Blog 3L / Write a short script that depicts a man collapsing in a rage of jealousy.
Author’s Note: Reading Shakespeare’s ‘Hamlet’ and ‘The Winter’s Tale’, my mind conflates the two notions of Hamlet’s deep-seated inaction and Leontes’ destructive jealousy. Something tangled and warped is born in my imagination.
A monologue riddled with envy by middle-aged Claudius set before the events of ‘Hamlet’.
Claudius: long in the shadow of a great king and long in love with his brother’s wife. After decades of meditative inaction, Claudius is struck with the decision to take what is rightfully his. Claudius will kill his brother: King Hamlet.
Act 1: A Rage of Regal Envy
CLAUDIUS
CLAUDIUS holds up a sharp dagger, inspects it, prods it, and places it down
I was the quiet son, then. He was loud and happy. But my brother knew me. Hamlet–he knew me.
We were fond of each other: each other’s puppeteers, contorting our boyhoods into farcical Falstaffs and playful Pucks. We gave the other the strings to pull, for we trusted no harm would come from our brother’s plying hands.
But know this, old friend, I had not strings tied to him for years.
It was the Cupid’s arrow struck that turned on us as shears.
And snapped each line to him I had one by one.
It was from her hands mine own strings now hung.
O, my fair Gertrude.
Eyes close and he smiles in dreamlike reverence. Eyes snap open, clouded by scorn
And from there led the agony in watching them wed!
Seeing them were thorns no less pricking than the needles inside my head.
O, those thousands of unopened letters to God explaining why I am dead.
Picks up the dagger, paces, distracted by memory
She laid the boy in his arms, and I did weep watching my brother cradle this newborn son. Hamlet: likeness in name, compress the division of time, and they art one. Mine eyes did drift to the sleepy smiles of that sweet, good queen…for she was looking at me.
Sighing dreamily, he sways
She drew me to her in the meadow the following moon.
Strayed from the yoke of her throne, past the pallid piers at Elsinore,
she crept whilst the babe at her bosom slept.
Wilder she grew, swifter she moved, nearer the moorland windswept.
At last, she turned to me at the meadow’s edge,
holding babe Hamlet to her breast.
She peered up at me with the demure eyes of a wise doe
and, in dulcet tones and with moonlit flesh, she spoke:
[off-stage, voice of GERTRUDE]
Come hither, my dear Claudius, sit by me.
CLAUDIUS wrestles with his anguish; he bursts with furious laughter
CLAUDIUS
O, I am no Lancelot, wretched Murder. Gertrude no tepid Guinevere! And wretched thou art, Murder, for thou art bound by crime and crime by blame and blame by guilt and guilt by suffering. And if I do not suffer guilt, it is no blameful crime. I would not waste away in want of a woman I shall never call my wife. And so, thou–Murder Most Foul–becomes my most secret friend…
My brother would oft ask me in those days of piteous bitterness:
[off-stage, voice of KING HAMLET]
How is it that the clouds still hang on thou?
CLAUDIUS
If only I hath unveiled my plan to him; if only I hath forewarned that a centurion’s twenty footsteps stood to run with me the length of time we waited. Would thee reproach me with those simple, stately ways of thine? Nay, congratulate me, Hamlet! I hath hung these clouds ‘round my neck as both noose and collar, binding me to thou. But this day, brother? This day those pillows of heaven shall make thy deathbed. Thou hath thy reign. Thou hath thy wife.
It is my turn now, brother. For all the strings I let thee ponder to pull on my limbs, for the eons thou make merry of my woe, for all the happy children thou hath denied her and I for one…simpering…son!
Lights up to KING HAMLET, who slumbers in his grotto, inebriated. CLAUDIUS places down the dagger and pulls a vial of poison from his pocket. CLAUDIUS looks to his brother, gasping. With a sinster smile, he shakes with passion.
And when I do it, I shall be that quiet son once more. Thou shall die loud and happy, in my blood-red hands, with the tincture of sin on thy tongue. And when thee raise thine eyes to me, thy gaze shall be clouded and ears full of death-song. But thou shall know it is me, brother.
Hark, Hamlet! Mark mine oath. Thou. Shall. Know. Me.
CLAUDIUS strides toward the grotto, a fisted hand with the poison enclosed
Lights down.
Works Cited
Shakespeare, William. Hamlet. Clarendon Press, 1912.
Mariama E. Biro Saibou 