Shakespeare\u2019s Hamlet Commentary by Alfred J. Drake, Ph.D.<\/title><meta name= \"description\" content= \"Hamlet commentary addresses major themes, major characters such as Ophelia, Claudius, Gertrude, Polonius, Yorick, sources, literary analysis, drama theory.\"><\/head><\/p>\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading has-text-align-center\">Commentaries on Shakespeare’s Tragedies<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-uagb-buttons uagb-buttons__outer-wrap uagb-btn__default-btn uagb-btn-tablet__default-btn uagb-btn-mobile__default-btn uagb-block-4f6cdd05 uag-hide-mob\"><div class=\"uagb-buttons__wrap uagb-buttons-layout-wrap \">\n<div class=\"wp-block-uagb-buttons-child uagb-buttons__outer-wrap uagb-block-dcba7b2a wp-block-button\"><div class=\"uagb-button__wrapper\"><a class=\"uagb-buttons-repeater wp-block-button__link\" aria-label=\"\" href=\"https:\/\/www.ajdrake.com\/shakespeare\/\" rel=\"follow noopener\" target=\"_self\" role=\"button\"><div class=\"uagb-button__link\">HOME<\/div><\/a><\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n<div 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target=\"_self\" role=\"button\"><div class=\"uagb-button__link\">GUIDES<\/div><\/a><\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-uagb-buttons-child uagb-buttons__outer-wrap uagb-block-d5da63d7 wp-block-button\"><div class=\"uagb-button__wrapper\"><a class=\"uagb-buttons-repeater wp-block-button__link\" aria-label=\"\" href=\"https:\/\/www.ajdrake.com\/shakespeare\/shakespeare-links\/\" rel=\"follow noopener\" target=\"_self\" role=\"button\"><div class=\"uagb-button__link\">LINKS<\/div><\/a><\/div><\/div>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-uagb-buttons uagb-buttons__outer-wrap uagb-btn__default-btn uagb-btn-tablet__default-btn uagb-btn-mobile__default-btn uagb-block-19d28286\"><div class=\"uagb-buttons__wrap uagb-buttons-layout-wrap \">\n<div class=\"wp-block-uagb-buttons-child uagb-buttons__outer-wrap uagb-block-69502be5 wp-block-button\"><div class=\"uagb-button__wrapper\"><a class=\"uagb-buttons-repeater wp-block-button__link\" aria-label=\"\" href=\"#act1\" rel=\"follow noopener\" target=\"_self\" role=\"button\"><div class=\"uagb-button__link\">ACT 1<\/div><\/a><\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-uagb-buttons-child uagb-buttons__outer-wrap uagb-block-0ec42142 wp-block-button\"><div class=\"uagb-button__wrapper\"><a class=\"uagb-buttons-repeater wp-block-button__link\" aria-label=\"\" href=\"#act2\" rel=\"follow noopener\" target=\"_self\" role=\"button\"><div class=\"uagb-button__link\">ACT 2<\/div><\/a><\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-uagb-buttons-child uagb-buttons__outer-wrap uagb-block-6ac70dcb wp-block-button\"><div class=\"uagb-button__wrapper\"><a class=\"uagb-buttons-repeater wp-block-button__link\" aria-label=\"\" href=\"#act3\" rel=\"follow noopener\" target=\"_self\" role=\"button\"><div class=\"uagb-button__link\">ACT 3<\/div><\/a><\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-uagb-buttons-child uagb-buttons__outer-wrap uagb-block-bfd6ecc9 wp-block-button\"><div class=\"uagb-button__wrapper\"><a class=\"uagb-buttons-repeater wp-block-button__link\" aria-label=\"\" href=\"#act4\" rel=\"follow noopener\" target=\"_self\" role=\"button\"><div class=\"uagb-button__link\">ACT 4<\/div><\/a><\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-uagb-buttons-child uagb-buttons__outer-wrap uagb-block-55716ff6 wp-block-button\"><div class=\"uagb-button__wrapper\"><a class=\"uagb-buttons-repeater wp-block-button__link\" aria-label=\"\" href=\"#act5\" rel=\"follow noopener\" target=\"_self\" role=\"button\"><div class=\"uagb-button__link\">ACT 5<\/div><\/a><\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-uagb-buttons-child uagb-buttons__outer-wrap uagb-block-0246bad9 wp-block-button\"><div class=\"uagb-button__wrapper\"><a class=\"uagb-buttons-repeater wp-block-button__link\" aria-label=\"\" href=\"#endnotes\" rel=\"follow noopener\" target=\"_self\" role=\"button\"><div class=\"uagb-button__link\">ENDNOTES<\/div><\/a><\/div><\/div>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\nShakespeare, William. The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark. <\/em>Second Quarto with additions from the Folio. (The Norton Shakespeare: Tragedies,<\/em> 3rd ed. Comb. text 358-447.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n<\/p>\n\n\n\nOf Interest: <\/strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.rsc.org.uk\/hamlet\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">RSC Resources<\/a> | <a href=\"https:\/\/internetshakespeare.uvic.ca\/Library\/Texts\/Ham\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">ISE Resources<\/a> | <a href=\"https:\/\/www.shakespeare-online.com\/sources\/hamletsources.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">S-O Sources<\/a> | <a href=\"https:\/\/www.folger.edu\/explore\/shakespeare-in-print\/first-folio\/bookreader-68\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">1623 Folio 762-92 (Folger)<\/a> | <a href=\"https:\/\/internetshakespeare.uvic.ca\/doc\/Ham_Q1\/index.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">First Quarto of Hamlet<\/em> (1603)<\/a> | <a href=\"https:\/\/internetshakespeare.uvic.ca\/doc\/Ham_Q2\/index.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Second Quarto of Hamlet <\/em>(1604)<\/a> | <a href=\"https:\/\/internetshakespeare.uvic.ca\/doc\/Saxo_M\/index.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Saxo Grammaticus\u2019s Historiae Danicae,<\/em> \u201cAmleth\u201d<\/a> | <a href=\"https:\/\/internetshakespeare.uvic.ca\/doc\/Belleforest_M\/index.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Belleforest\u2019s Histoires Tragiques<\/em> (1570)<\/a> | <a href=\"https:\/\/hdl.handle.net\/2027\/mdp.49015000413873\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Bright\u2019s Treatise of Melancholie<\/em><\/a> | <a href=\"https:\/\/www.gutenberg.org\/cache\/epub\/3589\/pg3589-images.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Montaigne\u2019s Essays<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\nPreliminary Notes on Hamlet<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\nTheology. <\/strong>In Christian terms, revenge amounts to usurpation of God\u2019s providential prerogatives. <a href=\"#_edn1\" id=\"_ednref1\">[1]<\/a> But this interpretation of revenge clashes with a more ancient one at work in Classical literature: in Aeschylus\u2019s tragic trilogy The Oresteia,<\/em> for instance, Orestes would be wrong not to take vengeance on his father Agamemnon\u2019s killer. How could Orestes not kill Clytemnestra? He and we know that such an act will bring the Furies down upon his head, but it must be done in spite of the penalty incurred. <a href=\"#_edn2\" id=\"_ednref2\">[2]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\nThe Elizabethans also love a good Senecan-style revenge tragedy, <a href=\"#_edn3\" id=\"_ednref3\">[3]<\/a> as the popularity of Thomas Kyd\u2019s The Spanish Tragedy <\/em><a href=\"#_edn4\" id=\"_ednref4\">[4]<\/a> shows, but in Hamlet, <\/em>Shakespeare\u2014author of the bloody revenge play Titus Andronicus <\/em><a href=\"#_edn5\" id=\"_ednref5\">[5]<\/a>\u2014seems to face most squarely the theological dilemma revenge entails.<\/p>\n\n\n\nSkepticism. <\/strong>There is something to the idea that Hamlet is a man out of his time, and not fit to be a tragic hero. <a href=\"#_edn6\" id=\"_ednref6\">[6]<\/a> That\u2019s true even if his problem isn\u2019t \u201cdelay,\u201d although the Prince accuses himself of it. He makes his share of false assumptions and rash mistakes. We can say only half in jest that Hamlet\u2019s problem may be that he has read Montaigne\u2019s Essays <\/em><a href=\"#_edn7\" id=\"_ednref7\">[7]<\/a> and absorbed too much of their epistemological skepticism.<\/p>\n\n\n\nThe play\u2019s proddings towards revenge don\u2019t seem solid to Hamlet: there is only a ghost who tells him what he wants to hear; namely, that Uncle Claudius is stealing Gertrude\u2019s attention and her son\u2019s kingdom, so the traitor must be paid back.<\/p>\n\n\n\nRecognition. <\/strong>At what point in the play does Hamlet attain clarity about the nature of his actions? He must have come round to the idea that he needs to let things shape up as they may. But exactly how he has come that far isn\u2019t clear to everyone.<\/p>\n\n\n\nPerhaps Hamlet\u2019s realization is due to a number of experiences: facing the shock of Ophelia\u2019s death; meditating on that army going to its death \u201ceven for an eggshell\u201d; <a href=\"#_edn8\" id=\"_ednref8\">[8]<\/a> bantering with a sexton or gravedigger; encountering the jester Yorick\u2019s skull as an object of meditation; escaping from the ship that was taking him to his death in England; and being ransomed by pirates at sea.<\/p>\n\n\n\nAdd to this list experiencing conflicted feelings about Ophelia and Gertrude; facing the anguish of being a young man with his whole life ahead of him, yet compelled to give his life for the honor of an elder\u2014his dead father. In this specific sense, Laertes is right when he lectures Ophelia about the Prince: \u201chis greatness weighed, his will is not his own\u201d (369, 1.3.17).<\/p>\n\n\n\nIn The Poetics, <\/em><a href=\"#_edn9\" id=\"_ednref9\">[9]<\/a> Aristotle says that well-crafted tragedies turn upon the hero\u2019s arriving at some fundamental insight (anagnorisis,<\/em> recognition) about the mistake he or she has made. If we want to characterize Hamlet\u2019s insight into his situation, what should we say is the insight, and what has led him to it? We might connect this question to Hamlet\u2019s musings during Act 5, Scene 1, the Gravedigger scene. What finally makes the play\u2019s resolution possible? Is it that Hamlet has been unable to act and something now makes him able to do so, or should the resolution be accounted for in some other way? <a href=\"#_edn10\" id=\"_ednref10\">[10]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\nHamlet\u2019s Romantic-Style Subjectivity. <\/strong>One of Shakespeare\u2019s best-known critics, the late Harold Bloom, wrote that Hamlet, thanks to his intense interiority and complexity, overflows the revenge tragedy that hosts him. Bloom\u2019s notion is a modernization of the Romantic-Era conception of the Prince of Denmark as a man who, to borrow his own words, is \u201cout of joint\u201d with, and indeed superior to, the straightforward action-hero task that has been handed to him by the ghost of his murdered father.<\/p>\n\n\n\nAs modern readers, we should register our own sensibilities about this interesting conception of Hamlet\u2019s <\/em>protagonist\u2014do we arrive at a perspective on Hamlet similar to those of Bloom and the Romantics, or do we form a different opinion of this most complex of Shakespeare\u2019s tragic heroes? <a href=\"#_edn11\" id=\"_ednref11\">[11]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"act1\">ACT 1<\/h3>\n\n\n\nAct 1, Scene 1. (358-62, Marcellus and Barnardo wait with Horatio in the hope that the ghost they\u2019ve seen will appear for yet a third time outside Elsinore Castle. The ghost materializes, but says nothing, and the men ponder its purpose. Horatio suggests acquainting Hamlet with this news: surely the Hamlet Sr.-like ghost will address his son.)<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\nAs the play opens, Barnardo and Francisco are waiting for the changing of their watch at Elsinore Castle, and Marcellus shows up in good time. Marcellus and Barnardo have apparently seen a strange apparition twice, and Marcellus has invited Hamlet\u2019s skeptical, philosophical friend Horatio along to watch with them tonight. Horatio remains dubious, and, says Marcellus, \u201cwill not let belief take hold of him\u201d (359, 1.1.23).<\/p>\n\n\n\nAll the same, before Marcellus can explain in detail the circumstances of the previous two visitations, the hoped-for third materializes, looking just like the late and renowned King of Denmark, Hamlet Sr. Even Horatio is a believer now, though the Ghost has nothing to say to him any more than it did to the watchmen previously.<\/p>\n\n\n\nStill, the Ghost (now gone) appears to have been dressed in full battle armor, so Horatio offers what sounds like a plausible conjecture about the Ghost\u2019s purpose: he suspects that the apparition\u2019s presence \u201cbodes some strange eruption to our state\u201d (360, 1.1.68), meaning that the eerie specter intends to issue some security-grounded warning. Marcellus and Barnardo, after all, are on watch because young Fortinbras is planning to take back territory his father had lost to Hamlet Sr. Denmark is expecting trouble, so perhaps the Ghost has come to reinforce that expectation.<\/p>\n\n\n\nBarnardo supposes much the same when he says, \u201cWell may it sort that this portentous figure \/ Comes arm\u00e8d through our watch so like the King \/ That was and is the question of these wars\u201d (361, 1.1.108-10). These men feel foreboding and a sickness at heart, but they have only general knowledge, and as it will turn out, their surmises do not address the Ghost\u2019s purpose for visiting the living in Denmark. <\/p>\n\n\n\nHoratio\u2019s main idea is to seek out Hamlet and have him engage with the Ghost. It seems logical to him that the young Prince will be able to attain particular, intimate knowledge of the spirit\u2019s purpose. As Horatio says, \u201cupon my life \/ This spirit, dumb to us, will speak to him\u201d (362, 1.1.169-70). That assumption, as we\u2019ll soon find, proves true.<\/p>\n\n\n\nAct 1, Scene 2. (363-69, Claudius and Gertrude hold court at Elsinore, sending ambassadors to Norway to thwart young Fortinbras\u2019s military threat; Claudius allows Polonius\u2019s son Laertes to head for France, but, with Gertrude, disapproves of Hamlet\u2019s protracted mourning and his desire to return to his studies at Wittenberg; in soliloquy, Hamlet broods on his father\u2019s death and his mother\u2019s hasty remarriage to Claudius; Horatio, Marcellus, and Barnardo inform Hamlet about his father\u2019s ghost; Hamlet questions them sharply, but agrees to join the next watch.) <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\nOur first impression of the Danish Court comes in the person and voice of the new king, Claudius, who has married his sister-in-law Gertrude not long after the sudden death of his brother, King Hamlet Sr. Claudius is a skillful speaker, but his ceremonious rhetoric betrays a schizoid sense of his own conduct: as he says, he has married Gertrude (\u201cour sometime sister, now our queen\u201d) \u201cwith a defeated joy,\u201d and \u201cWith an auspicious and a dropping eye\u201d (363, 1.2.10-11).<\/p>\n\n\n\nThere is a kind of derangement underlying this sort of talk, even if Claudius means only to come across as measured in his emotions, speech, and expectations. As such, the new king\u2019s scoffing at young Fortinbras\u2019 supposition that Denmark is \u201cdisjoint and out of frame\u201d (363, 1.2.20) is already a bit ironic, even before the disorder in Claudius\u2019s realm makes itself more apparent.<\/p>\n\n\n\nClaudius duly sends Cornelius and Voltemand off to conduct official business with Old Norway, the uncle of the troublesome Fortinbras, and decorously accedes to his chief advisor Polonius\u2019s request that his son Laertes should be allowed to return to France. The King has a point when he rounds on his mourning nephew Hamlet and asks him, \u201cHow is it that the clouds still hang on you?\u201d (364, 1.2.66)<\/p>\n\n\n\nTo Claudius and even to Gertrude, Hamlet\u2019s grief seems impolitic, self-indulgent, even prideful\u2014at least to them, who must face the realities of governing a kingdom. We might say that it\u2019s \u201creasonable\u201d to be unreasonable and immoderate about grieving, but that is perhaps too modern a sentiment by which to judge medieval people, who lived more intensely and insistently with death than we do today. Gertrude speaks more eloquently than Claudius when she says to the brooding Hamlet, \u201cDo not forever with thy veiled lids \/ Seek for thy noble father in the dust\u2014 \/ Thou know\u2019st \u2019tis common, all that lives must die, \/ Passing through nature to eternity\u201d (364, 1.2.70-73).<\/p>\n\n\n\nHamlet\u2019s response already shows signs of the intense interiority that will cause him so much inward conflict later in the play, but which also makes him the strong and remarkable character that he is. He tells Gertrude, \u201cI have that within which passes show\u2014 \/ These but the trappings and the suits of woe\u201d (365, 1.2.85-86).<\/p>\n\n\n\nSoon after Claudius posts his own response, which is characteristically both ostensibly loving and yet castigating, Hamlet speaks his first soliloquy, beginning \u201cO, that this too, too sallied flesh would melt, \/ Thaw, and resolve itself into a dew \u2026\u201d (366, 1.2.129-30). In this self-unburdening, Hamlet laments that God has already \u201cfixed \/ His canon \u2018gainst self-slaughter\u201d (363, 1.2.131-32), reproaches the general run of females in the person of Gertrude\u2014\u201cFrailty, thy name is woman\u201d (363, 1.2.146)\u2014and profoundly disparages Claudius in comparison with Hamlet, Sr. The latter was, says the Prince, \u201cHyperion\u201d to Claudius\u2019s \u201csatyr\u201d (363, 1.2.140), which, in his view, makes Gertrude\u2019s choice to remarry so hastily all the more contemptible.<\/p>\n\n\n\nHamlet\u2019s imagination at this point, even before he hears the Ghost\u2019s damning information, seems morbid: he sees the whole world as \u201can unweeded garden \/ That grows to seed\u201d (363, 1.2.135-36), one inhabited entirely by \u201cthings rank and gross in nature\u201d (363, 1.2.136). Hamlet seems to play with the amount of time that has passed between the old king\u2019s death and Gertrude\u2019s marriage, and the concession that she was apparently in genuine sorrow for her first husband only makes her subsequent conduct more unacceptable.<\/p>\n\n\n\nHamlet is already obsessed with the dark intimation that people are not what they seem: Gertrude is not the loyal wife she seemed, and Claudius is not the rightful and righteous successor that the court and the people apparently believe he is.<\/p>\n\n\n\nHamlet also knows, however, that he must repress this feeling in public: \u201cBut break, my heart, for I must hold my tongue\u201d (366, 1.2.159). Privately, things are different: when Horatio, Marcellus, and Barnardo come to acquaint him with what has occurred during the watch, Hamlet already seems to suspect that \u201csome foul play\u201d (369, 1.2.255) was involved in his father\u2019s death or that foul play is now afoot, even though his questioning of Horatio about the Ghost\u2019s appearance indicates genuine uncertainty about its provenance and mission.<\/p>\n\n\n\nThe Prince\u2019s scene-ending thought about what has been related to him is, \u201cFoul deeds will rise, \/ Though all the earth o\u2019erwhelm them, to men\u2019s eyes\u201d (369, 1.2.256-57). Hamlet doesn\u2019t know it yet, but he is about to receive his orders as a revenger, and his response to those orders will be anything but simple.<\/p>\n\n\n\nAct 1, Scene 3. (369-72, Laertes takes his leave of his sister Ophelia, lecturing her about Hamlet\u2019s high rank and the untrustworthiness of his love vows; Ophelia teases him about his own moral challenges; Polonius regales Laertes with sound but tedious advice, then reinforces his son\u2019s warnings to Ophelia about Hamlet, forbidding her even to speak with him in future.)<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\nLaertes has evidently been taught well in the arts of windbaggery by his father Polonius. He lectures Ophelia sententiously about the dangers of giving in to the importunate suit of a lustful young man far above her station. (369-70, 1.3.10-49) This advice is sound enough as such things go. After all, Hamlet is a Prince, so he is not free to love as he wishes without thought of Denmark. Still, as Gertrude later admits when Ophelia is dead, she had hoped the two lovers would in fact marry\u2014the difference in rank apparently never bothered the Queen at all.<\/p>\n\n\n\nIn any event, Ophelia holds her own against Laertes, showing that while circumstances may constrain her, she is not lacking in understanding or the courage to speak her mind. She tells her brother, \u201cDo not as some ungracious pastors do \/ Show me the steep and thorny way to heaven \/ Whiles, a puffed and reckless libertine, \/ Himself the primrose path of dalliance treads \u2026\u201d (370, 1.3.46-49).<\/p>\n\n\n\nPolonius soon arrives and first offers Laertes some sound but tedious advice, such as the famous \u201cNeither a borrower nor a lender be\u201d (370, 1.3.74). To Ophelia, Polonius offers less amiable advice, accusing Ophelia of being na\u00efve about Hamlet\u2019s intentions and showing that he himself reads the character of others as a function of stereotypes: Hamlet is a young, lusty bachelor, and is therefore not to be trusted, quite aside from his status as a prince. (371, 1.3.89ff) The sum of it is, \u201cI would not, in plain terms, from this time forth \/ Have you so slander any moment leisure \/ As to give words or talk with the Lord Hamlet\u201d (371-72, 1.3.131-33).<\/p>\n\n\n\nAct 1, Scene 4. (372-74, On the watch, Hamlet reports to Marcellus and Barnardo that Claudius is enjoying an alcohol-saturated party; the Ghost appears and beckons only to Hamlet to follow him; Hamlet\u2019s friends fear for his safety, but he will not be restrained, and is determined to follow the Ghost.) <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\nAt the beginning of Scene 4, Hamlet discusses the Court of Denmark\u2019s fondness for alcohol, declaring that his country is \u201ctraduced and taxed of other nations\u201d (372, 1.4.18) for this weakness. In his 1948 film adaptation of the play, Laurence Olivier quotes directly from this passage and applies the words to the Prince himself, who by implication suffers from \u201csome vicious mole of nature\u201d (372, 1.4.24) not with regard to alcohol but rather in that sense that he cannot \u201cmake up his mind.\u201d <a href=\"#_edn12\" id=\"_ednref12\">[12]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\nThis is an overstatement, perhaps, since there is good reason to doubt the purposes of an entity such as the one Hamlet sees in this scene for the first time, as he seems to agree when he first encounters the Ghost: \u201cWhat may this mean, \/ That thou, dead corpse, again in complete steel \/ Revisits thus the glimpses of the moon . . . ?\u201d (373, 1.4.51-53)<\/p>\n\n\n\nHamlet is not yet certain what to think of this strange apparition. All the same, he is so determined to follow this otherworldly visitor that he threatens to harm the friends who have brought him to encounter it: \u201cBy heaven,\u201d he shouts, \u201cI\u2019ll make a ghost of him that lets me\u201d (374, 1.4.85). <a href=\"#_edn13\" id=\"_ednref13\">[13]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\nAct 1, Scene 5. (374-78, the Ghost confirms his identity, recounts in detail his murder and references his current punishment in Purgatory; Hamlet vows to fulfill the Ghost\u2019s demand for revenge; returning from the encounter, Hamlet warns his friends never to reveal what they have witnessed, and to expect some \u201cantic,\u201d wild-seeming behavior from him in the near future.)<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\nThe Ghost affirms that he is Hamlet\u2019s departed father, and then recounts in bloodcurdling detail exactly what happened to him and who is responsible for it. This information elicits from Hamlet an excited \u201cOh, my prophetic soul!\u201d (375, 1.5.41) as if he had suspected all along that Claudius killed his father. The terms the Ghost uses to describe both Claudius and Gertrude are strongly reminiscent of the very ones Hamlet had used shortly before. For example, he complains with genuine disgust that Gertrude has married \u201ca wretch whose natural gifts were poor \/ To those of mine\u201d (375, 1.5.51-52).<\/p>\n\n\n\nThe command to take revenge could not be clearer: Hamlet is told, \u201cbear it not; \/ Let not the royal bed of Denmark be \/ A couch for luxury and damned incest\u201d (376, 1.5.81-83). At the same time, there is the all but impossible co-equal demand, \u201cTaint not thy mind, nor let thy soul contrive \/ Against thy mother aught \u2026\u201d (376, 1.5.85-86). It seems reasonable to suggest that within the play-world, the Ghost is in some sense real, and not a figment of Hamlet\u2019s imagination.<\/p>\n\n\n\nStill, the Ghost\u2019s utterances at times so closely coincide with Hamlet\u2019s prior thoughts that it\u2019s almost as if the Prince is talking to himself. Either way, Hamlet seems utterly convinced, at least in the moment, and once Hamlet Sr. vanishes into the air, the son commits himself to the heavy task that his dead father lays upon him.<\/p>\n\n\n\nOr at least that\u2019s how it seems until we consider the matter in somewhat more detail. On the one hand, near the beginning of the Ghost\u2019s recounting, we heard Hamlet proclaim that he wanted nothing less than revenge, to be accomplished \u201cwith wings as swift \/ As meditation or the thoughts of love \u2026\u201d (375, 1.5.29-31).<\/p>\n\n\n\nBut by the end of the Ghost\u2019s speech and immediately after his departure, Hamlet\u2019s metaphor shifts in a way that may well give us pause: he vows to the now absent Ghost, \u201cYea, from the table of my memory \/ I\u2019ll wipe away all trivial fond records, \/ \u2026 \/ And thy commandment all alone shall live \/ Within the book and volume of my brain \u2026\u201d (376, 1.5.98-99, 102-03).<\/p>\n\n\n\nHamlet\u2019s scholarly wax-writing-tablet metaphor seems sincere and meant to give us a sense of the purity of his desire for revenge, but it\u2019s slightly comic in that Hamlet, a young man who (at least for us today) has become a byword for deferral and delay, speaks of writing at the very instant when he says he is most certain of his desire to act:<\/em> \u201cmake a note to myself, take revenge.\u201d This is not the sort of thing one expects from a dedicated revenger. Revengers may be stymied or confused for a time, but they don\u2019t need a note to remind them to keep revenge on their calendars. <a href=\"#_edn14\" id=\"_ednref14\">[14]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\nIn any event, when Hamlet returns to his friends Marcellus, Barnardo, and Horatio, he seems reluctant to let them in fully on what has just happened to him. He swears them all to secrecy in the most extravagant manner, and tells his old friend, \u201cThere are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, \/ Than are dreamt of in your philosophy\u201d (378, 1.5.168-69), and says that he may find it necessary to \u201cput an antic disposition on\u201d (378, 1.5.173). This is no doubt frustrating to the friends who have made Hamlet\u2019s revelatory experience possible.<\/p>\n\n\n\nWhat are we to make of Hamlet\u2019s concluding words in Scene 5? He admits to his friends, \u201cThe time is out of joint\u2014oh, curs\u00e8d spite, \/ That ever I was born to set it right\u201d (378, 1.5.189-90). The utterance seems to indicate both acceptance and world-weariness.<\/p>\n\n\n\nDo these words also suggest a certain indecisiveness or resentment in the face of the task that Hamlet has been called to undertake? It is hard to treat them as consonant with the Prince\u2019s initial desire, as he put it, to \u201csweep to my revenge.\u201d For much of the rest of the play, Hamlet\u2019s alternating enthusiasm and lack of enthusiasm will be a feature to contend with, and we will return to it and the reasons for it as the need arises.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"act2\">ACT 2<\/h3>\n\n\n\nAct 2, Scene 1. (378-81, Polonius enjoins his servant Reynaldo to travel to Paris to gather intelligence about Laertes\u2019s conduct there; Ophelia enters, distressed by Hamlet\u2019s strange behavior\u2014the Prince seems addled; Polonius presumes that Hamlet is love-mad for Ophelia and resolves to tell the King at once.) <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\nPolonius is both an endearing character, full of well-intentioned, if comically delivered, advice to his children (and the royal couple) and a meddling intelligencer who deals with those same children in a sneaky, underhanded way. He sets spies on Laertes to find out if the young fellow is behaving (379-80, 2.1.1-71), and, having previously ordered Ophelia to stay away from Hamlet, he now insists that she accompany him to relate to Claudius the Prince\u2019s strange behavior\u2014namely, his sighing and state of undress: \u201cCome, go with me; I will go seek the King. \/ This is the very ecstasy of love \u2026\u201d (381, 2.1.98-99).<\/p>\n\n\n\nTo be fair, at this point Polonius\u2019s assumption that Hamlet\u2019s distraction is due to lovesickness seems reasonable, based upon what Ophelia has just told him.<\/p>\n\n\n\nAct 2, Scene 2. (381-94, warned by Polonius, Claudius and Gertrude ask Hamlet\u2019s friends Rosencrantz and Guildenstern to spy on him; Old Norway seeks safe passage for his nephew Fortinbras through Denmark; Polonius convinces the King and Queen to join him soon in watching Hamlet\u2019s conversation with Ophelia; Hamlet mocks Polonius with wild quips; Rosencrantz and Guildenstern engage with Hamlet, and he gets them to admit that they were \u201csent for.\u201d \n\t\t\tHamlet welcomes the players to Elsinore and entreats the First Player to recite a revenge scene about the slaughter of the Trojan king Priam by Achilles\u2019s son Pyrrhus; Hamlet reflects upon his own failure to act like a true revenger, and resolves to try the Ghost\u2019s case against Claudius by means of an improvised play at court: \u201cThe play\u2019s the thing\u2026.\u201d)<\/span>\n\t\t<\/span><span title='' data-less-title='' data-more-title='' class='yrm-toggle-expand yrm-toggle-expand-1' data-rel='yrm-zJFqI' data-more='(SYNOPSIS CONTINUES \u2026)' data-less='READ LESS' style='border: none; width: 100%;'>(SYNOPSIS CONTINUES \u2026)<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\nEverybody\u2019s favorite nobodies Rosencrantz and Guildenstern make their first appearance in the play (379-80, 2.2.1-39), and Voltemand brings what seems to be good news about that troublesome issue of young Fortinbras \u201csharking up\u201d an army of ruffians to take back what his father lost to the Danes. Now the young blade wants only to use Denmark\u2019s territory as a marching ground on his way to Poland, where he has other fighting to do (383, 2.2.60-79).<\/p>\n\n\n\nPolonius\u2019s insistence that he has \u201cfound \/ The very cause of Hamlet\u2019s lunacy\u201d (382, 2.2.48-49) excites Claudius, who says, \u201cOh, speak of that, that do I long to hear!\u201d (382, 2.2.50) Together these remarks suggest that Hamlet has been putting on a good show, taking up his \u201cantic disposition\u201d early in the game since \u201clunacy\u201d would not be the right term with which to describe his initial surliness and melancholia in Act 1.<\/p>\n\n\n\nThe Prince must, we presume, act in such a manner as to draw Claudius beyond his semi-comfortable geniality towards Hamlet, and into the active agent\u2019s circle of consequence and blood revenge. Polonius is certainly moved to act: he declares to the King and Queen, \u201cI\u2019ll loose my daughter to \u2026 [Hamlet]. \/ Be you and I behind an arras; then \/ Mark the encounter \u2026\u201d (385, 2.2.160-62).<\/p>\n\n\n\nThis determination is made stronger still when Hamlet wanders into the scene and Polonius engages him (sans Ophelia as yet) in a strange conversation that is carried on with Rosencrantz and Guildenstern after Polonius exits. Not realizing the irony of his formalistic amazement at Hamlet\u2019s \u201cpregnant replies,\u201d Polonius admiringly says, \u201cThough this be madness, yet there is \/ method in\u2019t\u201d (386, 2.2.201-02).<\/p>\n\n\n\nHamlet receives his old friends Rosencrantz and Guildenstern kindly, and he deftly, but gently, unmasks their dishonesty preparatory to his later, much harsher dealings with them. After the pair admit that they were indeed \u201csent for\u201d (387, 2.2.237, 254), Hamlet suggests that the King and Queen are worried about his mopishness, nothing more, and he immediately utters one of the most famous invocations in Shakespeare.<\/p>\n\n\n\nIt is a piece of Renaissance humanism, one that exudes aliveness to the beauty of a world that people were beginning to see afresh after centuries of medieval otherworldliness: \u201cWhat piece of work is a \/ man\u2014how noble in reason, how infinite in faculties, in form \/ and moving how express and admirable, in action how like \/ an angel, in apprehension how like a god \u2026\u201d (388, 2.2.264-67). The speech in its entirety should remind us how potent the concept of the Great Chain of Being was during Shakespeare\u2019s time. <a href=\"#_edn15\" id=\"_ednref15\">[15]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\nOf course, Hamlet says all this only to bring the whole \u201cmajestical roof fretted with \/ golden fire\u201d (388, 2.2.262-63) down on our heads, reminding us that we are but the most refined sod in the cosmos, a very \u201cquintessence of dust\u201d (388, 2.2.269). This letdown is deepened by Rosencrantz\u2019s quibbling interpretation of Hamlet\u2019s remark \u201cMan delights not me\u201d (388, 2.1.269), and the whole thing leads directly to the announcement that a troupe of actors (\u201cplayers\u201d) is on the way to Elsinore. (388, 2.2.274-77)<\/p>\n\n\n\nHamlet and Rosencrantz talk briefly about what the audience surely would have recognized to be the current state of Elizabethan theater\u2014delightfully implausible as that may be since, of course, the setting is medieval Denmark\u2014with Rosencrantz\u2019s estimation hardly amounting to a positive review. He calls the boy actors who are so popular of late \u201can eyrie of children, little eyases [eagles], \/ that cry out on the top of question and are most tyran- \/ nically clapped for\u2019t\u201d (389, 2.2.292.3-5, Folio only). If we are to believe Rosencrantz, child actors have become an object of mockery with their mannerisms and crude, bombastic acting. <a href=\"#_edn16\" id=\"_ednref16\">[16]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\nIn the course of a conversation about the current state of Elizabethan theater, Hamlet slips in a confessional remark: \u201cI am but mad north-northwest; when the wind is \/ southerly, I know a hawk from a handsaw\u201d (389, 2.2.306-307). If we didn\u2019t know that the word \u201chandsaw\u201d may, as the Norton editor informs us, refer to a \u201cheron,\u201d which is a bird that a hawk might prey upon, it would be hard to imagine a remark less likely to cure one\u2019s interlocutor of thinking that one is nearly insane. But Hamlet seems to mean, \u201cI know a predator from its prey.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\nIf the English stage is in turmoil, Denmark is disturbed as well; things aren\u2019t what they seem. After suitably mocking Polonius\u2019s silly announcement that the players have arrived at Elsinore, comparing him to the biblical figure Jephthah <a href=\"#_edn17\" id=\"_ednref17\">[17]<\/a> and thereby obliquely referring to Ophelia again, Hamlet solicits the First Player to give his rendition of the tragic ending of the Trojan War.<\/p>\n\n\n\nThe Prince listens with rapt interest as the Player recounts the moment at which Achilles\u2019s son Pyrrhus, carrying out the task of taking revenge against the Trojan King Priam for his slain father, nevertheless pauses briefly and seems unable to act. (392, 2.2.399-404) But after this momentary pause, Pyrrhus returns with all swiftness to his bloody task and carries it out. <a href=\"#_edn18\" id=\"_ednref18\">[18]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\nAs for Hecuba\u2019s grief at the murder of her husband, the player makes it seem so natural that even he gets worked up imitating it. Unlike the First Player, Hamlet faces such a situation in real life\u2014he has a murdered father to avenge\u2014so why doesn\u2019t he act at once? (393, 2.2.468-77) Things are so much simpler in fiction; a noble lie or representation may allow us to perpetuate our highest ideals, but real life is weighed down with epistemological uncertainties, Machiavellian considerations, and \u201cvicious mole[s] of nature\u201d such as indecisiveness.<\/p>\n\n\n\nHamlet\u2019s revenge imperative is hindered by Christian scruples and by doubts about the Ghost\u2019s purpose and provenance, as the end of his soliloquy shows: \u201cThe spirit that I have seen \/ May be a devil, and the devil hath power \/ T\u2019 assume a pleasing shape; yea, and perhaps \/ Out of my weakness and my melancholy, \/ \u2026 \/ Abuses me to damn me\u201d (394, 2.2.517-22).<\/p>\n\n\n\nBasing his plan on the literary gossip that \u201cguilty creatures sitting at a play \/ Have by the very cunning of the scene \/ \u2026 \/ \u2026 proclaim\u2019d their malefactions\u201d (394, 2.2.508-11), Hamlet invests much hope in his additions to The Murder of Gonzago<\/em> as a means of discovering certainty in the guilty visage of Claudius. This plan does not give us license to despise fiction as the mere opposite of \u201creal life\u201d\u2014in this instance, the public and political realm, the world of cold, hard reality and necessity, is exactly what allows Claudius to keep his murderous nature hidden from everyone but himself.<\/p>\n\n\n\nHamlet\u2019s method may seem dubious\u2014he is a man of words who has decided to tip himself towards action precisely by means of words\u2014but at the same time, this plan seems likely to elicit a deep, gut-level response from the usurper-king.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"act3\">ACT 3<\/h3>\n\n\n\nAct 3, Scene 1. (394-99, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern inform Claudius that they haven\u2019t fixed the cause of Hamlet\u2019s insanity; Polonius sets Ophelia in a spot where he and Claudius can watch her talking with Hamlet; the Prince soon begins speaking harshly to her, saying he never loved her, asking where her father is, spewing misogyny, and taunting her with, \u201cget thee to a nunnery\u201d; Ophelia is heartbroken; Claudius sees that this alleged madness has nothing to do with lovesickness, and plans to pack Hamlet off to England to collect tribute from that country; Polonius urges Claudius first to allow Gertrude to speak with Hamlet after the play.)<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\nThe King tells Rosencrantz and Guildenstern to encourage this new business of the players\u2019 coming to Elsinore. (395, 3.1.26-27) Perhaps it will draw out the reason for Hamlet\u2019s eccentric behavior. He and Polonius will conceal themselves to hear Hamlet talk with Ophelia (395, 3.1.42-43).<\/p>\n\n\n\nBut first, Hamlet speaks his famous \u201cTo be or not to be\u201d soliloquy. In it, he asks whether those who are frustrated with life, like him, would do best to continue to bear the \u201cslings and arrows of outrageous fortune\u201d\u2014the various blows and insults life throws at one\u2014or whether it is better to extinguish one\u2019s consciousness, by suicide if no other eventuality renders it unnecessary.<\/p>\n\n\n\nThe Prince is drawn to the latter course, but any resolution stemming from that attraction is blunted by the soliloquy\u2019s other main point, which is to say that our ignorance of what comes after death keeps us from acting on our resolutions in this life, and thus \u201centerprises of great pitch and moment \/ With this regard their currents turn awry \/ And lose the name of action\u201d (396, 3.1.85-87).<\/p>\n\n\n\nHamlet\u2019s wild words to Ophelia concern mainly the impossibility of virtue maintaining itself in a corrupt world: \u201cGet thee to a nunnery!\u201d (397, 3.1.119) probably means just that\u2014remove yourself from this wicked world, and seek shelter from the \u201carrant knaves\u201d who go about in it. Hamlet denies that he ever established any relationship with Ophelia, that he ever made any promises, saying, \u201cI loved you not\u201d (397, 3.1.116-17). He asks Ophelia where her father is (397, 3.1.127), a line usually taken to indicate that he knows he\u2019s being overheard.<\/p>\n\n\n\nAt line 142, Hamlet seems to lose his composure in a way that does not seem entirely scripted, and he utters words that frighten Claudius: \u201cI say we will have no \/ more marriage. Those that are married already\u2014all but one\u2014shall live\u201d (398, 3.1.143-45).<\/p>\n\n\n\nClaudius derives from this outburst the thought that Hamlet\u2019s disturbed state of mind is \u201cnot like madness\u201d (398, 3.1.161), so he must be watched even more closely. The Prince\u2019s \u201cmelancholy,\u201d says Claudius, whose guilt had already been spurred by Polonius\u2019 unwitting words about \u201csugar[ing] o\u2019er\u201d (395, 3.1.47) the most damnable deeds with piousness, \u201csits on brood\u201d (398, 3.1.162) over something still darker, and that is what he finds most troubling about the young man\u2019s hostility towards him.<\/p>\n\n\n\nAct 3, Scene 2. (399-408, Hamlet lectures the players on their craft, and solicits Horatio to watch the King\u2019s reaction to the play; with everyone seated, Hamlet makes lewd and unpleasant remarks to Ophelia; the actors perform a dumb-show and then a play with dialogue, the story eerily following Claudius\u2019s courting of Gertrude and his murder of Hamlet Sr.; rattled, Claudius calls for light and leaves in a panic; Hamlet is certain that Claudius betrayed his guilt; Rosencrantz and Guildenstern inform Hamlet\u2014who rebukes them for their service to the King as spies\u2014that Claudius is enraged and that Gertrude wants to speak with him immediately; Hamlet self-counsels restraint, but stalks off to reproach Gertrude for her disloyalty.)<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\nHamlet admonishes the players about their craft: his key bits of advice are that they should \u201co\u2019erstep not \/ the modesty of nature\u201d (399, 3.2.17-18) and make certain \u201cto hold as \u2018twere the mirror up to nature, to \/ show virtue her feature, scorn her own image, and the very \/ age and body of the time his form and pressure\u201d (399, 3.2.20-22).<\/p>\n\n\n\nAside from any ontological issues it may raise, Hamlet\u2019s remark is a moral statement akin to what we may find in Samuel Johnson much later: actors should display virtue as it is, and compel vice to confront itself head-on. <a href=\"#_edn19\" id=\"_ednref19\">[19]<\/a> Hamlet intends to do just that by means of his spectacle: simply showing and then speaking Claudius\u2019s sin should make that sin\u2019s effects register on his countenance (400, 3.2.70-79). No embellishment is necessary for such a hideous offense as that of Claudius, and working together, Hamlet and Horatio plan to read it on the man\u2019s face, and in his gestures.<\/p>\n\n\n\nA dumb-show soon follows (402, 3.2.122ff, stage directions). It is an eerie scene that shows Claudius what he has done, no more, no less, so the images of this silent preview of the play-within-the-play\u2019s action prime Claudius\u2019s imagination and conscience for the blows still to come when the \u201ctalkie\u201d version hits him. We might even say that this strange, silent presentation speaks <\/em>to Claudius in a direct way that it couldn\u2019t possibly do with respect to anyone else in the room, with the possible exception of Hamlet himself.<\/p>\n\n\n\nNext, the briefest of prologues is spoken, asking for the audience\u2019s patience. Then the Player King and Queen preview the plot, in the process uttering words that with damning precision hit upon what Hamlet himself must consider the guilty consciences of both Claudius and Gertrude.<\/p>\n\n\n\nThe Player King intimates that after many years of faithful union, he may not be long for this world, and expresses the wish that his Queen may find another faithful husband. The Player Queen\u2019s shocking reply to this wish is, \u201cNone wed the second but who killed the first\u201d (403, 3.2.164), strangely and in almost proverbial form implicating herself in her own husband\u2019s death, or at least in a betrayal that amounts to murder.<\/p>\n\n\n\nThe Player King offers his Queen some worldly but distressing wisdom: she may firmly believe what she says now, but once he is dead, her resolution will quickly and inevitably fade: \u201cSo think thou wilt no second husband wed, \/ But die thy thoughts when thy first lord is dead\u201d (404, 3.2.198-99). The passions, suggests the Player King, are not things we can simply will<\/em> to remain constant: they are subject to circumstance, to fate, and to the needs of the body.<\/p>\n\n\n\nClaudius\u2019s annoyance shows as soon as he hears this preamble: he asks Hamlet, \u201cHave you heard the argument? Is there no offense in\u2019t?\u201d (404, 3.2.216) Hamlet the playwright\u2019s words have struck home, and he tells the irritated Claudius, \u201cNo, no, they do but jest, poison in jest. No offense i\u2019th\u2019 world\u201d (404, 3.2.217-18). Gertrude\u2019s critical opinion of the Player Queen\u2019s words is, \u201cThe lady doth protest too much, methinks\u201d (404, 3.2.214)\u2014a point that is easily re-aimed at Claudius, whose anger is so easily sparked, perhaps, because he has insistently failed to consider the consequences of his evil actions. His stability of mind depends on repressing self-consciousness and reflection concerning his conduct.<\/p>\n\n\n\nHamlet cleverly slips in a mention of \u201cpoison\u201d when he says of the Player King and Queen, \u201cthey do but jest, poison in jest\u201d (404, 3.2.217)\u2014a mention that underscores the dumb-show\u2019s images and is unlikely to go unregistered by Claudius.<\/p>\n\n\n\nThen, too, Hamlet is cruelly merry with Ophelia throughout Act 3, Scene 2: he seems to be baiting her and accusing her of lewdness, effectually blaming her for Gertrude\u2019s failings. This treatment of Ophelia is another twist of the knife by Hamlet into her already wounded soul, and it is entirely undeserved. Her grief over what she believed in Act 3, Scene 1 was Hamlet\u2019s descent into madness was genuine: \u201cOh, what a noble mind is here o\u2019erthrown!\u201d (398, 3.1.147)<\/p>\n\n\n\nOphelia is not to blame for obeying her father\u2019s abusive scheme to use her as bait to draw Hamlet into the open, but at this point, Hamlet seems as determined to spread guilt wherever he can as to pin it where it really belongs, with Claudius. The Ghost had told Hamlet not to taint his mind against Gertrude, but he would have done well to add Ophelia to that protective command.<\/p>\n\n\n\nStill, to be fair, the blame is<\/em> strongly affixed to Claudius when we reach the point in the so-called Mousetrap <\/em>where \u201cone Lucianus, nephew to the King\u201d (404, 3.2. 226) shows up on stage with his \u201cdrugs fit\u201d and \u201cpours the poison in the Player King\u2019s ears<\/em>\u201d (stage directions following 405, 3.2.241). Forced to watch his fictive double commit the same dark sin twice (once in the dumb-show, and now here in the play proper), Claudius says, \u201cGive me some light, away\u201d (405, 3.2.249) and abruptly exits the theater space.<\/p>\n\n\n\nHamlet and Horatio appear to agree that what they have seen in Claudius\u2019s behavior is more than significant. Horatio\u2019s \u201cI did very well note him\u201d (405, 3.2.269) is not as dramatic as Hamlet\u2019s \u201cI\u2019ll take the Ghost\u2019s word for a thou- \/ sand pound\u201d (405, 3.2.265-66), but given all the circumstances, it may be taken as confirmation of guilt.<\/p>\n\n\n\nWith the King out of the picture for the moment, Hamlet\u2019s anger turns first towards Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, whom he disabuses of any hope that they may \u201cplay upon\u201d him like a musical instrument (407, 3.2.344), and then to Gertrude, who is perhaps the main target of the whole scene, so savage is the representation of her role in the disturbing affair of Hamlet Sr\u2019s death. The Prince\u2019s rejection of anyone who thinks he is their instrument is interesting in its own right\u2014at this point, what Hamlet needs most of all is to take control of events.<\/p>\n\n\n\nWith respect to Gertrude, Hamlet\u2019s words are even harsher than were those in The Murder of Gonzago.<\/em> He says, \u201cNow could I drink hot blood \/ And do such business as the bitter day \/ Would quake to look on\u201d (407, 3.2.361-63). Perhaps this violent thought is directed towards Claudius only, but it\u2019s hard to avoid supposing from what follows that it also applies to Gertrude: \u201cLet me be cruel, not unnatural. \/ I will speak daggers to her but use none\u201d (407, 3.2.366-67).<\/p>\n\n\n\nAct 3, Scene 3. (408-10, Claudius tells Rosencrantz and Guildenstern<\/strong> to hustle Hamlet off to England; Polonius tells Claudius he will eavesdrop on Hamlet\u2019s talk with Gertrude; alone, Claudius attempts to pray in earnest; Hamlet overhears Claudius, but delays killing him until he is doing something \u201cwith no relish of salvation in it\u201d; Claudius admits to himself that since he won\u2019t give up the fruits of his wicked deeds, he can\u2019t pray\u2014he\u2019s damned.) <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\nThe King has decided in his panic and rage that Hamlet must be trundled off to England, and Rosencrantz speaks more truly than he knows when he says to Claudius, \u201cThe cease of majesty \/ Dies not alone but like a gulf doth draw \/ What\u2019s near it with it \u2026\u201d (408, 3.3.15-17). Guildenstern, too, flatters the King that what he does is necessary to protect the welfare of the state and the people: \u201cMost holy and religious fear it is \/ To keep those many bodies safe \/ That live and feed upon your Majesty\u201d (408, 3.3.8-10).<\/p>\n\n\n\nThis must be somewhat comforting to Claudius since the political realm itself is like an exoskeleton protecting the usurper-king from the ravages of introspection and from the guilt that comes when one knows one is fending off such inward-tending thoughts. This is the same sort of \u201ctyrant\u2019s plea\u201d that accounts for the hollowness of Satan\u2019s rhetoric in Paradise Lost. <\/em><a href=\"#_edn20\" id=\"_ednref20\">[20]<\/a> There is probably no character in literature who thrives more on denial than Milton\u2019s Devil, but self-deluders like Claudius are not far behind.<\/p>\n\n\n\nAlone with his tormenting thoughts, however, Claudius now kneels and tries to confront \u201cthe visage of offense\u201d (409, 3.3.47), as he admits is the main use of mercy, but he can\u2019t because he won\u2019t give up his crown or his queen, the fruits of his sin. It\u2019s doubtful whether we are to understand this attempt at repentance as entirely sincere, but it\u2019s painful to behold a person in such spiritual distress, even if it is<\/em> his own fault.<\/p>\n\n\n\nIt may be that Claudius isn\u2019t so much sorry for killing the king as determined to indulge himself in remorse, or in what has been called the \u201cluxury of self-reproach.\u201d <a href=\"#_edn21\" id=\"_ednref21\">[21]<\/a> Is he just feeling sorry for himself? Whatever the truth may be, the results of his kneeling in prayer are nil: \u201cMy words fly up, my thoughts remain below; \/ Words without thoughts never to heaven go\u201d (410, 3.3.97-98).<\/p>\n\n\n\nBefore the King arrives at that conclusion, Hamlet reveals his earnestly un-Christian desire that Claudius\u2019s soul at death \u201cmay be as damned and black \/ As hell whereto it goes\u201d (410, 3.3.94-95). That hardly seems like a proper Christian sentiment\u2014it sounds more like something the revenger in a Senecan tragedy would say. <a href=\"#_edn22\" id=\"_ednref22\">[22]<\/a> In any case, the ineffectuality of Claudius\u2019s prayer relieves Hamlet of the need to contrive such an outcome: the usurper is unable to repent for his mortal sin, or even to take the first necessary steps that would reclaim his chance at salvation.<\/p>\n\n\n\nAct 3, Scene 4. (410-16, with Polonius concealed behind a curtain, Hamlet enters and frightens Gertrude, whose call for help elicits a cry from Polonius; Hamlet stabs Polonius, wrongly assuming he must be the King; Hamlet berates Gertrude for her remarriage and forces her to look within, but the Ghost appears and reminds him that his command is to kill Claudius, not his mother; Gertrude thinks Hamlet is hallucinating; Hamlet tells Gertrude not to sleep with Claudius, and tells her about the King\u2019s plot to send him to England. \n\t\t\tHamlet intends to defeat this plot by any means at his disposal; in departing, he apologizes tersely to Polonius\u2019s corpse and drags it out of Gertrude\u2019s room; Claudius enters and asks Gertrude where Hamlet is, and tells her he must clean up the mess Hamlet has made in killing Polonius; the King dispatches Rosencrantz and Guildenstern to find Hamlet.)<\/strong><\/span>\n\t\t<\/span><span title='' data-less-title='' data-more-title='' class='yrm-toggle-expand yrm-toggle-expand-1' data-rel='yrm-4tZsE' data-more='(SYNOPSIS CONTINUES \u2026)' data-less='READ LESS' style='border: none; width: 100%;'>(SYNOPSIS CONTINUES \u2026)<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\nHamlet soon reaches his mother\u2019s chambers, and engages with her in all strictness, insisting, \u201cYou go not till I set you up a glass \/ Where you may see the inmost part of you\u201d (410, 3.4.19-20). When the frightened Gertrude screams for help, Polonius echoes her cry and pays for that incautious mistake with his life: he is abruptly stabbed to death by Hamlet, who dispatches the meddling counselor with a catchphrase: \u201cDead for a ducat, dead\u201d (411, 3.4.24).<\/p>\n\n\n\nThe Prince goes on to berate Gertrude, and even accuses her of taking part in Claudius\u2019s murder plot. His killing of Polonius he admits to have been \u201cA bloody deed!\u201d but he continues with, \u201cAlmost as bad, good mother, \/ As kill a king and marry with his brother\u201d (411, 3.4.28-29). Gertrude seems genuinely shocked at the suggestion.<\/p>\n\n\n\nHamlet has little time now for the \u201cwretched, rash, intruding fool\u201d (411, 3.4.31) Polonius, a man everyone else held in high regard and with whom they showed considerable patience. He drives onward to make Gertrude confront her sinfulness as directly as he made Claudius behold his guilt during the staging of The Murder of Gonzago.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\nHamlet suggests that Gertrude\u2019s lust is surely not excusable by reference to the heat of youth. At her age, he insists, \u201cThe heyday in the blood is tame, it\u2019s humble \/ And waits upon the judgment\u201d (412, 3.4.69-70). His efforts succeed without much trouble since Gertrude cries out, \u201cO Hamlet, speak no more! \/ Thou turn\u2019st my very eyes into my soul, \/ And there I see such black and griev\u00e8d spots \/ As will leave there their tinct\u201d (412, 3.4.88-91).<\/p>\n\n\n\nAt this point, Ernest Jones\u2019s Oedipal reading of the play comes into its own, if it hadn\u2019t already. <a href=\"#_edn23\" id=\"_ednref23\">[23]<\/a> Hamlet can scarcely stand to imagine\u2014and yet can\u2019t help but imagine\u2014his mother in bed with Claudius, where they spend their time \u201choneying and making love \/ Over the nasty sty\u201d (412, 3.4.92-94). The Prince\u2019s mother-obsession is so deep that the Ghost must step in to admonish him about his \u201calmost blunted purpose\u201d (413, 3.4.110) of taking revenge against Claudius. Gertrude is unable to see the Ghost, but the sense of its reality and presence is no less powerful for that.<\/p>\n\n\n\nAs for Polonius, to the thought of whom Hamlet now returns, there is some remorse, but it is quickly smoothed over with philosophizing: \u201cFor this same lord \/ I do repent. But heaven hath pleased it so \/ To punish me with this and this with me, \/ That I must be their scourge and minister\u201d (414, 3.4.173-76). Hamlet tells Gertrude not to let on that he isn\u2019t insane, and he confides in her, at least to a degree, what he has in mind.<\/p>\n\n\n\nIt’s worth noting that what may appear a contradiction to Hamlet\u2019s advice to his mother to avoid sexual intercourse with Claudius is actually reinforcement. The Queen asks, \u201cWhat shall I do?\u201d and Hamlet responds ironically, \u201cNot this, by no means that I bid you do: \/ Let the bloat King tempt you again to bed \u2026 \/ [And] Make you to ravel all this matter out \/ That I essentially am not in madness \/ But mad in craft\u201d (414-15, 3.4.182-83, 187-89). The rest of Hamlet\u2019s advice makes it clear that he is again telling Gertrude not <\/em>to reveal any such thing.<\/p>\n\n\n\nKnowing he cannot trust Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, who are the King\u2019s agents in hustling him off to England, the Prince says nonetheless, \u201cLet it work, \/ For \u2018tis the sport to have the enginer \/ Hoist with his own petard\u2014and\u2019t shall go hard \/ But I will delve one yard below their mines \/ And blow them at the moon\u201d (415, 3.4.206-10). This is an odd exclamation since, presumably, Hamlet knows only that he\u2019s being \u201cmarshal[ed] to knavery\u201d (415, 3.4.206). He can\u2019t know the precise plan, but speaks with a mixture of fanciful expression and military precision, promising to turn the evildoers\u2019 intended harm back upon them.<\/p>\n\n\n\nClaudius enters after Hamlet\u2019s harrowing encounter with Gertrude, and he is now, by his own admission to his Queen, \u201cfull of discord and dismay\u201d (416, 3.4.263) at this turn of events. He knows that Hamlet\u2019s sword was meant for him, and he must try to clean up in a politically sustainable way the damage Hamlet has done in killing the beloved counselor Polonius.<\/p>\n\n\n\nAct 3, Scene 5. (416-17, Hamlet again mocks Rosencrantz and Guildenstern<\/strong>as Claudius\u2019s tools; running away, he refuses to tell them where he has stashed the body of Polonius.)<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\nHamlet calls Rosencrantz a \u201csponge\u201d (417, 3.5.12, 14-15) who \u201csoaks up the King\u2019s countenance, his \/ rewards, his authorities\u201d (15-16). As for Claudius, he is \u201ca thing,\u201d says Hamlet, \u201cof nothing\u201d (417, 3.5.27, 29). His odd remark that \u201cThe body is with the King, but the King is not with \/ the body\u201d (417, 3.5.26-27) most obviously refers to Polonius\u2019s corpse, but it might be connected to the longstanding political doctrine that the king has both a civil or corporate body, which is imperishable, and a natural, mortal one. <a href=\"#_edn24\" id=\"_ednref24\">[24]<\/a> In this sense, Hamlet may be making an oblique threat against Claudius.<\/p>\n\n\n\nAct 3, Scene 6. (417-19, Claudius discusses his desperate straits with Rosencrantz and Guildenstern; Hamlet, forced to face Claudius, mocks him with reminders of his own mortality and calls him \u201cmother\u201d; the King tells him that he must depart for England at once; in soliloquy, Claudius admits that he has commanded the death of Hamlet as soon as he arrives in England.)<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\nTalking to Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, Claudius realizes the perilous state he is in: \u201cDiseases desperate grown \/ By desperate appliance are relieved \/ Or not at all\u201d (417, 3.6.9-11). Then follows Hamlet\u2019s quizzical \u201cfishing\u201d conversation with the King, which culminates with the fine demonstration that \u201ca king may go a prog- \/ ress through the guts of a beggar\u201d (418, 3.6.29-30).<\/p>\n\n\n\nThe Prince\u2019s implication would seem to be that the adornment and aggrandizing of a king\u2019s decaying body, so easily inducted into the indifferent processiveness of nature, is what Claudius has traded his soul for, so in this respect he truly is \u201ca thing\u201d and \u201cnothing.\u201d Hamlet calls Claudius \u201cdear mother\u201d (418, 3.6.47), a slip-up that seems sincere since he has had so much trouble keeping the two apart in his mind.<\/p>\n\n\n\nClaudius is increasingly disturbed by Hamlet\u2019s presence, and even by his very existence: requesting \u201cThe present death of Hamlet\u201d (419,3.6.62), Claudius says, \u201cDo it, England, \/ For like the hectic in my blood he rages \/ And thou must cure me\u201d (419, 3.6.62-64). But what the King seeks most of all is security: \u201cTill I know \u2018tis done, \/ Howe\u2019er my haps, my joys will ne\u2019er begin\u201d (419, 3.6.64-65). <a href=\"#_edn25\" id=\"_ednref25\">[25]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"act4\">ACT 4<\/h3>\n\n\n\nAct 4, Scene 1. (419-20, Hamlet catches sight of Fortinbras\u2019s army crossing through Denmark to fight in Poland; he casts these men as models of honor, and again resolves to take bloody revenge on Claudius the usurper.) <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\nYoung Fortinbras seeks conveyance through Denmark on his way to Poland, and the Captain to whom Hamlet speaks doesn\u2019t think much of his assignment, saying, \u201cWe go to gain a little patch of ground \/ That hath in it no profit but the name\u201d (419, 4.1.17-18). Hamlet takes the point to heart, making yet another resolution that his mind will contain only thoughts of vengeance from now on. He admires Fortinbras and his men, who, he says, are \u201cExposing what is mortal and unsure \/ To all that fortune, death, and danger dare, \/ Even for an eggshell\u201d (420, 4.1.50-52).<\/p>\n\n\n\nAs for Hamlet\u2019s resolution, this time it runs, \u201cOh, from this time forth, \/ My thoughts be bloody or be nothing worth\u201d (420, 4.1.9.64-65) This vow, as we shall see, is no more permanent than the ones Hamlet made earlier in the play: Hamlet\u2019s nature is not to be contained in or by such revengers\u2019 oaths, if we may endow a literary character with a \u201cnature.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\nPart of the interest in Hamlet<\/em> is, of course, that not only is the time \u201cout of joint,\u201d but the hero himself is out of joint, not immediately adapted to the traditional role he must play\u2014a role that is both subservient and heroic in the old medieval fashion. In this way, the Romantic reading of the tragedy, in which Hamlet is too aloof and philosophical to carry out such a task as revenging a murdered father, is worthy of respect.<\/p>\n\n\n\nWe might even prefer to read Hamlet\u2019s actions in light of his standing as a young man with his whole life before him, yet subjected to the will of an imperious \u201cdead father.\u201d As such, Hamlet could be construed as yet another casualty of what Freud casts as the longstanding struggle between individuals in their quest for satisfaction and the impossible demands of an often cruel, irrational society. <a href=\"#_edn26\" id=\"_ednref26\">[26]<\/a> <\/p>\n\n\n\nAct 4, Scene 2. (420-25, Gertrude, anxious, hears that Ophelia has gone mad; Ophelia enters, singing bits of folk songs about death and men\u2019s betrayal of maids; Claudius agonizes over Ophelia\u2019s distress and bids Horatio watch over her; Laertes bursts in at the head of a party of citizens, demanding an explanation for Polonius\u2019s death; Claudius protests his innocence; Ophelia reenters, much to Laertes\u2019s grief; Claudius promises to reveal privately to Laertes what happened to Polonius, and provide direction on how to get satisfaction for the event.) <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\nOphelia is ushered into the presence of Gertrude and causes the Queen much dismay by showing clear signs of madness in her speech and gestures. Gertrude says somewhat obscurely, \u201cTo my sick soul, as sin\u2019s true nature is, \/ Each toy seems prologue to some great amiss\u201d (421, 4.2.17-18). Does Gertrude mean that she has resisted giving Ophelia admittance because the young woman\u2019s distracted nonsense might trigger Gertrude\u2019s own guilty conscience? What guilt might she be referring to, then? Ophelia\u2019s songs have to do mainly with death improperly marked and with men\u2019s acts of betrayal against women.<\/p>\n\n\n\nClaudius is moved by Ophelia\u2019s distress, and is no doubt partly right when he infers that her sorrow \u201csprings \/ All from her father\u2019s death\u201d (422, 4.2.74-75). Her mournful words, \u201cI can- \/ not choose but weep to think that they would lay him i\u2019th\u2019 cold \/ ground\u201d (422, 4.2.68-70) suggest as much, even without the song fragments she sings.<\/p>\n\n\n\nOphelia\u2019s sad condition comes as no surprise since she has been used even by the father she mourns\u2014used as an agent against Hamlet, dangled before him like a piece of meat to draw out the cause of his own alleged madness, and abandoned by Hamlet, too. In Act 5, Scene 2, Hamlet justifies the deaths of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern to Horatio by saying, \u201c\u2019Tis dangerous when the baser nature comes \/ Between the pass and fell incensed points \/ Of mighty opposites\u201d (439, 5.2.59-61). Ophelia, entirely without being the \u201cbaser nature\u201d Hamlet speaks of, has paid the price, too, for the unseemly struggles of the men around her.<\/p>\n\n\n\nClaudius seems stricken at the pace of bad events that he and Gertrude now confront. He says to her, \u201cWhen sorrows come, they come not single spies \/ But in battalions\u201d (422, 4.2.77-78), and no sooner has he said it than Laertes bursts in with the common folk at his back, shouting him up for the new king.<\/p>\n\n\n\nThe young man\u2019s key function is to present an obvious contrast with Hamlet: unlike the Prince, Laertes is determined to \u201csweep to his revenge\u201d without delay. He has no scruples about the concept of revenge, shouting at the King and anyone else within earshot, \u201cTo hell allegiance, vows to the blackest devil. \/ Conscience and grace to the profoundest pit! \/ I dare damnation\u201d (423, 4.2.131-33).<\/p>\n\n\n\nClaudius temporizes adroitly with Laertes, but it\u2019s hard to miss the irony in his declaration to Gertrude that \u201cThere\u2019s such divinity doth hedge a king \/ That treason can but peep to what it would, \/ Acts little of his will\u201d (423, 4.2.123-25). Clearly, this truism afforded Hamlet Sr. no protection from Claudius, whose treason did much more than \u201cpeep to what it would.\u201d What Claudius manages to do by the end of Act 4, Scene 2 is begin to steer <\/em>Laertes\u2019s rage somewhere else than towards his own person. As always, Claudius is a slick politician, and not the heroic figure that Hamlet Sr. was.<\/p>\n\n\n\nWhen Ophelia reenters and continues to sing her haunting, fragmentary ballads, Laertes is distracted for a time from his rage, and falls to mourning for his sister\u2019s loss of sanity, which, as Laertes and Claudius themselves point out, may lack coherence but not significance. As for Ophelia\u2019s famous gesture of distributing flowers to her distressed audience, she hands out rosemary (\u201cfor remembrance\u201d), pansies (\u201cfor thoughts\u201d), fennel, columbines, and rue. Flowers are natural beauties, but they are also, for the Elizabethans far more than for us today, the elements of a language by which to express a whole range of human experience and sentiment. <a href=\"#_edn27\" id=\"_ednref27\">[27]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\nOphelia\u2019s mind is disordered, and she registers the corruption and disorder all around her, beautifying it with floral symbolism and songs. She has lost her father, and Gertrude\u2014if we can venture a guess about who gets which flowers\u2014will wear her \u201crue with a difference\u201d (425, 4.2.170-71, 174-79) because she has lost her son to England. <a href=\"#_edn28\" id=\"_ednref28\">[28]<\/a> Ophelia is the blighted flower of the kingdom, the beauty and innocence that has been sacrificed for the sake of ambition and lust. Her descent into madness, and soon her death, show the consequences of Denmark\u2019s degeneracy even more clearly, perhaps, than all the play\u2019s violence.<\/p>\n\n\n\nAct 4, Scene 3. (426, a courier gives Horatio a letter from Hamlet telling him how he boarded a pirate ship and how he has managed to return to Denmark; in his letter, Hamlet asks Horatio to make sure the King receives the additional letters intended for him; Hamlet promises Horatio further explanation when they meet in person.)<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\nAt Elsinore Castle, Horatio receives a letter from Hamlet telling him that the Prince is back in Denmark after having ended up the sole prisoner of pirates who attempted to take their ship at sea as they crossed over to England. These men expect ransom. Hamlet also indicates that he has enclosed additional letters and that they must be delivered to the King himself, after which Horatio is to depart from Elsinore and rendezvous with Hamlet, who will then offer a more detailed explanation.<\/p>\n\n\n\nAct 4, Scene 4. (426-31, Claudius tells Laertes in private that Hamlet killed Polonius in attempting to kill Claudius himself; a messenger arrives with Hamlet\u2019s letter, which baffles the King; the King promises to help Laertes devise a plot whereby to achieve the revenge he craves against Hamlet; the two of them work up a scheme whereby a fencing match will be arranged and Laertes will wound Hamlet using a poison-tipped rapier and, failing that, the King will poison Hamlet with a chalice full of tainted wine; just then, Gertrude enters with terrible news: Ophelia has drowned in a nearby brook; the Queen delivers a lovely eulogy for Ophelia, and Laertes weeps.)<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\nIn private, the King explains to Laertes that Hamlet, not he, is responsible for the death of his father Polonius and that he had to avoid confronting Hamlet because of Gertrude and the people’s fondness for him. Just then, a messenger arrives with Hamlet\u2019s letter addressed to the King (and another one is addressed to Gertrude). The letter is ominous, but also opportune. It begins, \u201cHigh and mighty, You shall know I am set naked \/ on your kingdom\u201d (427, 4.4.42-43), and goes on to promise that Hamlet will soon explain the manner in which he has returned.<\/p>\n\n\n\nClaudius must now change his plan to satisfy Laertes from simply explaining that he has had him sent to his “present death” in England to cooking up a plot against Hamlet. The King thinks quickly and says to Laertes, \u201cI will work him \/ To an exploit now ripe in my device\u201d (428, 4.4.61-62)\u2014one that, says Claudius, will keep the blame for Hamlet\u2019s death away from him and Laertes.<\/p>\n\n\n\nClaudius now sees in Laertes his earthly salvation: the young hothead promises that he would do no less to Hamlet than \u201ccut his throat i\u2019th\u2019 church\u201d (429, 4.4.125). Claudius therefore lays out the plot he has contrived (406, 4.4.84-88): a fencing match will be proposed since the King knows that Hamlet is jealous of Laertes\u2019s reputation as a fencer, and Laertes will administer a lethal thrust with an unblunted rapier.<\/p>\n\n\n\nLaertes then adds a master stroke\u2014he will dip the rapier\u2019s point into a deadly \u201cunction\u201d (430, 4.4.140) that he bought from some unscrupulous apothecary. As surety, Claudius will offer Hamlet a poisoned chalice during the fencing match, just in case the rapier device fails (430, 4.4.156-60).<\/p>\n\n\n\nThe scene concludes with the terrible news that Ophelia has drowned. Gertrude\u2019s beautiful, ekphrastic <a href=\"#_edn29\" id=\"_ednref29\">[29]<\/a> description of Ophelia\u2019s death (430-31, 4.4.165-82) honors the loss of this innocent soul, but it can\u2019t redeem the mistreatment and neglect that caused her untimely end. Gertrude\u2019s speech doesn\u2019t describe the death as a suicide, even if the \u201cchurlish\u201d priests will later treat it as such at Ophelia\u2019s funeral.<\/p>\n\n\n\nWe can gather from Gertrude\u2019s presumably imaginative description the following: as Ophelia was attempting to perform a traditional rite of spurned lovers, which was apparently to hang garlands on willow tree branches, a thin branch (\u201can envious sliver\u201d) broke, and \u201cdown her weedy trophies and herself \/ Fell in the weeping brook\u201d (430, 4.4.172-74). She continued to sing her mad, haunting songs until her clothing became saturated with water and dragged her down. Gertrude describes her as \u201clike a creature native and endued \/ Unto that element\u201d (430, 4.4.178-79). <a href=\"#_edn30\" id=\"_ednref30\">[30]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\nFrom this description, it sounds as if Ophelia simply didn\u2019t understand what was happening, so she drowned. So much for Claudius\u2019s earlier command that she should be carefully attended to <a href=\"#_edn31\" id=\"_ednref31\">[31]<\/a> \u2014she just wanders off, it would seem, and drowns in the nearest brook.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"act5\">ACT 5<\/h3>\n\n\n\nAct 5, Scene 1. (431-37, while digging a grave, a Gravedigger and his assistant discuss the ethics and subtleties of Christian doctrine on suicide; Hamlet hears the Gravedigger singing and muses while he watches him cast up old skulls; stepping forth, Hamlet questions him about the person for whom the grave is being dug, eliciting a battle of wits; the Gravedigger casts up another skull and says it\u2019s that of Yorick, a beloved jester during Hamlet\u2019s youth; taking hold of the skull, Hamlet meditates on the all-embracing nature of mortality; just then, Ophelia\u2019s funeral party enters. \n\t\t\tLaertes quarrels with the priests who say that his sister, supposedly a suicide, cannot be given full Christian rites; the body is laid in the grave; Laertes leaps into the grave and trumpets his love for Ophelia and his bitterness against Hamlet; Hamlet, incensed by Laertes\u2019s words, declares himself, and a struggle ensues; the men are parted, Hamlet is escorted from the scene by Horatio, and Claudius reminds Laertes about their conspiracy against Hamlet.)<\/strong><\/span>\n\t\t<\/span><span title='' data-less-title='' data-more-title='' class='yrm-toggle-expand yrm-toggle-expand-1' data-rel='yrm-3gN8K' data-more='(SYNOPSIS CONTINUES \u2026)' data-less='READ LESS' style='border: none; width: 100%;'>(SYNOPSIS CONTINUES \u2026)<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\nThe Gravedigger scene that starts off Act 5 is probably the most famous scene in the Shakespearean canon. Sandwiched between the announcement of Ophelia\u2019s death and the violent deaths of Hamlet\u2019s <\/em>main characters in Act 5, Scene 2, this vignette serves as comic relief, but it also gives us and Hamlet a broader perspective on what has happened so far.<\/p>\n\n\n\nThe Gravedigger calmly goes about his business in the face of death. Indeed, we might say that his business is <\/em>death since, after all, everyone will need his services sooner or later. He even jests about the subject. His jests, as the Norton editors inform us, refer to an actual law case concerning the precise nature and legal implications of suicide by drowning. <a href=\"#_edn32\" id=\"_ednref32\">[32]<\/a> We will get no maudlin speeches or meditative musings from the Gravedigger. He\u2019s full of riddles about the sturdiness of the \u201chouses\u201d that gravediggers build, and fascinating, macabre law cases from decades ago.<\/p>\n\n\n\nThe crux of Ophelia\u2019s case, as our trusty legal counsel the Gravedigger has it, is \u201cIf the man go to this water and drown \/ himself, it is, willy-nilly, he goes, mark you that. But if the \/ water come to him and drown him, he drowns not himself\u201d (431, 5.1.15-17).<\/p>\n\n\n\nThat seems like a humane conclusion with regard to Ophelia since, if we attend to Gertrude\u2019s description of the young woman\u2019s death, she really did not \u201cgo to\u201d the brook and deliberately drown herself. Instead, she seems to have clutched a tree branch that broke, and to have then fallen into the brook in a state of extreme distraction so that she couldn\u2019t even conceive the danger she was in.<\/p>\n\n\n\nAfter this discussion, the Gravedigger sings and tosses up a skull that his spade has encountered in digging a fresh grave. This act spurs Hamlet\u2019s dark philosophical musings on the universality of death\u2014the skull so casually tossed up and aside becomes a memento mori <\/em>object, <a href=\"#_edn33\" id=\"_ednref33\">[33]<\/a> something common in medieval and Early Modern times. Hamlet conjectures that the skull \u201cmight be the pate of \/ a politician \u2026\u201d (433, 5.1.70-71). Or it might belong to a courtier.<\/p>\n\n\n\nAnother skull is thrown to the surface, and Hamlet wonders if it might be \u201cthe skull of a lawyer.\u201d And if it is, \u201cWhere be his quiddities now, his quillets, his \/ cases, his tenures, and his tricks? Why does he suffer this \/ mad knave now to knock him about the sconce with a dirty \/ shovel, and will not tell him of his action of battery?\u201d (433, 5.1.89-92)<\/p>\n\n\n\nHamlet\u2019s questions compel us to admit that all of the law\u2019s fine points, its emphasis on procedures and rules and court decorum, its concerns for the minute details of things like property deeds, and so forth matter not a whit the moment a lawyer dies\u2014at least, not to him.<\/em> All that\u2019s left to such a man, the Prince says, is a few feet of soggy earth to non-exist in forever after. It takes considerable banter for the conversation to become more intimate.<\/p>\n\n\n\nThis happens when the Gravedigger tosses up yet another skull, and this time he recognizes the identity of the man whose skull it is: Yorick, Hamlet Sr\u2019s court jester when the Prince was a little boy, twenty-three years ago.<\/p>\n\n\n\nAt the sight of this <\/em>skull, Hamlet turns sad: \u201cAlas, poor Yorick. I knew him, Horatio\u2014a fellow of \/ infinite jest, of most excellent fancy\u201d (435, 5.1.166-67). His loving childhood memories of this madcap jester confronts his nausea at the ugly sight of a barren skull, and he admonishes any fine lady at her cosmetics table that no matter how much makeup she applies, it\u2019s all for naught: \u201cto this \/ favor she must come\u201d (435, 5.1.174-75). What happened to Yorick will happen to her, just as it happened to Alexander the Great and Julius Caesar, and it will happen to everyone when their time is up.<\/p>\n\n\n\nIt was a medieval saying that \u201clife is loan,\u201d and every age has its way of saying the same thing. Greek and Roman Stoicism and Epicureanism were developed as philosophical means by which to allay the fear of death in anxious humans nearly two millennia before Shakespeare\u2019s time.<\/p>\n\n\n\nAs other critics have surely pointed out, though, when Hamlet confronts death as he does, the confrontation has a kind of freshness, as if he really is confronting this basic fact of life for the first time, in spite of the recent death of his father, and the even more recent death of Polonius. Perhaps it\u2019s always like that: the shock of death never quite wears off, so that every genuine, earnest consideration of it seems like the first in our personal history, though it be the hundredth.<\/p>\n\n\n\nIn any event, Hamlet\u2019s meditations (and Horatio\u2019s attempts to get the Prince to stop \u201cconsider[ing] too curiously\u201d at 435, 5.1.186) come to an abrupt end when he and Horatio see a funeral procession, evidently truncated to support only \u201cmaimed rites\u201d (435, 5.1.198), coming towards the burial grounds. Hamlet and his friend stand to one side to avoid detection, and Laertes begins wrangling with the officious priests.<\/p>\n\n\n\nWhy is Ophelia being carried to her burial with so little ceremony? Laertes demands to know, and the priest\u2019s rude reply is that \u201cHer death was doubtful\u201d (436, 5.1.206). If it weren\u2019t for Claudius\u2019s great power, he continues, she would have been subjected to the humiliating burial the law and the Church prescribe for suicides. These, the priests would no doubt say, are guilty of \u201cself-murder,\u201d so they don\u2019t deserve a full Christian burial. Laertes responds with scorn, and just then Hamlet recognizes the body about to be buried to be that of Ophelia.<\/p>\n\n\n\nGertrude scarcely has time to speak the memorable words, \u201cSweets to the sweet. Farewell. \/ I hoped thou shouldst have been my Hamlet\u2019s wife \u2026\u201d (436, 5.1.222-23) when there ensues an offensive bit of graveside theater of the absurd, an outrageous contest between Laertes and Hamlet over who loved Ophelia more. At least one of the men (Laertes) actually jumps into her uncovered grave. <a href=\"#_edn34\" id=\"_ednref34\">[34]<\/a> <\/p>\n\n\n\nThis is obviously not the way Hamlet had meant to reveal himself to the King, but events have got the better of him for the moment, and he vents his grief. It almost goes without saying that the two men have ruined Ophelia\u2019s funeral about as thoroughly as if they\u2019d both spent three days planning that very result. Everyone present is justly horrified, and it\u2019s one final, if unpremeditated, insult to Hamlet\u2019s <\/em>most cruelly put-upon character.<\/p>\n\n\n\nWhat has Hamlet learned from his brief but significant sojourn in the graveyard, and by means of some of his experiences in Act 4 as well? For one thing, he now fully appreciates that the earthly prize of a kingdom, of reputation, of a patch of land one may go or be sent to fight for, is a thing more to be mocked than contended for. Thanks to the Gravedigger and the fondly remembered Yorick with his still-abhorred skull, Hamlet has confronted the universality of death earnestly. The hapless Ophelia has demonstrated it for him, too, with her own unexpected quietus.<\/p>\n\n\n\nWhy does all this matter? Perhaps because if the demanded and sometime-sought-for revenge is to be accomplished, it can only happen when Hamlet\u2019s mind isn\u2019t tainted by pride, anger, or earthly attachment. Hamlet is not merely a Romantic dreamer or a distant intellectual, but he is<\/em> a peculiar kind of revenger, and his meditation on death is vital.<\/p>\n\n\n\nWhy, indeed, should we cling to life? And why should we try to control the outcomes of our actions? These are questions that Hamlet seems able to ask now, and in a manner that the \u201cTo be, or not to be\u201d soliloquy in Act 3, Scene 1 addressed brilliantly, but on a more abstractly philosophical level. In the play\u2019s final scene, we will see Hamlet addressing these \u201cbig questions\u201d in a different, more effectual way.<\/p>\n\n\n\nAct 5, Scene 2. (437-47, Hamlet tells Horatio how he returned to Denmark: discovering Rosencrantz and Guildenstern\u2019s orders to shepherd him to his death in England, Hamlet used his own royal seal to rewrite the commission so that they should be executed instead of him; Osric delivers the King\u2019s challenge to a fencing match with Laertes; Hamlet accepts; Gertrude drinks from the poisoned chalice; Hamlet declines to drink; Laertes wounds Hamlet with his poisoned rapier, and is wounded by Hamlet with the same weapon; the Queen collapses and dies, indicating the drink; Laertes, dying, reveals the truth; Hamlet stabs the King and forces him to drink from the poisoned cup. \n\t\t\tHamlet and Laertes exchange forgiveness, and Laertes dies; Hamlet calls upon Horatio to tell his story; Hamlet offers his dying support to Fortinbras\u2019s election; Hamlet dies, and Fortinbras expresses shock; the English ambassador asks who is to thank him for bringing news that \u201cRosencrantz and Guildenstern are dead\u201d; Horatio promises to reveal all to Fortinbras and the assembled lords; Fortinbras claims the kingdom and orders military rites for Hamlet.)<\/strong><\/span>\n\t\t<\/span><span title='' data-less-title='' data-more-title='' class='yrm-toggle-expand yrm-toggle-expand-1' data-rel='yrm-WIjDf' data-more='(SYNOPSIS CONTINUES \u2026)' data-less='READ LESS' style='border: none; width: 100%;'>(SYNOPSIS CONTINUES \u2026)<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\nTaking Horatio back to his time aboard a ship on the way to England and his death, Hamlet relates his impatience to know the \u201cgrand commission\u201d (438, 5.2.18) of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.<\/p>\n\n\n\nIn the process of searching for and finding what he sought, Hamlet tells Horatio, he learned an important lesson: \u201cOur indiscretion sometime serves us well \/ When our deep plots do fall, and that should learn us \/ There\u2019s a divinity that shapes our ends, \/ Rough-hew them how we will . . .\u201d (438, 5.2.8-11).<\/p>\n\n\n\nThis known\u2014namely, that his head is to be parted from his trunk as soon as he arrives\u2014Hamlet forges a new commission requesting instead that his longtime friends should be executed as soon as they set foot on English soil, without even time for Christian \u201cshriving\u201d so that they might face death with a clean moral slate.<\/p>\n\n\n\nMany critics view Hamlet\u2019s \u201crashness\u201d in stabbing Polonius as a fault\u2014it was, after all, the act that led Claudius to pack him off to England for immediate execution\u2014but apparently the Prince does not see things that way. He sees that awful incident as providential to a degree that he could not appreciate at the time it occurred. Similarly, he has no trouble justifying to a shocked Horatio the harsh and deadly trick he has played on Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.<\/p>\n\n\n\nIn the 1623 Folio edition, Hamlet says dismissively, \u201cWhy, man, they did make love to this employment,<\/em>\u201d and continues, \u201cThey are not near my conscience; their defeat \/ Does by their own insinuation grow. \/ \u2018Tis dangerous when the baser nature comes \/ Between the pass and fell incens\u00e8d points \/ Of mighty opposites\u201d (439, 5.2.56.1,<\/em> 57-61). In the grand struggle that is shaping up between Hamlet and Claudius, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are insignificant, and the absurdity of their fate, we might assert, is weirdly appropriate. <a href=\"#_edn35\" id=\"_ednref35\">[35]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\nHamlet also brings up a motive that is new to Horatio: <a href=\"#_edn36\" id=\"_ednref36\">[36]<\/a> he says that Claudius, whom he describes as \u201cHe that hath killed my king and whored my mother,\u201d has also \u201cPopped in between th\u2019election and my hopes\u201d (439, 5.2.64-65). In other words, Claudius\u2019s hasty marriage with the Queen has deprived Hamlet of the succession that would otherwise most likely have been granted to him. <a href=\"#_edn37\" id=\"_ednref37\">[37]<\/a> The Oedipal significance of this remark is not difficult to see: Claudius has come between Hamlet and Gertrude, supplanting the son\u2019s love and pushing him aside.<\/p>\n\n\n\nWhen the foppish Osric enters bearing the King and Laertes\u2019s fencing challenge, Hamlet teases the messenger for his silly phrases and mannerisms, but he calmly accepts the match, overriding Horatio\u2019s misgivings when the two are alone with the inspiring statement, \u201cWe defy augury. There is special provi- \/ dence in the fall of a sparrow. If it be, \/ \u2018tis not to come; if it \/ be not to come, it will be now; if it be not now, yet it will \/ come; the readiness is all\u201d (442, 5.2.191-94). This match is not of Hamlet\u2019s making, but whatever happens, he will accept the outcome.<\/p>\n\n\n\nIf we take a Providence-grounded view of events, Hamlet\u2019s reliance on the significance and order implicit even in \u201cthe fall of a sparrow\u201d may be the insight, the \u201cright attitude\u201d (to borrow a Buddhist term for its resonance here) that he has been in search of all along. <a href=\"#_edn38\" id=\"_ednref38\">[38]<\/a> The Prince must not be an agent of vengeance for his own part or even on his father\u2019s say-so, but an instrument of God\u2019s vengeance, which, the idea goes, will somehow turn the schemes of Claudius and Laertes against them.<\/p>\n\n\n\nWe might recall that Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, though all too willing to prostitute themselves to the designs of earthly rulers, nonetheless went to their deaths as instruments of forces larger than they could imagine, so in this sense they have shown Hamlet the way.<\/p>\n\n\n\nThis reading will seem plausible only, we should note, if <\/em>we choose to accept the convenient notion of an all-embracing Providence that guides everything under the sun. If we think this claim is just another evasion on Hamlet\u2019s part, we will no doubt read the text another way. (On this issue, see endnote 38.)<\/p>\n\n\n\nIn the end, the insidious plan hatched by the glib-tongued usurper Claudius and his assistant Laertes is frustrated, and his union with Gertrude is nullified when she drinks from the poisoned chalice, responding, \u201cI will, my Lord\u201d (444, 5.2.268) to Claudius\u2019s pathetic, cowardly \u201cGertrude, do not drink\u201d (444, 5.2.267). There\u2019s an Augustinian lesson to be drawn from this: the wicked will ultimately will find a way to destroy themselves. They are remarkably consistent in repeating the patterns of their evil. <a href=\"#_edn39\" id=\"_ednref39\">[39]<\/a> <\/p>\n\n\n\nHamlet, as we should expect, gains no earthly reward but death for his takedown of Claudius and Laertes, the latter of whom, at least at the point of death, reconciles with the Prince he has wounded mortally.<\/p>\n\n\n\nHamlet checks Horatio\u2019s impulse to commit suicide by drinking the remainder of the poisoned wine, and lays upon him the burden of preserving his \u201cwounded name\u201d (446, 5.2.322). Horatio is to tell Hamlet\u2019s \u201cstory\u201d; he is, says the Prince, to \u201creport me and my cause aright \/ To the unsatisfied\u201d (446, 5.2.317-18). Soon after uttering this final request, Hamlet dies, and Horatio sees him off with the graceful words, \u201cGood night, sweet prince, \/ And flights of angels sing thee to thy rest\u201d (446, 5.2.397-98).<\/p>\n\n\n\nIn the wake of the old order\u2019s self-destruction, Fortinbras and other listeners will hear from Horatio of (among other things) \u201cpurposes mistook, \/ Fall\u2019n on th\u2019inventors\u2019 heads\u201d (447, 5.2.362-63). This will in no way give them the full story, but it will have to do. <a href=\"#_edn40\" id=\"_ednref40\">[40]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\nIn marches Young Fortinbras, almost as if by accident (but not really so), accompanied by his guards and a couple of English ambassadors, and he is curious to learn what dreadful thing has just happened at Elsinore Castle. He has arrived in the wake of the Danish royal order\u2019s miserable self-destruction, and the kingdom is his for the taking.<\/p>\n\n\n\nAlthough the young man refrains from gloating, he is of course reversing the defeat of his own father at the hands of Hamlet\u2019s much-revered warrior father, Hamlet Sr. There is really no question of Fortinbras\u2019s being a better ruler than his predecessors, though Hamlet\u2019s final thoughts commend him for election. Young Fortinbras is an opportunist who has come to the right place at the right time\u2014an outcome that scarcely amounts to a purification of the state of Denmark, though it\u2019s fair to suggest that that was never the play\u2019s emphasis anyhow.<\/p>\n\n\n\nFinally, whatever cast we may want to put upon Hamlet, <\/em>whatever framework we may impose, it is a curious revenge tragedy in that it largely denies agency to the very character who is responsible for ensuring that the play\u2019s villain gets what he deserves, and yet the revenge is accomplished, or \u201cgets itself accomplished,\u201d in the strangest but also the most appropriate manner.<\/p>\n\n\n\nHarold Bloom, in Shakespeare and the Invention of the Human, <\/em>rightly suggests that this most enigmatic of tragic characters overflows the production that plays host to him: his subjectivity is more complex than even a sophisticated drama such as Hamlet <\/em>can properly absorb, or \u201cuse\u201d just to get its action performed. <a href=\"#_edn41\" id=\"_ednref41\">[41]<\/a> Aristotle had written nearly two millennia before Shakespeare\u2019s time that in tragedy, plot is the most important element, followed by character. <a href=\"#_edn42\" id=\"_ednref42\">[42]<\/a> It\u2019s hard to conjure a play that more thoroughly turns that dictum on its head.<\/p>\n\n\n\nFaced with the productive difficulty of a misfit between the hero\u2019s excessive capacities and an action that needs completing, it\u2019s no wonder that Shakespeare chose to end the play with an unsettling mixture of comic absurdity and military gravity. The English Ambassador, flummoxed, declares \u201cThe ears are senseless that should give us hearing to tell him his commandment is fulfilled \/ That Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are dead\u201d (447, 5.2.347-49). Fortinbras, for his part, honors Hamlet in death: \u201cfor his passage \/ The soldier\u2019s music and the rite of war \/ Speak loudly for him\u201d (447, 5.2.376-78).<\/p>\n\n\n\nEdition.<\/strong> Greenblatt, Stephen et al., editors. The Norton Shakespeare: Tragedies + Digital Edition.<\/em> 3rd ed. W. W. Norton, 2016. ISBN-13: 978-0-393-93860-9.<\/p>\n\n\n\nCopyright \u00a9 2012, revised 2025 Alfred J. Drake<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\nDocument Timestamp: 2\/4\/2026 1:21 PM<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"endnotes\">ENDNOTES<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity\"\/>\n\n\n\n*To return to exact part of the text referenced by the endnotes below, left-click on the endnote’s numbered link. By contrast, the blue scroll-up button at the bottom right of the page returns to the top of the document.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<a href=\"#_ednref1\" id=\"_edn1\">[1]<\/a> King James I is insistent on \u201cthe divine right of kings.\u201d See this excerpt from his \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/www.yorku.ca\/comninel\/courses\/3025pdf\/Speech.pdf\">Speech to the Lords and Commons of the Parliament at White-Hall<\/a>. (1610). Accessed 6\/1\/2024.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<a href=\"#_ednref2\" id=\"_edn2\">[2]<\/a> Aeschylus. The Oresteia: Agamemnon; The Libation Bearers; The Eumenides. <\/em>Trans. Robert Fagles. Penguin Classics, 1984. ISBN-13: 978-0140443332. See also <a href=\"https:\/\/gutenberg.net.au\/ebooks07\/0700021h.html\">E. D. A. Moreshead\u2019s translation<\/a>. Accessed 6\/1\/2024.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<a href=\"#_ednref3\" id=\"_edn3\">[3]<\/a> See, for example, Lucius Annaeus Seneca\u2019s <a href=\"https:\/\/www.poetryintranslation.com\/PITBR\/Latin\/MurgatroydSenecaThyestes.php\">Thyestes<\/em><\/a>.<\/em> Trans. Paul Murgatroyd. Accessed 6\/1\/2024.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<a href=\"#_ednref4\" id=\"_edn4\">[4]<\/a> Thomas Kyd. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.gutenberg.org\/files\/6043\/6043-h\/6043-h.htm\">The Spanish Tragedy<\/em><\/a>. <\/em>Accessed 6\/1\/2024.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<a href=\"#_ednref5\" id=\"_edn5\">[5]<\/a> Shakespeare, William. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.folger.edu\/explore\/shakespeares-works\/titus-andronicus\/read\/\">Titus Andronicus<\/em><\/a>. (Folger Shakespeare Library.) Accessed 6\/1\/2024.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<a href=\"#_ednref6\" id=\"_edn6\">[6]<\/a> See, for example, T. S. Eliot\u2019s essay \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/www.poetryfoundation.org\/articles\/69399\/hamlet\">Hamlet and His Problems<\/a>.\u201d (poetryfoundation.org.) Accessed 6\/1\/2024. Laurence Olivier\u2019s iconic 1948 film production of Hamlet <\/em>takes the idea that the Prince can\u2019t quite \u201cmake up his mind\u201d as a key feature. Olivier\u2019s film also seems to incorporate psychoanalytic insights into Hamlet\u2019s dilemma, as does, of course, Freud\u2019s disciple Ernest Jones in his 1910 essay \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikisource.org\/wiki\/The_American_Journal_of_Psychology\/Volume_21\/The_%C5%92dipus-complex_as_an_Explanation_of_Hamlet%27s_Mystery:_A_Study_in_Motive\">The Oedipus-complex as an Explanation of Hamlet’s Mystery: A Study in Motive<\/a>.\u201d (Wikisource.) Accessed 6\/1\/2024.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<a href=\"#_ednref7\" id=\"_edn7\">[7]<\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.luminarium.org\/renascence-editions\/montaigne\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Montaigne, Michel de. Essays.<\/em> Trans. John Florio<\/a>. (Renascence Editions.) Accessed 6\/1\/2024. See also <a href=\"https:\/\/archive.org\/details\/MontaigneImages\/page\/n3\/mode\/2up\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Montaigne\u2019s Essais,<\/em> trans. J. Florio 1603 (Internet Archive)<\/a> or <a href=\"https:\/\/www.gutenberg.org\/cache\/epub\/3589\/pg3589-images.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Gutenberg e-text<\/a>. Accessed 8\/26\/2025.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<a href=\"#_ednref8\" id=\"_edn8\">[8]<\/a> Shakespeare, William. The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark. <\/em>Second Quarto with additions from the Folio. In The Norton Shakespeare: Tragedies,<\/em> 3rd ed. Combined text 358-447. See 420, 4.1.52.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<a href=\"#_ednref9\" id=\"_edn9\">[9]<\/a> Aristotle. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.gutenberg.org\/cache\/epub\/1974\/pg1974-images.html\">The Poetics<\/em><\/a>.<\/em> Trans. S. H. Butcher. Project Gutenberg. Accessed 6\/1\/2024.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<a href=\"#_ednref10\" id=\"_edn10\">[10]<\/a> Sophocles, Oedipus Rex.<\/em> This play combines recognition (anagnorisis<\/em>) with reversal (peripeteia<\/em>): expecting good news from a messenger, Oedipus instead learns that the guilt lies squarely on his own shoulders. See <a href=\"https:\/\/www.gutenberg.org\/files\/31\/31-h\/31-h.htm\">The Oedipus Trilogy<\/em><\/a>. <\/em>Trans. F. Storr. Accessed 6\/1\/2024.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<a href=\"#_ednref11\" id=\"_edn11\">[11]<\/a> Bloom, Harold. Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human.<\/em> Riverhead Books, 1998. Ch. 23, Hamlet, <\/em>383-431.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<a href=\"#_ednref12\" id=\"_edn12\">[12]<\/a> Olivier\u2019s voiceover runs, \u201cThis is the story of a man who could not make up his mind.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<a href=\"#_ednref13\" id=\"_edn13\">[13]<\/a> The Norton editor points out that the word \u201clets\u201d here means \u201chinders or stops.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<a href=\"#_ednref14\" id=\"_edn14\">[14]<\/a> Garber, Marjorie. Shakespeare after All. <\/em>Anchor Books, 2004. Garber\u2019s analysis is that by Act 3, Scene 2, when Hamlet stages his play-within-the-play The Mousetrap, <\/em>he has learned how to convert his previously ineffectual words into action. See Hamlet, <\/em>466-505, esp. 500-01.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<a href=\"#_ednref15\" id=\"_edn15\">[15]<\/a> Lovejoy, Arthur O. The Great Chain of Being: A Study of the History of an Idea. <\/em>Harvard UP, 1976. First published 1933. Incidentally, the 1623 Folio copy of Hamlet\u2019s soliloquy begins, \u201cWhat a piece of work is a man\u2026.\u201d The Norton editors have chosen to omit the first \u201ca\u201d in keeping with the 1604 Second Quarto edition. The 1603 First Quarto has, \u201cNo nor Man that is so glorious a creature, \/ Contents not me \u2026.\u201d See also E. M. W. Tillyard’s excellent study The Elizabethan World Picture, <\/em>first published in 1942. In it, Tillyard reminds us that such rhetoric as Hamlet utters about human excellence is easily found in medieval theological descriptions of prelapsarian humanity, so that there is more continuity between medieval and Renaissance conceptions than one might suppose. London: Chatto & Windus, 1960. See “Introductory,” 1-6.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<a href=\"#_ednref16\" id=\"_edn16\">[16]<\/a> See Ackroyd, Julie. Child Actors on the London Stage, Circa 1600: Their Education, Recruitment and Theatrical Success. <\/em>Liverpool UP, 2022. See also Hillebrand, Harold N. Child Actors: A Chapter in Elizabethan Stage History.<\/em> Russell & Russell, 2nd ed., 1964.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<a href=\"#_ednref17\" id=\"_edn17\">[17]<\/a> See Norton footnote 4 regarding the story of Jephthah\u2019s sacrifice of his daughter over a vow he made in exchange for success against the Ammonites. Hamlet mentions this story at 390, 2.2.329-30.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<a href=\"#_ednref18\" id=\"_edn18\">[18]<\/a> Pyrrhus is called Neoptolemus in The Iliad<\/em> and The Odyssey. <\/em>In Virgil\u2019s Aeneid, <\/em>he reaches Priam in his palace and kills him at 2.660-92. Trans. Robert Fagles. Viking, 2006. There is no trace of hesitation in Virgil\u2019s account as Fagles renders it. It is the Trojan Prince Aeneas who is filled with horror at the sight of King Priam\u2019s corpse because it puts him in mind of his wife Creusa and his father Anchises. Aeneas\u2019s rage flows at once to perfidious Helen, and is only cooled by a vision of his mother Venus, who tells him to look to his family in their time of need. See 2.693-727. In Homer\u2019s Odyssey <\/em>(trans. Robert Fagles, Penguin, 1996), <\/em>Odysseus\u2019s brief account of Neoptolemus\u2019s career at 11.575ff also has the young man behaving with great forthrightness throughout the Trojan War. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<a href=\"#_ednref19\" id=\"_edn19\">[19]<\/a> In \u201cOn Fiction\u201d in The Rambler No. <\/em>4. 1750, Samuel Johnson writes, \u201cVice, for Vice is necessary to be shewn, should always disgust; nor should the Graces of Gaiety, or the Dignity of Courage, be so united with it, as to reconcile it to the Mind.\u201d Incidentally, the \u201cmirror\u201d image need not be understood to ratify the neoclassical claim that spectators are somehow fooled into taking what they see on the stage for a direct presentation of reality. In almost all cases, to gaze into a mirror is to know in a heightened way that one is looking at a copy or a representation, not the thing itself. This is not to dismiss the capacity of a representation to refer us to, or make us recognize, something real or true.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<a href=\"#_ednref20\" id=\"_edn20\">[20]<\/a> Milton, John. Paradise Lost. <\/em>Confronting Adam and Eve in Book 4, Satan says, \u201c. . . Melt, as I doe, yet public reason just, \/ Honour and Empire with revenge enlarg\u2019d, \/ By conquering this new World, compels me now \/ To do what else though damnd I should abhorre.\u201d <a href=\"https:\/\/milton.host.dartmouth.edu\/reading_room\/contents\/text.shtml\">The Milton Reading Room<\/a>, see <a href=\"https:\/\/milton.host.dartmouth.edu\/reading_room\/pl\/book_4\/text.shtml\">Paradise Lost, <\/em>Bk. 4<\/a>. Accessed 6\/10\/2024.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<a href=\"#_ednref21\" id=\"_edn21\">[21]<\/a> Wilde, Oscar. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.gutenberg.org\/files\/174\/174-h\/174-h.htm\">The Picture of Dorian Gray<\/em><\/a>.<\/em> In Ch. VIII, the narrator says with regard to Dorian, \u201cThere is a luxury in self-reproach. When we blame ourselves, we feel that no one else has a right to blame us. It is the confession, not the priest, that gives us absolution.\u201d (Gutenberg etext.) Accessed 6\/10\/2024.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<a href=\"#_ednref22\" id=\"_edn22\">[22]<\/a> Seneca. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.gutenberg.org\/files\/57999\/57999-h\/57999-h.htm\">Tragedies<\/em><\/a>. <\/em>(Gutenberg etext.) Accessed 6\/10\/2024.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<a href=\"#_ednref23\" id=\"_edn23\">[23]<\/a> See Jones, Ernest. \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikisource.org\/wiki\/The_American_Journal_of_Psychology\/Volume_21\/The_%C5%92dipus-complex_as_an_Explanation_of_Hamlet%27s_Mystery:_A_Study_in_Motive\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Oedipus Complex as an Explanation of Hamlet\u2019s Mystery<\/a>.\u201d (Wikisource.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n<a href=\"#_ednref24\" id=\"_edn24\">[24]<\/a> Kantorowicz, Ernst. The King\u2019s Two Bodies: A Study in Medieval Political Theology. <\/em>Princeton UP, 2016. Orig. published in 1957.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<a href=\"#_ednref25\" id=\"_edn25\">[25]<\/a> Shakespeare, William. The Tragedy of King Richard the Third.<\/em> Quarto. In The Norton Shakespeare: Histories,<\/em> 3rd ed. 384-465. See 438, 4.2.4-5: the question that the newly crowned Richard III puts to his adviser Buckingham is, \u201cBut shall we wear these honors for a day, \/ Or shall they last and we rejoice in them?\u201d And Macbeth says to himself, \u201cTo be thus is nothing, but to be safely thus\u201d (938, 3.1.48). Shakespeare, William. The Tragedy of Macbeth.<\/em> In The Norton Shakespeare: Tragedies,<\/em> 3rd ed. 917-69.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<a href=\"#_ednref26\" id=\"_edn26\">[26]<\/a> Freud, Sigmund. Civilization and Its Discontents. <\/em>Trans. James Strachey. W. W. Norton & Co., 2010. First published in German in 1930.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<a href=\"#_ednref27\" id=\"_edn27\">[27]<\/a> See <a href=\"https:\/\/g.co\/kgs\/PnDzEQs\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Jane E. Giraud\u2019s The Flowers of Shakespeare,<\/em> 1846 (Google)<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<a href=\"#_ednref28\" id=\"_edn28\">[28]<\/a> Amanda Mabillard writes that while we can hardly be certain about the distribution of flowers, \u201cBy a long established custom \u2026 which has become a fixed stage tradition, Ophelia assigns rosemary to Hamlet, who is present to her imagination; she gives pansies to Laertes; fennel and columbines to Claudius; and rue to the Queen and herself.\u201d See \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/www.shakespeare-online.com\/plays\/hamlet\/opheliasend.html#:~:text=By%20a%20long%20established%20custom,to%20the%20Queen%20and%20herself.\">Ophelia\u2019s End\u2026.<\/a>\u201c (Shakespeare-online.com.) Accessed 6\/9\/2024. Norton footnote 3 to pg. 425 points out that \u201cColumbines were associated with ingratitude or marital infidelity, fennel with flattery.\u201d Rue, says Norton\u2019s footnote 4, \u201cis associated with repentance \u2026.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<a href=\"#_ednref29\" id=\"_edn29\">[29]<\/a> See \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/www.arts.gov\/stories\/blog\/2023\/explore-ekphrastic-poems-reading-list\">Explore Ekphrastic Poems: A Reading List<\/a>.\u201d Aunye Boone, June 8, 2023. (Nat. Endowment for the Arts blog). Accessed 6\/10\/2024.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<a href=\"#_ednref30\" id=\"_edn30\">[30]<\/a> If anyone had actually witnessed what Gertrude describes, surely they would have tried to save Ophelia, not simply watch her drown over an extended period of time. Norton footnote 2 on pg. 430 informs us that forsaken love partners \u201cproverbially hung garlands on willows.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<a href=\"#_ednref31\" id=\"_edn31\">[31]<\/a> Shakespeare, William. The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark. <\/em>Second Quarto with additions from the Folio. In The Norton Shakespeare: Tragedies,<\/em> 3rd ed. Combined text 358-447. See 422, 4.2.73: \u201cGive her good watch \u2026.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<a href=\"#_ednref32\" id=\"_edn32\">[32]<\/a> The case is Hales v. Petit <\/em>(1558).<\/em> (See <a href=\"https:\/\/shakespeareoxfordfellowship.org\/shakespeares-knowledge-of-law\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">The Shakespeare Law Library\u2019s account of that case<\/a>.) Essentially, Sir James Hales\u2019s property was forfeited and leased after he committed suicide, and his widow sued the leaseholder, Cyriac Petit, to regain the property. Her argument was that a person\u2019s property couldn\u2019t be subject to \u201cforfeit\u201d unless he was still alive. Sir James\u2019s suicide, her attorneys argued, couldn\u2019t have happened while he was still alive, so he couldn\u2019t forfeit his property by such means. The widow lost the case, but as the Norton footnote 5 for page 431 suggests, the interesting thing is the splitting up of the suicidal act into \u201cimagination, resolution, and perfection (accomplishment).\u201d See also <a href=\"https:\/\/archive.org\/details\/commentariesorre00grea\/page\/252\/mode\/2up\">Edmund Plowden\u2019s account of the case<\/a>. In Shakespeare\u2019s time, apparently, it would only have been available in complex \u201claw French.\u201d Here is the <a href=\"https:\/\/archive.org\/details\/commentariesorre00grea\/page\/258\/mode\/2up\">key passage<\/a> in Plowden\u2019s English account (modernized):<\/p>\n\n\n\n\u201c\u2026 [I]t was argued by Walsh, Cholmley, Bendloe,<\/em> and Carus<\/em> Serjeants, that the Forfeiture of the Goods and Chattles real and personal shall have Relation to the Act done in the Party’s Lifetime, which was the Cause of his Death; and upon this the Parts of the Act are to be considered. And Walsh<\/em> said that the Act consists of three Parts. The first is the Imagination, which is a Reflection or Meditation of the Mind, whether or no it is convenient for him to destroy himself, and what Way it can be done. The second is the Resolution, which is a Determination of the Mind to destroy himself, and to do it in this or that particular Way. The third is the Perfection, which is the Execution of what the Mind has resolved to do. And this Perfection consists of two Parts, viz. the Beginning and the End. The Beginning is the doing of the Act which causes the Death, and the End is the Death, which is only a Sequel to the Act. And of all the Parts the doing of the Act is the greatest in the Judgment of our Law, and it is in Effect the whole, and the only Part that the Law looks upon to be material\u2026. Then here the Act done by Sir James Hales,<\/em> which is evil and the Cause of his Death, is the throwing himself into the Water, and the Death is but a Sequel thereof, and this evil Act ought some Way to be punished.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<a href=\"#_ednref33\" id=\"_edn33\">[33]<\/a> The memento mori<\/em> tradition was very powerful during the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. See the dailystoic.com\u2019s article on this tradition, \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/dailystoic.com\/history-of-memento-mori\/#:~:text=%E2%80%9CMemento%20Mori%2C%E2%80%9D%20or%20translated,architecture%2C%20and%20more%20throughout%20history.\">History of Memento Mori<\/a>.\u201d Accessed 6\/10\/2024.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<a href=\"#_ednref34\" id=\"_edn34\">[34]<\/a> Today, we would say this is the stuff of the worst kind of reality television.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<a href=\"#_ednref35\" id=\"_edn35\">[35]<\/a> Perhaps the lethal duping of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern really is an injustice on Hamlet\u2019s part, an act of disproportionate violence against men who know nothing of the evil Claudius has done. Still, it\u2019s hard to feel much sympathy for them. Perhaps our minds are too thoroughly poisoned by listening to Hamlet for that to be possible. These two men serve the interests of a corrupt King against their friend. They are looking for preferment, and to Hamlet they are insignificant pawns in the deadly game of chess taking place between him and Claudius. Well, if Hamlet\u2019s annoying friends will be patient for about four centuries, Tom Stoppard will make it up to them by acknowledging them as the proto-postmodern loose ends that so many audiences and critics find them to be: he will write that witty absurdist play, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead.<\/em> So does their untimely taking-off mean that Hamlet <\/em>itself is absurdist, or postmodern, or nihilistic? Does it mean that the play\u2019s conjectured providential design is \u201crough-hewn,\u201d or at least that divine justice is not self-evidently \u201cjust\u201d? In truth, this latter point would be nothing new since the alignment between God\u2019s will and human will is always at the center of Christian representations of life\u2019s struggles. Or does it mean that Shakespeare\u2019s God, like Dante\u2019s, has a rather pointed sense of humor\u2014one that embraces the absurdity of the fates that human beings create for themselves when they sin in the peculiar, outrageous ways that they do?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<a href=\"#_ednref36\" id=\"_edn36\">[36]<\/a> In speaking to Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, Hamlet had already hinted at this other motive at 406, 3.2.315 when he said, \u201cI lack advancement.\u201d)<\/p>\n\n\n\n<a href=\"#_ednref37\" id=\"_edn37\">[37]<\/a> On the theme of inheritance, see Anthony Burton\u2019s \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/shakespeareoxfordfellowship.org\/laertes-rebellion\/\">Laertes\u2019s Rebellion as a Defense of His Inheritance: Further Aspects of Inheritance Law in Hamlet<\/em><\/a>.\u201d (shakespeareoxfordfellowship.org) Accessed 6\/10\/2024.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<a href=\"#_ednref38\" id=\"_edn38\">[38]<\/a> See also The<\/em> Bhagavad Gita. <\/em>Trans. Stephen Mitchell. Harmony, 2002 repr. This sacred text comes to mind since one of the key lessons Lord Krishna teaches the Charioteer Arjuna is that while taking action is a necessary part of life, we should not claim credit or responsibility for the outcomes of the actions that we take. In any case, it\u2019s by no means certain that we should go along with Hamlet\u2019s \u201cProvidential\u201d reading: perhaps it\u2019s only the product of his own self-deception. This possibility is in alignment with Rhodri Lewis\u2019s thesis in Shakespeare\u2019s Tragic Art<\/em> (Princeton UP, 2024), which suggests that Shakespearean tragedy trades heavily in the wages of delusion and self-deception. See Lewis, Ch. 3. \u201cThings, Things, Things: Hamlet<\/em>,<\/em>\u201d 96-125.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<a href=\"#_ednref39\" id=\"_edn39\">[39]<\/a> See, for example, the Jesuit priest and poet Gerard Manley Hopkins\u2019s Petrarchan sonnet, \u201cI wake and feel the fell of dark, not day. The last three lines run, \u201cI see \/ The lost are like this, and their scourge to be \/ As I am mine, their sweating selves; but worse.\u201d Accessed 6\/10\/2024.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<a href=\"#_ednref40\" id=\"_edn40\">[40]<\/a> Garber, Marjorie. Shakespeare after All. <\/em>Anchor Books, 2004. Garber\u2019s point is that Horatio hasn\u2019t heard Hamlet\u2019s private version of events, as related in the soliloquys.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<a href=\"#_ednref41\" id=\"_edn41\">[41]<\/a> Bloom, Harold. Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human.<\/em> Riverhead Books, 1998. Ch. 23, Hamlet, <\/em>383-431.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<a href=\"#_ednref42\" id=\"_edn42\">[42]<\/a> Aristotle. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.gutenberg.org\/files\/1974\/1974-h\/1974-h.htm\">The Poetics<\/em><\/a>.Trans. S. H. Butcher. In section 6, Aristotle writes, \u201cThe Plot, then, is the first principle, and, as it were, the soul of a tragedy: Character holds the second place.\u201d (Gutenberg etexts.) Accessed 6\/10\/2024.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Shakespeare\u2019s Hamlet Commentary by Alfred J. Drake, Ph.D. Shakespeare, William. The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark. Second Quarto with […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_eb_attr":"","_uag_custom_page_level_css":"","_lmt_disableupdate":"no","_lmt_disable":"","site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"iawp_total_views":15,"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[284,36,301,291,300,298,302,306,130,303,299,240,304,305],"wf_page_folders":[11],"class_list":["post-235","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry","category-tragic-plays","tag-clowns-in-shakespeare","tag-elizabethan-drama","tag-flights-of-angels-sing-thee-to-thy-rest","tag-human-nature","tag-i-am-too-much-in-the-sun","tag-interiority-in-shakespeare","tag-ophelia","tag-shakespearean-revenge-tragedies","tag-shakespearean-tragedy","tag-suicide-in-literature","tag-to-be-or-not-to-be","tag-violence-in-literature","tag-yorick","tag-yoricks-skull"],"uagb_featured_image_src":{"full":false,"thumbnail":false,"medium":false,"medium_large":false,"large":false,"1536x1536":false,"2048x2048":false},"uagb_author_info":{"display_name":"ajd_shxpr","author_link":"https:\/\/www.ajdrake.com\/shakespeare\/author\/ajd_shxpr\/"},"uagb_comment_info":0,"uagb_excerpt":"Shakespeare\u2019s Hamlet Commentary by Alfred J. Drake, Ph.D. Shakespeare, William. The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark. 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{"id":235,"date":"2024-04-13T22:06:40","date_gmt":"2024-04-14T05:06:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ajdrake.com\/shakespeare\/?page_id=235"},"modified":"2026-02-04T13:21:26","modified_gmt":"2026-02-04T21:21:26","slug":"hamlet-2","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.ajdrake.com\/shakespeare\/hamlet-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Hamlet"},"content":{"rendered":"