Hamlet

The College Board, Advanced Placement Examination, English Literature and Composition, 2004. 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.

Now might I do it pat, now he is praying,
And now I’ll do’t. And so he goes to heaven,
And so am I revenged. That would be scanned:
A villain kills my father; and for that,
I, his sole son, do this same villain send
To heaven.
Why, this is hire and salary, not revenge.
He took my father grossly, full of bread,¹
With all his crimes broad blown, as flush as May;
And how his audit stands, who knows save heaven.
But in our circumstance and course of thought,
’Tis heavy with him; and am I then revenged
To take him in the purging of his soul,
When he is fit and seasoned for his passage?
No.
Up, sword, and know thou a more horrid hent.²
When he is drunk asleep; or in his rage,
Or in th’ incestuous pleasure of his bed,
At gaming, a-swearing, or about some act
That has no relish of salvation in’t—
Then trip him, that his heels may kick at heaven
And that his soul may be as damned and black
As hell, whereto it goes. My mother stays.
This physic³ but prolongs thy sickly days.

Hamlet, 3.3.77-101

¹ full of bread in the full enjoyment of the world
² know thou a more horrid hent wait for a more horrible occasion
³ physic medicine