The Monologue
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:
Scene I: Happy families are all alike---they're totally fucked up.
Scene II--Part One: Rosencrantz & Guildenstern are creepy. and Part Two: Hamlet was a high school drama geek.
KING CLAUDIUS
And can you, by no drift of circumstance,
Get from him why he puts on this confusion,
Grating so harshly all his days of quiet
With turbulent and dangerous lunacy?
"You've been here a whole hour, already! I paid for your passage from...wherever the hell you came from! Stop fucking around!"
ROSENCRANTZ
He does confess he feels himself distracted;
But from what cause he will by no means speak.
GUILDENSTERN
Nor do we find him forward to be sounded,
But, with a crafty madness, keeps aloof,
When we would bring him on to some confession
Of his true state.
I wonder if Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are truly convinced Hamlet is mad, or if they're just using the words that the king and queen used to them in order to keep them happy? I didn't think Hamlet seemed terribly out of sorts while talking to them.
QUEEN GERTRUDE
Did he receive you well?
ROSENCRANTZ
Most like a gentleman.
GUILDENSTERN
But with much forcing of his disposition.
ROSENCRANTZ
Niggard of question; but, of our demands,
Most free in his reply.
Dude, you just finished telling her that he wouldn't answer your most important questions.
QUEEN GERTRUDE
Did you assay him
To any pastime?
ROSENCRANTZ
Madam, it so fell out, that certain players
We o'er-raught on the way: of these we told him;
And there did seem in him a kind of joy
To hear of it: they are about the court,
And, as I think, they have already order
This night to play before him.
LORD POLONIUS
'Tis most true:
And he beseech'd me to entreat your majesties
To hear and see the matter.
KING CLAUDIUS
With all my heart; and it doth much content me
To hear him so inclined.
Good gentlemen, give him a further edge,
And drive his purpose on to these delights.
ROSENCRANTZ
We shall, my lord.
Claudius: YAY HE'S GOING TO DO SOMETHING OTHER THAN BROOD. Sry to say, your highness, Hamlet's figured out how to be obnoxious by proxy.
Jacobi's Claudius says "with all my heart" like he really means it and hopes that Hamlet's on the way to mending. I do think that in part of his mind he does, but that there's a voice back there at the same time letting him know this is all too good to be true. He does turn on a dime here in a scene or two---even by the end of this scene, he's definitely suspicious.
KING CLAUDIUS
Sweet Gertrude, leave us too;
For we have closely sent for Hamlet hither,
That he, as 'twere by accident, may here
Affront Ophelia:
Her father and myself, lawful espials,
Will so bestow ourselves that, seeing, unseen,
We may of their encounter frankly judge,
And gather by him, as he is behaved,
If 't be the affliction of his love or no
That thus he suffers for.
WAIT WAIT WAIT I totally missed that. Claudius sent for Hamlet? And then everyone's surprised when Hamlet figures out he's being watched? SERIOUSLY?
Hamlet's fury in this scene suddenly makes a lot more sense to me. That is just insulting.
QUEEN GERTRUDE
I shall obey you.
And for your part, Ophelia, I do wish
That your good beauties be the happy cause
Of Hamlet's wildness: so shall I hope your virtues
Will bring him to his wonted way again,
To both your honours.
OPHELIA
Madam, I wish it may.
See, Gertrude totally ships Hamlet/Ophelia. JUST TELL POLONIUS YOU WANT THEM TO GET HITCHED, SO HE'LL STOP COCKBLOCKING HAMLET.
LORD POLONIUS
Ophelia, walk you here. Gracious, so please you,
We will bestow ourselves.
To OPHELIA
Read on this book;
That show of such an exercise may colour
Your loneliness. We are oft to blame in this,--
'Tis too much proved--that with devotion's visage
And pious action we do sugar o'er
The devil himself.
cesario: help me with this line, please?
angevin2: sure
cesario: 'Tis too much proved--that with devotion's visage
And pious action we do sugar o'er
The devil himself.
cesario: I can't unravel it.
cesario: Is he actually saying
cesario: "we're doing something totally skeezy here, but if you look innocent, Hamlet will never suspect?"
cesario: That's more self-awareness than I ever suspected Polonius of.
angevin2: Pretty much. I think the tone is more that you can cover up even skeezier things with a pious enough veneer
angevin2: but that is more or less right.
cesario: bleah.
cesario: It's hard to live in the lap of this much idiocy for this long.
Also, I find it cruel, creepy, and strangely perceptive of Polonius that he knows exactly how to make his daughter look like an object of desire to Hamlet. "Stand there looking pale and lonely and distracted and he'll immediately try to jump you." It's rather ironic that in a society where the faintest breath of sexuality can ruin a young girl's life, the girl's guardian is forced to view her in almost constantly sexual light so as to know how best to control and protect her. Ironic and CREEPY.
KING CLAUDIUS
[Aside] O, 'tis too true!
How smart a lash that speech doth give my conscience!
The harlot's cheek, beautied with plastering art,
Is not more ugly to the thing that helps it
Than is my deed to my most painted word:
O heavy burthen!
:( :( :( Oh, Claudius. I really like him. Of course, I have the benefit of distance---if he had any power over my life, I'm sure I'd react to him with as much hostility as I could safely command. (Of course, I once told my Shakespeare class that I'd marry Richard III if only I could contrive never to be alone with him.) But I have a lot of empathy with Claudius here---assuming you have any conscience whatsoever, it would be absolutely galling to pretend your innocence on a daily basis and never be able to make any atonement at all. Which is why I believe, as I said earlier, that Claudius was originally determined to be the best king and surrogate father he could be. That...changes, of course.
HAMLET
To be, or not to be: that is the question:
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them?
The fourth Doctor would say that "to take arms against a sea of troubles" is a mixed metaphor, but then the Doctor's a show off. It's a perfect image. You're gonna hack at the sea with a sword. What difference does it make to the sea? So Hamlet feels his troubles are to him.
To die: to sleep;
No more; and by a sleep to say we end
The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to, 'tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wish'd. To die, to sleep;
To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there's the rub;
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause: there's the respect
That makes calamity of so long life;
I know I've said this before, but Christianity seems to be a monstrous, distorted thing to Hamlet, devoid of all comfort---more like a vaguely Catholic redressing of the old pagan northern religions. None of the reassurance that Marcellus seemed to draw from it in the first scene is present here. He'd really be better off if he could rid himself of it entirely.
For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,
The oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely,
The pangs of despised love, the law's delay,
The insolence of office and the spurns
That patient merit of the unworthy takes,
When he himself might his quietus make
With a bare bodkin? who would fardels bear,
To grunt and sweat under a weary life,
But that the dread of something after death,
The undiscover'd country from whose bourn
No traveller returns, puzzles the will
And makes us rather bear those ills we have
Than fly to others that we know not of?
And now we know, for certain, that while Hamlet may not be hallucinating or hearing voices, his grip on reality is, in fact, beginning to slip---just not in the way he's pretending it to everyone else. The only reason he can think of for everyone not killing themslves is that they're afraid of hell. He can't even conceive of anyone being able to simply take troubles in stride, and enjoy life in spite of them. I didn't used to understand that part at all, until my freshman year of college when I felt as though killing myself would be pointless because not even death could make the pain stop. Completely irrational, and absolutely insuperable to anyone actually caught in the grips of it. No wonder he can't spur himself to action.
Thus conscience does make cowards of us all;
And thus the native hue of resolution
Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought,
And enterprises of great pith and moment
With this regard their currents turn awry,
And lose the name of action.
He's covering the same ground here that he did in the monologue at the end of the previous scene, where he recognizes that he's incapable of action without thought, incapable of just losing himself in emotion and charging into the fray, so to speak. Only here he seems resigned to it, whereas in the previous scene, if Claudius had happened across him at that moment he might well have launched himself at him.
--Soft you now!
The fair Ophelia! Nymph, in thy orisons
Be all my sins remember'd.
Practically the only interesting thing that the Jacobi production did with Ophelia is arrange the blocking of that monologue so as to suggest she overheard everything he was saying. Which I absolutely love, for reasons I'll get to in a moment. In both the Jacobi and the Branagh productions, Hamlet walks up to Ophelia and speaks that last line to her; but whenever I read it, I see Hamlet saying that line to himself, so that when Ophelia says:
OPHELIA
Good my lord,
How does your honour for this many a day?
She's the one who's taken the initiative. Hamlet knows she's not allowed to speak to him, so why would he speak to her? But if she speaks first, then he immediately knows something is up---and if he's on his guard from the very beginning, it explains how quickly he figures out they're being watched, and the nasty turn the conversation takes, without anyone saying stupid things like "he obviously never loved her at all." And by "anyone" I mean "most of the critical literature".
HAMLET
I humbly thank you; well, well, well.
OPHELIA
My lord, I have remembrances of yours,
That I have longed long to re-deliver;
I pray you, now receive them.
So imagine what's going through Hamlet's head. He's so depressed he can't even take comfort in the thought of suicide, he's "dreadfully attended" by the king's spies, some of them in the shape of old friends, he hasn't spoken to Ophelia in ages, and for a split second after she speaks to him maybe he thinks, She's going to defy her father and we're going to be all right. But then in the next second she's giving back his letters, which to his mind probably says that she's come to agree with her father that he can't be trusted.
You have to wonder *why* Ophelia tries to give his letters back. Polonius didn't tell her to do it. In fact, he implies in earlier scenes that he told her to give them to him. So I see a few possibilities: either she's got letters that she desperately doesn't want her father to see, but she can't bring herself to destroy them, so she tries to give them to Hamlet so they'll be safe; or, she knows she'll never be able to resist her father's will, and so instead of simply ignoring Hamlet for the rest of their lives she wants to break things off herself---that being as much of her own agency as she can wrest from the situation. Or, further to the "she's just a kid" theory, she hopes that by doing something sort of spiteful she can prompt Hamlet to some kind of action, make him fight for her, for them---she can't do it, but he could, so why won't he?
My own money is on some combination of the last two options, because that is just how much Ophelia's life sucks.
HAMLET
No, not I;
I never gave you aught.
Which is very unkind of him, but understandable---she just dealt a savage blow to his pride, and since he's not really in the habit of bending that fantastic intellect to the understanding of other people's motivations, he won't have any idea why.
OPHELIA
My honour'd lord, you know right well you did;
And, with them, words of so sweet breath composed
As made the things more rich: their perfume lost,
Take these again; for to the noble mind
Rich gifts wax poor when givers prove unkind.
There, my lord.
Poor Ophelia is desperately trying to make Hamlet SAY SOMETHING, DO SOMETHING, REACT---deny that he intended to be unkind, accuse her of being false so that she can explain herself. But Hamlet did not eat his Perceptive Wheaties this morning.
HAMLET
Ha, ha! are you honest?
OPHELIA
My lord?
HAMLET
Are you fair?
OPHELIA
What means your lordship?
HAMLET
That if you be honest and fair, your honesty should
admit no discourse to your beauty.
OPHELIA
Could beauty, my lord, have better commerce than
with honesty?
HAMLET
Ay, truly; for the power of beauty will sooner
transform honesty from what it is to a bawd than the
force of honesty can translate beauty into his
likeness: this was sometime a paradox, but now the
time gives it proof. I did love you once.
He sounds like her father, and yet he sounds as though he's talking about his mother. His accusations against Ophelia have less to do with her specifically and more to do with the general bent of all his thoughts lately; he's not really any better at understanding himself than he is at understanding anyone else, despite his incessant introspection.
OPHELIA
Indeed, my lord, you made me believe so.
HAMLET
You should not have believed me; for virtue cannot
so inoculate our old stock but we shall relish of
it: I loved you not.
OPHELIA
I was the more deceived.
That's a continuation of the nihilism he demonstrates in The Monologue: he's come to believe that as no one is pure, no one can be capable of true love.
HAMLET
Get thee to a nunnery: why wouldst thou be a
breeder of sinners? I am myself indifferent honest;
but yet I could accuse me of such things that it
were better my mother had not borne me: I am very
proud, revengeful, ambitious, with more offences at
my beck than I have thoughts to put them in,
imagination to give them shape, or time to act them
in. What should such fellows as I do crawling
between earth and heaven? We are arrant knaves,
all; believe none of us. Go thy ways to a nunnery.
Where's your father?
He's been locked inside his head for so long that he's begun to mistake thought for intent and the image he has of himself is distorted, appalling. And you can't have mercy on anyone else's failures when you're that disgusted with yourself.
OPHELIA
At home, my lord.
In the Branagh production, just before he asks "where's your father", Polonius gives away his presence by making a really obvious noise that both Hamlet and Ophelia hear. So when Ophelia says "at home", Hamlet knows she's lying, and Ophelia knows that he knows she's lying, but she still can't say anything else. It's an interpretive liberty, but I approve it heartily, because it just underscores how incredibly trapped Ophelia is, and shows Hamlet that he can't have any dealings with Ophelia that aren't tainted by the larger business with his uncle.
If you buy into the theory I expounded earlier, that part of what drew Hamlet to Ophelia in the first place was how innocent she was of court intrigue, then it also explains his bitter disappointment here. Of course it's not her fault, any reasonable person could see that, but---as the entire scene has been at pains to demonstrate---Hamlet's not reasonable right now. His perception of the world around him is so distorted that he's become like a small child who throws a screaming temper tantrum when his soup comes out of the microwave too hot to eat--any imperfection in Ophelia, in whose perfection he would wish to take refuge, is magnified into something gross and unpardonable.
HAMLET
If thou dost marry, I'll give thee this plague for
thy dowry: be thou as chaste as ice, as pure as
snow, thou shalt not escape calumny.
Here, for a chilling moment of clarity, Hamlet proves that he does understand the position she's in---powerless, subject to whatever people choose to think of her, which won't necessarily have anything to do with her actual conduct. But there's no empathy in that understanding, and there's nothing more disturbing than to be understood by someone who clearly doesn't care.
Get thee to a
nunnery, go: farewell. Or, if thou wilt needs
marry, marry a fool; for wise men know well enough
what monsters you make of them. To a nunnery, go,
and quickly too. Farewell.
Except I think he does care. He's fucked in the head, so there's no way Ophelia could divine that in his speech, but then I don't accept the traditional gloss that "nunnery" means "whorehouse" or that "monster" necessarily means "cuckold". In a nunnery, her innocence would be preserved, and no one would use her against him. It's a selfish kind of caring, but at least it's less of an insult.
OPHELIA
O heavenly powers, restore him!
HAMLET
I have heard of your paintings too, well enough; God
has given you one face, and you make yourselves
another: you jig, you amble, and you lisp, and
nick-name God's creatures, and make your wantonness
your ignorance. Go to, I'll no more on't; it hath
made me mad. I say, we will have no more marriages:
those that are married already, all but one, shall
live; the rest shall keep as they are. To a
nunnery, go.
He's conflating Ophelia with Gertrude again, to some degree, but I'm struck by the line "make your wantonness your ignorance"---it sounds like he doesn't believe she can really be as unworldly, as easily directed by her father and the king, as she is. If she is very young, perhaps he has yet to realize that children can have women's bodies. In any case, the last lines make it obvious that by now he knows that Claudius is listening; and when he says "it hath made me mad" I believe that's the first time he's said those words, or words like them, and meant them.
OPHELIA
O, what a noble mind is here o'erthrown!
The courtier's, soldier's, scholar's, eye, tongue, sword;
The expectancy and rose of the fair state,
The glass of fashion and the mould of form,
The observed of all observers, quite, quite down!
And I, of ladies most deject and wretched,
That suck'd the honey of his music vows,
Now see that noble and most sovereign reason,
Like sweet bells jangled, out of tune and harsh;
That unmatch'd form and feature of blown youth
Blasted with ecstasy: O, woe is me,
To have seen what I have seen, see what I see!
Ophelia's last words before she goes mad. All the more heartbreaking because they prove that, whatever Hamlet may think, she does know him: "the observed of all observers"---he too is trapped, and she sees it.
I used to think she couldn't be very smart, to have taken in all Hamlet's ranting and come to no more penetrating conclusion than "yup, clearly crazy", but if she did overhear The Monologue...well, you put all that together with his behavior here, and I'd probably come to the same conclusion she does.
KING CLAUDIUS
Love! his affections do not that way tend;
Nor what he spake, though it lack'd form a little,
Was not like madness. There's something in his soul,
O'er which his melancholy sits on brood;
And I do doubt the hatch and the disclose
Will be some danger:
Oh yes, Claudius is no fool.
which for to prevent,
I have in quick determination
Thus set it down: he shall with speed to England,
For the demand of our neglected tribute
Haply the seas and countries different
With variable objects shall expel
This something-settled matter in his heart,
Whereon his brains still beating puts him thus
From fashion of himself. What think you on't?
Will someone please tell me at what point in history England paid tribute to Denmark, and why?
Also, I wonder if he has already decided to have Hamlet killed in England, or if he means what he says to Polonius? I suspect not---more likely he makes that decision after Hamlet kills Polonius. I guess it depends on how maliciously you want to play him.
LORD POLONIUS
It shall do well: but yet do I believe
The origin and commencement of his grief
Sprung from neglected love.
He has the tenacity of a lobster when it comes to an idea he's set his mind on.
How now, Ophelia!
You need not tell us what Lord Hamlet said;
We heard it all. My lord, do as you please;
But, if you hold it fit, after the play
Let his queen mother all alone entreat him
To show his grief: let her be round with him;
And I'll be placed, so please you, in the ear
Of all their conference. If she find him not,
To England send him, or confine him where
Your wisdom best shall think.
Because naturally Gertrude's incapable of forming her own conclusions, cause of the girlparts. Well, no point pointing out that Polonius is an idiot, considering that it's about to get him killed.
KING CLAUDIUS
It shall be so:
Madness in great ones must not unwatch'd go.
What a brilliantly foreboding line to end the scene on. Gives you shivers. And for some reason it always makes me think of Odysseus. Anyone with an annotated copy of the play, is it considered a direct allusion?
Tomorrow: But what he really wants to do is direct.
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:
Scene I: Happy families are all alike---they're totally fucked up.
Scene II--Part One: Rosencrantz & Guildenstern are creepy. and Part Two: Hamlet was a high school drama geek.
KING CLAUDIUS
And can you, by no drift of circumstance,
Get from him why he puts on this confusion,
Grating so harshly all his days of quiet
With turbulent and dangerous lunacy?
"You've been here a whole hour, already! I paid for your passage from...wherever the hell you came from! Stop fucking around!"
ROSENCRANTZ
He does confess he feels himself distracted;
But from what cause he will by no means speak.
GUILDENSTERN
Nor do we find him forward to be sounded,
But, with a crafty madness, keeps aloof,
When we would bring him on to some confession
Of his true state.
I wonder if Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are truly convinced Hamlet is mad, or if they're just using the words that the king and queen used to them in order to keep them happy? I didn't think Hamlet seemed terribly out of sorts while talking to them.
QUEEN GERTRUDE
Did he receive you well?
ROSENCRANTZ
Most like a gentleman.
GUILDENSTERN
But with much forcing of his disposition.
ROSENCRANTZ
Niggard of question; but, of our demands,
Most free in his reply.
Dude, you just finished telling her that he wouldn't answer your most important questions.
QUEEN GERTRUDE
Did you assay him
To any pastime?
ROSENCRANTZ
Madam, it so fell out, that certain players
We o'er-raught on the way: of these we told him;
And there did seem in him a kind of joy
To hear of it: they are about the court,
And, as I think, they have already order
This night to play before him.
LORD POLONIUS
'Tis most true:
And he beseech'd me to entreat your majesties
To hear and see the matter.
KING CLAUDIUS
With all my heart; and it doth much content me
To hear him so inclined.
Good gentlemen, give him a further edge,
And drive his purpose on to these delights.
ROSENCRANTZ
We shall, my lord.
Claudius: YAY HE'S GOING TO DO SOMETHING OTHER THAN BROOD. Sry to say, your highness, Hamlet's figured out how to be obnoxious by proxy.
Jacobi's Claudius says "with all my heart" like he really means it and hopes that Hamlet's on the way to mending. I do think that in part of his mind he does, but that there's a voice back there at the same time letting him know this is all too good to be true. He does turn on a dime here in a scene or two---even by the end of this scene, he's definitely suspicious.
KING CLAUDIUS
Sweet Gertrude, leave us too;
For we have closely sent for Hamlet hither,
That he, as 'twere by accident, may here
Affront Ophelia:
Her father and myself, lawful espials,
Will so bestow ourselves that, seeing, unseen,
We may of their encounter frankly judge,
And gather by him, as he is behaved,
If 't be the affliction of his love or no
That thus he suffers for.
WAIT WAIT WAIT I totally missed that. Claudius sent for Hamlet? And then everyone's surprised when Hamlet figures out he's being watched? SERIOUSLY?
Hamlet's fury in this scene suddenly makes a lot more sense to me. That is just insulting.
QUEEN GERTRUDE
I shall obey you.
And for your part, Ophelia, I do wish
That your good beauties be the happy cause
Of Hamlet's wildness: so shall I hope your virtues
Will bring him to his wonted way again,
To both your honours.
OPHELIA
Madam, I wish it may.
See, Gertrude totally ships Hamlet/Ophelia. JUST TELL POLONIUS YOU WANT THEM TO GET HITCHED, SO HE'LL STOP COCKBLOCKING HAMLET.
LORD POLONIUS
Ophelia, walk you here. Gracious, so please you,
We will bestow ourselves.
To OPHELIA
Read on this book;
That show of such an exercise may colour
Your loneliness. We are oft to blame in this,--
'Tis too much proved--that with devotion's visage
And pious action we do sugar o'er
The devil himself.
cesario: help me with this line, please?
angevin2: sure
cesario: 'Tis too much proved--that with devotion's visage
And pious action we do sugar o'er
The devil himself.
cesario: I can't unravel it.
cesario: Is he actually saying
cesario: "we're doing something totally skeezy here, but if you look innocent, Hamlet will never suspect?"
cesario: That's more self-awareness than I ever suspected Polonius of.
angevin2: Pretty much. I think the tone is more that you can cover up even skeezier things with a pious enough veneer
angevin2: but that is more or less right.
cesario: bleah.
cesario: It's hard to live in the lap of this much idiocy for this long.
Also, I find it cruel, creepy, and strangely perceptive of Polonius that he knows exactly how to make his daughter look like an object of desire to Hamlet. "Stand there looking pale and lonely and distracted and he'll immediately try to jump you." It's rather ironic that in a society where the faintest breath of sexuality can ruin a young girl's life, the girl's guardian is forced to view her in almost constantly sexual light so as to know how best to control and protect her. Ironic and CREEPY.
KING CLAUDIUS
[Aside] O, 'tis too true!
How smart a lash that speech doth give my conscience!
The harlot's cheek, beautied with plastering art,
Is not more ugly to the thing that helps it
Than is my deed to my most painted word:
O heavy burthen!
:( :( :( Oh, Claudius. I really like him. Of course, I have the benefit of distance---if he had any power over my life, I'm sure I'd react to him with as much hostility as I could safely command. (Of course, I once told my Shakespeare class that I'd marry Richard III if only I could contrive never to be alone with him.) But I have a lot of empathy with Claudius here---assuming you have any conscience whatsoever, it would be absolutely galling to pretend your innocence on a daily basis and never be able to make any atonement at all. Which is why I believe, as I said earlier, that Claudius was originally determined to be the best king and surrogate father he could be. That...changes, of course.
HAMLET
To be, or not to be: that is the question:
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them?
The fourth Doctor would say that "to take arms against a sea of troubles" is a mixed metaphor, but then the Doctor's a show off. It's a perfect image. You're gonna hack at the sea with a sword. What difference does it make to the sea? So Hamlet feels his troubles are to him.
To die: to sleep;
No more; and by a sleep to say we end
The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to, 'tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wish'd. To die, to sleep;
To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there's the rub;
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause: there's the respect
That makes calamity of so long life;
I know I've said this before, but Christianity seems to be a monstrous, distorted thing to Hamlet, devoid of all comfort---more like a vaguely Catholic redressing of the old pagan northern religions. None of the reassurance that Marcellus seemed to draw from it in the first scene is present here. He'd really be better off if he could rid himself of it entirely.
For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,
The oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely,
The pangs of despised love, the law's delay,
The insolence of office and the spurns
That patient merit of the unworthy takes,
When he himself might his quietus make
With a bare bodkin? who would fardels bear,
To grunt and sweat under a weary life,
But that the dread of something after death,
The undiscover'd country from whose bourn
No traveller returns, puzzles the will
And makes us rather bear those ills we have
Than fly to others that we know not of?
And now we know, for certain, that while Hamlet may not be hallucinating or hearing voices, his grip on reality is, in fact, beginning to slip---just not in the way he's pretending it to everyone else. The only reason he can think of for everyone not killing themslves is that they're afraid of hell. He can't even conceive of anyone being able to simply take troubles in stride, and enjoy life in spite of them. I didn't used to understand that part at all, until my freshman year of college when I felt as though killing myself would be pointless because not even death could make the pain stop. Completely irrational, and absolutely insuperable to anyone actually caught in the grips of it. No wonder he can't spur himself to action.
Thus conscience does make cowards of us all;
And thus the native hue of resolution
Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought,
And enterprises of great pith and moment
With this regard their currents turn awry,
And lose the name of action.
He's covering the same ground here that he did in the monologue at the end of the previous scene, where he recognizes that he's incapable of action without thought, incapable of just losing himself in emotion and charging into the fray, so to speak. Only here he seems resigned to it, whereas in the previous scene, if Claudius had happened across him at that moment he might well have launched himself at him.
--Soft you now!
The fair Ophelia! Nymph, in thy orisons
Be all my sins remember'd.
Practically the only interesting thing that the Jacobi production did with Ophelia is arrange the blocking of that monologue so as to suggest she overheard everything he was saying. Which I absolutely love, for reasons I'll get to in a moment. In both the Jacobi and the Branagh productions, Hamlet walks up to Ophelia and speaks that last line to her; but whenever I read it, I see Hamlet saying that line to himself, so that when Ophelia says:
OPHELIA
Good my lord,
How does your honour for this many a day?
She's the one who's taken the initiative. Hamlet knows she's not allowed to speak to him, so why would he speak to her? But if she speaks first, then he immediately knows something is up---and if he's on his guard from the very beginning, it explains how quickly he figures out they're being watched, and the nasty turn the conversation takes, without anyone saying stupid things like "he obviously never loved her at all." And by "anyone" I mean "most of the critical literature".
HAMLET
I humbly thank you; well, well, well.
OPHELIA
My lord, I have remembrances of yours,
That I have longed long to re-deliver;
I pray you, now receive them.
So imagine what's going through Hamlet's head. He's so depressed he can't even take comfort in the thought of suicide, he's "dreadfully attended" by the king's spies, some of them in the shape of old friends, he hasn't spoken to Ophelia in ages, and for a split second after she speaks to him maybe he thinks, She's going to defy her father and we're going to be all right. But then in the next second she's giving back his letters, which to his mind probably says that she's come to agree with her father that he can't be trusted.
You have to wonder *why* Ophelia tries to give his letters back. Polonius didn't tell her to do it. In fact, he implies in earlier scenes that he told her to give them to him. So I see a few possibilities: either she's got letters that she desperately doesn't want her father to see, but she can't bring herself to destroy them, so she tries to give them to Hamlet so they'll be safe; or, she knows she'll never be able to resist her father's will, and so instead of simply ignoring Hamlet for the rest of their lives she wants to break things off herself---that being as much of her own agency as she can wrest from the situation. Or, further to the "she's just a kid" theory, she hopes that by doing something sort of spiteful she can prompt Hamlet to some kind of action, make him fight for her, for them---she can't do it, but he could, so why won't he?
My own money is on some combination of the last two options, because that is just how much Ophelia's life sucks.
HAMLET
No, not I;
I never gave you aught.
Which is very unkind of him, but understandable---she just dealt a savage blow to his pride, and since he's not really in the habit of bending that fantastic intellect to the understanding of other people's motivations, he won't have any idea why.
OPHELIA
My honour'd lord, you know right well you did;
And, with them, words of so sweet breath composed
As made the things more rich: their perfume lost,
Take these again; for to the noble mind
Rich gifts wax poor when givers prove unkind.
There, my lord.
Poor Ophelia is desperately trying to make Hamlet SAY SOMETHING, DO SOMETHING, REACT---deny that he intended to be unkind, accuse her of being false so that she can explain herself. But Hamlet did not eat his Perceptive Wheaties this morning.
HAMLET
Ha, ha! are you honest?
OPHELIA
My lord?
HAMLET
Are you fair?
OPHELIA
What means your lordship?
HAMLET
That if you be honest and fair, your honesty should
admit no discourse to your beauty.
OPHELIA
Could beauty, my lord, have better commerce than
with honesty?
HAMLET
Ay, truly; for the power of beauty will sooner
transform honesty from what it is to a bawd than the
force of honesty can translate beauty into his
likeness: this was sometime a paradox, but now the
time gives it proof. I did love you once.
He sounds like her father, and yet he sounds as though he's talking about his mother. His accusations against Ophelia have less to do with her specifically and more to do with the general bent of all his thoughts lately; he's not really any better at understanding himself than he is at understanding anyone else, despite his incessant introspection.
OPHELIA
Indeed, my lord, you made me believe so.
HAMLET
You should not have believed me; for virtue cannot
so inoculate our old stock but we shall relish of
it: I loved you not.
OPHELIA
I was the more deceived.
That's a continuation of the nihilism he demonstrates in The Monologue: he's come to believe that as no one is pure, no one can be capable of true love.
HAMLET
Get thee to a nunnery: why wouldst thou be a
breeder of sinners? I am myself indifferent honest;
but yet I could accuse me of such things that it
were better my mother had not borne me: I am very
proud, revengeful, ambitious, with more offences at
my beck than I have thoughts to put them in,
imagination to give them shape, or time to act them
in. What should such fellows as I do crawling
between earth and heaven? We are arrant knaves,
all; believe none of us. Go thy ways to a nunnery.
Where's your father?
He's been locked inside his head for so long that he's begun to mistake thought for intent and the image he has of himself is distorted, appalling. And you can't have mercy on anyone else's failures when you're that disgusted with yourself.
OPHELIA
At home, my lord.
In the Branagh production, just before he asks "where's your father", Polonius gives away his presence by making a really obvious noise that both Hamlet and Ophelia hear. So when Ophelia says "at home", Hamlet knows she's lying, and Ophelia knows that he knows she's lying, but she still can't say anything else. It's an interpretive liberty, but I approve it heartily, because it just underscores how incredibly trapped Ophelia is, and shows Hamlet that he can't have any dealings with Ophelia that aren't tainted by the larger business with his uncle.
If you buy into the theory I expounded earlier, that part of what drew Hamlet to Ophelia in the first place was how innocent she was of court intrigue, then it also explains his bitter disappointment here. Of course it's not her fault, any reasonable person could see that, but---as the entire scene has been at pains to demonstrate---Hamlet's not reasonable right now. His perception of the world around him is so distorted that he's become like a small child who throws a screaming temper tantrum when his soup comes out of the microwave too hot to eat--any imperfection in Ophelia, in whose perfection he would wish to take refuge, is magnified into something gross and unpardonable.
HAMLET
If thou dost marry, I'll give thee this plague for
thy dowry: be thou as chaste as ice, as pure as
snow, thou shalt not escape calumny.
Here, for a chilling moment of clarity, Hamlet proves that he does understand the position she's in---powerless, subject to whatever people choose to think of her, which won't necessarily have anything to do with her actual conduct. But there's no empathy in that understanding, and there's nothing more disturbing than to be understood by someone who clearly doesn't care.
Get thee to a
nunnery, go: farewell. Or, if thou wilt needs
marry, marry a fool; for wise men know well enough
what monsters you make of them. To a nunnery, go,
and quickly too. Farewell.
Except I think he does care. He's fucked in the head, so there's no way Ophelia could divine that in his speech, but then I don't accept the traditional gloss that "nunnery" means "whorehouse" or that "monster" necessarily means "cuckold". In a nunnery, her innocence would be preserved, and no one would use her against him. It's a selfish kind of caring, but at least it's less of an insult.
OPHELIA
O heavenly powers, restore him!
HAMLET
I have heard of your paintings too, well enough; God
has given you one face, and you make yourselves
another: you jig, you amble, and you lisp, and
nick-name God's creatures, and make your wantonness
your ignorance. Go to, I'll no more on't; it hath
made me mad. I say, we will have no more marriages:
those that are married already, all but one, shall
live; the rest shall keep as they are. To a
nunnery, go.
He's conflating Ophelia with Gertrude again, to some degree, but I'm struck by the line "make your wantonness your ignorance"---it sounds like he doesn't believe she can really be as unworldly, as easily directed by her father and the king, as she is. If she is very young, perhaps he has yet to realize that children can have women's bodies. In any case, the last lines make it obvious that by now he knows that Claudius is listening; and when he says "it hath made me mad" I believe that's the first time he's said those words, or words like them, and meant them.
OPHELIA
O, what a noble mind is here o'erthrown!
The courtier's, soldier's, scholar's, eye, tongue, sword;
The expectancy and rose of the fair state,
The glass of fashion and the mould of form,
The observed of all observers, quite, quite down!
And I, of ladies most deject and wretched,
That suck'd the honey of his music vows,
Now see that noble and most sovereign reason,
Like sweet bells jangled, out of tune and harsh;
That unmatch'd form and feature of blown youth
Blasted with ecstasy: O, woe is me,
To have seen what I have seen, see what I see!
Ophelia's last words before she goes mad. All the more heartbreaking because they prove that, whatever Hamlet may think, she does know him: "the observed of all observers"---he too is trapped, and she sees it.
I used to think she couldn't be very smart, to have taken in all Hamlet's ranting and come to no more penetrating conclusion than "yup, clearly crazy", but if she did overhear The Monologue...well, you put all that together with his behavior here, and I'd probably come to the same conclusion she does.
KING CLAUDIUS
Love! his affections do not that way tend;
Nor what he spake, though it lack'd form a little,
Was not like madness. There's something in his soul,
O'er which his melancholy sits on brood;
And I do doubt the hatch and the disclose
Will be some danger:
Oh yes, Claudius is no fool.
which for to prevent,
I have in quick determination
Thus set it down: he shall with speed to England,
For the demand of our neglected tribute
Haply the seas and countries different
With variable objects shall expel
This something-settled matter in his heart,
Whereon his brains still beating puts him thus
From fashion of himself. What think you on't?
Will someone please tell me at what point in history England paid tribute to Denmark, and why?
Also, I wonder if he has already decided to have Hamlet killed in England, or if he means what he says to Polonius? I suspect not---more likely he makes that decision after Hamlet kills Polonius. I guess it depends on how maliciously you want to play him.
LORD POLONIUS
It shall do well: but yet do I believe
The origin and commencement of his grief
Sprung from neglected love.
He has the tenacity of a lobster when it comes to an idea he's set his mind on.
How now, Ophelia!
You need not tell us what Lord Hamlet said;
We heard it all. My lord, do as you please;
But, if you hold it fit, after the play
Let his queen mother all alone entreat him
To show his grief: let her be round with him;
And I'll be placed, so please you, in the ear
Of all their conference. If she find him not,
To England send him, or confine him where
Your wisdom best shall think.
Because naturally Gertrude's incapable of forming her own conclusions, cause of the girlparts. Well, no point pointing out that Polonius is an idiot, considering that it's about to get him killed.
KING CLAUDIUS
It shall be so:
Madness in great ones must not unwatch'd go.
What a brilliantly foreboding line to end the scene on. Gives you shivers. And for some reason it always makes me think of Odysseus. Anyone with an annotated copy of the play, is it considered a direct allusion?
Tomorrow: But what he really wants to do is direct.