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

[angevin2]

Isn't it weird how Gertrude and Claudius apparently don't even think to approach Horatio on this issue?

Perhaps, on top of any of the possibilities you mention, they just don't notice him? Which gets back to the class issues -- Horatio is Just Some Guy of low social rank, an outsider at court, and so forth. This works better if you're using a text that doesn't have him attending on Ophelia in the fourth act, because then he barely interacts with the court at all (other than Hamlet).

Oh my god, that is humiliating. Mostly for Ophelia, but for Hamlet too, I think---Jesus Christ, their parents! are reading their sexy scribblins!

In the Branagh film it's absolutely excruciating. Poor Ophelia!

"'Cause I'm totally hoping those two wacky kids are gonna make it work."

"Hamlet might stop being weird and creepy if he gets laid."

"most dreadfully attended" sounds to me like he ought to have a crowd of helpful servants bumping elbows with him at every turn. It would contribute to the sense of claustrophobia that any proper Hamlet must feel

[cesario]

I think you're right---Horatio may indeed be too poor for Claudius and Gertrude to notice. The fact that Marcellus and Bernardo felt they could approach him at the beginning of the play probably says something about his social status.

Also, I wonder if Hamlet's interest in theater (which is, as you note, self-aware given that he's royalty) connects up with Elizabeth's in any way and what that means if it does...

There's no doubt in my head that Elizabeth was a source of tremendous fascination to Shakespeare, and that all his royal figures are colored by his observations of her to some degree.

[corbistheca]

Rosencranz & Guildenstern = Fred & George, just creepier. And Shakespeare's kinder to them than Rowling, because he doesn't make one survive alone.

I confess, it still baffles me that Claudius thinks Polonius is any good at all.I think the answer to that question lies a few lines later -- at "What do you think of me?" "As of a man faithful and honorable." No, definitely not smart -- but loyal and (in a doddering sort of way) reliable, widely respected as an honest man, such that he is unlikely to ever notice (on his own account) that Claudius just may have offed Hamlet Sr. or to believe it if someone tried to tell him so -- Claudius keeps him around because it's really quite reassuring to have a guy who will staunchly defend your innocence, especially when you're guilty. Plus, his absurdity's always good for a smothered laugh

[cesario]

Claudius keeps him around because it's really quite reassuring to have a guy who will staunchly defend your innocence, especially when you're guilty. Plus, his absurdity's always good for a smothered laugh.

Excellent points, both of them. :)

Bless you for using livejournal as a vehicle for discussing Shakespeare and giving me an excuse to a. read along and b. throw in two cents (or five. or six. or twenty-eight.) on the comments page.

Oh, it's as much for my sake as anyone else's, but you're very welcome to any good that can be derived from it. :-)

[tangleofthorns]

Think about this:

He that plays the king shall be welcome; his majesty
shall have tribute of me (1); the adventurous knight
shall use his foil and target (2); the lover shall not
sigh gratis (3); the humourous man shall end his part
in peace (4); the clown shall make those laugh whose
lungs are tickled o' the sere (5); and the lady shall
say her mind freely, or the blank verse shall halt
for't (6). 1. Claudius, who is "playing" the king by usurping the throne from his brother, gets neither welcome nor tribute from Hamlet

[cesario]

That's quite brilliantly observed. It's almost like the Player's court is an ideal of what Hamlet wishes the Danish court were---he wishes he had a king worth honoring, that his own sighs as a lover might avail him something, that Polonius could die a happy fool in his bed, and Ophelia had some freedom of speech and action.

Although when Ophelia goes mad, she does speak her mind freely, and no one can stop her.

[tangleofthorns]

Also I love the "Lost all my mirth...What a piece of work is a man" speech madly. It's such an incisive and perfect portrait of depression/grief.