Hamlet Reading Questions: Act 2

Act II
1. What is Polonius employing Reynaldo to do? What instructions does he give to him?

He has told Reynaldo to give his son, Laertes money and letters. He has also employed him to ask around and find out what his son has been up to in Paris. He wants to know if there are any rumors and make sure that they are the truth or lies. He simply wants to know what his son is doing and if he really is doing music.

2. What report of Hamlet’s behavior does Ophelia give to Polonius in 2.1? What
specifically does she tell him about how he was acting? What other words are used to describe Hamlet’s behavior (especially his actions) throughout these acts? When Hamlet appears in 2.2, how would you characterize his speech?

Ophelia tells her father that she just had a scare. She told him that she was in her room sewing when Hamlet came in with no hat on his head, his shirt unbuttoned, and his stockings dirty, undone, and down around his ankles. His face looked so “out of sorts” like if he came back from hell and then he came up to her and grabbed her by the waist and held her hard. He then backed away and just starred at her for a long time. Then after a while he looked at her up and down 3 times and sighed as if it was his last breath and he left without taking his eyes off of her.

 His actions seem strange, especially in this scene that Ophelia described. Hamlet didn’t say a word…he seems quite and reserved throughout all his actions and he mostly talks to himself about things. He acts as if everything he does will be the last thing he does.

In 2.2, Hamlet talks back to Polonius in a smart way; he says things that can interpreted in two ways. He makes it seem to Polonius that he is talking about his and his daughter.

3. What news does King Claudius receive from Norway in 2.2? What is the status of the impending invasion from act 1?
News: The Old King sent out messengers to stop his nephew’s war preparations to what they thought were to Poland but it was really directed to Denmark. He ordered Fortinbras’s arrest. “Fortinbras swore to never threaten Denmark again.” The old King was so happy his nephew swore to do such a thing that he gave him gold coins and permission to lead his soldiers into Poland but they need permission from Claudius to pass through Denmark.

In Act 1, Young Fortinbras was so upset that Old King Hamlet killed his father, so he wanted revenge.  

4. What speech does Hamlet ask the Player to perform in 2.2? What event in history/literature is being recounted in this speech? Who is Pyrrhus?  

He asks him to preform The Aeneid. This is a Roman poet epic that was written by Virgil between 29 and 19 B.C.

Pyrrhus is the son of Achilles. Pyrrhus, also called Neoptolemus, appears in Aeneas’s account of the siege of Troy as the brutal murderer of Priam and Priam’s sons.

5. In his second soliloquy (“O, what a rogue and peasant slave am I”), what is Hamlet’s response to the player’s speech? What aspect of the Player’s speech does he specifically comment on?

He feels bad that he made the player preform the speech because he saw how overwhelmed he was that the player started to cry. Hamlet comments specifically in the part of the speech were he talks about murder because he tries to relate it to his father’s murder and Claudius.