gallèd eyes had stopped turning her eyes red
¹⁰ post rush