Hamlet Questions: Act 1, Scenes 1-2

Act I
1. What is the Ghost wearing when he come on stage? When before, according to Horatio, had he been seen wearing it?

He is wearing the exact same armor the King was when he fought the King of Norway.

2. Marcellus asks someone to “tell me…/Why this same strict and most observant watch/ So nightly toils the subject of the land…” What is the answer?
They are protecting Denmark from the Young King Fortinbras because he is trying to take back the lands his dad lost from the battle the elder King Hamlet had with the elder King Fortinbras.

3. What story from the past does Horatio relate?
He relates it to Julius Caesar and how he was assassinated and how the “corpse rose out of their graves and ran through the streets of Rome speaking gibberish”.

4. What makes the ghost disappear?
The rooster.

5. Note all of the different matters of court business that Claudius attends to at the opening of 1.2. How does he try to comfort Hamlet? Does it work?
He tries to comfort Hamlet buy saying that his dad like everyone’s dad eventually dies but that he (Claudius) “loves him” just like any father would love his son. He also tells him that he is also next to obtaining the throne, to be king. He also tries to tell him that he is his son and that he cares for him.

6. In Hamlet’s first soliloquy (“O that this too too solid flesh would melt…”), what does he tell the audience is so upsetting to him?
He is so upset about his current situation, about his mom marrying his uncle right after his dad died. He wants to commit suicide.  

7. “Foul deeds will rise,/ Though all the earth o’erwhelm them, to men’s eyes” (~1.2.256-­‐7) What does Hamlet mean by this?
Hamlet is trying to say that the bad things that have been done will soon come to light (be discovered) no matter how hard people try to hide them.