Turning Points Hamlet 25: One Woe Doth Tread Upon Another’s Heel
In this week’s exciting episode, we are forced to add a new symbol to our map key-forced by clowns!
Act IV, Scene VIIb: A) Gertrude describes Ophelia’s drowning.
In a game, this would be our first player character death. Clearly Ophelia has been completely removed from play after failing her Sanity check. In a game we’d describe it directly rather than hearing it through an NPC.
This is clearly a down moment, and a big one (marked with another double-deep arrow.) But is it a procedural or a dramatic low? I’d argue that this is a point where the two strands dovetail, as is appropriate at especially important moments. Ophelia is an unintended casualty of actions taken by Hamlet to further his procedural aims-his mistaken killing of Polonius, and perhaps his feigned madness. Yet we also anticipate that her death will take an emotional toll on Hamlet. If anything, we feel more pity (the hallmark of a dramatic down moment) than suspense (the marker of a procedural down beat) at this moment. Our concern for how this will affect Hamlet’s s plans are pushed to the background.
The scene is also a choice point, in that a character takes action without resistance, and we see the result. In this case, Ophelia has chosen to kill herself.
B) Laertes’s rage flares again, prompting Claudius to fear that his success in calming him will now be undone.
This beat brings the procedural suspense back into play. This is something of a wild card moment. On the surface, it might seem that anything that worries our antagonist is good for our hero. But we know that Laertes’ fury won’t be good for Hamlet, even if it prevents also scotches Claudius’ exact plan for cleverly disposing of his nephew. If we’re worried for Hamlet, this must be a procedural down beat.
Act V, Scene I: A) The two gravediggers (billed as First and Second Clown) engage in Elizabethan badinage, casting satirical doubt on the decision to grant Ophelia a Christian burial, despite her apparent suicide.
Whether this scene, featuring previously new characters who promptly vanish again after popping up to comment, chorus-like, on the action, constitutes an up or down moment is a matter of interpretation. If you buy the idea that their Elizabethan badinage is pure comedy relief, it provides an up moment for the audience-one that none of the main characters, as the story spirals toward tragedy, is now capable of providing. GMs often throw in comedy relief walk-ons and underlings to lighten the proceedings, but rarely need to keep all the PCs offstage while they do it.
However, this is a prime example of a Shakespeare clown scene that is darker than it might appear on the surface. In mocking the decision to bury Ophelia on consecrated ground, the gravediggers cast a jaundiced eye on the privilege of our entire main cast. They cynically undercut the proceedings in general, and our sympathy for Ophelia’s fate in particular. In this interpretation, they offer another twist of the emotional knife, confronting the audience with a subtle but troubling irony. That would make it an emotional down note arising from the drama, but not from any of the main characters. In a game, a GM might convey this with a quick aside, for example a description of cynical or doubtful onlookers to the main action.
Let’s map the irony by giving this jarring comic moment both an up and a down arrow; by crossing them we show the mixed emotion. This beat mixes unease and relief and relates more to the emotional than the procedural thread of the story.
As a scene of commentary on the action, as opposed to action itself, this beat creates a need for a new symbol. Let’s make that a pair of observing binoculars.
If you refer to the full map to date in all its sprawling splendor, you’ll see that we’ve reached our lowest point ever.