Hamlet – Act I

“Something is rotten in the state of Denmark.”

I love this line from act 1 of Hamlet. It just works, doesn't it? It is one of many famous lines from act I. Indeed, this one act probably contains more famous Shakespearean one-liners than any other act in any other play (or maybe any other play entirely). Besides this one, we have:

“Frailty, thy name is woman!”
“There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.”
“Neither a borrower nor a lender be;”
“To thine ownself be true,”

There are others I’m sure. The point is that this play, right out of the gate, feels “bigger” than anything I have yet read and it’s easy to see why it is so prevalent and ingrained into our canon (culture?), even from the very first lines. The language, the characters, and the intrigue carry you off and transport you into another world, like all good art must.

Speaking of the very first lines, they are perfect. I agree wholeheartedly with Bill Bryson, one of my favorite writers, who describes in his book on Shakespeare (a great book by the way, one of my favorites easily) that you can feel the darkness and tension right away, right off of the page. Here's the opening lines:

ACT I, SCENE I.

Elsinore. A platform before the castle. FRANCISCO at his post. Enter to him BERNARDO

BERNARDO

Who's there?

FRANCISCO

Nay, answer me: stand, and unfold yourself.

BERNARDO

Long live the king!

FRANCISCO

Bernardo?

BERNARDO

He.

FRANCISCO

You come most carefully upon your hour. 

Can’t you just see the two guards, standing outside the castle walls in the cold darkness, their breath steaming from their mouths, hand buried deep in their tunics, bobbing up and down on switching feet to stay warm? And can’t you just sense that something is wrong, a palpable and nervous tension? I don’t know why but I get a very strong image in my head of what this looks like, right away and throughout. Maybe it’s just ingrained into my subconscious, this setting (I have read and seen this play already. Who hasn't?), but I’ll be damned if I don’t feel some kind of magic here. And the ghost of the king…such a spooky and unnatural presence woven into and out of the act perfectly, like the wandering, immaterial wraith that it is meant to be.

The first act sets up so much of the rest of the play. Hamlet is upset that his uncle married his mom (Claudius and Gertrude) barely a month after his father, the old king, dies. A ghost appears, multiple times, and turns out to be the ghost of the murdered father. The ghost informs Hamlet that Claudius murdered him. The ghost demands revenge.

A revenge tragedy, this one then, but light years better so far than Titus Andronicus. So much more layered nuance here, so much more skill and so much more art. So anyway, can you tell I like this play yet? As a special treat (okay, maybe not), I decided to post separately for each act because a) it will be fun and b) I feel like there is plenty to write about. So, five posts in five days. The five post challenge. Exciting, right?