Turning Points Hamlet 6: Confined To Fast In Fires
Act I, Scene V: A) The ghost commands Hamlet to avenge his murder, naming Claudius as his killer.
For all its spooky verse, this is a straight expository scene, in which the ghost provides crucial information to Hamlet and he listens. Equivalent scenes of NPCs slinging facts at PCs occur all the time in roleplaying. This story point occurs on the pragmatic axis, giving Hamlet a concrete mission, and is neither a win or a loss. As we're left with the question of how he'll pursue the mission, this is a suspense point.
B) Hamlet swears Horatio and Marcellus to secrecy.
A cool bit of stagecraft underlines the eerie mood, as the ghost choruses their vows. As the friends readily agree, this is not much of a story point.
Act II, Scene I: A) In a bizarre scheme to test his son’s mettle, Polonius enlists a functionary, Reynaldo, to go to Paris and slander Laertes’ name.
This peculiar and eminently removable scene further establishes Polonius as both dodderer and schemer. In an RPG version of Hamlet you’d have to make this point about Polonius in a scene involving a player character, if you deemed it necessary at all. Although Reynaldo is clearly taken aback by his lord’s instructions, he obeys the instructions, so it’s a conflict- and suspense-free moment. It doesn’t warrant a spot on our narrative map.
C) A frightened Ophelia comes to Polonius to report an encounter with an unhinged Hamlet. He concludes that he has gone mad with love for her and takes her to repeat her story to the king.
In this dramatic scene, Ophelia seeks reassurance from Polonius, and gets a small measure of it. Her father does regrets not taking Hamlet’s interest in her more seriously, but is mostly concerned with being a good courtier and getting information to the king.
Our map doesn’t record gradations of success, so if we score this as an Ophelia scene, the scene ends with the dramatic arrow pointing up.
If we’re only concerned with Hamlet, we suspect, given his resolve the last time we saw him, that he is playing Ophelia and Polonius, and that their response plays into his scheme. Were we to score the scene from his point of view, it would be an upward-pointing procedural arrow. The scene furthers his goal in some way we have yet to see, introducing a suspense element as we anticipate an answer to that question. In an RPG, the player would likely have explained what he was trying to do-and would have played out the encounter with Ophelia in a persuasion interaction.
Our graphic is getting wide now, so here's a detail version:
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