1599: Autumn

Things Dying, Things reborn

• Why didn't Essex march on Tyrone as soon as he got to Ireland in April 1599?
• Why didn't Essex fight the war of "attrition" and "starvation" advocated by Edmund Spenser?
• As Earl Marshall, what rights and responsibilities did Essex believe he had?
• How many knights did Essex create in Ireland?
• Shapiro says that Essex's enemies relied on "three furies" to defeat him. What were they?
• After a great military defeat, Essex borrowed a controversial tactic from Tacitus. What was it?
• What did John Harington blame for the English defeat in the Curlew Mountains?
• On September 7, Tyrone and Essex conferred for a half an hour. Why did Shapiro call that tactic "foolhardy"?
• What rank of people formed the East India Company?
• To whom did Hakluyt dedicate his second volume of Principle Navigations, Traffics, and Discoveries of the English Nation? Why change the dedicatee from his first volume?
• Which play was performed on the Dragon in 1607? Why?
• Which play, written shortly after Hamlet, parodied epic and chivalric language?
• What weapon in Hamlet signalled a shift from medieval chivalry to the "strange vices" of foreigners?
• While Essex was confined to house arrest, what were his followers Southampton and Rutland doing?

Essays and Soliloquies

• Who might have written the "Ur" Hamlet (the now-lost dramatic version) of the 1580's?
• Who wrote the twelfth-century source for Hamlet?
• Which character in Hamlet was Shakespeare's invention?
• How many existing words does Shakespeare use for the first time in Hamlet? How many of those are never used again?
• How many words does Shakespeare coin (make up) for Hamlet?
• Give an example of a "hendiadys." How many of them are in Hamlet?
• What literary form might have influenced the soliloquies? Who gets credit for inventing that form?
• Polonius reads aloud one of Hamlet's love letters to Ophelia, which compares his love to Ptolomeic certainties: "Doubt that the sun doth move." What was ironic about quoting Ptolomeic science in 1599?

Second Thoughts

• Why couldn't Shakespeare's second quarto have been performed at the Globe in its 1599 state?
• What encounter with what character in 4.4, along with the soliloquy that follows it, gets deleted in the Folio or "revised" Hamlet?
• A hired actor from a road production of Hamlet sold something to London publishers in 1603. What did he sell, and what part did he play?
• Until recently, all readers have read a "conflated text" of Hamlet. What does that mean?
• Shapiro tells us that to understand Shakespeare's greatness, "we need only look at the trails of sparks"? To what does he refer?