Hamlet

The College Board, Advanced Placement Examination, English Literature and Composition, 2007. 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 Claudius’s 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 his attitude toward his own situation.

O, my offence is rank, it smells to heaven;
It hath the primal eldest curse upon’t,
A brother’s murder. Pray can I not,
Though inclination be as sharp as will:
My stronger guilt defeats my strong intent;
And, like a man to double business bound,
I stand in pause where I shall first begin,
And both neglect. What if this cursed hand
Were thicker than itself with brother’s blood,
Is there not rain enough in the sweet heavens
To wash it white as snow? Whereto serves mercy
But to confront the visage of offence?
And what’s in prayer but this two-fold force,
To be forestalled ere we come to fall,
Or pardon’d being down? Then I’ll look up;
My fault is past. But, O, what form of prayer
Can serve my turn? ‘Forgive me my foul murder’?
That cannot be; since I am still possess’d
Of those effects for which I did the murder,
My crown, mine own ambition and my queen.
May one be pardon’d and retain the offence¹?
In the corrupted currents² of this world
Offence’s gilded hand may shove by justice,
And oft ’tis seen the wicked prize itself
Buys out the law: but ’tis not so above;
There is no shuffling, there the action lies
In his true nature; and we ourselves compell’d,
Even to the teeth and forehead of our faults,
To give in evidence³. What then? what rests?
Try what repentance can: what can it not?
Yet what can it when one can not repent?
O wretched state! O bosom black as death!
O limed⁴ soul, that, struggling to be free,
Art more engaged⁵! Help, angels! Make assay⁶!
Bow, stubborn knees; and, heart with strings of steel,
Be soft as sinews of the newborn babe!
All may be well.

Hamlet, 3.3.40-76

¹ the offence that which has been gained through the crime
² currents course of events
³ the action . . . in evidence in God’s court, the legal action must be brought in accord with the facts; we forced events to testify against ourselves
⁴ limed trapped, like a bird caught in birdlime
⁵ engaged entangled
⁶ Make assay put forth all your efforts