Hamlet

Hamlet, the story of a King’s death and his court’s reaction, explores the physical manifestation of personal loss. Throughout the show, each of the main characters will lose one of their five senses. King Claudius, blind to the power he killed his brother for, will lose his sense of sight. Queen Gertrude, having married her late husband’s brother less than two months after his death, will lose her sense of taste. Laertes, deaf to all excuses of why Hamlet has killed his father, loses his ability to hear. Ophelia, after Hamlet’s rejection, can no longer “smell the roses,” and loses her sense of smell. Finally, Hamlet, who has lost his father, whom he loved and trusted above anyone else, loses his sense of touch, and by the end of the play, will no longer feel anything.