(The above is a clickable image)
This week, I decided that we should take it old school. Really old school. 1603 old school. In school, we read Hamlet. I will be blunt- I thought it was going to be another dull read, but I was pleasantly surprised. It was amazing.
Hamlet's father, the king, just recently died, and no one seems to care as much as he does. His mother remarried (not even a month after the death of her husband) to Claudius, Hamlet's uncle. Claudius is made king. Hamlet just can't seem to stop mourning his beloved father.
The Ghost of Old Hamlet appears, accusing Claudius of murdering him. Hamlet believes him, and decides acting insane will be in favor if he were to kill Claudius. Polonius, a manipulative, nosy person, comes up with different scenarios to support his idea that Hamlet is crazy from heart break. As the reader, we know that that isn't the case, and we read with amusement as he goes from idea to idea to prove that Ophelia has broken his heart.
Slowly, the pretending turns into reality as Hamlet slipped into insanity. He came up with a plot (The Mouse Trap) when Rosencrantz and Guildenstern brought in a traveling acting company. He decided that if Claudius acted guilty after watching the actors act out his fathers death, then he would kill him. If not, then it was just the devil tricking him. In the end, Claudius was guilty.
I feel like Hamlet is a back in the day version of Game of Thrones. In one act, everyone aside from Horatio and Fortinbras end up dead. Claudius, after realizing Hamlet knows, and Laertes, seeking revenge at Hamlet for Polonius's death, devise a plan to kill Hamlet. Consequently, it back fires on them and Claudius, Hamlet, Gertrude, and Laertes all died from various methods (mainly poison).
Horatio lives on to tell the story.
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