I found it somewhere online. I wish I could remember where or when, but all I know now is that I discovered the bones of one of my favourite lessons sometime before I started assiduously attributing everything I found – partly to model for my students, but mostly so I could find it again. My original is saved as a .docx – so this is from after 2007 but before the school board went Google. Suffice it to say, there’s nothing particularly new here.
Old as it is, this lesson sat in my files for years before I suddenly started using it. A few years ago, post-Covid, my complicated on-again-off-again relationship with Hamlet was, well, on again – and this time I knew that the dense language of the soliloquies was going to be problematic. I already had students acting out a dumb-show of sorts as we started the play, and we pretty much always play a few rounds of “Revenge his foul and most unnatural murder” before we get very far into Act 1. We also stomp around the room learning the feeling of iambic pentameter by chanting “I am a pirate with a wooden leg.” But none of those things were going to get us through the “solid flesh” soliloquy in Act 1, scene 2 (which starts with trochaic meter, of all things – clearly Shakespeare was NOT thinking of future students). What to do? What to do?
Get on our feet, obviously.
After making sure we understand what’s led up to Hamlet being alone on stage for the first time, I hand out the soliloquy and the class makes a circle. I don’t bother explaining any of the words or references – I just say that I expect people to struggle with some of the pronunciation. Then we read the soliloquy around the circle, switching at every punctuation mark. No one understands much. I ask if any words or ideas jumped out at them. Usually there’s something but mostly everyone is lost.
Then we read around the circle again – this time just the last word of every line. Sometimes we do this twice. Again, I ask what this might be about. Now people are starting to get some ideas. I answer some questions: Hyperion is the Titan who ruled the sun; a satyr is a, um, horny goat man; Niobe wept until she turned into a weeping statue…
Depending on how much time we have, we may read around the circle again – either switching at punctuation or switching at end of sentences. Today, I was running a bit behind, so I just harried everyone outside into the cool autumn air. Then I explained what we were doing. We all read the soliloquy out loud. The deal is, though, that as you read, you walk in a straight line and turn 180 degrees every time there’s a punctuation mark.
There are a lot of punctuation marks. A LOT.
Soon, everyone is reading and walking and turning and turning. It is confusing. We lose our place. We’re not in time with everyone else. Basically, it’s chaos. When we finish, I ask “How is Hamlet feeling?” And everyone knows.
Confused.
Anxious.
Messed up.
He’s just turning in circles, like he doesn’t know what to do.
Back inside, we read the soliloquy one more time – this time as a conversation between two halves of the class. The “speaker” switches at every punctuation mark again – as if Hamlet is talking to himself which, of course, he is.
And then the bell rings. As students leave they tell me what they know. He’s angry – at his mother, for getting married again, for getting married so fast, for marrying Claudius. His world is a mess. He’s just so upset. It’s like, how did I end up here?
Which is, of course, exactly how Hamlet feels in this soliloquy. Tomorrow we’ll look at some of the words and phrases, but the real work is already done – and the students did it themselves, with their bodies and the words on the page. Because it’s all right there.
Now, for the rest of the play.
(This page has lots of good information and links to a video where actor Paapa Essiedu demonstrates some of this methodology.)
