I’m looking for some examples of gossip and rumors in Hamlet. One come to mind when Polonius instructs Reynaldo to go to France and spread rumors about Laertes but I could use some help with other examples.
Thank You
How long do you have until the paper is due?
About a week.
Something tells me you’re not entirely enamored with the Bard.
I suppose this is a wildly unrealistic, old world, old fogey sort of a suggestion, but…
have you tried, you know, actually reading the play? It hardly takes a week.
We don’t really do homework for folks here. If you’ve got some specific passages that you’d like to discuss, you’ll probably find lots of pedants willing to help you out.
Not looking for anyone to do the work for me, just looking for a few suggestions. I have read the play, guess I just don’t understand it as well as others.
I heard a rumour that Ophilia was a stupid bitch.
The play is full of rumors and gossip. Everyone spends the whole thing talking shit about everybody else. Go to literally any scene, find a bit where somebody is talking about somebody else, and odds are pretty good that it’s gossip. Your teacher has lobbed a real softball at you.
Just now I pulled up the text of Hamlet, went to a scene entirely at random and, sure enough, Polonious (that asshole) is talking shit about Hamlet to Gertrude.
The OP could also watch a video of the play. I’d recommend Kenneth Brangh’s production, which lasts just 4 hours and includes essentially all the text of the play.
Even the ghost of his dad comes back from the dead just to talk shit about Hamlet’s mom and uncle. None of that Long Island Medium/John Edward “He wants you to know he loves you and he forgives everyone” crap for King Ham.
Hey, OP, head on over to my neck of the woods! You’re in luck - I’m in a production of Hamlet that opens tomorrow night. You could check it out for all the gossip and hearsay you can stand!
To be on point, actually, I find many people can get a lot more from a competently performed production of Shakespeare than they can from reading it. That usually works for me, anyway. I would second the recommendation to see a filmed version.
Me? Why, I’m playing Claudius. No gossip there, everything I say is the absolute truth, yessiree. The ghost, on the other hand, lies like a Danish rug.
This is a great film with a helluva cast:
Kenneth Branagh
Julie Christie
Billy Crystal
Gérard Depardieu
Charlton Heston
Derek Jacobi
Jack Lemmon
Rufus Sewell
Robin Williams
Kate Winslet
Branagh said he would never again film anything in a hall of mirrors. :smack:
Suggest the OP watch this with the captioning on, take a few notes, and that paper will be a piece of cake. It will probably be the only one in class that is wholly original. Your teacher might faint.