The very first Hamlet blog...

Today in our lesson times two we looked at King Claudius' speech, after looking at Aristotle and other things (which i'm going to have to read more about as I don't really get it yet.)  But hey ho, that's not the blog assignment so it's all good. I do, however, have to blog about Claudius, so, here goes...

My first impression of Claudius isn't a good one. As we said in class, he doesn't exactly paint a nice picture with "mirth in funeral and with dirge in marriage". And his speech gives the impression that the loss of former King Hamlet is recent as people are still grieving, so these remarks seem a tad insensitive, yet the whole audience seem to agree. So yeah, not a fan, not a fan. 

However, we also discussed the different plays performed, and the way things are set out and how the actors perform the line, depend on how the audience are affected. We looked at 3 different versions of the performance, and the King in each of them portrays the speech in different ways. The first one was more intimate with a smaller audience who were very supportive of him and his decisions. The second version gave the impression of a King who only wanted the power, as he gave a very echoey, formal speech with greater distance between him and the Queen. Finally, the third version seems very over dramatised by the King, with what seems to be an acted pause. The impression is that the audience are forced to agree in the awkward atmosphere. 

p.s Now we're in 2011 and i think this is my first blog of the year, i think my sign off needs to a bit better than the now overdone "TOOODLES", so while i ponder on this, for now my sign off shall be a variation on the theme of TOOODLES,

NOOODLES.