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.

Oooh, and it also adds to the whole privacy/surveillance thing. I suppose it's not done much because it isn't Romantic. ;)

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...

[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.