Imagery in Shakespeare Assignment

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Read the excerpt from Spurgeon's famous essay on Hamlet, "The Imagery of Hamlet, which you will find on pp. 184-186, and answer the questions below.  Submit your responses before class begins.

 

  1. What, according to Spurgeon, is the “dominating” image in Hamlet?      
  2. What other character besides Hamlet speaks lines that develop this imagery in Hamlet?      
  3. What interpretations of the cause of Hamlet’s delay in taking action against Claudius does Spurgeon reject?      
  4. What effect do the “flashes of sheer beauty in the imagery” have on the images of sickness, rottenness and corruption?      
  5. How do passages like 1.2.279-280, 1.4.26-39 and the likelihood that the ghost’s appearance would have been done through a trap door in the stage – thus giving the impression that it were rising from the earth – fit with Spurgeon’s ideas on imagery in the play?
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