HONORS PS1500 - Physics in the Plays of Tom Stoppard

Hamlet Act 5 --- Questions for Discussion

• Scene 1 --- Summary

Did Ophelia kill herself, or did "the water come to her, and drown her" (see lines 15, 16)?

• Scene 2 --- Summary

Did Gertrude kill herself by knowingly drinking from the poisoned cup?

Did Rosencrantz and Guildenstern deserve their fate?

1. Act 5, Scene 2 , lines 4 to 62 (Two parts: Hamlet and Horatio)

Starts with Hamlet: Sir, in my heart there was a kind of fighting / that would not let me sleep.

Ends with Horatio: Why, what a king is this!

Some Central Issues for Our Class

• The Hamlet Problem: Why does Hamlet delay taking his revenge? Why doesn’t he kill Claudius immediately? And why does Hamlet constantly feel guilty about not being able to go through with it?
  
  

• In Act 5, Scene 2, lines 10 and 11, Hamlet declares that "There's a divinity that shapes our ends / Rough-hew them how we will." Later in the same scene, lines 192 to 195, Hamlet says, "There is special providence in the fall of a sparrow. If it be now, ‘tis not to come; if it be not to come, it will be now; if it be not now, yet it will come --- the readiness is all."  Is everything that will happen to you already determined, or can you take action to control your own destiny?
   

• In Act 1, Scene 5, lines 166 and 167, Hamlet says that "There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, / Than are dreamt of in your philosophy." Are there more things than are dreamt of today? Will there always be? What sort of person might these lines apply to today?
   

• In Act 5, Scene 1, line 55, Horatio observes that the gravedigger can joke about his grisly task because "Custom hath made it in him a property of easiness." How does the idea that custom deadens the senses permeate the play? To what extent is this applicable to everyday life today?

Return to Honors PS1500 home page

Last modified:  Tuesday, February 27, 2007 06:50 PM