Mirrors in Hamlet

One of the best tragedies ever written in history: Hamlet, with characters full of passion which makes them act in a very impulsive way when it comes to revenge that constantly transgresses the reader or audience’s thoughts and sometimes their behavior. Published in 1601 and written by one of the most famous British playwrights, William Shakespeare (1564-1616), whose play has keep him “alive” throughout more than half of a century.

             Hamlet is Shakespeare’s longest play where the main theme is revenge that causes madness and murder. This is because the king of Denmark has just died for a “estrange” reason, and his brother Claudius ascends the throne. Hamlet, the son of the king who has just died, sees his father’s ghost and he tells him that Claudius poisoned him, so he could stay with the throne and Gertrude, his wife. There is where Hamlet starts thinking about revenge, because he cannot allow his uncle stays with his mother and the power of Denmark in an unjust way.

            The first thought Hamlet has is killing his uncle for what he has done, but Hamlet, as a very complex, reflective, and thoughtful character, is always reasoning what to do or not, which is the reason why he takes longer in devising a plan to overthrow his uncle. Sometimes he has very impulsive attitude which make him do mad things like mistreating Ofelia, his beloved one, and make everyone thinks, including his mother, that he is seriously out of his mind, which does not favors him to carry out his plan.

            This play goes form tragedy to tragedy, there is no happy ending although there are a lot of comic characters and scenes, but it might be some kind of Shakespeare’s resource so the play could not be so miserable. To appreciate some of the drama characteristics of this play, it is important not just to read but to see it on stage. In this case Kenneth Branagh directed a movie based on this piece of writing which is very close to the original script in 1996.   

            Kenneth Branagh is well-known for making Shakespeare movies and they are always become attached to the original dialogs and details of the plays like: Much Ado about nothing, Othelo, and of course, Hamlet. A great advantage that this play has, is that it does not contains a specific period of when the story happens; besides there are not a lot of detailed specifications in the scenery which makes a tougher job for the director but a better way for the reader to accept the movie.

            At the beginning of act III, scene i, it is said that the King, the Queen, Polonius, Ophelia, and other characters enter to a room in the castle and nothing more. There are no specifications of magnitude, colors or furniture, so Branagh makes that scene in a spacious, kind of ball room, with a painting in a wall and several mirrors around it. Later in the scene, enter Hamlet, and these mirrors are an important element to highlight Hamlet’s legendary soliloquy.

To be, or not to be- that is the question:
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them.   

                                     (verse 1749- 1753)

These are the first words of the soliloquy which summarize the whole idea of it: accepting the reality even if it hurts, or do something about it despite the harmful consequences that those actions could bring. In the movie, Hamlet recites these verses in front of a mirror which, during the scene, is like being showing two people. This factor of seeing two people uttering this fragment represents the two choices Hamlet has showing as in fact there were two characters trying to decide which the best option is to choose and act that way.

            When a play does not have that much annotations for staging it, directors can add some elements to certain scenes to make them more significant. Such was the case of “Kenneth Branagh’s Hamlet” when he adds mirrors, appearances of other scenes that the characters are describing, and modified sceneries which help to intensify the meaning of the words and actions happening in a specific scene.

Bibliography

Barron, D. (Producer), & Branagh, K. (Director). (1996). Hamlet [Motion picture]. United

States: Columbia Pictures.

Shakespeare, W. (2006). Hamlet, in Hamlet y Macbeth. (pp. 29-186) Mexico: Universidad

Veracruzana

Shakespeare, W. (2011). Hamlet retrieved from

http://www.opensourceshakespeare.org/views/plays/play_view.php?WorkID=hamle

t&Act=3&Scene=1&Scope=scene