Due Nov 9

Danish Prince 101

Read Hamlet, Acts 1-2. (Available online here and here, as well as in the Humanities course book.) As you read, watch for moments where a character speaks with intent to persuade. Highlight a short passage (1-5 lines lone) and paste it into a comment below. Then reply to that comment with a brief, ¶-length discussion of what's striking in your quoted passage. What's the speaker's intent? How does the speaker marshal arguments, evidence, authorities in support of that aim?

As you consider what passage to quote for this assignment, take note of what other students have already covered. While I want to get some coverage of the great ghost scene in Act 1 (not to mention the meeting of the court and the leave-taking of Laertes from his father Polonius), I don't want you to neglect Act 2, with Hamlet's feigned madness, his feigning friends Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, and the troop of players who arrive at the very end of that act.

But more important is that you pick a passage where there's something interesting going on: something worthy of note in the way that characters approach the task of persuasion, something paradoxical or otherwise interesting as focus for the upcoming essay. It's too early to commit—you're still dating, playing the field as it were—but no sense playing the game without an eye to the future, right?