DRJ #2: Act II

The thing that really drew a parallel for me with a situation in my own life in this act was the exchange that Claudius and Gertrude had with Guildenstern and Rosencrantz. The way that Claudius and Gertrude ask them to check on Hamlet and try to make him feel better reminded me of situations that you see with middle school and high school students. Often students will gang up on each other and elect people to fix the problem when another student’s behavior is abnormal. As a mentor, I see it happen all the time. It is interesting to see something so similar occur in two entirely different contexts.

Although she is only in Act II for a very brief period of time, Ophelia’s actions in the act still raise questions. In the previous act Ophelia is very quick to defend Hamlet when talking to her father, but in this act her behavior seems to switch. Ophelia goes running to her father after having been scared by Hamlet showing up in her room while she was sewing. The shift in Ophelia’s attitude seems odd. Why would she tell her father? It makes more sense that she would want to protect Hamlet, not turn him in. It could be said that Ophelia is immature. Her actions seem rash and poorly thought out. Ultimately though, through telling her father about Hamlet’s strange behavior Ophelia proves just how strange Hamlet’s behavior was. If she, the one who should be most concerned for Hamlet’s health and should be the most aware of a problem or switch, thinks that Hamlet has gone mad then it seems likely that he actually has. Shakespeare uses Ophelia in this act to paint a picture of Hamlet and his behavior and to show how well that Hamlet is fooling all of the characters.

Deceit is definitely the most obvious theme of this Act II. Even at the very beginning of the act we see deception through the conversation between Polonius and Reynaldo. Polonius, in a sense, asks Reynaldo to spread rumors about the behavior of Laertes so that Polonius can get information about his son’s actual behavior. In some of the cases in this act, the situation is almost confusing because the true feelings, desires and motives of the characters can get lost in the midst of their actions. Hamlet for example, is acting as if he is crazy. He has not told anyone else of his plan and because of this all of the other characters in the play believe that he has gone mad. Hamlet’s behavior is very convincing, at certain points it is easy for the reader to forget the he is not actually crazy, he is deceiving those around him. The odd thing about the interactions between each of the characters is how common they really are. Their plans to deceive one another are in actuality situations that occur in daily life all of the time. In a group of people, be it family members, friends, coworkers, even complete strangers, it is not at all uncommon for people to lie about others, act differently from how they are feeling, or send others to gather information. It happens. Perhaps Shakespeare was using the deceptive characters for a reason. It could be that through these situations of deceit, Shakespeare was making a statement about human behavior in general and our unfortunate tenancy to manipulate situations in order to get what we want out of someone or something.