Kayla+Fehringer

__Hamlet Blog #4: February 20, 2012 3:48pm__
Let's talk about Laertes. At the beginning of the show Laertes runs away to France and all he really says is "Ophelia! Do not fall for Hamlet!" which we all, already know has already happened. Then he waltzs back onto the scene to mourn his father's and then his sister's deaths. Throughout the show everyone is always talking about how great Laertes is at fencing and life but the Laertes I see in Act 5 Scene 2 doesn't seem all the epic to me. **LAERTES** It is here, Hamlet. Hamlet, thou art slain. No medicine in the world can do thee good. In thee there is not half an hour of life. The treacherous instrument is in thy hand, Unbated and envenomed. The foul practice Hath turned itself on me. Lo, here I lie, Never to rise again. Thy mother’s poisoned. I can no more. The king, the king’s to blame.

**LAERTES** He is justly served.

It is a poison tempered by himself.

Exchange forgiveness with me, noble Hamlet.

Mine and my father’s death come not upon thee,

Nor thine on me

In these last speeches by Laertes I see a weak man ratting out King Claudius and begging Hamlet for forgiveness with his last breaths not the brave, intelligent hero everyone makes him out to be. I have to wonder, first if Laertes was ever the man the King made him out to be or if maybe the murder of his father and sister's suicide caused him, like many of the other characters, to fall from the great man he once was to the sad and maybe mentally unstable man he was when he died. While Laertes was absolutley set on avenging his father's death, the King came up with the whole scheme and at the end it seems to me that Laertes never really wanted to hurt anyone. However it could also be his fear of what comes after death and he could have made those quick amends with Hamlet to avoid going to hell. One of the things about Shakespeare's Hamlet is that, aside from the most minor characters, each character seems to have a complex set of emotions and motives which could be one of the reasons that it is such a classic story.

__Hamlet Blog #3: February 12, 2012 11:52am__
Valentine's Day is in two days and with red and pink and white hearts everywhere it's hard not to think about LOVE! In Hamlet there are a lot of entangling (and incestous) love connections. Hamlet loves his mother Gertrude who loves Claudius and used to love Hamlet Sr. (The former king and Claudius's brother. Polonius loves his children Laertes and Ophelia and Ophelia loves Hamlet (and according to some people Laertes and her Father. Ew!) But what no one seems to know is if Hamlet loves Ophelia. Or if Ophelia's rejection did kind of make him real crazy instead of fake crazy. It's pretty obvious the Ophelia was falling for Hamlet but there are a lot of differing opinions on if Ophelia had already fooled around with Hamlet before the story even begins or if she's really as innocent as her brother thinks she is. Based on the movie version I watched and on the way I interpret Ophelia and Hamlet I think that Ophelia and Hamlet were in love and definitely sleeping together. But Ophelia followed her Father's wishes and ignored Hamlet which pissed him off but didn't make him real crazy. Then later when Polonius is murdered everyone assumes that's why Ophelia goes crazy but I think it also had something to do with Hamlet getting shipped off to England to get murdered too. Maybe I only believe in Hamlet and Ophelia's love because I want to believe that there was at least the possibility of some kind of happy ending sorta before everyone messes up and ends up dying in the end. But you can also see little glimpses of their affections for each other in the text, especially in Act 5 Scene 1 when Hamlet discovers that she is dead.

**HAMLET** I loved Ophelia. Forty thousand brothers Could not with all their quantity of love Make up my sum. What wilt thou do for her?

**HAMLET** 'Swounds, show me what thou'lt do. Woo’t weep? Woo’t fight? Woo’t fast? Woo’t tear thyself? Woo’t drink up eisel, eat a crocodile? I’ll do ’t. Dost thou come here to whine, To outface me with leaping in her grave? Be buried quick with her?—and so will I. And if thou prate of mountains let them throw Millions of acres on us, till our ground, Singeing his pate against the burning zone, Make Ossa like a wart! Nay, an thou'lt mouth, I’ll rant as well as thou.

He's saying that he loved Ophelia more than the forty thousand brother's could ever have loved her and that he would stop eating, fight, drink vinegar, eat a crocodile or cut himself for her, which seems really extreme and the other characters chalk it up to insanity but to me it just shows how passionately he loved her even despite his "Get thee to a nunnery" speech earlier. I'm pretty much certain that if Hamlet had the choice, Ophelia definitely would have been his Valentine!

__Hamlet Blog #2: February 5, 2012 5:49pm__
On Friday we read and watched the scenes with the Ghost of Hamlet Sr. in them. We talked about how hard they are to stage and I, of course, compared the versions we watched to the version I saw at OSF. In their version of Hamlet they had a deaf actor play the part of the Ghost so he performed all of the Ghosts monologues in sign language and it voiced it over so that we could all understand what was being said. It was way cool and not only did it appeal to a more diverse audience but it illustrated what a close relationship Hamlet had with his father. Dan Donohue (gorgeous ginger Hamlet) signed his lines back and the way they set it up it emphasized the father-son relationship that the King had with Hamlet. In addition to being awe-sticken by Dan's talent with talking and sign language I was very curious about how they managed to make sense of Shakespeare and translate it into sign language. I could a tale unfold whose lightest word would harrow up thy soul, freeze thy young blood, Make thy two eyes, like stars, start from their spheres, Thy knotted and combined locks to part And each particular hair to stand on end like quills upon the fearful porpentine.

I can't imagine that there are signs for "harrow" and "porpentine" but somehow they made it work and while I appreciate the intensity of the Kenneth Branagh version and some of the others we watched in class, OSF's is probably my favorite.

__Hamlet Blog #1: January 29, 2012 6:16pm__
When I first saw the show Hamlet in Ashland at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, the only thing I really took from it was that Dan Donohue (the actor who played the Danish prince) was a total babe. Looking back on it, I'm not sure why me and all the other girls on the trip fell so in love with him. He was old enough to be our Dad and had bright red hair but for whatever reason we all went to the gift shop and bought posters with him on it, making a very Hamlet-esque face in front of a wall with famous lines from the play painted on it. As soon as I got home I put it up on my wall, and it's still there to this day. But I haven't kept it up for two years because I still think Dan Donohue is a heart throb. I kept it up because the words scrawled across the background intrigue me. "What a piece of work is man" it says in bright red, block letters. Looking back on it now, I think the real reason we all went crazy for Mr. Donohue wasn't because he is the next Ryan Gosling but because he was an incredible actor who had mastered the language of Shakespeare and the complexities of the character of Hamlet. I remember really, really wanting to meet Dan and during the rest of the trip I kept my eyes open for any tall, mysterious red heads walking around in downtown Ashland. Unfortunately, I never saw him. However, on a tour we took a few days later my group got Jefferey King, the actor who played Claudius. I know that Claudius is the bad guy and you aren't supposed to like him but there was something so interesting about his character. In Act 1 Scene 2, his speech to Hamlet, while it seems nice, has a manipulative and villianous undertone. //'Tis sweet and commendable in your nature, Hamlet, // //To give these mourning duties to your father. // //But you must know your father lost a father, // //That father lost, lost his, and the survivor bound // //In filial obligation for some term // //To do obsequious sorrow. But to persever // //In obstinate condolement is a course // //Of impious stubbornness. //

Throughtout almost the entire play, using this kind of elaborate charade of innocence he remains, to the most of the other characters in the play, a secret bad guy. But though he's willing to do anything to get ahead (including but not limited to assasinating people, executing people and murdering people) he still sometime shows signs of feeling and occasionally even feels bad for all the terrible stuff he does.

[] (This is a video trailer of OSF's Hamlet. WATCH IT.)