Hamlet+Blog+Post+1

~Cali Bogatko 1/18/12 Initial Response to Hamlet So I thought the scenes we read this week were interesting in that they set up some conflict that will happen later on. It seems like most of Shakespeare's plays involve death, misunderstanding and forbidden love. By the way Hamlet is so suspicious of his father's death and how quickly his mother seems to have gotten over it, you can assume that his uncle had something to do with it. Already the whole truth of the situation isn't being told which is never a good thing because that's usually the initial cause of why people end up dying in most Shakespeare plays. Also, it's common in his plays that two characters fall in love who aren't really supposed to fall in love because of things like class status and family feuds. Like how Ophelia and Hamlet aren't supposed to be in love because of their different responsibilities to the kingdom. These scenes relate to our essential question because they set the stage for certian characters to be thought of as insaine. For example, people may think Hamlet is insaine if he tries to tell others of seeing his father's ghost, or people might think his uncle is insaine for being the possible cause of the king's death. At first, the guards who hadn't seen the ghost thought the guards who said they had were crazy and they didn't trust them. But it took them seeing the ghost with their own eyes to change their assumptions and believe the 'crazy' guards. I thought that Horatio's passage about what could happen if there really is a ghost haunting the castle in Act 1 Scene 1 was stylistically interesting because he uses a lot of intense imagery to describe what happened in ancient Rome when Ceasar died. He could also be foreshaddowing a similar situation in Denark to come since their king also recently died.

"A mote it is to trouble the mind’s eye. In the most high and palmy state of Rome, A little ere the mightiest Julius fell, The graves stood tenantless and the sheeted dead Did squeak and gibber in the Roman streets As stars with trains of fire and dews of blood, Disasters in the sun, and the moist star Upon whose influence Neptune’s empire stands Was sick almost to doomsday with eclipse. And even the like precurse of feared events, As harbingers preceding still the fates And prologue to the omen coming on, Have heaven and earth together demonstrated Unto our climatures and countrymen."