Board 8 > Save My Hamlet Scene - Day 11

(+) Yeah! (+)

up to 2 saves per hour.
2 saves from unique users to be safe.
last scene is eliminated.

1.1 - ghost appears during night watch
1.5 - ghost describes murder, Hamlet swears revenge; oath
2.2 - Rosencrantz and Guildenstern; fishmonger; players arrive; "rogue and peasant slave"
3.1 - "to be or not to be"; nunnery
3.2 - The Mousetrap
3.4 - Hamlet berates Gertrude; kills Polonius; ghost appears to Hamlet only
4.5 - Ophelia's madness; Laertes demands vengeance
4.7 - Claudius persuades Laertes to follow his plan for killing Hamlet; Ophelia drowns
5.1 - Gravediggers; Laertes jumps into the grave; Hamlet jumps into the grave
5.2 - Hamlet explains how he got R&G killed; duel; everyone dies; Fortinbras becomes king

Eliminated:
11. 1.2 - wedding banquet; Hamlet learns about ghost; "sullied/solid flesh"
12. 4.6 - Horatio reads letter from Hamlet about being captured by pirates
13. 3.3 - Claudius confesses and prays; "now might I do it pat"
14. 4.3 - Hamlet eventually reveals where he put the body; Claudius plans to have Hamlet killed in England
15. 1.3 - sending Laertes off; advice for Ophelia
16. 1.4 - waiting for ghost; ghost beckons Hamlet to follow
17. 4.4 - Fortinbras on his way to Poland; "how all occasions do inform against me"
18. 4.2 - R & G beg Hamlet to tell them where he put Polonius's body
19. 2.1 - Reynaldo; Ophelio affrighted
20. 4.1 - Gertrude tells Claudius what happened; Claudius determines to send Hamlet away

A big scene, and one of my favourites. We're introduced to several major characters here, but Hamlet and Claudius most substantially. This scene sets up how villainous a portrayal of Claudius this will be, the tenor of Hamlet and Claudius's relationship, as well as the political tenor in Denmark.

The 1980 BBC Shakespeare adaptation I'm watching has an interesting transition, where the applause from the wedding ceremony starts as the characters are exiting in 1.1, before it cuts to the room in 1.2, resembling audience applause as actors exit the stage. This puts us in mind of the world as a stage, and specifically in the next scene, the pageantry of the wedding ceremony as a piece of theatre. Patrick Stewart's Claudius is a slick politician playing to the room in reassurance as he navigates the delicate political situation of the sudden transfer of power, which later scenes would suggest might not be completely smooth amongst the general populace. Likewise, Hamlet has a performance of his own, arriving at a wedding dressed for a funeral. Derek Jacobi's Hamlet applauds sarcastically, and equally delivers his barbs to the room. His behaviour seems as much about grief as an outright challenge to the falsities.
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Much of the play is about acting and theatre, and this speech is key:

Seems, madam? Nay, it is. I know not seems.
'Tis not alone my inky cloak, good mother,
Nor customary suits of solemn black,
Nor windy suspiration of forced breath,
No, nor the fruitful river in the eye,
Nor the dejected 'havior of the visage,
Together with all forms, moods, shapes of grief,
That can denote me truly. These indeed seem,
For they are actions that a man might play.
But I have that within which passeth show,
These but the trappings and the suits of woe.

All around him are actors, himself included, but whereas others are putting on a show of grief, Hamlet expresses that what he's doing is performative, but it's a performance that fails to express the extent of his real grief. The inky cloak is a signifier that he's already rejected, but cannot yet imagine an alternative. As with his antic disposition later, Hamlet is trying to find the right performance. His soliloquys are attempts to speak his role into existence, even as they fail to translate into action.

Hamlet represents a new subjectivity in a rapidly changing England with contradictory values as it shifts from feudalism towards capitalism. Private property, trade, and merchant capital are changing the structure of English society. People are becoming of the idea that they are of their own making rather than products of their place and society. Then, of course, there's the Reformation. Religion was central to people's concept of the world, so the very idea that a previous conception can be outlawed based on who's on the throne is a traumatic shift. More specifically, Protenstantism takes the public ritual out of religion, and destroys the idea that these rituals have a magic function - that you manipulate the world through the manipulation of symbols. The theatre can be seen as compensatory for this loss, like a modern church, hence why Puritans feared it. People congregate at the theatre to participate in a public ritual, to watch life performed in a way that's predictable (in the way that it's the same plot beats every time), and which suggests the possibility of resolution. We watch plays and movies to sublimate our anxieties and watch them resolved by symbols on a stage or a screen. Hamlet, caught between the rigid hierarchy of the old world and the emerging future of self-determination, hopes that by acting as the avenging son, he will become the avenging son, and the social order will be reasserted.
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i enjoyed the eliminated writeup a lot!

3.4
5.1
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thanks!
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bump
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I second Seabass' comment. By the way, who is in the BBC version you're watching?

5.1
2.2
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Derek Jacobi as Hamlet
Claire Bloom as Gertrude
Patrick Stewart as Claudius
Eric Porter as Polonius
Lalla Ward as Ophelia
David Robb as Laertes
Patrick Allen as the Ghost of Hamlet's Father
Robert Swann as Horatio
Jonathan Hyde as Rosencrantz
Geoffrey Bateman as Guildenstern

it's really good.
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Wow that's a really great cast.
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1.1
3.1
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Remaining:
*1.1 - ghost appears during night watch
1.5 - ghost describes murder, Hamlet swears revenge; oath
*2.2 - Rosencrantz and Guildenstern; fishmonger; players arrive; "rogue and peasant slave"
*3.1 - "to be or not to be"; nunnery
3.2 - The Mousetrap
*3.4 - Hamlet berates Gertrude; kills Polonius; ghost appears to Hamlet only
4.5 - Ophelia's madness; Laertes demands vengeance
4.7 - Claudius persuades Laertes to follow his plan for killing Hamlet; Ophelia drowns
5.2 - Hamlet explains how he got R&G killed; duel; everyone dies; Fortinbras becomes king
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bump
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1.5
3.1

2.2
4.5
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Remaining:
*1.1 - ghost appears during night watch
*1.5 - ghost describes murder, Hamlet swears revenge; oath
3.2 - The Mousetrap
*3.4 - Hamlet berates Gertrude; kills Polonius; ghost appears to Hamlet only
*4.5 - Ophelia's madness; Laertes demands vengeance
4.7 - Claudius persuades Laertes to follow his plan for killing Hamlet; Ophelia drowns
5.2 - Hamlet explains how he got R&G killed; duel; everyone dies; Fortinbras becomes king
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5.2
4.5
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3.4
1.5

Remaining:
*1.1 - ghost appears during night watch
3.2 - The Mousetrap
4.7 - Claudius persuades Laertes to follow his plan for killing Hamlet; Ophelia drowns
*5.2 - Hamlet explains how he got R&G killed; duel; everyone dies; Fortinbras becomes king
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bump
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1.1
5.2

3.2
4.7

Sudden death.
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3.2
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