According to the book Backwards and Forwards by David Ball, action takes place when something happens that causes another thing to happen. It is the cause and effect idea and each play, story, and even movie, is filled with action following action until a stasis is reached. In the play Hamlet by Shakespeare, there are a lot of important action scenes, but the scene I have chosen to analyze is the scene when Hamlet meets the ghost because this is the scene where the main character was given a motive. 

What I found interesting about this play was that the motive was not evident nor predictable from the beginning. When I read this play I had no idea what the storyline was and I was shocked when I saw the appearance of supernatural themes. I thought that the scene with the ghost was a dream and I had to reread it once I realized that it was most certainly not a dream. The ghost gave Hamlet his purpose in this scene. While reading this scene I thought of the ghost as a kind ghost who was misunderstood by Hamlet's friends, but the 1996 movie with Kenneth Branagh gave me a whole other take on the scene. I felt scared seeing that ghost and I watched Hamlet go from scared to sad. From reading the play I thought Hamlet would be fearless and then mad. As I watched the movie I discovered that not everyone took the scenes the same way and that due to these different interpretations, Hamlet's personality is not written in stone. 

I liked this scene a lot because it is open to many different interpretations and it went beyond my expectations of the pay. It also is the beginning of a long journey for Hamlet and in order to understand how the story ends, you need to understand how it begins. 

Benedict Cumberbatch played Hamlet in a 2015 and in an interview, he showed his strong understanding of the Shakespearean play and the emotional connection he can have with the main character. It is very interesting to hear someone talk so intellectually about the play while also being the one to play the lead role. The way he explains what is happening is as though he wrote the play with Shakespeare himself. The monologue "To Be or Not to Be" is one that is difficult to understand due to the type of English that was used by Shakespeare. Cumberbatch was able to connect to Hamlet and the play in a way which allowed him to deliver the difficult language using more of what he does not say instead of what he does say as a way to convey emotion. 

"It's to find the need. It's to find the need to say it." said Cumberbatch. In order for him to truly connect with the lines of the famous monologue, he needs to think of it as if he needs to say it as a way to tell the audience what he feels. Since the monologue is so popular, it is easy to just recite the lines blindly without a true understanding of each and every word, but Cumberbatch avoids feeling comfortable in just saying his lines and instead finds a purpose for everything he says in the play. He delivers the words slowly and carefully as if he were thinking of each word right there on stage. He avoids rhythm and patterns with his phrases and allows the audience to grasp each word and phrase. 
Cumberbatch believes that empathy is the answer as to why the monologue "To Be or Not to Be" is not a conversation, but instead a soliloquy. He says the purpose was to allow the audience to understand Hamlet and what his mindset is truly like. The monologue is him thinking out loud and saying what his problems are and what the things are that have him bothering him the most.  

When Cumberbatch delivered the monologue he was sitting and his voice was sad and maybe even a little confused. He was easy to relate to and even though the words he was saying had some anger to them, the way Cumberbatch played the character did not give Hamlet a sense of true insanity. This Hamlet was the perfect amount of insane that allowed empathy to the audience. It was easy to feel empathy for this Hamlet because he was more relatable to people of modern day today.

Kenneth Branagh did a movie version of Hamlet in 1996. His delivery of "To Be or Not to Be" was more insane. The staging was him speaking to himself through a mirror in a creepy whisper. His body language looks insane and he holds a swords to his head and rubs it through his hair. Branagh perfectly conveys insanity as an important part for this Hamlet's personality. The viewers can see Hamlet has gone mad and the acting done by Branagh provokes the emotion of fear.