I’m watching Larry Olivier in his 1948 Hamlet.
He rives Ophelia nuts to make folks believe that he is crazy so that he won’t be killed, and she does away with herself.
Why doesn’t Hamlet just whack his step father right away?
And by God, Larry Olivier reminds me of Garrison Cooper.
Hamlet asks himself the same question throughout the play, many of the soliloquies dwell on it. The initial excuse for his delay is that he doesn’t know whether to trust the ghost, it could be a demon rather than his father’s spirit. He later prevaricates again when he has a chance to kill the King. His excuse this time is that the King was praying and if he killed him then his soul might not go to Hell.
Let’s not forget that regicide was serious business, punishable by imprisonment, torture, death, and eternal damnation.
If Hamlet (ahem) whacked his uncle at the start the play would come up three hours short.
Scene 1: Nightime, The battlements of Elsinore:
Horatio: Bloody hell it’s the old King’s ghost!
Scene 2: The battlements the next night:
Hamlet: It’s a bit parky…
Ghost: Woo! Your uncle killed me! Avenge me!
Hamlet: Righto.
Scene 3:
Hamlet: Oy you! (stabs the king)
Claudius: Argh!
The whole point of the play is that Hamlet is a bit indecisive.
Neil Gaiman does David Tennant’s Hamlet-
To be, or not to be, that is the question. Weeelll…. More of A question really. Not THE question. Because, well, I mean, there are billions and billions of questions out there, and when I say billions, I mean, when you add in the answers, not just the questions, weeelll, you’re looking at numbers that are positively astronomical. . .
Garrison Cooper = Gary Cooper?
prevaricates = procrastinates?
I need footnotes just to understand this thread!
Anyway, I agree the actual answer is if Hamlet did kill the king in act one, there would be no play, or at least the play would be much different. However, Shakespeare makes Hamlet’s motivations intriguing enough, that we’ve been discussing them ever since. Not fully trusting the ghost and not wanting to let the king die while praying and two things that Hamlet mentions specifically, but not the only things that keep him from acting.
Poor Ophelia was really driven insane by Hamlet, but I don’t agree that he was just putting on a show for people to think he was insane. The Ophelia from Olivier’s version might as well have been a stage prop though. I liked this scene much better with Gibson and Bonham Carter.
Why doesn’t Odysseus just go straight home after the fall of Troy?
Little known fact: in Shakespeare’s first draft of Hamlet he sets off to kill his uncle immediately but Poseidon gets angry that Hamlet didn’t sacrifice something to him first and so toys with his life for ten years before letting Hamlet get around to it. Marlowe convinced Shakespeare to switch to a more internal and thus cerebral conflict.
Oops, Anderson Cooper.
:rolleyes:
Thanks, aldiboronti. I thought he believed the ghost right off the bat.