Hamlet Response Journal

Response Journal for Act 1 Scene 1 to Act 1 Scene 5

1. How does the play make you feel at this point? Record your emotional response(s) in a few sentences and then explore them for a few minutes, trying to figure out why you feel as you do.

Personally, I'm a big fan of regal drama fictions. I like to indulge myself with the words authors use to describe the castles, characters, and many other things. This play, it is different. The characters are just mysterious. Their real emotions not really opened up by the author (because it's a play, I'm quite familiar with reading third-person view). I really tried to keep up with the words Shakespeare used, but it's just so hard. Sometimes, the words he used has two meanings. So it's just difficult for me to identify what he meant in each lines.

2. In what situations have you felt similar to the characters? What persons, places, or ideas, from your own experiences came to your mind while you were reading this portion of the play? Try to list at least three associations, but don't worry about trying to figure out why they came to mind. Just accept that they occur.

a. At Elsinore Act 1 Scene 1, Barnardo calls out who's there and Francisco answered it's him. I can relate this to my experience during Pathfinder camps. I got punished due to disobedience. My punishment was to 'stay in the dark'. Every 'Eisian' Pathfinder knows what's 'stay in the dark'. The Pathfinder instructor will lead you to a dark place within the camp, and put you there. It's dark, not lights, and it's creepy. So there was this time I got punished by staying in the dark. I'm scared so I wandered off from my post and saw some figure beside a tree and I called out, "Who's there?" The figure turned to me and answered, "It's me!" So it's just my friend after all. 

b. Ofttimes, Hamlet reminds me of myself. I usually brood and ponder around during the day. I like to think about problems that are happening to me. Not to be a creep, but I like to talk to myself. You see, talking to myself helps me figure out solutions to problems. Sometimes while doing Algebra 2 homework alone in my room I talked to myself, babbling x and y equals to blah, blah, blah. That's just my way of working and staying alone.

c. Act 1 Scene 5 where the ghost appeared reminds me of one episode in the Vampire Diaries. There's this spooky girl who was the guy's ex-girlfriend, but she died. So she came back to warn him about the danger that's creeping through the darkness and something bad is going to happen. She's not malevolent, she just wants to help. Both the girl and the ghost who came back to Hamlet are unrested spirits. They came back to warn the people they care about that something fishy is going on.

3. What portions of Shakespeare's language attracts your attention? These might be individual words, phrases, lines, scenes, or images. Make note of whatever features draw your attention. Speculate for a few minutes about what you think they might mean.

Okay, not trying to sound like a creep here, but I actually like the part where the ghost of Hamlet's father was revealing the secret of his death. He mentioned about Claudius in Act 1 Scene 5 lines 47 and 48:

"Ay, that incestuous, that adulterate beast, With witchcraft of his wit, with traitorous gifts- "

 The adjectives and nouns used in the excerpt above fits perfectly together. It creates a vision how Claudius is like. It's so poetic and really narrative. The excerpt above caught my attention at first sight.

4. Make note of any portion of the play, its language, or events that cause you problems. Note any questions that you might ask.

I expected that my problem reading Hamlet is its language. I'm not a vocabulary freak, who knows every single word, and who has a wide knowledge of old English. So I had problems with those poetic phrases which has two meanings. Makes it hard for me to browse through the dictionary one by one, since most of the words I read in one page is alien for me. Other than that I've got no problem with the play. Just the language.

Questions that I might ask? Can it be something about the setting? If yes, I would like to know how the old Dane royal palaces and castles might look like. Since I've seen in movies, the old English palaces and castles look so mysterious like Hogwarts. I'm kind of a person who likes to imagine the setting and the character's appearance. Because if there's no description how the character looks like, and how the setting is, I can't really imagine what's going on. So I really want to know how the royal palace or castles looks like, and how the characters in the dresses and looks like.