Hamlet: Act 2, Scene II

[cesario]

Thanks to my crazy crazy sleeping schedule, I didn't post a Hamlet scene yesterday, but this one is so freakin' EPIC it ought to make up for it. Normally I knock these things out over a couple of hours, but this one's taken me all day. I'm dividing it up in two posts and putting the first half up while I work on the second so I don't have to worry

Comments

[cesario]

That's an excellent point, about R & G prompting him with "ambition". I should have considered the fact that they're Claudius' spies more closely.

[tempestsarekind]

By the way, Hamlet? Not much of a poet.

Seriously. I like to wave that fact in the face of people who are mean to Orlando because of his poetry. :P

I've always thought that Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are making all those enigmatic statements not to set up Hamlet's remarks, but because they're trying to get him to talk, hoping he'll open up about something--but then he deflects their enigmatic comments with more enigmatic comments. This may be the influence of Tom Stoppard on my brain, though. (And for what it's worth, the Oxford edition suggests that the bit about "the world's grown honest" might be proverbial, though that might just mean, "No, we don't know why he says that, either.")

[angevin2]

Man, how can people be mean to Orlando? He's such a lovable dork.

[cesario]

If that comment is proverbial it would make rather more sense. Also, I have not read the Stoppard play, but I just mooched a copy from BookMooch so I'll be up to speed shortly.

[nextian]

I've been stuck with R/G since Stoppard, which also gave me my burning hatred of Hamlet himself, but this is a much kinder reading of the text.

I've always thought that the lines like "None, my lord, but that the world's grown honest" are of a piece with their jokey behavior throughout -- they're able to keep up with his sense of humor even when we can't, which makes it sadder that they have to die. It also makes it sad when they're played by Timothy Spall & co as slimy morons.

[cesario]

I don't feel as though I can like or dislike Hamlet. He feels less a person and more a manifestation of human consciousness or something. And I haven't read Stoppard myself. Not that Stoppard, anyway.

I actually thought Timothy Spall played...Rosencrantz? as rather sweet and sympathetic. No stupider than his lines make him, and I actually found Hamlet rather unkind for provoking that air of wounded dignity in him.

[nextian]

It's definitely worth a read, as I'm sure you know! Although, since it's a metatextual thing, it does always make me feel guilty for finishing the play and, er, killing R&G again. So caveat lector.

That's so funny -- I also found Hamlet unkind in that movie, but I've always been prone to assume that the negative qualities in Branagh's characterization are not intentional, considering how much he seems to be, er, Gilderoy Lockhart. I thought the director's intention was to associate Rosencrantz with Spall's other roles, largely as, you know, the Henchman (although Spall as always added some class to the stereotype)... but again, calling it intentional is much kinder and certainly makes me like the adaptation more.

[lizbee]

Between lamenting that fortune has turned a bit sour, and that the world has grown honest, I always think of R. and G. as minor con-men. They were probably planning to steal the family silver and sell Claudius a really good piece of property over in Holland, fine farming fields, well-irrigated, etc.

[cesario]

I think calling them con-men might be giving them too much credit.

[hedda62]

These are wonderful posts; I'm looking forward to the whole play and more.

The neat thing about R&G is how you can't have one without the other, whether they're a couple or two halves of the same brain (or body. It would be cool to play them as Siamese twins) or a package deal that you have to hire as one and pay double for, like the smart guy and his dumb brother-in-law, except that they are nearly indistinguishable and obviously both smart. But it's the genius of Shakespeare that we wonder about stuff like that; they could easily enough have been one guy who boringly followed Hamlet around.

[angevin2]

Heh. My sisters are twins and have never, ever been able to forgive Hamlet for offing R&G, because they really sympathize with them...

[cesario]

Well, I think there's a tradition of casting them in a Abbott & Costello sort of mold, in terms of their appearance. I think casting them as conjoined twins would be...difficult, but more fun to watch, certainly. :)