Opening Scene Week 11

     I am really not quite sure why they opened Scene 2 with Polonius giving Renoldoe instructions.  But, this is what I think.  They opened this scene with something simple because Hamlet just saw a ghost.  After Polonius gives instuctions, Ophelia barges in his room terrified of Hamlet.  You need to know that Hamlet has had time to go into her room and take her "by the wrist and held me hard.

then goes he to the length of all his arm, and, with his other hand thus o'er his brow" as well as stay like that for a long time.  If the scene opened with Ophelia barging in the room, it would not have been as convincing.  If the scene did not open with this, where else would it fit in?  Shakespeare thought out the little details.  The play needed these scenes and they had to be places stratigicly.  That is why the scene opened the way it did.