Month: October 2015

In this scene Gertrude confronts Claudius about the murder that Hamlet has committed. Claudius acts surprised and asks where he is and Gertrude replies that he is hiding the corpse of the man he has killed says that he will be blamed for this murder and fro Hamlets behaviour because he could have done something to stop him but decided to not make a big deal of it and now he has murdered Polonius so he has to cover it up now. Claudius then plans to send Hamlet to England when the sun sets. he sends Rosencrants and Guildenstern to talk to Hamlet and to try to calm him down.

Claudius says Hamlet is a danger, and orders Rosencrantz and Guildenstern to prepare to leave for England. They agree that if the King were to die it would be a tragedy for the country. Polonius enters with news: Hamlet is going to Gertrude’s room, where Polonius will hide behind a tapestry to spy.
Now alone, Claudius cries out that his “offense is rank!”. He wants to pray, but doesn’t see how he can ask forgiveness when he possesses the spoils of the murder, neither of which he wants to give up: Gertrude and the throne. Yet he kneels to pray. Hamlet enters. He draws his sword to kill Claudius and get revenge. But it occurs to him that if he kills Claudius as he prays, then he will go to heaven. That wouldn’t be real revenge, especially when Claudius murdered Hamlet’s father before he could pray, sentencing Hamlet’s father to torment in purgatory. Hamlet decides to wait until Claudius is sinning to kill him. Hamlet exits.
Claudius stops praying. The attempt was useless: “My words fly up, my thoughts remain below. Words without thoughts never to heaven go”.

Hamlet teaches three of the players on how to act. His lecture focuses on how to avoid overacting, suiting action to word and word to action. Hamlet has already told Horatio what the Ghost said, and now reveals his plan: the play to be put on, will mirror the Ghosts’ description of Claudius’s murder of Hamlet’s father. If Claudius looks guilty while watching it, then he is.
Claudius, Gertrude, Polonius, Ophelia and others arrive to watch the play. Hamlet tells Horatio he’s now going to act insane.

The players enter and first act out a dumbshow (a short silent play that shows what the longer play is about). The players then begin to act the full play. As the plot becomes clear, Gertrude and Claudius become uncomfortable. Hamlet mocks them, while continuing to say sexual puns at Ophelia. Claudius asks the name of the play. Hamlet says, “The Mouse-trap.”
When the villain in the play pours poison into the king’s ear, Claudius jumps from his seat, calls for light, and rushes from the room. Hamlet’s plan worked. He tells Horatio that this proves the Ghost was telling the truth. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern enter and say that his mother wants to see him. Hamlet agrees to go, but furiously tells them they cannot “pluck out the heart of his mystery” or play him like a flute. Polonius enters, repeating Gertrude’s request to see him. Hamlet pretends to see odd shapes in a non-existent cloud. Polonius also pretends to see the shapes to make him feel better

Everyone leaves but Hamlet, who says to himself that he could “drink hot blood”, but forces himself to remember not to hurt his mother.

In this scene, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern can’t figure out what the reason is behind Hamlet’s weird behavior, but they tell King Claudius and Gertrude that he was excited by the arrival of the players. The King and Queen, hoping that Hamlet will improve agree to watch the play. Rosencrantz, Guildenstern and Gertrude leave. Claudius and Polonius then chose that moment to set up the “accidental” meeting between Hamlet and Ophelia. Polonius tells Ophelia to walk in the courtyard as if she were reading a book.

In his soliloquy, Hamlet agonizes over whether to kill himself: “To be or not to be”. He thinks men would almost always choose suicide over the “slings and arrows” except that they fear what might happen in the afterlife. He says that such thinking turns people into cowards, and action into inaction. Suddenly Ophelia enters and tries to return the gifts Hamlet gave her. He denies having ever given them. Hamlet then asks Ophelia if she’s honest, then says beauty corrupts honesty. Becoming angry, he tells Ophelia he loved her once, then says he never loved her. He commands her to go to a nunnery (a place for prostitutes) rather than become a “breeder of sinners” He condemns women for hiding their faces behind makeup. Hamlet then storms off. Ophelia is left heartbroken.
Claudius then decides that Hamlet neither loves Ophelia nor is mad. Instead, he thinks Hamlet is “brooding” on something, and that this brooding will lead to danger. He decides to send Hamlet to England. Polonius still thinks Hamlet loves Ophelia. He requests that after the play Hamlet be sent to talk with Gertrude , where Polonius will again spy.

Claudius and Gertrude meet with Hamlet’s friends Rosencrantz and Guildestern, who they told to go to Elsinore to figure out why Hamlet was so strange. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern agree to help.
Polonius entered and said that he figured out the cause of Hamlet’s madness. But, first, the ambassadors have returned from Norway. He goes to get them. While Polonius is gone, Gertrude says that Hamlet’s madness probably comes from his father’s death and fast marriage to his uncle, Claudius .
Polonius returns with the ambassadors. They report that the King of Norway rejected Fortinbras , who promised not to attack the Danes. Norway then rewarded Fortinbras by letting him attack the Poles. Now Norway asked Claudius to give Fortinbras’ army free passage through Denmark on the way to Poland. Claudius agrees.

After a long talk about Hamlet’s madness, Polonius reads love letters that Hamlet sent to Ophelia. Claudius and Gertrude agree that love may be causing Hamlet’s behavior. Polonius proposes that they stage a meeting between Hamlet and Ophelia and spy on them to test his theory. Claudius agrees. Hamlet enters. The King and Queen leave Polonius alone to talk with him. Polonius speaks with Hamlet, who responds with statements about pregnancy, death and Denmark, Polonius, was confused and then exited.
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern enter. Hamlet greets his friends warmly, and tells them that Denmark is a prison. They disagree. He then says a long speech about the beauty of the world and nobility of man, all of which looks to him like dust and fails to please him. Hamlet asks why they’ve come. They say to visit him, but Hamlet angrily demands whether they were ordered by the King and Queen. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern admit they were.

Hamlet cheers up a bit when Rosencrantz mentions the arrival of a troupe of players (actors). Hamlet says his “uncle-father and aunt-mother” are wrong: he’s only insane when they are around. Polonius enters with the players. Hamlet mocks Polonius, but greets the players warmly. He asks the First player to act a speech about the Trojan queen Hecuba’s grief at the death of her husband, Priam. The Player does, and he does it well.
Hamlet tells Polonius to treat the players well and give them good lodgings, and privately asks the First Player to perform The Murder of Gonzago on the following night, with some extra lines Hamlet wrote himself. The Player agrees.

When Hamlet was alone he became so furious that the Player could get so emotional over dead Hecuba, while he couldn’t even bring himself to revenge his murdered father. Hamlet then comes up with a plan: he’ll have the players show a scene similar to Claudius’s murder of his father: “The play’s the thing wherein I’ll catch the conscience of the King”.

Polonius sent his servant Reynaldo to Paris to give Laertes some money and letters, but also to secretly check up on him. Polonius’s instructions were so precise and complicated that they seemed absurd. Ophelia entered, upset. She told Polonius that Hamlet burst into her room and held her wrists, staring at her face and sighing. Then he left without saying anything.
Polonius came to the conclusion that Hamlet was going mad with love because he ordered Ophelia to stop speaking with him.

When Hamlet and the Ghost were alone, the Ghost spoke. It claimed to be the spirit of Hamlet’s father, murdered by Hamlet’s uncle Claudius. Though the story was that Hamlet’s father was napping in his garden and was stung by a serpent, in reality Claudius poured poison into the his ear, murdering him and sending him to Purgatory because he was not given a chance to confess his sins before he died.
The Ghost commanded Hamlet to avenge him for his murder. The Ghost also warned Hamlet not to harm his mother. The Ghost disappeared at dawn. Hamlet promises to do nothing but seek revenge. He talks badly about his mother Gertrude, “O most pernicious woman!”, then his uncle Claudius. Horatio and Marcellus rush in. Hamlet refuses to tell them what happened, fearing that they’ll reveal it. But he says he will pretend to be insane, and makes them swear to silence on his sword. The Ghost’s voice echoes: Swear! And they swear. Hamlet panics because of the burden the Ghost gave him.

In the cold night, Hamlet, Horatio, and Marcellus keep watch. Meanwhile, from inside the castle they hear partying. Hamlet talks to Claudius about his constant merry-making, saying that it makes the Danish look corrupt. Hamlet links indulgence of desires to corruption then says “what looks like enjoyment only hides internal corruption”. The Ghost appears and beckons Hamlet to follow it. But Horatio and Marcellus try to hold him back: they think the ghost might be trying to trap him saying “Religion provides no answers what looks good could be evil”. Hamlet breaks free of them and follows after the Ghost. Marcellus then says “something is rotten in the state of Denmark” and they both run after Hamlet.

As Laertes prepares to go to France, He warns his sister, Ophelia, about not falling for Hamlet, someone whose passions will differ over time and someone who is supposed to marry just to stay as King and to maintain the state. Laertes worries about Ophelia’s pride and honour as well as Hamlet worries about his mother’s.
Ophelia promises to obey, but sarcastically tells Laertes to listen to his own advice.
Polonius enters, tells his son for taking long, then immediately starts giving him fatherly advice about how to act: be sociable, to not lend or borrow money, to be true to your own self etc. Finally, he lets Laertes go. The Father and son talk reflects Claudius’s with Hamlet, except Polonius isn’t trying to hide a secret. Polonius asks Ophelia what Laertes was talking to her about and Ophelia answers saying “Hamlet”. After Polonius asks her to explain, she says that Hamlet has expressed his love for her. Polonius tells her that Hamlet is only pretending to love her only to sleep with her, and forbids her to talk to him. Ophelia again promises to obey.

The morning after Horatio and the guards see the ghost, King Claudius speaks to his courtiers, explaining his marriage to Gertrude, the dead king’s widow wife and the mother of Prince Hamlet. Claudius says that he misses his brother but has chosen to lessen Denmark’s mourning by his marriage with Gertrude. He mentions that Fortinbras has written to him, demanding the surrender of the lands that King Hamlet won from Fortinbras’s father.
His speech ended, Claudius turns to Laertes, the son of Polonius. Laertes expresses his desire to return to France, where he was staying before his return to Denmark for Claudius’s coronation. Polonius gives him permission, and Claudius grants Laertes his consent as well.

Turning to Prince Hamlet, Claudius asks why “the clouds still hang” upon him, as Hamlet still wears black mourning clothes. Gertrude urges him to take off his “nightly colour,” but he replies bitterly that his inner sorrow is so much that his appearance is just a poor reflection of it. Using fatherly advice, Claudius says that all fathers die, and all sons will lose their fathers. When a son loses a father, he is meant to mourn, but to mourn for too long is unmanly and inappropriate. Claudius tells Hamlet to think of him as a father, reminding Hamlet that he stands in line to succeed to the throne after Claudius’s death.

Claudius then says that he does not wish for Hamlet to return to school at Wittenberg (where he had been studying before his father’s death), as Hamlet wanted to do. Gertrude repeats her husband, showing a desire for Hamlet to stay close to her. Hamlet forcefully agrees to do that. Claudius says that he is very pleased by Hamlet’s decision to stay that he will celebrate with parties and cannon fire, an old tradition called “the king’s rouse.”

now alone, Hamlet expresses that he wishes he could die, that he could evaporate and cease to exist. He wishes that God had not made suicide a sin. Anguished, he mourns his father’s death and his mother’s fast marriage to his uncle. He remembers how much his parents loved each other, and the thought that now, not yet two months after his father’s death, his mother marries his uncle, angers him.