“To Be Or Not To Be”: Hamlet Act III, scene 1; Brush Up Your Shakespeare: 011

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Religion & Spirituality

4.8 • 1.2K Ratings

🗓️ 27 March 2024

⏱️ 21 minutes

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Summary

What’s eating Hamlet? That’s what everyone at court is trying to figure out! As the play progresses, the new king, Claudius, gets closer and closer to discovering Hamlet’s secret–that Hamlet has somehow figured out that Claudius murdered his way to the throne by killing Hamlet’s father!

Transcript

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0:00.0	Good evening and welcome to another episode of Brush Up Your Shakespeare, where we make
0:06.2	Shakespeare fun and easy, the way it was always meant to be.
0:10.9	This is episode 11, and today we will be commencing with Act 3,
0:15.8	scene one of Hamlet and in this scene is the single most famous soliloquy
0:22.0	in all of Western literature. Yes, it is time for to be or not to be,
0:28.1	which brings us to our line for today. The line for today is to be or not to be. That is the question. Say it with me. To be or not to be that is the question. And one more time to be or not to be that is the question.
0:46.0	Well the tension is really cranking up as Claudius the new king of Denmark is trying to find out why Hamlet is acting so strangely.
0:56.0	Is Claudius just concerned for the mental welfare of his new stepson, or is he concerned that Hamlet's sudden change of behavior
1:06.7	may signal Hamlet knows that Claudius killed his brother and Hamlet's father. But we are getting ahead of ourselves.
1:15.5	Hamlet knows that a ghost that looks like his father, the recently deceased
1:20.4	king, has appeared to him and told him that his brother murdered him in his sleep by pouring
1:27.2	poison in his ear. But Hamlet is not sure whether this is really his father's ghost or whether it could be a devil, only
1:37.8	pretending to be his father, and ordering Hamlet to avenge his murder by killing Claudius in order to damn Hamlet's soul for eternity.
1:50.9	A band of wandering actors have arrived at the castle and Hamlet has secretly arranged with
1:56.8	them to put on a play that very night in which the murder of his father will be enacted.
2:04.4	Hamlet will watch Claudius closely
2:07.1	to see if he reacts, and if he does, Hamlet will know
2:11.5	the ghost is speaking the truth.
2:14.0	In the meantime, King Claudius and Queen Gertrude, Hamlet's mother,
2:19.5	sent for two old school chums of Hamlet to come to Denmark and see if they could figure out why
2:26.7	Hamlet is acting so oddly. The attempts of Rosenkrantz and Guildenstern though are a bust.
2:34.6	They cannot get from Hamlet anything that would be helpful, and we find them reporting this
	...

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