Question

Read the excerpt from hamlet, act i, scene ii. claudius: take thy fair hour, laertes; time be thine, and thy best graces spend it at thy will. but now, my cousin hamlet, and my son,— hamlet: [aside.] a little more than kin, and less than kind. claudius: how is it that the clouds still hang on you? hamlet: not so, my lord; i am too much i' the sun. what is the most likely reason that shakespeare chose this point in the play to give hamlet his first aside?

Answer 1

If the options are: 
A. Shakespeare is alerting the audience to the conflict between Claudius and Hamlet.
B. Shakespeare is making sure the audience knows early on that Hamlet is a tragic hero.
C. Shakespeare is contrasting Hamlet with Laertes to create suspense for the audience.
D. Shakespeare is hinting to the audience that Claudius will cause an unhappy ending for Hamlet.

Then the answer is A. Hamlet can't resist undermining Claudius' words, but he still can't do it openly, at this early moment in the play. Hamlet's first aside is a verbal pun of the kind that was favorite with the Rennaissance audiences: he draws on the similarity of the words "kin" and "kind", saying that he is more than kin (therefore, related to many more ways with Claudius than he would be with an uncle), but less than kind (he despises him and plots against him, in a way). These words are spoken aside because Hamlet still doesn't have precise information on his uncle's involvement in his father's death, but he nevertheless suspects something vile had been going on.

Answer 2

 i am assuming we are talking about the "to be or not to be" speech. In this speech he basically contemplates suicide. This is a good point in the play, because everything accumulated, and he was torn. He was torn because he doesn't want to keep on living when he knows about his uncle killing his dad and marrying his mom, which made Hamlet pretty depressed, but he doesn't know what death will bring and that's scary as well.