Hamlet and Guildenstern's belongings and replaced it with a forged copy indicating that his former friends should be killed instead. A foppish courtier, Osric, interrupts the conversation to deliver the fencing challenge to Hamlet. Hamlet, despite Horatio's pleas, accepts it. Hamlet does well at first, leading the match by two hits to none, and Gertrude raises a toast to him using the poisoned glass of wine Claudius had set aside for Hamlet. Claudius tries to stop her, but is too late: she drinks, and Laertes realizes the plot will be revealed. Laertes slashes Hamlet with his poisoned blade. In the ensuing
Hamlet on screen Hawke is the youngest of the big-screen Hamlets, at 27 when production began. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the central character, Prince Hamlet, was perceived as effeminate; so it is fitting that the earliest screen success as "Hamlet" was Sarah Bernhardt in a five-minute film of the fencing scene, in 1900. The film was a crude talkie in that music and words were recorded on phonograph records, to be played along with the film. Silent versions of the play were directed by Georges Méliès in 1907 ("Hamlet"), Luca Comerio in 1908, William George Barker in 1910, August