May
2
ELA B30: May 2 The end of Hamlet, both for us and for him!
- We got settled quickly and reviewed where we were. We reconsidered the mindset of both Hamlet and Laertes and were going to watch to see if the characters of the play were written to act “in character” or whether there seemed to be some inconsistencies in the writing or their actions in the play.
- We listened to the audio and read along. I was very proud to see that throughout our study of Hamlet, all but a few students followed intently in their play books. It was nice to see that they didn’t just sit back and listen, but that they followed and were “with me” through it all. That was great.
- We considered one question, a nagging one if you will: Near the end, when the duel has begun and Claudius offers Hamlet the drink from the poisoned cup, Laertes asks Claudius in an aside whether he should do it now, cut Hamlet and let the killing begin, but Claudius almost seems intent on being “the one” to usher Hamlet to death. The promise was given to Laertes, though, that he could be the hand that killed Hamlet. Does it seem like Claudius is a little too eager to be the one to kill, or did he just take advantage of a moment of opportunity?
Another question is why Laertes backs off so suddenly! Hamlet is bound to die now that he has been cut by the poisoned sword, and Laertes himself has been cut so he will die as well. Why not die and spew hateful, vengeful words at Hamlet? Why not yell at him and flaunt the fact that “na na! You’re about to die and it’s because you killed my dad!”? Instead of this, though, Laertes immediately becomes weak of his purpose and confesses everything to Hamlet and tells on the King. Is this because the Queen and he, himself, are about to die and that wasn’t in the plan? Is it because he’s about to die and wants to die without sin on his hands? Why does Laertes confess and reach out for Hamlet’s forgiveness so quickly after purposefully cutting Hamlet with the sword to kill him. Inconsistent action or the result of his reasoned thinking? - We watched five short video clips that an English student did for his teacher’s class and then posted on Youtube. He took the movie of Hamlet with Mel Gibson and condensed the two hour movie into half an hour. He did a fantastic job of breaking the movie apart so that each video has only the actions of each of the five Acts of Hamlet. He also did a wonderful job of maintaining the essential plot components to keep the story and tension in tact. What he did do, though, that is so unique is that he added modern elements to his voice over (like his constant criticism of Spiderman III being awful), added literary comments through the same dialogue about elements of the writing, such as major characters talking with minor ones. He also used some interesting voice choices but was able to record it all and have it sound very authentic, not like a student with a microphone. The students loved it!
I will say that it was not without contemplation and professional judgement that I decided to show these videos in my classroom. I mentioned to the students that there was some language in them that I would choose to remove if possible, but that when weighing the benefits and negatives, I found the benefit much greater. I don’t purposefully show content that is more mature than my students, but in this instance, I felt it was alright to do so. So we watched the videos and it was a comprehensive review of all the essential parts of Hamlet that we have taken over the last month. Whew! What a great play!