Shakespeare's Work
Shakespeare’s plays are set in many locations, some of them fictional. Europe, Africa and the Middle East are all settings for Shakespeare's plays, as you can see on the interactive map below. His plays are set in 12 countries, with cities in what is now Italy being Shakespeare’s favourite backdrop.
HAMLET
One of the most quoted lines of Shakespeare comes from The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark: "To be or not to be, that is the question!"
The Tragedy of Hamlet often shortened to Hamlet , is a tragedy written by William Shakespeare at an uncertain date between 1599 and 1602. Hamlet is his longest play, and is among the most powerful and influential tragedies in English literature. The play likely was one of Shakespeare's most popular works during his lifetime, and still ranks among his most performed, topping the performance list of the Royal Shakespeare Company. It has inspired many other writers – and has been described as "the world's most filmed story."
Here you will have the opportunity to become familiar with Hamlet's feelings.
With the help of this link, try to complete the following sentences:
1. Hamlet is the ____________ of Denmark.
2. Hamlet’s mother is ________________.
3. The ghost is ____________ .
4. Hamlet’s mother has just married ______________.
5. Hamlet thinks ____________ is a murderer.
6. Hamlet was in love with _______________.
7. Claudius wants to send Hamlet to _____________ .
8. Hamlet kills ____________‘s father by mistake.
9. Laertes is Ophelia’s _______________ .
10. _____________ drowns herself.
11. Gertrude mistakenly drinks from the cup poisoned by ____________ for Hamlet.
12. In the end Hamlet also kills ________________.
Here you have some key scenes from Hamlet
which of these aspects do you think could appear in the play?
• the introduction of a ghost
• comical situations
• a suspicious death
• unhappiness
• a merry ending
• suicide
• tragic love
• death
• murder
Hamlet's soliloquy
This soliloquy, probably the most famous speech in the English language, is spoken by Hamlet in Act III, scene i. His most logical and powerful examination of the theme of the moral legitimacy of suicide in an unbereably painful world. Hamlet poses the problem of whether to commit suicide as a logical question. "To be, or not to be," that is, to live or not to live. He, then, weighs the moral ramifications of living and dying.
Watch the video and then do the activity below
Match Hamlet’s words (left) with a modern version of those words (right)
1.- To be, or not to be: that is the question: Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
2.- Or to take arms against a sea of troubles and by opposing end them? To die: to sleep;
3.- No more; and by a sleep to say we end The heartache and the thousand natural shocks That flesh is heir to,
4.- For who would bear the whips and scorns of time, who would fardels bear, To grunt and sweat under a weary life,
5.- But that the dread of something after death,
6.- The undiscover’d country from whose bourn No traveller returns, puzzles the will
7.- And makes us rather bear those ills we have Than fly to others that we know not of?
8.- Thus conscience does make cowards of us all,
9.- And thus the native hue of resolution Is sicklied o’er with the pale cast of thought
10.-And enterprises of great pith and moment With this regard their currents turn awry, And lose the name of action.
a.- We prefer to live with our problems not risking something we don’t know
b.- Who wants to suffer through an exhausting life,
c.- Death is an unknown place from which no one returns, which we wonder about without getting any answers from
d.- Is it better to be alive or dead?
Is it more admirable to tolerate all the nasty things that luck throws your way,
e.- And our natural boldness becomes weak with too much thinking,
f.- Or to fight against all those troubles by simply putting an end to them once and for all?
g.- Actions that should be carried out at once get misdirected, and stop being actions at all.
h.- Sleep ends the emotional problems and bad events that all humans suffer
i.- Unless they were afraid of something dreadful after death,
j- Fear makes us all cowards,