ENG 403/4A Hamlet Final Assessment DUE DATE: WEDNESDAY, 12/20, 11:30 PM At the end of the Hamlet unit, you will have two choices to earn 100 points. These choices replace the final essay test that was in the course originally. You can choose only ONE of the following options, and the due date remains the same. These activities will be graded just like the test would have been, meaning there is no chance to redo or revise the assignment. However, this will be taken into consideration when I grade them. No matter what option you choose, it must be completed in a Word document and labeled or titled so that it is clear to your teacher which option you chose. On your document, write it as a heading, like this: Your first and last name Date Name of the option you chose Models of each assignment can be found in class announcements. Option #1: RAFT A RAFT is a writing assignment that encourages you to uncover your own voice and formats for presenting your ideas about the content you are studying. In this design, you have a lot of freedom to choose what interests you. · R = Role of the writer: Who are you as the writer? · A = Audience: To whom are you writing? · F = Format: In what format are you writing? · T = Topic: What are you writing about? The process: 1. Use the chart below to choose two characters from the ROLE column. Your goal is to write in the voice (Role) of YOUR CHARACTER. 2. Using the knowledge and understanding that you have gained throughout the reading and viewing of Hamlet, choose a related Audience, Format, and Topic from the chart below. 3. As you craft your creative writing assignment, be sure the character’s personality and motivations are evident. For instance, you could choose Ophelia (role), Hamlet (audience), blog entry (format) and betrayal (theme). Then you will write a blog entry from Ophelia’s point of view with Hamlet as the intended audience focused on the theme of betrayal. 4. Next, repeat this process for a different role, audience, format and theme. 5. Please see the model below (pg. 8) to understand what to do. 6. If you are unsure of what a particular format is, the best thing to do is look up examples online. · YOU MUST CHOOSE TWO CHARACTERS FROM THE ROLE LIST AND COMPLETE TWO DIFFERENT RAFTS. THEY WILL BE WORTH 50 POINTS EACH AND MUST BE AT LEAST 200 WORDS EACH. · To clarify, this means two different roles, two different audiences, two different formats and two different themes. · You may use some words from the play, but if you do they MUST be exact and put in quotation marks. The goal, however, is to use your own words. No outside sources are to be used for this assignment. · You can choose to write about a particular scene or event, or the play as a whole. · You are in the voice of the character, so if you choose the role of Ophelia, then you will become her (first person POV) and reflect her personality and motivations in your writing. Role Audience Format Theme Choose the role that you .

1. ENG 403/4A
Hamlet Final Assessment
DUE DATE: WEDNESDAY, 12/20, 11:30 PM
At the end of the Hamlet unit, you will have two choices to earn
100 points. These choices replace the final essay test that was in
the course originally. You can choose only ONE of the
following options, and the due date remains the same. These
activities will be graded just like the test would have been,
meaning there is no chance to redo or revise the assignment.
However, this will be taken into consideration when I grade
them.
No matter what option you choose, it must be completed in a
Word document and labeled or titled so that it is clear to your
teacher which option you chose. On your document, write it as a
heading, like this:
Your first and last name
Date
Name of the option you chose
Models of each assignment can be found in class
announcements.
Option #1: RAFT
A RAFT is a writing assignment that encourages you to uncover
your own voice and formats for presenting your ideas about the
content you are studying. In this design, you have a lot of
freedom to choose what interests you.
· R = Role of the writer: Who are you as the writer?
· A = Audience: To whom are you writing?
· F = Format: In what format are you writing?
· T = Topic: What are you writing about?

2. The process:
1. Use the chart below to choose two characters from the ROLE
column. Your goal is to write in the voice (Role) of YOUR
CHARACTER.
2. Using the knowledge and understanding that you have gained
throughout the reading and viewing of Hamlet, choose a related
Audience, Format, and Topic from the chart below.
3. As you craft your creative writing assignment, be sure the
character’s personality and motivations are evident. For
instance, you could choose Ophelia (role), Hamlet (audience),
blog entry (format) and betrayal (theme). Then you will write a
blog entry from Ophelia’s point of view with Hamlet as the
intended audience focused on the theme of betrayal.
4. Next, repeat this process for a different role, audience,
format and theme.
5. Please see the model below (pg. 8) to understand what to do.
6. If you are unsure of what a particular format is, the best thing
to do is look up examples online.
· YOU MUST CHOOSE TWO CHARACTERS FROM THE
ROLE LIST AND COMPLETE TWO DIFFERENT RAFTS.
THEY WILL BE WORTH 50 POINTS EACH AND MUST BE
AT LEAST 200 WORDS EACH.
· To clarify, this means two different roles, two different
audiences, two different formats and two different themes.
· You may use some words from the play, but if you do they
MUST be exact and put in quotation marks. The goal, however,
is to use your own words. No outside sources are to be used for
this assignment.
· You can choose to write about a particular scene or event, or
the play as a whole.
· You are in the voice of the character, so if you choose the role
of Ophelia, then you will become her (first person POV) and
reflect her personality and motivations in your writing.

3. Role
Audience
Format
Theme
Choose the role that you will take on.
Choose a character to receive your ideas.
Choose the format by which you will deliver message.
Choose a theme as the topic for your writing.
· Prince Hamlet
· Polonius
· Ophelia
· Claudius
· Gertrude
· Horatio
· Laertes
· King Hamlet
· Prince Hamlet
· Polonius
· Ophelia
· Claudius
· Gertrude
· Horatio
· Laertes
· King Hamlet
· Prince Fortinbras
· Your teacher is NOT your audience
· Letter
· Essay
· Speech
· Journal entry

4. · Newspaper article
· Letter to the editor
· E-mail
· Declaration
· Eulogy
· Closing Argument in Courtroom
· Blog entry
· Poem
· Sonnet
· Anger
· Courage
· Revenge
· Paranoia
· Love
· Obsession
· Betrayal
· Suicide
· Depression
· Corruption
· Weakness
· Deception
· Ambition
· Loyalty
· Madness
Option #2: Personal Soliloquy
This option will give you the chance to write your own
soliloquy based on Hamlet’s famous “To be or not to be”
soliloquy.
Fear sometimes makes people crazy! Hamlet is attempting to
confront his underlying fear in his soliloquy. He means to figure

5. out exactly what he is afraid of. In other words, what is
underneath the fear he feels?
One of the cool things about Shakespeare is that his characters
seem to understand how complex it is to be human. We all feel
fear, but we are not all brave enough to reflect on ourselves in
order to try to understand our fears.
We are not in Hamlet’s situation. We are, however, very much
like Hamlet. We are young and hopeful, and very saddened by
loss and angered by the injustice of loss. Like Hamlet, we want
to do what’s “right,” we feel compelled to honor those we love
by doing what is “right,” but we don’t always know what that is
or what “right” means. For Hamlet, consequences of doing what
is “best” create some ethical/moral and emotional consequences.
He attempts to weigh the consequences of each decision, as well
as his fears, as he tries to figure out “What exactly am I afraid
of? What is underneath my fears?”
In your own personal soliloquy, imitate Hamlet’s sense of
conundrum using your own personal situation of indecision and
underlying fear. We all have them. Most of us mask them very,
very well. I am asking you to risk (by exposing a situation and
fear) or to utilize this as a way to write about your own fear.
You can write about this from your own perspective or from the
opposing viewpoint. For example, in “To Swim or Not to
Swim,” the author writes about her fear of drowning in the sea
and about her fear of facing people who might tease her for
being afraid of swimming. She could just as easily have written
from the point of view of the ocean, about using its power to
drown her or launch her onto an island paradise somewhere, and
the ethical/moral issues of each of those choices.
1. Decide on the following key points for your soliloquy:
a. What is the situation?
b. What is the fear you have?

6. c. What is at stake if you ______ and confront this fear?
d. What may be gained by confronting your fear and doing
____?
e. What may be lost by confronting your fear and doing _____?
f. What does it symbolically mean that you do or do not do
_____?
g. What is “the rub” (the complicated situation of the decision)
for the situation in your soliloquy?
h. What point of view/perspective are you going to write from?
2. Read the model soliloquy.
3. Write your own soliloquy using the questions above to guide
you.
a. Your soliloquy must “match” the lines of Hamlet’s soliloquy
(worksheet below).
b. Your writing must “read” like a soliloquy – it is not prose, it
is verse.
c. The content, as always, must be your own. Yes, you will use
the same structure as the original, and perhaps a few of the
same words, but no other outside sources may be used.
d. The written work you turn in can EITHER be the worksheet
OR a new document with the soliloquy and appropriate heading.
e. You can write from your own point of view (I, me, my – first
person) or from another perspective, such as the thing you fear.
Grading criteria: Below is a general grading rubric. You MUST
follow the details of the guidelines above. You must also revise
and edit – consider what you turn in to be “final draft” status.
Criteria
points possible
Points earned
Meets the criteria of the assignment as outlined in the
assignment directions. For the RAFT, this means two different
rafts of at least 200 words each, etc.
90

7. Revised and edited for surface features such as spelling,
punctuation, capitalization, spacing, clarity, word choice and
sentence structure.
10
TOTAL
100
0
DUE DATE: WEDNESDAY, 12/20, 11:30 PM

8. Hamlet’s soliloquy worksheet: You can fill this in with your
own writing as a final draft, then copy paste it into a new
separate document, add your heading and hand it in. OR, you
can use this as a rough draft and create a new document to hand
in.
To be, or not to be, that is the question:
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles
And by opposing end them. To die—to sleep,
No more; and by a sleep to say we end
The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to: 'tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wish'd. To die, to sleep;
To sleep, perchance to dream—ay, there's the rub:

9. For in that sleep of death what dreams may come
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause—there's the respect
That makes calamity of so long life.
For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,
Th'oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely,
The pangs of dispriz'd love, the law's delay,
The insolence of office, and the spurns
That patient merit of th'unworthy takes,
When he himself might his quietus make
With a bare bodkin? Who would fardels bear,
To grunt and sweat under a weary life,
But that the dread of something after death,

10. The undiscovere'd country, from whose bourn
No traveller returns, puzzles the will,
And makes us rather bear those ills we have
Than fly to others that we know not of?
Thus conscience does make cowards of us all,
And thus the native hue of resolution
Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought,
And enterprises of great pitch and moment
With this regard their currents turn awry
And lose the name of action.

11. Model: Ms. Monson’s Personal Soliloquy, Imitation of Hamlet’s
“To Be, or Not To Be”
To Swim, or Not to Swim
To Swim, or Not to Swim, that is the question –
Whether it be safer in the mind to suffer the teeth and jeers
Of my grinning friends standing on the shore,

12. Protecting my body from the cold ocean depths of darkness
By not jumping in, learning the monstrous lengths of jokes,
At lengths I will never outlive or overcome from their memory,
Or, to confront the darkness below the water’s slippery surface,
The unknown, where, I am almost assured
To feel the wounds of knashing jaws of shark teeth,
Or stings and bites of a thousand other perils that I do not
know,
Yet imagine ripping at my flesh,
When I would, then and at first, choose to protect
My drier pride, face the lashings of my friends’ tongues
By guarding my body’s beauty, as it were. To stand on land,
Laughing a continent of comparative jokes,
Not be the target to be laughed at,
Secure ‘gainst the swells of tides of judgment,
Taunts of childish games
That both make me stuck ashore and drown me outright.
Ah, there’s the rub, to stand, rejecting waves of judgment while
inviting it,
To swim, free in water, unbound, protect pride by clawing
within,
Rejecting instinct that commands a drowning, at the first,
In perilous dreams of unknowing by the sun and the darkness,
together,
And, thereby, rejecting and inviting each choice without end.
To be, to swim, to feel free, floating, commanding myself in all
of what I know not,
To be, to swim, and not die,
Not die either from wound or from imaginings that pulse my
heart to panic.
To do what a million have done and lived.
Or, by standing adock so long, we all wait in untidy swimwear
In scorching sun beneath sunscreen,
When we could just jump in and float,
Hide the imperfect body housing my soul,
Stopping the mocking and misery of the driest of cowardice

13. humor.
It is a great choice in the moment to jump, or not. But wait!
The lifeguard walks near. In all my hopes,
Remember your training and abilities.
Credit for all ideas: Ms. Monson
Model RAFT Assignment
Ms. Caton
11/29/17
Option #1: RAFT
(Rosencrantz, Laertes, email, weakness)
_____________________________________________________
___________________________________________________
Date: 17 May 1550
From:[email protected]
To:[email protected]
Subject: Feebleness and frailty
Good afternoon my good Laertes:
I hope this email finds you well. I have struggled of late to
express to Guildenstern my feelings of regret regarding my own
weaknesses as they pertain to the most unfortunate situation of
our mutual friend, Hamlet. I am hoping that you, as both his
acquaintance and someone who has also lost a father, might
understand what I feel I must explain.
Guildenstern and I have always considered ourselves good and

14. faithful friends to Hamlet, which leads to my current sense of
shame over the weakness I have shown in agreeing to spy on
Hamlet and go through with the plan leading to his possible
death. When a man like King Claudius wields his power, it can
be quite difficult to remain strong. I allowed my own fears and
feeble sense of true friendship to overtake me, and for this I am
ashamed. You, on the other hand, showed great strength in
seeking revenge for your own father’s death, even though you,
too, fell victim to King Claudius’ devious ways.
(This email would go on for one more short paragraph to meet
the length requirement.)
Sincerely yours,
Rosencrantz