Ever since I have returned from Wittenberg, strange things have been going on in Elsinore. The king, Hamlet Sr., died suddenly. I knew the king well as he was the father of my dear friend, Hamlet. Within a month of the former king's death, his brother, King Claudius of Norway, swooped in and married the widowed Queen Gertrude which made him the King of Denmark. I have to say, it's all a bit peculiar if you think about it. There was really no apparent political values behind the marriage as Claudius was already the king of his own country and Hamlet could have easily risen to the throne. If it was true love that brought them together then so be it but it is a bit incestuous.
My heart goes out to Hamlet as the passing of his father and marriage of his mother has really taken a toll on him. I heard that he told his mother, "Together with all forms of forms, moods, shapes of grief, that can denote me truly: these indeed seem, for they are actions that a man might play: but I have that within which passeth show; these but the trappings and the suits of woe" (Shakespeare I.ii.82-86). At first I believed that he was still mourning for his father but then, after the wedding, I overheard him say, "O, that this too too solid flesh would melt, thaw and resolve itself into dew! Or that the Everlasting had not fix'd his canon 'gainst self-slaughter! O God! God" (Shakespeare I.ii.129-132). I have never seen his so distraught before!
When I finally got a chance to speak with him, he seemed genuinely relieved to be in my company. While Hamlet is skilled at the art of deceiving, I know him well enough to say that he was not putting on a façade to hide his grief in my presence. We had good conservation until I mentioned that I was visiting for his father's funeral. He reacted by getting defensive and said, "I prithee, do not mock me, fellow-student; I think that it was to see my mother's wedding" (Shakespeare I.ii.177-178). Hamlet has never lashed out at me in that manner before. He seemed to forget about it though, after I told him about the ghost.
Ah the ghost! That is the other strange occurrence that has taken place. I was a skeptic towards spirits until I encountered one myself. I remember telling Marcellus, "In what particular thought to work I know not; but in the gross and scope of my opinion, this bodes some strange eruption to our state" (Shakespeare I.i.67-69). Some strange eruption it was indeed! It topped off my theory that thing were not as they should be in Elsinore. I partly regret bringing young Hamlet to the ghost. I tried my best to warn him of the ghosts possible malevolent intentions. I told him, "What if it tempt you toward the flood, my lord, or to the dreadful summit of a cliff that beetles o'er his base into the sea, and there assumes some other horrible form, which might deprive your sovereignty of reason and draw you into madness?" (Shakespeare I.iv.69-74). I feared that the ghost would take what makes us human: our power to reason. After the encounter, Hamlet confided in me that he is going to pretend to have gone mad. As a loyal friend, I support him in his decision but I pray that his sanity and logic has not been confiscated as I feared it would and that he, in his act of madness, is still capable of his mind. Only time shall tell what will become of the boy's plan.
- Horatio
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