Act 2- Language- Erika Kehrt

1. Expostulate: to attempt to dissuade someone from some course or decision by earnest reasoning.

Pg. 67, Line 86. Shakespeare uses the word “expostulate” to attempt to illuminate Hamlet’s insanity by using parallelism to compare two totally different things and making them join into one. He attempts to dissuade the king and queen from the original course of the conversation by explaining his meaning of wisdom. Polonius explains his meaning of wisdom to help illuminate his reasoning behind why he thinks Hamlet is going crazy.

2. Fain: gladly; willingly.

Pg. 69, Line 131. Shakespeare uses the word “fain” to illuminate the fact that Polonius is trying to prove his trustworthiness to King Claudius. He claims that he will gladly prove to King Claudius that he is loyal and honorable because he wants Claudius to believe that the reason Hamlet is crazy is due to his daughter. And he would “fain” prove that to the king to illuminate that he is coming out with this information in the kings best interest, so maybe that his stepson/cousin might get the help he needs.

3. Appurtenance: something subordinate to a more important thing; an accompanying part or feature of something; accessory.

Pg. 77, Line 371. Shakespeare uses the word “appurtenance” in the line to indicate that in order to welcome all of the actors he has to go through all of the polite customs of greeting one another such as shaking hands. By uses this word it just implies that this customary greeting was subordinate to what is to come after (which was the actors acting out speech that Hamlet wrote in order to see if King Claudius was his father’s murderer or not).

4. Epitaph: a brief statement written on a tomb or gravestone.

Pg. 83, Line 525. Epitaph is used in order to portray how adamant Hamlet is about the actors well treatment while staying in the kingdom. He is saying he would rather have a bad statement written on his tombstone oppose to the actors going around bashing them (and giving them a bad reputation) while they were still alive because they were treated very poorly. So Hamlet makes this claim to Polonius using such harsh tone so that he understands how strongly he feels about the actor’s well treatment.

5. Offal: waste parts of a butchered animal; refuse; garbage.

Pg. 84, Line 580. By Shakespeare using the word “Offal” in Hamlet’s thoughts to himself, it contributes to the negative/harsh tone of Hamlet’s soliloquy. In the line that Offal is used, Hamlet is reminiscing on how horrible a person his uncle is. He states that if he would have known how horrible a man his uncle was earlier he would have fattened up the vultures with King Claudius’ “Offal” or his intestines. And Hamlet continues stating all the negatives of his uncle; Remorseless, treacherous, sex-obsessed, etc.