Analyze An extended metaphor is a metaphor in which two things are compared in length and in various way Review Hamlet's dialogue in Scene 2, lines 353-375. what ways does he compare himself to a musical instrument? Is his attitude toward Rosencrantz and Guildenstern consistent with his behavior toward them in Act II, Scene 2, or does this speech signal a change? Explain

Hamlet is angry that his (supposed) friends are "playing" him, like an instrument. This means that he feels they are manipulating and using him, trying to get him to confess why he has been acting crazy based on orders from the King. He begins this extended metaphor when they push him to tell why he is acting the way he is.

He compares himself by saying that Rosencrantz and Guildenstern seem to know which buttons to press to get him to speak, to make the 'notes' come out. Mostly he compares himself to a pipe, but at the end he also compares himself to a lute by saying "Call me what instrument you will, though you can fret me, yet you cannot play upon me." There's a double meaning in the word fret--it means to worry but also it refers to the neck of a stringed instrument like a lute.

This aggression is a shift from 2.2, because Hamlet is much angrier here. In that first scene he is suspicious of his friends but does not yell as much or as violently as he does in 3.2.