- Which characters are guessing about the behaviors of others in the first act?
- Horatio is guessing about the behavior of the soldiers (Bernardo and Francisco). he believes they are imagining things about seeing a ghost.
- Queen Gertrude is guessing that her son Hamlet is only depressed bout his father's dead.
- Hamlet is guessing that all the public displays of mourning by Claudius are fake manifestations of emotion and that he only cares about the power of being King of Denmark and the pleasure of having taken Queen Gertrude as his wife. Hamlet is also guessing that his mother does not care about King Hamlet's death and is only happy to have a new husband share her bed. Furthermore, Hamlet is initially guessing about his own grief. Something bothers him enormously about the whole situation. He distrusts Claudius viscerally yet he is also uncertain of his own thoughts and emotions and even contemplates suicide. When he meets the Ghost he does not immediately accept the Ghost's accusation but decides to put King Claudius under surveillance and find out the truth.
- Claudius is guessing about Hamlet's moroseness as just being infantile emotional affectation.
- Laertes is guessing about Hamlet's affection for Ophelia to be just plain lust disguised as love.
- Polonius also thinks that Hamlet's feelings for Ophelia are only physical desire and considers that Ophelia's feelings for Hamlet are only childlish illusions.
- how are the characters testing each other?
- Horatio submits the soldiers to the production of actual evidence. He only believes them when he sees the Ghost himself. He even has the soldiers attack the ghost with spears to see if it is really a ghost.
- Being tested by Horatio, the soldiers ask him to test the Ghost since they respect him for being a scholar and they want him to use his knowledge to make sure what they have seen is not a figment of their imagination.
- Hamlet decides, after speaking with the Ghost, to test Claudius by feigning madness induced by grief, until he is able to prove or disprove the Ghost's accusations.
The entire act is a warning about how appearances can be deceiving.
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