Day: 8 November 2015

In this scene, two gravediggers argue about wether Ophelia deserves a christian funeral. one of the defends her and the other explains the the gravedigger that it was her choice and that she decided to shorten her life. one of the gravediggers leave and Hamlet and Horatio arrive. They discuss how the gravedigger is throwing around skulls of people who were once important people and skulls that once spoke words and sang. In his digging the gravedigger finds the skull of Yorick, one of Hamlet’s old friends and Hamlet asks if Alexander the Great looked like that once and the gravediggers tells him that he did and he even smelt that bad. Hamlet is surprised at how low humans can go, that even the greatest can fall to the same place. the King, Gertrude, Laertes and a Priest enter with a coffin. The priest tells Laertes that Ophelia should be buried outside the church graveyard and should have stones thrown on her body for taking her own life. Laertes gets angry and tells the priest to perform a proper ceremony just like the other ones. He jumps into the grave and demands to be buried alive with Ophelia and curses the person responsible for her death. Hamlet appears and jumps in the grave with Laertes and they both wrestle. Hamlet proves that he can be as crazy as Laertes, then he leaves.

In this scene, Claudius admits to Laertes that Hamlet murdered his father. Laertes asks Claudius why he let Hamlet get away with such a crime but Claudius tells him that he was holding back but wasn’t planning on letting Hamlet get away with his crime. In the middle of the conversation, the messenger enters with the letter for the king from Hamlet, the King is then assured by the letters that Hamlet is still alive so he and Laertes come up with a plan to kill Hamlet and their plan is to organise a fencing match between the two but Laertes’ sword will not be blunted like Hamlet’s. Laertes will dip his sword into poison and if that doesn’t work the Claudius will have a drink made for Hamlet with poison in it to make sure he dies. Gertrude enters interrupting their plans and tells them about Ophelia drowning and explains her death in detail. Laertes is enraged by this and runs out.

In this scene Horatio receives a letter sent to him by Hamlet and the letter tell him to lead the messenger to the King to hand him letters and tells him to go to Hamlet as fast as he would run from death because Hamlet needed to tell him things about Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.

In this scene, Horatio and a gentleman convince Gertrude to talk to Ophelia as she is crazed and talking nonsense. Ophelia enters and Gertrude talks to her but Ophelia sings about the sad death of her father and after a while King Claudius enters and talks to Ophelia and they hear noises from outside. Laertes enters and is angry but Claudius manages to calm him down and tells Laertes that if he is found guilty of Laertes’ fathers death then he will give Laertes all of his possesions but if Laertes is found guilty then Claudius will try his hardest to get revenge for Polonius’ death.