Milestone Assement 1 : 18th september 2013

Hamlet

Background- Synopsis of the play

The play starts of with two watchmen guarding the castle and they discover a ghost. The ghost resembles the deceased king hamlet. Claudius, King hamlets brother takes the throne and marries the kings widow, queen Gertrude. The watchmen and Horacio (hamlets close friend) bring prince hamlet (me) to the place where they first discovered the ghost. The ghost speaks to Hamlet revealing that he is the deceased king and that claudius killed him. The Ghost orders hamlet to get revenge on claudius for killing him and marrying his wife.

So hamlet devotes himself to do the task, but because he is philosophical he takes quite a while to get it done. Hamlet gets so deep into his thoughts people start to think he is mad, so Claudius and Gertrude try to discover the cause of the problem. So along calls a man called Polonius the lord Chamberlain, he is the father of Ophelia. Ophelia is Hamlets lover. Polonius claims that Hamlet has gone crazy because hes so in love with her. So Claudius and Polonius get Ophelia to talk to him while they spy on the conversation but no good comes from it and hamlet just seems crazy.

Now along comes a group of Actors and hamlet has an idea. His idea was to get the actors to re act a scene thats similar to the way Claudius kills the king to see if he reacts to show his guilt. So it came to the murder scene and Claudius walked out the room so Hamlet and Horatio know that he's guilty now. So hamlet goes of to kill Claudius but when he does it Claudius is praying and because of Hamlets beliefs, that if you die while praying you go to heaven he didn't do it.

Now Claudius is scared of Hamlet now and has him sent to england. Hamlet goes to confront his mother, in whose bedchamber Polonius has hidden behind a tapestry. Hearing a noise from behind the tapestry, Hamlet believes the king is hiding there. He draws his sword and stabs through the fabric, killing Polonius Ophelia fathers who is also Hamlets lover. Claudius sends hamlet to england and arranges for him to be killed there. but hamlet escapes and returns to denmark.

Right, so Hamlets lover  ophelia, the daughter of polonius, the man hamlet has just killed finds about her fathers death she kills herself by drowning herself in a river. Now polonius also had a son, laertes who was staying in france but he returns to denmark in rage and wants to avenge his fathers and sisters death, so he challenges hamlet to a duel.Laertes challenges hamlet to a duel and claudius suggests that he uses a poisoned sword so hamlet only needs to be cut for him to die. He also gets poisoned wine in case the duel fails.
Poor gertrude didn't know and makes a toast to hamlets and drinks the poisoned wine and she dies immediately. during the fight laertes and hamlet wound each other. Somehow laertes manages to wound himself with his own sword and the reveals to hamlets about how claudius is behinds the queens death and he dies from the poison  after hamlet stabs claudius with poisoned sword and forces him to drink the rest of the poison and claudius dies. And finally hamlet also dies of poison to and he dies in horacios arms.

Synopsis of my scene

After Gertrude briefly talks to polonius, Polonius wishes the queen to be harsh with Hamlet when he arrives, saying that she should punish him for his recent behaviour. Gertrude agrees. Hamlet comes in his mothers room to have a talk with his mother. Polonius hides behind the tapestry. Hamlet doesn't waste time and gets into it.  

Gertrude says that he has offended his father, meaning his stepfather, Claudius. He interrupts her and says that she has offended his father, meaning the dead King Hamlet, by marrying Claudius. Hamlet approaches her with an almost violent force and states his intention to make her fully aware of the understanding of her sin. Fearing for her life, Gertrude cries out. From behind the arras, Polonius calls out for help. Hamlet, realizing that someone is behind the arras and suspecting that it might be Claudius, cries, “How now! A rat?” He draws his sword and stabs it through the arras. Gertrude asks Hamlet "O me, what hast thou done?", and he replies, “Nay, I know not:  Is it the king?” At this moment hamlet is scared, he has just killed someone and he doesn't even know who it is, but he's hoping that its the king. The queen says his action was a “rash and blood deed", and Hamlet replies  to turn it back on her "almost as bad good mother as kill a king and marry his borther".  Disbelieving, the queen screams, “As kill a king!” and Hamlet replies "at lady, t'was my word." implying that she heard him correctly.  

Hamlet lifts the arras and notices the reasonably innocent Polonius. He turns to his mother and shows her a picture of the dead king and a picture of the current king, he makes comments on the control of his father to his uncle, and asks her furiously "And what judgement would you step from this to this?"  which basically means what has driven her to marry a rotten man such as Claudius. She begs with him to stop, "o Hamlet speak no more"  Hamlet continues to criticize her  Claudius, then suddenly, the ghost of his father again appears before him "save me and hover o'er me with your wings"

Hamlet speaks to the ghost, but Gertrude is unable to see it and believes him to be mad. "Alas, he is mad!" The ghost has come to remind Hamlet of his purpose that Hamlet has not yet killed Claudius and must achieve his revenge. Gertrude is amazed and unable to see him. Hamlet describes the ghost, but Gertrude sees nothing, and in a moment the ghost disappears 

"to whom do you speak this?"

"do you see nothing there?"

"nothing at all yet all that is i see"

  Hamlet tries desperately to convince Gertrude that he is not mad but has just pretend madness all along, and he needs her to abandon Claudius and regain her good principles. He needs her as well not to reveal to Claudius that his madness has been an act. Gertrude, still shaken from Hamlet’s furious criticism of her, agrees to keep his secret. He says goodnight and Drags Polonius’s body behind him, Hamlet leaves his mother’s room.

Historical 

Hamlet is the story of a Danish prince whose uncle murders the prince’s father, marries his mother, and claims the throne. The prince pretends to be feeble-minded to throw his uncle off guard, then manages to kill his uncle in revenge. Shakespeare changed the emphasis of this story entirely, making his Hamlet a philosophically minded prince who delays taking action because his knowledge of his uncle’s crime is so uncertain.

Written during the first part of the seventeenth century. Hamlet was probably first performed in July 1602. It was first published in printed form in 1603. Shakespeare borrowed for his plays ideas and stories from earlier literary works. He could have taken the story of Hamlet from several possible sources, including a twelfth-century Latin history of Denmark.

Themes

The are a lot of themes in hamlet but the one i found most interesting was The impossibility of certainty.

I found this interesting because you're never really sure. 

• Can we have certain knowledge about ghosts? 
• Is the ghost what it appears to be, or is it really a misleading? 
• Does the ghost have reliable knowledge about its own death, or is the ghost itself deluded?
• How can we know for certain the facts about a crime that has no witnesses?
• Can Hamlet know the state of Claudius’s soul by watching his behavior?  
• Can he know the facts of what Claudius did by observing the state of his soul? 
• Can Claudius know the state of Hamlet’s mind by observing his behavior and listening to his speech? Can we know whether our actions will have the consequences we want them to have? 
• Can we know anything about the afterlife?

But the more known and common themes consist of:

love                                                            greed                                               murder              

evil                                                             power                                               lust

marriage                                                    corruption                                         loyalty

pride                                                          death                                                hate