Select an activity

Write down all the associations that come into your mind in relation to the words on the screen.

Compost

Trespass

Confess

Virtue

Vice

Suggestions

Compost: rotting – decaying – smelly – feeds plants – unwanted material

Trespass: crime – taboo – enter forbidden territory – Lord’s Prayer – sin

Confess: admit – reveal – murder – dark secrets – sin – religious belief

Virtue: goodness – virginity – purity – perfection – morality

Vice: bad habits – criminal – vice squad – evil

Below is an extract from Hamlet. (The extract below relates to the previous activity.)

(i) With close reference to the language and imagery in this passage, examine how Shakespeare presents Hamlet’s state of mind. [15]

Queen.

This is the very coinage of your brain.

This bodiless creation ecstasy.

Is very cunning in.

Hamlet.

Ecstasy!

My pulse, as yours, doth temperately keep time,

And makes as healthful music. It is not madness

That I have utt'red. Bring me to the test,

And I the matter will re-word which madness

Would gambol from. Mother, for love of grace,

Lay not that flattering unction to your soul,

That not your trespass but my madness speaks:

It will but skin and film the ulcerous place,

Whiles rank corruption, mining all within,

Infects unseen. Confess yourself to heaven;

Repent what’s past; avoid what is to come;

And do not spread the compost on the weeds,

To make them ranker. Forgive me this my virtue;

For in the fatness of these pursy times

Virtue itself of vice must pardon beg,

Yea, curb and woo for leave to do him good.

Queen.

O Hamlet, thou hast cleft my heart in twain.

Hamlet.

O, throw away the worser part of it,

And live the purer with the other half.


(Act 3 Scene iv)

Write a sentence that contains each of the phrases. You can add each phrase onto the screen as you need them.

Then select your best two and share these with the class.

Phrases

you are spell stopp’d
in word and deed
melting the darkness
foul and muddy
understanding begins to swell
flesh and blood

Suggestions

Your lips are open in shock; you are spell stopp’d.

Loyalty is sacred and in word and deed we shall abide by this code.

The candle flame was melting the darkness.

His mind was foul and muddy like a festering bog.

After hours of revision, my understanding begins to swell.

He loved her as if she were his own flesh and blood.

The extract below shows the phrases in context.

(i) With close reference to the language and imagery of this extract, analyse the ways in which Shakespeare presents Prospero’s attitudes towards his prisoners. [15]

[Here enters Ariel before; then Alonso, with a frantic gesture, attended by Gonzalo; Sebastian and Antonio in like manner, attended by Adrian and Francisco. They all enter the circle which Prospero had made, and there stand charm’d; which Prospero observing, speaks.]

Prospero.

A solemn air, and the best comforter

To an unsettled fancy, cure thy brains,

Now useless, boil’d within thy skull! There stand,

For you are spell-stopp’d.

Holy Gonzalo, honourable man,

Mine eyes, ev’n sociable to the show of thine,

Fall fellowly drops. The charm dissolves apace,

And as the morning steals upon the night,

Melting the darkness, so their rising senses

Begin to chase the ignorant fumes that mantle

Their clearer reason. O good Gonzalo,

My true preserver, and a loyal sir

To him thou follow’st! I will pay thy graces

Home both in word and deed. Most cruelly

Did’st thou, Alonso, use me and my daughter;

Thy brother was a furtherer in the act.

Thou are pinch’s for’t now Sebastian. Flesh and blood,

You, brother mine, that entertain’d ambition,

Expell’d remorse and nature, who, with Sebastian –

Whose inward pinches therefore are most strong –

Would here have kill’d your king, I do forgive thee,

Unnatural though thou art. Their understanding

Begins to swell and the approaching tide

Will shortly fill the reasonable shore

That now lies foul and muddy.


(Act 5 Scene i)