Understanding (?) Hamlet

The last time that I taught our Introduction to Literature course, I assigned Shakespeare's Hamlet in order to discuss performance. I call it "Night of a Thousand Hamlets," and it involves showing numerous clips of the "To Be or Not to Be" speech done by various actors (Olivier, Branagh, Gibson, etc.). I also give a reading quiz to see that everyone in class has kept up with the assignments.

Among the questions I asked were "How does Ophelia die?" and "What does Hamlet ask of Horatio at the end of the play?" I'm usually stunned by the answers. Even if you've not fully read the play, you'd think there are enough cultural references to Hamlet out there for someone to guess correctly. Not quite.

I did not correct any misspellings or grammatical errors in the following answers.

How does Ophelia die?

• “Being grazed by the poison sword”
• “May have been grased by the sword”
• “Ophelia dies by drinking poison”
• “By poison”
• “Ophelia commits suicide”
• “She is murdered”
• “She kills herself”
• “Ophelia dies”
• “Ophelia goes insane after her father’s death and kills herself"

What does Hamlet ask of Horatio at the end of the play?

• “Hamlet asks Horatio to avenge his death”
• “He asks Horatio to look after his mother”
• “Hamlet asks Horatio to sneak him out of the palace”
• “Hamlet asks Horatio that country”
• “Hamlet asks Horatio to defend him”
• “To flee the kingdom”
• “Hamlet asks Horatio to give him the cup to drink”

You'd think grading short reading quizzes (just 3-4 questions each) would be simple, perhaps even boring. However, the answers above would indicate that it's never dull, no matter how simple the answers might be.

Where Do You Start?

As a writing teacher, sometimes I get sentences and paragraphs and even entire essays that are just so astonishing in their inability to convey information clearly that I have to save them and share them. The paragraph below, written for a developmental writing class, is the one that stood out this semester as the worst offender. The assignment was a relatively simple one. Students had to describe a place that held some special significance to them. I expected there to be not only physical description of this place but some attempt to explain why it was so significant, what sort of history they had with the places they chose.

I have preserved the sentence structure and the spelling and all other aspects of the original except for the line spacing (which had its own issues). This was the final draft's concluding paragraph. Yes, it is all just one sentence. I had written on the rough draft that the student should try to sum up, as best he could, why the place he had chosen to discuss meant so much to him.

"In conclusion, Angel Stadium means a lot me and it will always be a place of merit and it's a place that will always have importance to me and it will never be a place to I can hang out because of the memories that I have at the stadium and it will never leave my mind and the memories i have of game seven of the world series and it can be a good thing it can also be a bad thing but I see it as a good thing because it will always be in my mind and that is why it has merit and importance in my life."

I just couldn't think of what to tell the student about how to make that conclusion better. Unfortunately, he stopped coming to class at about the same time, so I never had a chance to return the graded paper and talk to him about how he might try to improve his writing skills. That means that someone--hopefully, someone more patient and talented than I am--will be helping him out in the same class next semester.