Hamlet; the Noir Adaption 2023 Act 1 Scene 2 Subscene 5

 Act One Scene Two

Sub-Scene Five

Alone

“Yet Brutus says he was ambitious; And, sure, he is an honorable man.” Hamlet paused in his words. “I speak not to disprove what Brutus spoke.”

Hamlet is on his left knee before the burial mound of his father, King Hamlet. He was along then with his father since his return. He has played the role of near-death or death many times, and with each moment, he felt the caress of death was truly upon him.

“But here I am to speak what I do know. You all did love him once, not without cause.” Hamlet quoted the words from Julius Caesar when Mark Anthony met Brutus to know of the death of the Emperor and friend, Julius Caesar. Death to him was nothing new; he had seen his friends of the arts die; some to self-immolation on the effect due to loss of adoration. He had brushed them off as he did after each performance. He was asked about his feelings on the death of one.

“What cause withholds you then, to mourn for him?”

“I have none. She’s dead. Another will take her role. We go on with the next performance.” That was what the headlines said of him.

“Like the King, the Prince shall inherit, or has he done so?” It was the meek topic at the luncheon. Succession to the King but none dared to ask out loud. The luncheon was soon over and much was said of the King turned to depart consoling words for the widow.

“O judgment! Thou art fled to brutish beasts, And men have lost their reason to remember you anymore.” Hamlet sighed. His tears fell from his eyes. His father once the revered King was made a subject of post-judgment by the ones who once kissed his toes for favors, and in the end, he was made into nothing. A passing moment for them indeed.

“Bear with me, Father. My heart is in the coffin there with you.” Hamlet nowed his head low.

(Freely extracted the words from the play of Julius Caesar.)

“Oh, that this too, too sullied flesh would melt, thaw, and resolve itself into a dew.” Hamlet looked at the burial mound. “Or that the Everlasting had not fixed his canon gainst self-slaughter!”

“O God, God! How weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable seem to me all the uses of this world!” Hamlet place injustice on God’s denial of self-life taking. His father may have more to be said if suicide was the means to depart.

Or perhaps it would be if Mother will do suit to follow the father.

“She should have done as Juliet did for Romeo. “ Hamlet thought of his mother then. “Fie on t, ah fie! Upon his death, the unweeded garden took to seed. That it should come to this. But not two months death he lies, so excellent a king, that was to come to this now.”

“My mother, those shoes were old with which she followed my poor father's body.” Hamlet sighed. “Let me not think on it.”

“Frailty, thy name is woman! Why she, even she a beast that wants discourse of reason would have mourned no longer chose to marry my uncle, my father's brother, but once was like my father before me then. Within a month, within a day of the burial, yet the salt of most unrighteous tears had left the flushing in her galled eyes, she married him.”

“O most wicked speed, to post with such dexterity to incestuous sheets.” Hamlet slapped the palm of his right hand onto his forehead. “Desist thy image from my mind. It is not nor it cannot come to good. She is no Lady Macbeth to unsex here. She may have used that to veil her true intentions.”

(In an attempt to make her worthy of murder, she asks spirits to “unsex me here,” implying that being a woman means she cannot be powerful. This is the first example of Lady Macbeth purposefully rejecting her femaleness to gain power.)

“But break, my heart, for I must hold my tongue. And my evil thoughts. He dies not long and yet vengeance intrudes upon me as if he needed one. I must ask for forgiveness.” Hamlet was troubled inside. His father dead, estranged from him for years, with no reconciliation of their love, and then his mother weds even before the father’s soul had even rested.

“I am wronged, Father or am I not?”Hamlet seeks his mind.

“So, will we, for you, young Hamlet.” The voice shuddered on hearing it and made the grieving man look at it. It was the loyal aides of the dead King.

Horatio, Barnados and Marcellus.

“Hail, Hamlet.”