HAMLET NOTES ON TRUST

The world of Elsinore is a world of suspicion, rumour and eavesdropping. From the tension of the opening scene, with tensely exchanged passwords and an air of expectation, where the guards do not know what to expect, whom to trust, or even what the Danish state is doing. The air of suspicion is compounded by the first court scene with its air of challenge and suspicion - glossing over deliberate rudeness in favour of ritualised pronouncements. This seems to be a world where 'court' behaviour suppresses individual feeling. In this world geared up for war, Hamlet seems justifiably unsure who he can trust: one University friend is to be trusted, but the others (quite reasonably) not: and by using various provocative means to test his situation (the ‘antic disposition’, rudeness to Ophelia and her father, aggression and mockery with Rosacrantz and Guildenstern for example) Hamlet both investigates and complicates his own situation. Candidates will identify eavesdropping - Hamlet watching the King, and his mother, and Polonius’s fatal eavesdropping on Hamlet. One trust - Gertrude’s trust in Claudius - only disappears late in the play: but throughout, Hamlet’s faith in Horatio seems secure. The play is full of eavesdropping, espionage, secrets, provocations and lies.