How to Teach Your Children Shakespeare (42 page)

and Hamlet answers,

O throw away the worser part of it
,

And live the purer with the other half
.

(If your children ever use the word
worser
for “worst,” they can now defend themselves by reminding you that Hamlet said it first.) Claudius, now aware of the threat to his life, sends Hamlet to England and tries to have him killed. While on his way, Hamlet sees an army marching past and hears of the brave deeds of the Prince of Norway who is leading his men into war. Hamlet compares his own cowardice to the bravery of the Norwegian prince and his followers, and this is the trigger for Hamlet’s final soliloquy.

Soliloquy 5

How all occasions do inform against me
.

Like the other soliloquies, this one is filled with Hamlet’s inner struggle: his effort to cope with his own inaction at a time when action is called for. The example of the soldiers going off to fight
even for an eggshell
makes him ashamed of himself, and the soliloquy ends with a declaration of future action no matter what:

O, from this time forth
,

My thoughts be bloody or be nothing worth!

This renewed determination to avenge his father’s murder ends Part 2 of the play and catapults us into Part 3.

Events move quickly now. On his way to England, Hamlet escapes (his ship is boarded by pirates!), and he makes his way back to Denmark to
confront his destiny. Meanwhile, at Elsinore, Ophelia goes mad with grief over her father’s death (and, presumably, the loss of Hamlet’s love) and dies by drowning herself in a stream. Her brother Laertes has by now returned from France, and when he hears that Hamlet is on his way back to Denmark, he vows to kill him to avenge the deaths of his father and sister.

Laertes and Claudius now hatch a plan together: Laertes will challenge Hamlet to a duel, and Laertes’s sword will be tipped with poison. Meanwhile, in case that fails, Claudius will put poison in a cup of wine for Hamlet to drink.

Hamlet does return from England, and he nears Elsinore on the day of Ophelia’s funeral. In one of the greatest scenes in the play, Hamlet chats with the grave digger, a comic fellow who doesn’t give a fig for death—he’s seen too much of it. This is where Hamlet, famously, finds the skull of his father’s jester in the ground, holds it up, and says
Alas, poor Yorick
. Although this moment has become a cliché, the Yorick speech is in fact tremendously moving. It is another example of a great genius writing a speech for another great genius.

HAMLET

(
taking the skull
)

Alas, poor Yorick! I knew him, Horatio—a fellow of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy. He hath borne me on his back a thousand times.… Here hung those lips that I have kissed I know not how oft
[often].
Where be your gibes
[jokes]
now? your gambols
[dances]?
your songs? your flashes of merriment that were wont
[likely]
to set the table on a roar? Not one now to mock your own grinning? Quite chapfallen?

When Laertes and the other mourners show up for the funeral, Laertes jumps into Ophelia’s open grave, Hamlet comes forward, and they grapple with each other.

The next day they meet for the duel, where things almost turn out as Claudius planned. But not quite. When Hamlet and Laertes begin their duel, Gertrude insists on drinking from the nearby (poisoned) cup of wine—and dies from it. Meanwhile Hamlet is scratched by the poisoned sword and realizes the trick. He changes swords with Laertes and stabs him. Then he attacks Claudius, stabs him with the sword, and forces him
to drink the rest of the poison from the cup. As you can tell, even from this short description, it is one of the most thrilling scenes in all of literature, and your children should watch it. The breathless sense of peril that it creates is astonishing.

As Hamlet is dying, Horatio, Hamlet’s loyal friend, grabs the cup of poison and tries to drink it himself so that he can join Hamlet in death. Hamlet wrestles it out of Horatio’s hand:
HAMLET

Give me the cup. Let go! By heaven, I’ll h’at
[have it].

O God, Horatio, what a wounded name
,

Things standing thus unknown, shall I leave behind me!

If thou didst ever hold me in thy heart
,

Absent thee from felicity
[happiness]
awhile

And in this harsh world draw thy breath in pain

To tell my story
.

Have your children act out this speech. Hamlet is dying. He’s saving his best friend from dying with him. His soul is in torment over the wounded reputation he leaves behind him, and yet perhaps his soul is finally at rest because he has, at last, killed his father’s murderer. What great heroics can here be played.

The play ends a few moments later, after the Prince of Norway enters and claims the crown of Denmark. He does honor to Hamlet; and the final image of the play is of Hamlet in death, having at last avenged the murder of his father.

Passage 24
The Most Famous Words in the World

To be, or not to be; that is the question:

Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer

The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune
,

Or to take arms against a sea of troubles
,

And, by opposing, end them. To die, to sleep—

No more—and by a sleep to say we end

The heartache and the thousand natural shocks

That flesh is heir to—’tis a consummation

Devoutly to be wished. To die, to sleep—

To sleep, perchance to dream. Ay, there’s the rub
,

For in that sleep of death what dreams may come
,

When we have shuffled off this mortal coil
,

Must give us pause
.

(
Hamlet
, Act III, Scene 1, lines 64–76)

T
hese words are so famous that they’ve become a cliché. Actors find it hard to speak them because audiences have heard them so many times before. Even professionals tend to dismiss the speech, resigned that no one is going to listen because they think they know what it says. But the speech is famous for a reason. It is staggeringly well written and immensely touching, and you should take time to read it to your children
and explain what it means. As you do, have them memorize at least the first third, which will take them through the most famous part of the speech and get them to its central meaning.

Let’s begin by reviewing the whole speech, making sure we understand all the words. Go over it slowly with your children, reading them Shakespeare’s words, then the paraphrase.