Turning Points Hamlet 27: The Quick and Dead
Act V, Scene Ic: A) Confronting a priest, the priest in charge of Ophelia’s funeral, Laertes demands greater ceremony for Ophelia’s funeral, and is rebuffed.
If we were treating Laertes as a PC, this would be a failed persuasion interaction for him. Since we’re concerned about Hamlet, who watches unseen, we have to see this from the vantage of his procedural or dramatic progress. It serves as another reminder of Laertes’ temper, and thus his danger to Hamlet. The reminder of the threat he poses is procedural, and because it intensifies, we score this with a down arrow. It’s been awhile since we had a suspense beat, and the last one also underscored Laertes’ menace.
B) Hamlet realizes that the funeral is for Ophelia.
The dramatic irony completes itself: Hamlet now shares the audience’s knowledge of Ophelia’s death. He undergoes the shock and horror we’ve anticipated from him since the previous scene. As armadillo_king pointed out earlier, her death represents both a dramatic and a procedural setback for him. He loved her (if we accept the dramatically strongest choice for the actor playing him) and tried (though perhaps half-heartedly) to get her out of the way of his campaign of vengeance. So we mark this with both arrow types, both pointed down.
In an RPG, this would be the moment when the character gains information that the player already had. This is how our form resolves dramatic irony.
C) Seeing Laertes leap into the grave, Hamlet follows. A fight ensues as each seeks to proof the greater magnitude of his grief.
By allowing himself to be overcome with grief and anger, Hamlet sabotages his procedural goal in the course of seeking his emotional goal. He’s seeking emotional absolution, but impulsively employs an aggressive tactic. Not unexpectedly, he fails to get his emotional goal, too. Another pair of matched down arrows.
This scene reminds us of games like Pendragon or Dying Earth (and soon, Skulduggery) where characters must roll to avoid acting on their emotional impulses. It seems as if the player has been forced by his character’s emotional qualities to act against his procedural interest.
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