April 29

ELA B30: Ap 29 Gravedigger comedy within Hamlet

  1. Today, the students came in half expecting a quiz and let’s just say they were not disappointed! They wrote a twenty question quiz that, for the most part, needed only single line responses.
  2. I had mentioned to them yesterday of the famous Arnold Schwartzeneggar version of Hamlet and said I would deliver it. I came through with that today. They were pretty impressed, as was I when I found the right version, and they’re considering sending letters to Cameron Crow to actually make the film this trailer advertises.

  3. 3 We discussed the Porter scene from Macbeth, for those who vaguely remembered it. Just prior to that scene, the murder of Duncan has already taken place, Macbeth is already regretting his deed, his wife has involved herself to make sure the blame doesn’t fall on them, and the young sons have run off in fear. All of this tension just occurs when Shakespeare takes a moment’s pause to stretch out that tension, in one way, and aleviate it in another. Instead of jumping into the final tragic events of the final Act of the play, Shakespeare wrote the part of the Porter who plays a comic, really, for the audience, speaking coyly and making fun about who possibly is knocking at the door. This same type of comic relief exists in Hamlet, again at the beginning of the final Act just before everything “goes down”, so to speak. In this play, instead of a Porter (or servant) again there is someone who speaks truths to Hamlet, though in round-about ways. In this particular part of the play, though, Hamlet faces the exact thing he has been avoiding for the whole play – Death. It seems to follow him around, with the death of his father, and deciding on how to act or whether to act at all in taking Claudius’s life, the death of Polonius and so on. Death is all around him, but he struggles with how he feels about it, overthinking as he goes along. Here, though, he is made to stop finally and face death, straight on, in the (former) face of his old friend Yorick, who was the King’s jester. Hamlet has to finally come to terms with his surroundings, the things that have happened, and the reality of what future most likely waits for him. There is a very helpful video that shows the Gravedigger scene but with the help of Cartoons it is explained. Check it out.


Posted April 29, 2008 by Waldner in category ELA 30

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