Hire's Hamlet Log Act 4

ACT 4 (in little nutshells)

Scene 1: The King hears Gertrude’s “profound heaves” (sighs) and asks her what the heck just happened. Poor Gertrude just witnessed a murder, saw her son starring off into space at a ghost ex-husband, and was threatened never to sleep with her current husband again. She lies to Claudius saying that “he weeps for what he has done.” So Claud sends old Rosencranz and Guildenstern to go get Hamlet and find the body. Poor guys. Now Claudius is like “dang, this just keeps getting worse….”
------------------------------------------------------
Scene 2: R&G find Hamlet who is acting kooky again. He’s playing hide and seek with Polonius’s body. He rudely calls his ex-friends “sponges” meaning that they are meaningless vessels of transporting information. (soaking it up and someone else squeezing it out) Cool metaphor. Go Shakespeare go.
--------------------------------------
Scene 3: Hilarious scene where Hamlet outwardly mocks Claudius and basically says that someday he’s gonna get pooped out of a worm like the rest of us. He sends Hamlet off to England as punishment for killing Polonius (oh benevolent Claudius…) Then he tells the audience that he’ll have Hamlet killed whilst in England.
---------------------------------------------
Scene 4: These are great lines here! K.B. really overdoes it in my opinion but this is a turning point in Hamlet’s mind. All blank verse in this scene and it seems as if his reasoning is sound…although when you think about it, it’s kind of weird being inspired by a guy who’s going off to kill 20,000 innocent people all for a little pocket of land. Could that favor the madness side of Hamlet?
--------------------------------------------------------------
Scene 5: The longest scene in act 4. The crazy Ophelia scene. I like when Claudius says “O’ my dear Gertrude, this, like to a murd’ring piece, in many places/Gives me superfluous death.” (101) He’s beginning to get what he deserves…things are cascading in a downward spiral all around him. Speaking of that, right after he says that, Laertes fans bust down the door demanding answers surrounding Polonius’s death. Claudius really has to think on his toes now to cover his tracks…
----------------------------------------------------------
Scene 6: Letter from Hamlet – “Dear Horatio, I’ve had an epiphany! Give these other letters to the King for me. So anyway, I got captured by this pirate ship and all sorts of crazy things happened to me. Rosencranz and Guildenstern are still on their way to England…wait till I tell you what happened to them! See ya, Hamlet”
-------------------------------------------------------------
Scene 7: Letter from Hamlet – “Dear King, I’m coming back, unarmed, to tell you something. Hamlet”

Then, Claudius really is buttering up Laertes and telling him how great a fencing dude he is. He also mentions that Hamlet has been talking smack about his mediocre fencing skills. So he suggests a duel to settle the score! Laeartes agrees and even offers to put poison on the end of his sword thingy so that he’ll kill him for sure! Claudius thinks that backup plans are a great idea and suggests poisoning a drink too…so that Hamlet can drink it if the stabbing plan falls through too! Gertrude tells everyone that Ophelia is drowned. Now…was it suicide? This gets Laetres even more worked up!