Act V Scene i - Diana

 Our group: Rosalind, Jasmin, Emily, Christopher, Hernan and myself, are assigned to Act V scene I or the gravediggers scene. Interestingly enough the gravediggers do play significant roles as providing an age for our beloved Hamlet and such. At first reading of the scene we encountered the problem of different translations referring to the gravediggers as clowns. We quickly knew clowns and gravediggers were complete opposites in that "gravediggers" has a more negative connotation and seems to fit the mood of a funeral rather than clowns. But as we read, what these clowns/gravediggers were saying was pretty humorous and caused some good laughs between our group.

"Here lies the water - good.  Here stands the man - good. If the man go to this water and drown himself, it is, will he, nill he, he goes. Mark you that. But if the water come to him and drown him, he drowns not himself. Argal, he that is not guilty of his own death shortens not his own life."

This remark seems to make no sense but the gravedigger/clown has a point on the occasion.

In this scene, Hamlet has returned with Horatio and sees this gravedigger/clown singing as he digs a hole for a corpse and throws out skulls.

Hamlet then breaks out into noble speeches of what these skulls were before "this rude nave now to knock him about the sconce with a dirty shovel".

While working on the scene we noted that Hamlet speaks and receives short answers from Horatio, as our group discussed he was just there to stand pretty and nod, likely being an indifferent Horatio. But as Ms. Barrios noted it makes no sense for Horatio to not care when in the end he is willing to die alongside Hamlet. Perspective.

Another important topic was Hamlet's supposed madness deceiving love. In Act III Scene I, specifically the "get thee to a nunnery" scene, Hamlet puts off this I never loved you, Ophelia stunt which arose questions of: Did Hamlet really love Ophelia or not? Hmmm. When Hamlet discovers it is Ophelia's body who is to be buried and Laertes leaps into the grave, Hamlet and Laertes quarrel about whose grief is bigger.

"I loved Ophelia. Forty thousand brothers/ Could not, with all their quantity of love,/ Make up my sum." -Hamlet

 We learned he did love Ophelia, question answered.

As a group, we reviewed different adaptations of our scene to get a feel of it and discussed it so we all had a sense of what we were saying, even Horatio although it did not seem Horatio knew what he himself was talking about.