Hamlet Group

Question:


rpg
Student
High School - 12th Grade

I need one good speech in Act IV of Hamlet. The speech has to give a "cause and effect" explanation to the audience of Shakespeare's time.

It can be regarding social, cultural or economic values.

I have to expand on that one speech

Thanks

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Posted by rpg on Tuesday April 14, 2009 at 11:16 AM and tagged with act iv, cause and effect, hamlet, speech.

Answers:

  1. hi1954
    hi1954 Teacher

    eNotes Editor

    There are really only two great "speeches" in Act IV of Hamlet, one by Hamlet and one by the King.  The King's speech, in IV.5, which begins "O, this is the poison of deep grief," gives a sort of synopsis of the situation at this point in the play.  Hamlet's speech in IV.4, lines 32 through the end, is probably more what you're after.  This is the speech with the lines

    "Rightly to be great

    Is not to stir without great argument,

    But greatly to find quarrel in a straw

    When honor's at the stake."

    Sources:
    http://www.enotes.com/hamlet/

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    Posted by hi1954 on Tuesday April 14, 2009 at 6:42 PM


  2. jillyfish Student
    Doctorate

    Act IV, Scene IV. Hamlet has just witnessed Fortinbras, the man of action, set off to fight a meanigless war against Poland for pride's sake only. Halet is impressed and makes this long speech about what it means to act like a man...

    What is a man,(35)
    If his chief good and market of his time
    Be but to sleep and feed? A beast, no more.
    Sure, he that made us with such large discourse,
    Looking before and after, gave us not
    That capability and godlike reason(40)
    To fust in us unused. Now, whether it be
    Bestial oblivion, or some craven scruple
    Of thinking too precisely on the event—
    A thought which, quarter'd, hath but one part wisdom
    And ever three parts coward—I do not know(45)
    Why yet I live to say 'This thing's to do,'
    Sith I have cause, and will, and strength, and means
    To do't. Examples gross as earth exhort me.
    Witness this army, of such mass and charge,
    Led by a delicate and tender prince,(50)
    Whose spirit with divine ambition puff'd,
    Makes mouths at the invisible event,
    Exposing what is mortal and unsure
    To all that fortune, death, and danger dare,
    Even for an eggshell. Rightly to be great(55)
    Is not to stir without great argument,
    But greatly to find quarrel in a straw
    When honour's at the stake. How stand I then,
    That have a father kill'd, a mother stain'd,
    Excitements of my reason and my blood,(60)
    And let all sleep, while to my shame I see
    The imminent death of twenty thousand men
    That for a fantasy and trick of fame
    Go to their graves like beds, fight for a plot
    Whereon the numbers cannot try the cause,(65)
    Which is not tomb enough and continent
    To hide the slain? O, from this time forth,
    My thoughts be bloody, or be nothing worth!

    Sources:
    http://www.enotes.com/hamlet-text/act-iv-scene-iv

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    Posted by jillyfish on Wednesday April 15, 2009 at 3:09 AM