Hamlet: Act 4, Scene I

[cesario]

Previous posts:

First Act:
Scene I: The Crazy Occult Forays of Marcellus and Horatio.
Scene II: Claudius is the villain, but he's still hotter than you.
Scene III: Ophelia's virginity is a national treasure. Just ask her dad and brother.
Scene IV: That a ghoooooooooost?
Scene V: "'Who's your daddy?' Now that's just inappropriate."

Second Act:

Comments

[angevin2]

and I can't help thinking that Act 3 closed in a really weird spot. If it was me I'd have ended the action in a scene or two here, where Claudius sends Hamlet to England. But then, I'm not Shakespeare.Well, in the early editions, there's no act break here -- most of the earliest editions of Shakespeare's plays don't have them, and it's likely that performances at the Globe didn't have them either (though I seem to recall that performances at the Blackfriars, the upscale indoor theater built in the early seventeenth century, did). The act break here first appeared in the 1676 quarto, long after anyone involved with the original performances had died, and the only reason editors keep putting the break there is because everyone's done it and it would be gratuitously confusing to renumber the scenes, since the action is pretty clearly continuous. The notes to the new Arden edition suggest that there's a possibility of a scene change implied by "and from his mother's closet hath he dragged them," meaning they are somewhere else, but

[corbistheca]

I was also struck by the weirdness of act-transition-structure -- particularly because in my text (a new Arden Complete Works, but the cheaper version without notes) "Act III" concludes with the stage direction "Exit lugging Polonius. The Queen remains." So thank you for the historical context!

Gertrude's retelling of her conversation with Hamlet really intrigues me. He spent the largest proportion of the scene calling her a whore, and then talking to the ghost of his father (who Gertrude can't see) -- so she's inevitably gotten a pretty good idea of what's upsetting him, even to the point of "you know, he seems a lot more shook up about me marrying Claudius than by his father's death" but she doesn't mention any of that to Claudius. And wasn't the whole point of their conversation, back when Claudius and Polonius were plotting it in 3.1, that Gertrude should try to find out what was making Hamlet crazy? But she doesn't say "Honey, the source of my son's insanity seems to be that he hates you" -- she says "my son's crazy, but he

[angevin2]

Thanks! Man, Restoration-era editors have a lot to answer for, don't they? ;)

As for Gertrude -- well, she's stuck between her husband and her son, isn't she? No wonder that she doesn't speak up (even if Hamlet was a total dick to her)...

[anonymous]

Okay-I love these. I love acting and reading Shakespeare (since I was eleven) and this has given me a whole new perspective.
And then they...stopped. Months ago. Did I miss something?
Could someone please tell me?

[cesario]

sorry, the only thing that happened is that I got a job and stopped doing them. I hope I'll get around, at least to finishing Hamlet, pretty soon.

[anonymous]

Please do more-I was really looking forward to Twelfth Night.