Melanie's Artwork: Hamlet Act IV & V

This post contains my sketches for act four and five of Hamlet and also my overall final piece. Act IV:
Somewhere in act four Claudius states:

O heavy deed!
It had been so with us, had we been there.
His liberty is full of threats to all-
To you yourself, to us, to every one.
Alas, how shall this bloody deed be answer'd?
It will be laid to us, whose providence
Should have kept short, restrain'd, and out of haunt
This mad young man. But so much was our love
We would not understand what was most fit,
But, like the owner of a foul disease,
To keep it from divulging, let it feed
Even on the pith of life. Where is he gone?

and so I spelled out Liberty and filled it with threats that would limit people or make them fear. Liberty is spelled wrong because a liberty full of threats is not real liberty. That is how I took the "liberty full of threats" portion of this quote. But reading it again tells me that Claudius is thinking of his own life, therefore someone else's liberty is everyone else's lives full of threats. Either way, liberty is spelled wrong because it doesn't feel like liberty if you are constantly threatened.

Fiery Quickness and Flame of Love

“But that I know love is begun by time,

And that I see, in passages of proof,

Time qualifies the spark and fire of it.

There lives within the very flame of love

A kind of wick or snuff that will abate it”
(and here's where I got fiery quickness: Hamlet, this deed, for thine especial safety,-
Which we do tender as we dearly grieve
For that which thou hast done,- must send thee hence
With fiery quickness. Therefore prepare thyself.
The bark is ready and the wind at help,
Th' associates tend, and everything is bent
For England. )

Polonius: Where He is Eaten

“King: Now, Hamlet, where’s Polonius?

Hamlet: At supper.

King: At supper? Where?

Hamlet: Not where he eats, but where he is eaten. A certain convocation of politic worms are e’en at him. Your worm is your only emperor for diet. We fat all creatures else to fat us, and we fat ourselves for maggots. Your fat king and your lean beggar is but variable service, two dishes, but to one table. That’s the end.”

Hamlet: Leash

King: How dangerous is it that this man goes loose!

Yet must not we put the strong law on him.

This is what I imagined "putting the strong law on" would look like. Not actually but symbolically. But since Hamlet is the prince he is nearly untouchable and therefore he can't be chained up (or punished for his murder) and so he's send off somewhere where he won't be near the king, and can't get at him to kill him.

All The Dead

(This is the only sketch I did for act five)

"Alexander died, Alexander was buried, Alexander returneth into dust, the dust is earth, of earth we make loam, and why of that loam, whereto he was converted, might they not stop a beer-barrel?

Imperious Ceasar, dead and turn’d to clay,

Might stop a hole to keep the wind away.

O, that that earth, which kept the world in awe,

Should patch a wall to expel the winter’s flaw!”

When I read this portion of the text I came up with this image of the dirt of the earth on a large scale, showing all the dead of the earth because they all return to dust and therefore the dirt is all the dead.

This is basically my final piece of artwork for Hamlet.
This is the over arching piece that expresses my feelings at the end of Hamlet. Actually it comes with inspiration from the river that Ophelia was associated with and also the reference to fishing that Hamlet makes. Although these are sad and quite disgusting references, the two thoughts together and separated from their original intent brought about this image. I love the peacefulness of the river and the sweetness of it. It seems like, in the end of Hamlet, maybe in a movie version, I would be pleased to see this landscape as the closing scene. It portrays the peace that is supposed to be there in the end. Perhaps the characters found peace in their death after all. If they did not than this image goes right along with all the themes that Shakespeare wrote into Hamlet, namely madness and acting. If this image is the end of the play that did not end peacefully than it is only an act and a lie. If everyone was mad after all than this is their madness: the extreme serenity one finds in ignorance and total chaos. (another reason that this is my final piece, even though it isn't the size I wanted it to be, is because I took a long time on it. It wasn't even going to be a sketch but it took up so much time and it was inspired by the play)

I hope you all enjoyed all my artwork these past few weeks. Now that Hamlet is over, what's next? I have decided that when I read another Shakespeare play I want to try out this method of learning again. I don't want this blog to die with Hamlet and therefore I'm proposing that we keep posting any artwork we have about Shakespeare and let our learning extend beyond this class. What do you say?