In this week’s Dispatches from The Secret Library, Dr Oliver Tearle explores the meaning and origins of a famous Shakespeare phrase
‘Hoist with one’s own petard’. The expression is well-known, and its meaning is fairly clear to most people: it describes someone who has been scuppered by their own schemes, someone who has come a-cropper because of some mischief they intended against others. But what is a ‘petard’, and where does it come from?
By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)
Hamlet is not the only character in Shakespeare’s play who offers us a soliloquy. Claudius, Hamlet’s uncle and the murderer of Hamlet’s father (Claudius’ own brother), also gives us a detailed insight into his thoughts, for the first time, in this private moment as he goes to pray in Act III Scene 3 of Shakespeare’s play. ‘O, my offence is rank, it smells to heaven’ definitively confirms Claudius’ guilt for the first time in Hamlet.
For this reason, among several others, it’s worth stopping to analyse ‘O, my offence is rank’ in terms of its language and meaning. We’ll offer an analysis by summarising the soliloquy line-by-line, glossing any words that require it.
By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)
‘Now might I do it pat, now he is praying’: so begins one of the numerous soliloquies spoken by Hamlet in Shakespeare’s play. Although it’s not the most famous soliloquy in Hamlet – ‘To be or not to be’ and ‘O that this too too sullied flesh would melt’ are both better-known – ‘Now might I do it pat’ offers a valuable insight onto both Hamlet’s personal thoughts and the play’s wider concern with questions relating to religion and revenge.
By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)
The ‘Alas, poor Yorick’ speech from Shakespeare’s Hamlet has become one of the most famous and instantly recognisably theatre tropes – or, at least, those three words, ‘Alas, poor Yorick’, have.
Perhaps the rest of Hamlet’s speech is less famous, and certainly many people misquote the next four words that follow ‘Alas, poor Yorick’; so a few words of analysis might help to illuminate the meaning of one of Shakespeare’s greatest meditations on mortality and the brevity of life. (We have analysed the play here.)
By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)
‘O, what a rogue and peasant slave am I!’: so exclaims Hamlet in one of his more despairing soliloquies in Shakespeare’s play. But what prompts him to exclaim ‘O, what a rogue and peasant slave am I!’ and what does he say in this important speech in the play?
Hamlet’s soliloquy comes in act 2 scene 2 of Hamlet, shortly after he has spoken with the players or actors, and just before he hatches his fiendish plan to try to determine the guilt of his uncle (which he comes up with towards the end of the soliloquy).