Hamlet: Act 2, Scene II, Part Two
Previous post:
First Act:
Scene I: The Crazy Occult Forays of Marcellus and Horatio.
Scene II: Claudius is the villain, but he's still hotter than you.
Scene III: Ophelia's virginity is a national treasure. Just ask her dad and brother.
Scene IV: That a ghoooooooooost?
Scene V: "'Who's your daddy?' Now that's just inappropriate."
Second Act:
Act 2, Scene I: Happy families are all alike---they're totally fucked up.
Act 2, Scene II--Part One: Rosencrantz & Guildenstern are creepy.
GUILDENSTERN
There are the players.
HAMLET
Gentlemen, you are welcome to Elsinore. Your hands,
come then: the appurtenance of welcome is fashion
and ceremony: let me comply with you in this garb,
lest my extent to the players, which, I tell you,
must show fairly outward, should more appear like
entertainment than yours. You are welcome: but my
uncle-father and aunt-mother are deceived.
"Let me shake hands with you, otherwise it will look like I'm more interested in a bunch of actors than in peers of my own caste. And that would be bad. Even if it is more or less correct."
GUILDENSTERN
In what, my dear lord?
HAMLET
I am but mad north-north-west: when the wind is
southerly I know a hawk from a handsaw.
Jacobi plays that line like he's trying to sound mad, where Branagh utters it as a rebuke. I think I prefer the latter, really.
HAMLET
Hark you, Guildenstern; and you too: at each ear a
hearer: that great baby you see there is not yet
out of his swaddling-clouts.
ROSENCRANTZ
Happily he's the second time come to them; for they
say an old man is twice a child.
This seems to be the image of Polonius most fixed in Hamlet's mind, c.f. the "if like a crab you could go backwards" line. It also brings to mind Polonius' line to Ophelia, "think yourself a baby."
HAMLET
My lord, I have news to tell you.
When Roscius was an actor in Rome,--
A line I did not understand at all until I saw Derek Jacobi perform it in a quavery old man's voice, and then I realized Hamlet was doing the same thing as when he talked to Polonius earlier in the scene, pretending to be so old he could remember Roscius.
LORD POLONIUS
The best actors in the world, either for tragedy,
comedy, history, pastoral, pastoral-comical,
historical-pastoral, tragical-historical, tragical-
comical-historical-pastoral, scene individable, or
poem unlimited: Seneca cannot be too heavy, nor
Plautus too light. For the law of writ and the
liberty, these are the only men.
HAMLET
O Jephthah, judge of Israel, what a treasure hadst thou!
LORD POLONIUS
What a treasure had he, my lord?
HAMLET
Why,
'One fair daughter and no more,
The which he loved passing well.'
LORD POLONIUS
[Aside] Still on my daughter.
HAMLET
Am I not i' the right, old Jephthah?
LORD POLONIUS
If you call me Jephthah, my lord, I have a daughter
that I love passing well.
Hamlet has good reason to twit Polonius about Ophelia as he did before, but the way he does it here is a bit chilling, since Jephthah sacrificed his daughter as a burnt offering. (That story always pissed me off when I was a kid.) As I am highly prejudiced in Ophelia's favor, and refuse to believe that Hamlet didn't truly love her, I choose to read this as Hamlet...not accusing Polonius so much as warning him to what end Ophelia may come if he keeps on as he is.
Enter four or five Players
You are welcome, masters; welcome, all. I am glad
to see thee well. Welcome, good friends. O, my old
friend! thy face is valenced since I saw thee last:
comest thou to beard me in Denmark? What, my young
lady and mistress! By'r lady, your ladyship is
nearer to heaven than when I saw you last, by the
altitude of a chopine. Pray God, your voice, like
apiece of uncurrent gold, be not cracked within the
ring. Masters, you are all welcome. We'll e'en
to't like French falconers, fly at any thing we see:
we'll have a speech straight: come, give us a taste
of your quality; come, a passionate speech.
Not much here, except to show that he knows them pretty well, considering what they are and who he is. It irritates the snot out of me that Branagh's Hamlet actually casts "my young lady and mistress" as a little girl---I know it fits the 19th century look of the film, but it completely robs that line of the joke. Also, considering that a minute ago Hamlet was talking about how he's lost all mirth, the excitement with which he greets the players is almost startling. One wonders when exactly he got the idea for them to play Gonzago---the instant their presence was announced, or sometime during the course of their conversation? In any case, his pleasure in their appearance is clearly more than merely utilitarian.
First Player
What speech, my lord?
HAMLET
I heard thee speak me a speech once, but it was
never acted; or, if it was, not above once; for the
play, I remember, pleased not the million; 'twas
caviare to the general: but it was--as I received
it, and others, whose judgments in such matters
cried in the top of mine--an excellent play, well
digested in the scenes, set down with as much
modesty as cunning. I remember, one said there
were no sallets in the lines to make the matter
savoury, nor no matter in the phrase that might
indict the author of affectation; but called it an
honest method, as wholesome as sweet, and by very
much more handsome than fine. One speech in it I
chiefly loved: 'twas Aeneas' tale to Dido; and
thereabout of it especially, where he speaks of
Priam's slaughter: if it live in your memory, begin
at this line: let me see, let me see--
'The rugged Pyrrhus, like the Hyrcanian beast,'--
it is not so:--it begins with Pyrrhus:--
'The rugged Pyrrhus, he whose sable arms,
Black as his purpose, did the night resemble
When he lay couched in the ominous horse,
Hath now this dread and black complexion smear'd
With heraldry more dismal; head to foot
Now is he total gules; horridly trick'd
With blood of fathers, mothers, daughters, sons,
Baked and impasted with the parching streets,
That lend a tyrannous and damned light
To their lord's murder: roasted in wrath and fire,
And thus o'er-sized with coagulate gore,
With eyes like carbuncles, the hellish Pyrrhus
Old grandsire Priam seeks.'
So, proceed you.
LOL AWKWARD. Seriously, what are you going to do when your royal patron starts acting like he thinks he can act? Smile and clap, that's what you do. No, in all seriousness, I imagine Hamlet is probably a rather competent actor---he would have plenty of experience, and he certainly understands the uses of artifice. Also, Hamlet is an elitist snob---of course his taste is more rarefied than anyone else's.
Also, he saw the play once and memorized that whole speech. People actually used to be able to do that. It makes one feel very slow and dull.
LORD POLONIUS
'Fore God, my lord, well spoken, with good accent and
good discretion.
I feel that in this moment Hamlet is of one accord with Oscar Wilde as he said "Whenever people agree with me I feel I must be wrong."
First Player
'Anon he finds him
Striking too short at Greeks; his antique sword,
Rebellious to his arm, lies where it falls,
Repugnant to command: unequal match'd,
Pyrrhus at Priam drives; in rage strikes wide;
But with the whiff and wind of his fell sword
The unnerved father falls.
Oh no. Would this be a speech about the foul murder of a GRAVE AND WARLIKE OLD MAN?
Then senseless Ilium,
Seeming to feel this blow, with flaming top
Stoops to his base, and with a hideous crash
Takes prisoner Pyrrhus' ear:
WHO HAS SOMETHING SIGNIFICANT HAPPEN TO HIS EAR?
for, lo! his sword,
Which was declining on the milky head
Of reverend Priam, seem'd i' the air to stick:
So, as a painted tyrant, Pyrrhus stood,
And like a neutral to his will and matter,
Did nothing.
His foul deed is frozen in a moment in time!
But, as we often see, against some storm,
A silence in the heavens, the rack stand still,
The bold winds speechless and the orb below
As hush as death, anon the dreadful thunder
Doth rend the region, so, after Pyrrhus' pause,
Aroused vengeance sets him new a-work;
And never did the Cyclops' hammers fall
On Mars's armour forged for proof eterne
With less remorse than Pyrrhus' bleeding sword
Now falls on Priam.
I may sound as though I'm mocking, but actually I find this speech dreadfully moving, no doubt because the imagery is so cinematic. You can almost hear a James Horner score in the background.
Out, out, thou strumpet, Fortune! All you gods,
In general synod 'take away her power;
Break all the spokes and fellies from her wheel,
And bowl the round nave down the hill of heaven,
As low as to the fiends!'
By which we may infer that Hamlet has been muttering this speech under his breath for the entire act. Well enough. Now that I've seen Charleton Heston deliver it, it happens to me occasionally too.
LORD POLONIUS
This is too long.
OMGWTFBBQ. How did Hamlet not stab Polonius right then! He is totallly that guy who talks in the row behind you in the theater!
HAMLET
It shall to the barber's, with your beard. Prithee,
say on: he's for a jig or a tale of bawdry, or he
sleeps: say on: come to Hecuba.
Polonius is my mother?
First Player
'But who, O, who had seen the mobled queen--'
HAMLET
'The mobled queen?'
LORD POLONIUS
That's good; 'mobled queen' is good.
Poor Polonius. He senses he's offended Hamlet on a personal level and now he's trying to make up for it but he doesn't know how because this is all completely baffling to him.
First Player
'Run barefoot up and down, threatening the flames
With bisson rheum; a clout upon that head
Where late the diadem stood, and for a robe,
About her lank and all o'er-teemed loins,
A blanket, in the alarm of fear caught up;
Who this had seen, with tongue in venom steep'd,
'Gainst Fortune's state would treason have
pronounced:
But if the gods themselves did see her then
When she saw Pyrrhus make malicious sport
In mincing with his sword her husband's limbs,
The instant burst of clamour that she made,
Unless things mortal move them not at all,
Would have made milch the burning eyes of heaven,
And passion in the gods.'
Oh my! Would that half of the speech be about a queen and mother so devoted to her slain husband that she would never dream of remarrying?
I have to say, every time I read "o'er-teemed loins" I just...wince.
LORD POLONIUS
Look, whether he has not turned his colour and has
tears in's eyes. Pray you, no more.
The sheer absurdity of the contrast between that line and that wild, magnificent speech before it sets me howling every single time. Polonius is an idiot, but his point is perfectly valid, viewed from a certain perspective---it's all in his head. It has nothing to do with the real world. Oh my, is that thematic at all?
HAMLET
'Tis well: I'll have thee speak out the rest soon.
Good my lord, will you see the players well
bestowed? Do you hear, let them be well used; for
they are the abstract and brief chronicles of the
time: after your death you were better have a bad
epitaph than their ill report while you live.
LORD POLONIUS
My lord, I will use them according to their desert.
HAMLET
God's bodykins, man, much better: use every man
after his desert, and who should 'scape whipping?
Use them after your own honour and dignity: the less
they deserve, the more merit is in your bounty.
Take them in.
I call this the only Christian moment in a play that is, generally, as pagan as Beowulf before the priests had at it. I also love it.
LORD POLONIUS
Come, sirs.
HAMLET
Follow him, friends: we'll hear a play to-morrow.
Exit POLONIUS with all the Players but the First
Dost thou hear me, old friend; can you play the
Murder of Gonzago?
First Player
Ay, my lord.
HAMLET
We'll ha't to-morrow night. You could, for a need,
study a speech of some dozen or sixteen lines, which
I would set down and insert in't, could you not?
First Player
Ay, my lord.
HAMLET
Very well. Follow that lord; and look you mock him
not.
Apart from the fact that an actor at that time could probably absorb sixteen lines easy as breathing, what's the dude going to say? "Stuff it up your royal ass?"
I think it must say something about Hamlet that he tells them not to mock Polonius, considering how little respect he has for him.
HAMLET
Now I am alone.
In case you were needing the stage direction.
O, what a rogue and peasant slave am I!
Is it not monstrous that this player here,
But in a fiction, in a dream of passion,
Could force his soul so to his own conceit
That from her working all his visage wann'd,
Tears in his eyes, distraction in's aspect,
A broken voice, and his whole function suiting
With forms to his conceit? and all for nothing!
For Hecuba!
What's Hecuba to him, or he to Hecuba,
That he should weep for her? What would he do,
Had he the motive and the cue for passion
That I have? He would drown the stage with tears
And cleave the general ear with horrid speech,
Make mad the guilty and appal the free,
Confound the ignorant, and amaze indeed
The very faculties of eyes and ears. Yet I,
A dull and muddy-mettled rascal, peak,
Like John-a-dreams, unpregnant of my cause,
And can say nothing; no, not for a king,
Upon whose property and most dear life
A damn'd defeat was made. Am I a coward?
Who calls me villain? breaks my pate across?
Plucks off my beard, and blows it in my face?
Tweaks me by the nose? gives me the lie i' the throat,
As deep as to the lungs? who does me this?
Ha!
'Swounds, I should take it: for it cannot be
But I am pigeon-liver'd and lack gall
To make oppression bitter, or ere this
I should have fatted all the region kites
With this slave's offal: bloody, bawdy villain!
Remorseless, treacherous, lecherous, kindless villain!
O, vengeance!
I feel like, if I were still in the habit of writing papers and being academically formal, or if I were even still in the habit of thinking about this stuff seriously at all, I'd have something very important to say about this passage. As it is, it's late, I'm still sleep deprived, this has been an incredibly long fucking scene, and I can't come up with a single impressive comment. So I'll just say that I think this passage is very important. Hamlet's been locked inside his mind all his life, and now he's confronted by events that would tear him from the clutches of his cozy little brain palace and drive him into taking dire action---his only retreat from the pain of that is to dive back down into his brain, where, in deliberating his course of action, the necessity of taking action seems to lessen. He thinks he feels deeply because he thinks about it all the time, but there's no immediacy of action or emotion in him, which probably came as a shock---I bet when he was at school he stirred himself up into a towering passion over things he read in books on a regular basis. But real life != drama or fiction or daydreams, and that's one of the last illusions you lose on your way to adulthood I think.
Why, what an ass am I! This is most brave,
That I, the son of a dear father murder'd,
Prompted to my revenge by heaven and hell,
Must, like a whore, unpack my heart with words,
And fall a-cursing, like a very drab,
A scullion!
Of course, when he says "like a whore" he means "like a woman" because women have no power except what they persuade the men around them to yield up, and since they haven't got swords they use words. If wordiness = femininity, what's Shakespeare saying about himself?
Fie upon't! foh! About, my brain! I have heard
That guilty creatures sitting at a play
Have by the very cunning of the scene
Been struck so to the soul that presently
They have proclaim'd their malefactions;
For murder, though it have no tongue, will speak
With most miraculous organ. I'll have these players
Play something like the murder of my father
Before mine uncle: I'll observe his looks;
I'll tent him to the quick: if he but blench,
I know my course. The spirit that I have seen
May be the devil: and the devil hath power
To assume a pleasing shape; yea, and perhaps
Out of my weakness and my melancholy,
As he is very potent with such spirits,
Abuses me to damn me: I'll have grounds
More relative than this: the play 's the thing
Wherein I'll catch the conscience of the king.
He doesn't sound to me as though he's really been entertaining doubts about the ghost; more like he suddenly realized that perhaps the ghost was false, yes, quick, I'll seize on that to excuse my delay. He really is grasping round for excuses; and while I don't think he ever quite loses his grip on reality, as we'd define insanity now, I do think his judgment, if it was ever any better than this, is pretty bad, because...ok, Hamlet, let's go over this. You're going to judge whether or not Claudius is really guilty by whether or not he gets a funny look on his face while watching the play? How do you know it's not just because he has to visit Ye Royal Danish Chamberpot? In any case, the play you're putting on for him is clearly an accusation designed to embarrass Claudius, and whether he was guilty or not, he'd be bound to react to it.
Oh, Hamlet. You won't be giving any lectures on crisis management technique any time soon.
TOMORROW: Act 3, Scene I: Hamlet and Ophelia go to couple's counseling.
First Act:
Scene I: The Crazy Occult Forays of Marcellus and Horatio.
Scene II: Claudius is the villain, but he's still hotter than you.
Scene III: Ophelia's virginity is a national treasure. Just ask her dad and brother.
Scene IV: That a ghoooooooooost?
Scene V: "'Who's your daddy?' Now that's just inappropriate."
Second Act:
Act 2, Scene I: Happy families are all alike---they're totally fucked up.
Act 2, Scene II--Part One: Rosencrantz & Guildenstern are creepy.
GUILDENSTERN
There are the players.
HAMLET
Gentlemen, you are welcome to Elsinore. Your hands,
come then: the appurtenance of welcome is fashion
and ceremony: let me comply with you in this garb,
lest my extent to the players, which, I tell you,
must show fairly outward, should more appear like
entertainment than yours. You are welcome: but my
uncle-father and aunt-mother are deceived.
"Let me shake hands with you, otherwise it will look like I'm more interested in a bunch of actors than in peers of my own caste. And that would be bad. Even if it is more or less correct."
GUILDENSTERN
In what, my dear lord?
HAMLET
I am but mad north-north-west: when the wind is
southerly I know a hawk from a handsaw.
Jacobi plays that line like he's trying to sound mad, where Branagh utters it as a rebuke. I think I prefer the latter, really.
HAMLET
Hark you, Guildenstern; and you too: at each ear a
hearer: that great baby you see there is not yet
out of his swaddling-clouts.
ROSENCRANTZ
Happily he's the second time come to them; for they
say an old man is twice a child.
This seems to be the image of Polonius most fixed in Hamlet's mind, c.f. the "if like a crab you could go backwards" line. It also brings to mind Polonius' line to Ophelia, "think yourself a baby."
HAMLET
My lord, I have news to tell you.
When Roscius was an actor in Rome,--
A line I did not understand at all until I saw Derek Jacobi perform it in a quavery old man's voice, and then I realized Hamlet was doing the same thing as when he talked to Polonius earlier in the scene, pretending to be so old he could remember Roscius.
LORD POLONIUS
The best actors in the world, either for tragedy,
comedy, history, pastoral, pastoral-comical,
historical-pastoral, tragical-historical, tragical-
comical-historical-pastoral, scene individable, or
poem unlimited: Seneca cannot be too heavy, nor
Plautus too light. For the law of writ and the
liberty, these are the only men.
HAMLET
O Jephthah, judge of Israel, what a treasure hadst thou!
LORD POLONIUS
What a treasure had he, my lord?
HAMLET
Why,
'One fair daughter and no more,
The which he loved passing well.'
LORD POLONIUS
[Aside] Still on my daughter.
HAMLET
Am I not i' the right, old Jephthah?
LORD POLONIUS
If you call me Jephthah, my lord, I have a daughter
that I love passing well.
Hamlet has good reason to twit Polonius about Ophelia as he did before, but the way he does it here is a bit chilling, since Jephthah sacrificed his daughter as a burnt offering. (That story always pissed me off when I was a kid.) As I am highly prejudiced in Ophelia's favor, and refuse to believe that Hamlet didn't truly love her, I choose to read this as Hamlet...not accusing Polonius so much as warning him to what end Ophelia may come if he keeps on as he is.
Enter four or five Players
You are welcome, masters; welcome, all. I am glad
to see thee well. Welcome, good friends. O, my old
friend! thy face is valenced since I saw thee last:
comest thou to beard me in Denmark? What, my young
lady and mistress! By'r lady, your ladyship is
nearer to heaven than when I saw you last, by the
altitude of a chopine. Pray God, your voice, like
apiece of uncurrent gold, be not cracked within the
ring. Masters, you are all welcome. We'll e'en
to't like French falconers, fly at any thing we see:
we'll have a speech straight: come, give us a taste
of your quality; come, a passionate speech.
Not much here, except to show that he knows them pretty well, considering what they are and who he is. It irritates the snot out of me that Branagh's Hamlet actually casts "my young lady and mistress" as a little girl---I know it fits the 19th century look of the film, but it completely robs that line of the joke. Also, considering that a minute ago Hamlet was talking about how he's lost all mirth, the excitement with which he greets the players is almost startling. One wonders when exactly he got the idea for them to play Gonzago---the instant their presence was announced, or sometime during the course of their conversation? In any case, his pleasure in their appearance is clearly more than merely utilitarian.
First Player
What speech, my lord?
HAMLET
I heard thee speak me a speech once, but it was
never acted; or, if it was, not above once; for the
play, I remember, pleased not the million; 'twas
caviare to the general: but it was--as I received
it, and others, whose judgments in such matters
cried in the top of mine--an excellent play, well
digested in the scenes, set down with as much
modesty as cunning. I remember, one said there
were no sallets in the lines to make the matter
savoury, nor no matter in the phrase that might
indict the author of affectation; but called it an
honest method, as wholesome as sweet, and by very
much more handsome than fine. One speech in it I
chiefly loved: 'twas Aeneas' tale to Dido; and
thereabout of it especially, where he speaks of
Priam's slaughter: if it live in your memory, begin
at this line: let me see, let me see--
'The rugged Pyrrhus, like the Hyrcanian beast,'--
it is not so:--it begins with Pyrrhus:--
'The rugged Pyrrhus, he whose sable arms,
Black as his purpose, did the night resemble
When he lay couched in the ominous horse,
Hath now this dread and black complexion smear'd
With heraldry more dismal; head to foot
Now is he total gules; horridly trick'd
With blood of fathers, mothers, daughters, sons,
Baked and impasted with the parching streets,
That lend a tyrannous and damned light
To their lord's murder: roasted in wrath and fire,
And thus o'er-sized with coagulate gore,
With eyes like carbuncles, the hellish Pyrrhus
Old grandsire Priam seeks.'
So, proceed you.
LOL AWKWARD. Seriously, what are you going to do when your royal patron starts acting like he thinks he can act? Smile and clap, that's what you do. No, in all seriousness, I imagine Hamlet is probably a rather competent actor---he would have plenty of experience, and he certainly understands the uses of artifice. Also, Hamlet is an elitist snob---of course his taste is more rarefied than anyone else's.
Also, he saw the play once and memorized that whole speech. People actually used to be able to do that. It makes one feel very slow and dull.
LORD POLONIUS
'Fore God, my lord, well spoken, with good accent and
good discretion.
I feel that in this moment Hamlet is of one accord with Oscar Wilde as he said "Whenever people agree with me I feel I must be wrong."
First Player
'Anon he finds him
Striking too short at Greeks; his antique sword,
Rebellious to his arm, lies where it falls,
Repugnant to command: unequal match'd,
Pyrrhus at Priam drives; in rage strikes wide;
But with the whiff and wind of his fell sword
The unnerved father falls.
Oh no. Would this be a speech about the foul murder of a GRAVE AND WARLIKE OLD MAN?
Then senseless Ilium,
Seeming to feel this blow, with flaming top
Stoops to his base, and with a hideous crash
Takes prisoner Pyrrhus' ear:
WHO HAS SOMETHING SIGNIFICANT HAPPEN TO HIS EAR?
for, lo! his sword,
Which was declining on the milky head
Of reverend Priam, seem'd i' the air to stick:
So, as a painted tyrant, Pyrrhus stood,
And like a neutral to his will and matter,
Did nothing.
His foul deed is frozen in a moment in time!
But, as we often see, against some storm,
A silence in the heavens, the rack stand still,
The bold winds speechless and the orb below
As hush as death, anon the dreadful thunder
Doth rend the region, so, after Pyrrhus' pause,
Aroused vengeance sets him new a-work;
And never did the Cyclops' hammers fall
On Mars's armour forged for proof eterne
With less remorse than Pyrrhus' bleeding sword
Now falls on Priam.
I may sound as though I'm mocking, but actually I find this speech dreadfully moving, no doubt because the imagery is so cinematic. You can almost hear a James Horner score in the background.
Out, out, thou strumpet, Fortune! All you gods,
In general synod 'take away her power;
Break all the spokes and fellies from her wheel,
And bowl the round nave down the hill of heaven,
As low as to the fiends!'
By which we may infer that Hamlet has been muttering this speech under his breath for the entire act. Well enough. Now that I've seen Charleton Heston deliver it, it happens to me occasionally too.
LORD POLONIUS
This is too long.
OMGWTFBBQ. How did Hamlet not stab Polonius right then! He is totallly that guy who talks in the row behind you in the theater!
HAMLET
It shall to the barber's, with your beard. Prithee,
say on: he's for a jig or a tale of bawdry, or he
sleeps: say on: come to Hecuba.
Polonius is my mother?
First Player
'But who, O, who had seen the mobled queen--'
HAMLET
'The mobled queen?'
LORD POLONIUS
That's good; 'mobled queen' is good.
Poor Polonius. He senses he's offended Hamlet on a personal level and now he's trying to make up for it but he doesn't know how because this is all completely baffling to him.
First Player
'Run barefoot up and down, threatening the flames
With bisson rheum; a clout upon that head
Where late the diadem stood, and for a robe,
About her lank and all o'er-teemed loins,
A blanket, in the alarm of fear caught up;
Who this had seen, with tongue in venom steep'd,
'Gainst Fortune's state would treason have
pronounced:
But if the gods themselves did see her then
When she saw Pyrrhus make malicious sport
In mincing with his sword her husband's limbs,
The instant burst of clamour that she made,
Unless things mortal move them not at all,
Would have made milch the burning eyes of heaven,
And passion in the gods.'
Oh my! Would that half of the speech be about a queen and mother so devoted to her slain husband that she would never dream of remarrying?
I have to say, every time I read "o'er-teemed loins" I just...wince.
LORD POLONIUS
Look, whether he has not turned his colour and has
tears in's eyes. Pray you, no more.
The sheer absurdity of the contrast between that line and that wild, magnificent speech before it sets me howling every single time. Polonius is an idiot, but his point is perfectly valid, viewed from a certain perspective---it's all in his head. It has nothing to do with the real world. Oh my, is that thematic at all?
HAMLET
'Tis well: I'll have thee speak out the rest soon.
Good my lord, will you see the players well
bestowed? Do you hear, let them be well used; for
they are the abstract and brief chronicles of the
time: after your death you were better have a bad
epitaph than their ill report while you live.
LORD POLONIUS
My lord, I will use them according to their desert.
HAMLET
God's bodykins, man, much better: use every man
after his desert, and who should 'scape whipping?
Use them after your own honour and dignity: the less
they deserve, the more merit is in your bounty.
Take them in.
I call this the only Christian moment in a play that is, generally, as pagan as Beowulf before the priests had at it. I also love it.
LORD POLONIUS
Come, sirs.
HAMLET
Follow him, friends: we'll hear a play to-morrow.
Exit POLONIUS with all the Players but the First
Dost thou hear me, old friend; can you play the
Murder of Gonzago?
First Player
Ay, my lord.
HAMLET
We'll ha't to-morrow night. You could, for a need,
study a speech of some dozen or sixteen lines, which
I would set down and insert in't, could you not?
First Player
Ay, my lord.
HAMLET
Very well. Follow that lord; and look you mock him
not.
Apart from the fact that an actor at that time could probably absorb sixteen lines easy as breathing, what's the dude going to say? "Stuff it up your royal ass?"
I think it must say something about Hamlet that he tells them not to mock Polonius, considering how little respect he has for him.
HAMLET
Now I am alone.
In case you were needing the stage direction.
O, what a rogue and peasant slave am I!
Is it not monstrous that this player here,
But in a fiction, in a dream of passion,
Could force his soul so to his own conceit
That from her working all his visage wann'd,
Tears in his eyes, distraction in's aspect,
A broken voice, and his whole function suiting
With forms to his conceit? and all for nothing!
For Hecuba!
What's Hecuba to him, or he to Hecuba,
That he should weep for her? What would he do,
Had he the motive and the cue for passion
That I have? He would drown the stage with tears
And cleave the general ear with horrid speech,
Make mad the guilty and appal the free,
Confound the ignorant, and amaze indeed
The very faculties of eyes and ears. Yet I,
A dull and muddy-mettled rascal, peak,
Like John-a-dreams, unpregnant of my cause,
And can say nothing; no, not for a king,
Upon whose property and most dear life
A damn'd defeat was made. Am I a coward?
Who calls me villain? breaks my pate across?
Plucks off my beard, and blows it in my face?
Tweaks me by the nose? gives me the lie i' the throat,
As deep as to the lungs? who does me this?
Ha!
'Swounds, I should take it: for it cannot be
But I am pigeon-liver'd and lack gall
To make oppression bitter, or ere this
I should have fatted all the region kites
With this slave's offal: bloody, bawdy villain!
Remorseless, treacherous, lecherous, kindless villain!
O, vengeance!
I feel like, if I were still in the habit of writing papers and being academically formal, or if I were even still in the habit of thinking about this stuff seriously at all, I'd have something very important to say about this passage. As it is, it's late, I'm still sleep deprived, this has been an incredibly long fucking scene, and I can't come up with a single impressive comment. So I'll just say that I think this passage is very important. Hamlet's been locked inside his mind all his life, and now he's confronted by events that would tear him from the clutches of his cozy little brain palace and drive him into taking dire action---his only retreat from the pain of that is to dive back down into his brain, where, in deliberating his course of action, the necessity of taking action seems to lessen. He thinks he feels deeply because he thinks about it all the time, but there's no immediacy of action or emotion in him, which probably came as a shock---I bet when he was at school he stirred himself up into a towering passion over things he read in books on a regular basis. But real life != drama or fiction or daydreams, and that's one of the last illusions you lose on your way to adulthood I think.
Why, what an ass am I! This is most brave,
That I, the son of a dear father murder'd,
Prompted to my revenge by heaven and hell,
Must, like a whore, unpack my heart with words,
And fall a-cursing, like a very drab,
A scullion!
Of course, when he says "like a whore" he means "like a woman" because women have no power except what they persuade the men around them to yield up, and since they haven't got swords they use words. If wordiness = femininity, what's Shakespeare saying about himself?
Fie upon't! foh! About, my brain! I have heard
That guilty creatures sitting at a play
Have by the very cunning of the scene
Been struck so to the soul that presently
They have proclaim'd their malefactions;
For murder, though it have no tongue, will speak
With most miraculous organ. I'll have these players
Play something like the murder of my father
Before mine uncle: I'll observe his looks;
I'll tent him to the quick: if he but blench,
I know my course. The spirit that I have seen
May be the devil: and the devil hath power
To assume a pleasing shape; yea, and perhaps
Out of my weakness and my melancholy,
As he is very potent with such spirits,
Abuses me to damn me: I'll have grounds
More relative than this: the play 's the thing
Wherein I'll catch the conscience of the king.
He doesn't sound to me as though he's really been entertaining doubts about the ghost; more like he suddenly realized that perhaps the ghost was false, yes, quick, I'll seize on that to excuse my delay. He really is grasping round for excuses; and while I don't think he ever quite loses his grip on reality, as we'd define insanity now, I do think his judgment, if it was ever any better than this, is pretty bad, because...ok, Hamlet, let's go over this. You're going to judge whether or not Claudius is really guilty by whether or not he gets a funny look on his face while watching the play? How do you know it's not just because he has to visit Ye Royal Danish Chamberpot? In any case, the play you're putting on for him is clearly an accusation designed to embarrass Claudius, and whether he was guilty or not, he'd be bound to react to it.
Oh, Hamlet. You won't be giving any lectures on crisis management technique any time soon.
TOMORROW: Act 3, Scene I: Hamlet and Ophelia go to couple's counseling.