This essay will be due in dropbox on Monday March 10, 2014.
It will be 2 pages long Times New Roman 12 Point Font. You must cite the play using parenthetical citations (Shakespeare 12).
You must put a full citation to the play Hamet at the bottom of the paper.
Choose one of the following topics for your essay:
1. Study Hamlet’s seven soliloquies. Write an essay in which you discuss how they reveal his character and his search for identity.
2. Reread the scenes involving Ophelia and Hamlet. Write an essay in which you discuss his attitudes and behaviors toward her. Did he, as he says near the end, love her?
3. Is Polonius a nearly senile old fool or a shrewd and worldly politician? Write an essay in which you explain your interpretation.
4. Analyze the three appearances of the ghost, and explain what they add to the play. Consider Hamlet as both literature and theater.
5. Analyze the character of Horatio as he appears from his first view of the ghost in Act 1 to the death of Hamlet in Act 5.
6. The play includes numerous examples of characters trying to trap other characters. Choose three examples, and write an essay in which you explain the situations and consider ways the examples reinforce themes of the play.
7. Write an essay in which you discuss what characters like Orsic, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern add to the play.
8. When Hamlet returns from his experience at sea, how has his frame of mind changed? Write an essay in which you explain your ideas.
9. Read the Play “Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead” by Tom Stoppard. Then write an essay in which you explain how Stoppard uses these minor characters from “Hamlet”.
10. Write an essay in which you discuss the causes and effect of Hamlet’s procrastination of the duty to achieve revenge.
11. Write an argumentative essay where you explain the origin of the ghost. Was it from hell or was it angelic? Use evidence from the text to back up what you believe.
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