Hamlet Blog Post #1

 I pity my lord Hamlet. His noble father, our king, not two months gone and already his wife, remarried. Hamlet is too oft alone for one so shrouded in grief. Claudius, even in marriage and title, is as Hamlet said, “[His] father’s brother, but no more like [his] father than [him] to Hercules” (1.2.152-153).  What a contrast Hamlet sees between his good father and his uncle, “the serpent that did sting [his] father’s life” (1.5.38).  In marrying the queen so soon after his death, King Claudius has done the whole of Denmark wrong. He has poisoned the country, turned it into, “A couch for luxury and damned incest” (1.5.83). And now that Hamlet has seen his father and knows for certain, the cause of his death, he means to exact his revenge. Meanwhile Queen Gertrude ignores his villainy, ignores even the death of her husband as today, at her wedding, she stood before Denmark in wedded bliss. Although it is not my place to say, the both of them, King and Queen, hath wronged the late king and the whole of Denmark. I only wish for my dear friend Hamlet that he not “let [his] soul contrive against [his]mother aught”(1.5.85-86) in exacting his revenge on King Claudius. The royal family has gotten itself into quite a tangle indeed. After all this, I believe, as Marcellus put it, “something is rotten in the state of Denmark” (1.4.90).