Hamlet: Act 3, Scene IV
Previous posts:
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.
Third Act:
Scene I: Hamlet and Ophelia get couple's counseling, Elsinore style.
Scene II: But what he really wants to do is direct.
Scene III: Claudius isn't just hot---he's got depth!
Despite the fact that I am an Opheliaphile and just generally batshit about this play, I believe this is my favorite scene in the whole thing. Infer whatever you like from that fact.
LORD POLONIUS
He will come straight. Look you lay home to him:
Tell him his pranks have been too broad to bear with,
And that your grace hath screen'd and stood between
Much heat and him. I'll sconce me even here.
Pray you, be round with him.
I don't know if this would be of any consolation to Ophelia or not, but here, at least, is proof to us that Polonius treats every woman like a child, not just his daughter.
HAMLET
[Within] Mother, mother, mother!
QUEEN GERTRUDE
I'll warrant you,
Fear me not: withdraw, I hear him coming.
And Gertrude, who may not be as smart as Hamlet but is still light years smarter than Polonius, is trying both be polite and get him the fuck out of her way. Which just proves she's a queen. I couldn't do that. I'd be all, "Polonius, shut your damn pie hole, my crazy son is coming and he's probably got a knife, 'cause God knows we can't strip the royalty of their phallic symbols even if there is a substantial chance he's going to jump Bogart all over the first person to look at him cross eyed."
POLONIUS hides behind the arras
Enter HAMLET
HAMLET
Now, mother, what's the matter?
QUEEN GERTRUDE
Hamlet, thou hast thy father much offended.
HAMLET
Mother, you have my father much offended.
QUEEN GERTRUDE
Come, come, you answer with an idle tongue.
HAMLET
Go, go, you question with a wicked tongue.
QUEEN GERTRUDE
Why, how now, Hamlet!
HAMLET
What's the matter now?
QUEEN GERTRUDE
Have you forgot me?
HAMLET
No, by the rood, not so:
You are the queen, your husband's brother's wife;
And--would it were not so!--you are my mother.
QUEEN GERTRUDE
Nay, then, I'll set those to you that can speak.
I LOVE THAT. I love that because for the first time it's Hamlet vs Someone Who Has No Obligation to Put Up With His Shit. It pisses me off when Gertrude gets trembly and weepy in this scene (lookin' at you, Claire Bloom) because she's his MOTHER. And no matter how old, how existential, or how heir-to-the-throne you are, your mother is still going to be able to tear a piece off you like no one else can. I'm not saying that Gertrude actually does this all that much, at least not compared to some of Shakespeare's other mothers (there are, for instance, several moments in Richard III where Richard has these very scandalized moments of "...Mom! that I LOVE) but there's an energy to their exchange here at the beginning of this scene that suggests it could have come down to that, if it weren't for the very unfortunate fact that Hamlet's actually got the moral high ground on this one, and Gertrude has a guilty conscience.
That back and forth volley just always delights my soul.
HAMLET
Come, come, and sit you down; you shall not budge;
You go not till I set you up a glass
Where you may see the inmost part of you.
I am actually pretty sure he's talking about her sinful heart, here, and not her vagina. Sorry, Legions of Psychoanalytical Critics Whose Shit I Had to Wade Through As An Undergrad.
QUEEN GERTRUDE
What wilt thou do? thou wilt not murder me?
Help, help, ho!
LORD POLONIUS
[Behind] What, ho! help, help, help!
HAMLET
[Drawing] How now! a rat? Dead, for a ducat, dead!
Makes a pass through the arras
LORD POLONIUS
[Behind] O, I am slain!
Falls and dies
Just before I die, I hope I have the time to say "O, I am slain."
QUEEN GERTRUDE
O me, what hast thou done?
HAMLET
Nay, I know not:
Is it the king?
QUEEN GERTRUDE
O, what a rash and bloody deed is this!
HAMLET
A bloody deed! almost as bad, good mother,
As kill a king, and marry with his brother.
angevin2 asked me how I was so sure that the Player Queen's lines in Scene II were meant to be the speech Hamlet wrote for the play; there are two reasons. One, all that guff about how she's never ever ever no way no sir not in a million years nuh-uh going to re-marry after her husband's death adds up to exactly sixteen lines, and Hamlet said he was going to write twelve or sixteen lines. Two, Hamlet's line there, "kill a king and marry with his brother," is a close reflection of what the Player Queen says: "a second time I kill my husband dead when second husband kisses me in bed." In both lines, Hamlet is equating the wife's remarriage with the act of murdering the first husband, even though as far as I can tell he never, even to himself, accuses Gertrude of knowing or participating in the king's murder. The fact that the second marriage seems, to him, a crime almost, if not just as horrible---well. The fact that Hamlet is special like the bus is not news to me.
QUEEN GERTRUDE
As kill a king!
HAMLET
Ay, lady, 'twas my word.
Lifts up the array and discovers POLONIUS
Thou wretched, rash, intruding fool, farewell!
I took thee for thy better: take thy fortune;
Thou find'st to be too busy is some danger.
That is a pathetic fucking epitaph right there, but, alas, not unjust.
Leave wringing of your hands: peace! sit you down,
And let me wring your heart; for so I shall,
If it be made of penetrable stuff,
If damned custom have not brass'd it so
That it is proof and bulwark against sense.
QUEEN GERTRUDE
What have I done, that thou darest wag thy tongue
In noise so rude against me?
Yeah, that's quintessential Mom-talk right there.
HAMLET
Such an act
That blurs the grace and blush of modesty,
Calls virtue hypocrite, takes off the rose
From the fair forehead of an innocent love
And sets a blister there, makes marriage-vows
As false as dicers' oaths: O, such a deed
As from the body of contraction plucks
The very soul, and sweet religion makes
A rhapsody of words: heaven's face doth glow:
Yea, this solidity and compound mass,
With tristful visage, as against the doom,
Is thought-sick at the act.
QUEEN GERTRUDE
Ay me, what act,
That roars so loud, and thunders in the index?
I really think she has no idea what he's going on about, at this point. But she gets it in the next instant.
HAMLET
Look here, upon this picture, and on this,
The counterfeit presentment of two brothers.
See, what a grace was seated on this brow;
Hyperion's curls; the front of Jove himself;
An eye like Mars, to threaten and command;
A station like the herald Mercury
New-lighted on a heaven-kissing hill;
A combination and a form indeed,
Where every god did seem to set his seal,
To give the world assurance of a man:
This was your husband.
Just in case we've forgotten, the old king was GRAVE and WARLIKE. Honestly, this description, along with the first description Hamlet gives of him in act one scene two, is what has grounded my impression of Hamlet's father as possibly a very impressive and effective king, but really rather impossible for his wife and son to know or love very well on any kind of personal level. Hamlet, of course, has the self-awareness of a catnip mouse, and hasn't disentangled his complicated feelings about his father from his complicated feelings about...everything else, so whenever he talks about the old king it is with a startling lack of attention to his own subtext.
Look you now, what follows:
Here is your husband; like a mildew'd ear,
Blasting his wholesome brother. Have you eyes?
Could you on this fair mountain leave to feed,
And batten on this moor? Ha! have you eyes?
FFS, Hamlet, it's not like she divorced him. Was she supposed to continue to batten on a fair mountain that was actually in the process of decomposing?
You cannot call it love; for at your age
The hey-day in the blood is tame, it's humble,
And waits upon the judgment: and what judgment
Would step from this to this?
LOL, OLD PEOPLE SEX. You know, I think the vast majority of Hamlet's problems stem from an inability to understand his own mind and feelings, but he's a veritable paragon of self-awareness compared to how hard he fails at understanding Gertrude.
Sense, sure, you have,
Else could you not have motion; but sure, that sense
Is apoplex'd; for madness would not err,
Nor sense to ecstasy was ne'er so thrall'd
But it reserved some quantity of choice,
To serve in such a difference. What devil was't
That thus hath cozen'd you at hoodman-blind?
Eyes without feeling, feeling without sight,
Ears without hands or eyes, smelling sans all,
Or but a sickly part of one true sense
Could not so mope.
So Hamlet, is your point here that she shouldn't have remarried at all, shouldn't have married your uncle, or that she just ought to have married someone you thought was attractive? You have yet to accuse him of being anything other than less hot and less dignified than your dad. Granted, the word "subjective" doesn't seem to be in your vocabulary, but I believe that's a flaw in royalty generally.
O shame! where is thy blush? Rebellious hell,
If thou canst mutine in a matron's bones,
To flaming youth let virtue be as wax,
And melt in her own fire: proclaim no shame
When the compulsive ardour gives the charge,
Since frost itself as actively doth burn
And reason panders will.
"It is completely unfair that my mother is a total skank, when Ophelia won't even put out."
QUEEN GERTRUDE
O Hamlet, speak no more:
Thou turn'st mine eyes into my very soul;
And there I see such black and grained spots
As will not leave their tinct.
Which is a little bit weird, because, as I said, he hasn't actually accused her of much of anything yet. Just, you know, remarrying. In my head, this is supporting evidence for my theory that Gertrude has suspected something fishy about her first husband's death all along, maybe even connected it to Claudius, but is just so much better pleased with her new life that she's never let herself think about it too hard.
HAMLET
Nay, but to live
In the rank sweat of an enseamed bed,
Stew'd in corruption, honeying and making love
Over the nasty sty,--
QUEEN GERTRUDE
O, speak to me no more;
These words, like daggers, enter in mine ears;
No more, sweet Hamlet!
Yes, thank you Gertrude, I really want him to shut up too. Jesus, that was gross.
HAMLET
A murderer and a villain;
A slave that is not twentieth part the tithe
Of your precedent lord; a vice of kings;
A cutpurse of the empire and the rule,
That from a shelf the precious diadem stole,
And put it in his pocket!
Finally he gets around to accusing somebody of an actual crime. And I would just like to pause and express humble appreciation of the phrasing. "A cutpurse of the empire," etc. Ladies and gentlemen, please remove your handkerchiefs for this moment of drool.
QUEEN GERTRUDE
No more!
HAMLET
A king of shreds and patches,--
Enter Ghost
THERE IT GOES AGAIN. Oh my God, I think the Ghost's entrances are my favorite part of the whole play. They make OMGWTFBBQ into an art form.
Save me, and hover o'er me with your wings,
You heavenly guards! What would your gracious figure?
He appeals to heaven to protect him from his father. How interesting is that?
QUEEN GERTRUDE
Alas, he's mad!
Wasn't that the whole point?
HAMLET
Do you not come your tardy son to chide,
That, lapsed in time and passion, lets go by
The important acting of your dread command? O, say!
Ghost
Do not forget: this visitation
Is but to whet thy almost blunted purpose.
But, look, amazement on thy mother sits:
O, step between her and her fighting soul:
Conceit in weakest bodies strongest works:
Speak to her, Hamlet.
I've been thinking all along during this read through that if it weren't for the fact that Marcellus, Bernardo, and Horatio also saw the ghost, I would just assume that the entire interview in act one scene four was a figment of Hamlet's imagination, a visible manifestation of his conscience or sub-conscious or something. This appearance of the ghost's feels even more like...one of those. Surely on some level of Hamlet's mind he's thinking "holy shit, if I keep mouthing off to my mom like this, I'm gonna get my face smacked." And then...BOOM, ghost. And Gertrude can't see him---why on earth not, when she has so much closer a connection to him than Horatio, et al?
HAMLET
How is it with you, lady?
QUEEN GERTRUDE
Alas, how is't with you,
That you do bend your eye on vacancy
And with the incorporal air do hold discourse?
Forth at your eyes your spirits wildly peep;
And, as the sleeping soldiers in the alarm,
Your bedded hair, like life in excrements,
Starts up, and stands on end. O gentle son,
Upon the heat and flame of thy distemper
Sprinkle cool patience. Whereon do you look?
HAMLET
On him, on him! Look you, how pale he glares!
His form and cause conjoin'd, preaching to stones,
Would make them capable. Do not look upon me;
Lest with this piteous action you convert
My stern effects: then what I have to do
Will want true colour; tears perchance for blood.
Poor Hamlet, doesn't want to cry in front of his dad. :-(
Those first two and a half lines do ravish the ear, don't they?
QUEEN GERTRUDE
To whom do you speak this?
HAMLET
Do you see nothing there?
QUEEN GERTRUDE
Nothing at all; yet all that is I see.
HAMLET
Nor did you nothing hear?
QUEEN GERTRUDE
No, nothing but ourselves.
HAMLET
Why, look you there! look, how it steals away!
My father, in his habit as he lived!
Look, where he goes, even now, out at the portal!
Exit Ghost
It strikes me that Gertrude's inability to see the ghost must have been something of a shock and a disappointment for Hamlet, who had his vision confirmed by two other eyewitnesses last time.
QUEEN GERTRUDE
This the very coinage of your brain:
This bodiless creation ecstasy
Is very cunning in.
HAMLET
Ecstasy!
My pulse, as yours, doth temperately keep time,
And makes as healthful music: it is not madness
That I have utter'd: bring me to the test,
And I the matter will re-word; which madness
Would gambol from.
Hamlet, I think, is unaware of the degree to which his pretended madness has overspilled its boundaries and become madness in fact.
Mother, for love of grace,
Lay not that mattering unction to your soul,
That not your trespass, but my madness speaks:
It will but skin and film the ulcerous place,
Whilst rank corruption, mining all within,
Infects unseen. Confess yourself to heaven;
Repent what's past; avoid what is to come;
And do not spread the compost on the weeds,
To make them ranker. Forgive me this my virtue;
For in the fatness of these pursy times
Virtue itself of vice must pardon beg,
Yea, curb and woo for leave to do him good.
Er, my print copy says "flattering unction", so I'll go with that. Here's another incredibly gross but extremely affecting extended simile, for which I do thank you, Hamlet, but as far as I'm concerned it is well past time you went to England, because you need a change of scenery like nobody's business. A little mortal peril will do you good.
Also, there you and Claudius go using the same metaphor again. HAHAHAHA you're related whether you like it or not.
QUEEN GERTRUDE
O Hamlet, thou hast cleft my heart in twain.
HAMLET
O, throw away the worser part of it,
And live the purer with the other half.
I like how Hamlet either a) only thinks women need to be virtous or b) is so overcome by the flashy, florid sin of fratricide that silly little sins like killing Polonius by accident don't even signify in his brain anymore.
Good night: but go not to mine uncle's bed;
Assume a virtue, if you have it not.
Oh my GOD, Gertude, how are you not slapping his face so hard that his eyeballs switch sockets? HOW IS THIS YOUR BUSINESS, YOU LITTLE SHIT?
That monster, custom, who all sense doth eat,
Of habits devil, is angel yet in this,
That to the use of actions fair and good
He likewise gives a frock or livery,
That aptly is put on. Refrain to-night,
And that shall lend a kind of easiness
To the next abstinence: the next more easy;
For use almost can change the stamp of nature,
And either the devil, or throw him out
With wondrous potency.
You know, for all the noise Gertrude keeps making about Hamlet's words striking her to the heart, she never says exactly what she feels guilty for. But Hamlet either takes it for granted that she's regretting marrying Claudius, or doesn't care whether she repents or not, as long as she stops sleeping with him. She never does agree to do this, incidentally, though Hamlet hardly seem to notice. He's saying, in essence, that the substance of virtue is in action, not intent, which conclusion bears a striking similarity to the one Claudius came to in the previous scene, where he realizes that he can mouth prayers of repentance all day long but, until he gives up the things he gained by sinning, his repentance will only be hollow. From which we may infer that Hamlet and Claudius's brains work very much alike, and also that Hamlet is a HOWLING HYPOCRITE. Or maybe just that he is dimly aware of what his own problem is, but not fully enough for the awareness to be of any use to him.
Once more, good night:
And when you are desirous to be bless'd,
I'll blessing beg of you.
"Please be my Mommy again and not Claudius's smokin' hot girlfriend?"
For this same lord,
Pointing to POLONIUS
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.
I will bestow him, and will answer well
The death I gave him.
Prophecy, or intent? I think Hamlet is very sorry for killing Polonius---right now. In a few minutes, though, it will have traveled to some other less-often-visited portion of his mind, and by the time he sets Rosencrantz & Guildenstern up for their deaths, it's all just practice for what he hopes to do to Claudius.
So, again, good night.
I must be cruel, only to be kind:
Thus bad begins and worse remains behind.
One word more, good lady.
QUEEN GERTRUDE
What shall I do?
HAMLET
Not this, by no means, that I bid you do:
Let the bloat king tempt you again to bed;
"The bloat king." How Hamlet does harp on these images of Claudius as a being of self-indulgence and excess. Remember, boys and girls, HAMLET DOESN'T LIKE FUN.
Pinch wanton on your cheek; call you his mouse;
And let him, for a pair of reechy kisses,
Or paddling in your neck with his damn'd fingers,
Make you to ravel all this matter out,
That I essentially am not in madness,
But mad in craft.
Um, Hamlet, I really, really don't think you have to worry about that. I seriously doubt that Gertrude was planning to walk out of this room and tell anyone that you're not crazy.
QUEEN GERTRUDE
Be thou assured, if words be made of breath,
And breath of life, I have no life to breathe
What thou hast said to me.
HAMLET
I must to England; you know that?
QUEEN GERTRUDE
Alack,
I had forgot: 'tis so concluded on.
GERTRUDE: *secret sigh of relief*
HAMLET
There's letters seal'd: and my two schoolfellows,
Whom I will trust as I will adders fang'd,
They bear the mandate; they must sweep my way,
And marshal me to knavery.
And seriously, who thought that was a good idea? In Claudius's pocket they may be, but they're still not, you know...awesome.
Let it work;
For 'tis the sport to have the engineer
Hoist with his own petard: and 't shall go hard
But I will delve one yard below their mines,
And blow them at the moon: O, 'tis most sweet,
When in one line two crafts directly meet.
This man shall set me packing:
I'm not saying I give a shit about Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, but I do acknowledge that Hamlet's a great deal wilder against them than they deserve, really.
I'll lug the guts into the neighbour room.
Mother, good night. Indeed this counsellor
Is now most still, most secret and most grave,
Who was in life a foolish prating knave.
Come, sir, to draw toward an end with you.
Good night, mother.
Exeunt severally; HAMLET dragging in POLONIUS
To just read it, it's startling to remember all of a sudden that the whole time Hamlet and Gertrude have been having this conversation, Polonius's dead body has been lying there in front of them leaking blood all over the floor. And Hamlet's afraid that Gertrude's going to tell people he's not really mad. Special like the bus, dude.
Tomorrow: Act 4, Scene 1, in which Gertrude and Claudius make flaily gestures.
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.
Third Act:
Scene I: Hamlet and Ophelia get couple's counseling, Elsinore style.
Scene II: But what he really wants to do is direct.
Scene III: Claudius isn't just hot---he's got depth!
Despite the fact that I am an Opheliaphile and just generally batshit about this play, I believe this is my favorite scene in the whole thing. Infer whatever you like from that fact.
LORD POLONIUS
He will come straight. Look you lay home to him:
Tell him his pranks have been too broad to bear with,
And that your grace hath screen'd and stood between
Much heat and him. I'll sconce me even here.
Pray you, be round with him.
I don't know if this would be of any consolation to Ophelia or not, but here, at least, is proof to us that Polonius treats every woman like a child, not just his daughter.
HAMLET
[Within] Mother, mother, mother!
QUEEN GERTRUDE
I'll warrant you,
Fear me not: withdraw, I hear him coming.
And Gertrude, who may not be as smart as Hamlet but is still light years smarter than Polonius, is trying both be polite and get him the fuck out of her way. Which just proves she's a queen. I couldn't do that. I'd be all, "Polonius, shut your damn pie hole, my crazy son is coming and he's probably got a knife, 'cause God knows we can't strip the royalty of their phallic symbols even if there is a substantial chance he's going to jump Bogart all over the first person to look at him cross eyed."
POLONIUS hides behind the arras
Enter HAMLET
HAMLET
Now, mother, what's the matter?
QUEEN GERTRUDE
Hamlet, thou hast thy father much offended.
HAMLET
Mother, you have my father much offended.
QUEEN GERTRUDE
Come, come, you answer with an idle tongue.
HAMLET
Go, go, you question with a wicked tongue.
QUEEN GERTRUDE
Why, how now, Hamlet!
HAMLET
What's the matter now?
QUEEN GERTRUDE
Have you forgot me?
HAMLET
No, by the rood, not so:
You are the queen, your husband's brother's wife;
And--would it were not so!--you are my mother.
QUEEN GERTRUDE
Nay, then, I'll set those to you that can speak.
I LOVE THAT. I love that because for the first time it's Hamlet vs Someone Who Has No Obligation to Put Up With His Shit. It pisses me off when Gertrude gets trembly and weepy in this scene (lookin' at you, Claire Bloom) because she's his MOTHER. And no matter how old, how existential, or how heir-to-the-throne you are, your mother is still going to be able to tear a piece off you like no one else can. I'm not saying that Gertrude actually does this all that much, at least not compared to some of Shakespeare's other mothers (there are, for instance, several moments in Richard III where Richard has these very scandalized moments of "...Mom! that I LOVE) but there's an energy to their exchange here at the beginning of this scene that suggests it could have come down to that, if it weren't for the very unfortunate fact that Hamlet's actually got the moral high ground on this one, and Gertrude has a guilty conscience.
That back and forth volley just always delights my soul.
HAMLET
Come, come, and sit you down; you shall not budge;
You go not till I set you up a glass
Where you may see the inmost part of you.
I am actually pretty sure he's talking about her sinful heart, here, and not her vagina. Sorry, Legions of Psychoanalytical Critics Whose Shit I Had to Wade Through As An Undergrad.
QUEEN GERTRUDE
What wilt thou do? thou wilt not murder me?
Help, help, ho!
LORD POLONIUS
[Behind] What, ho! help, help, help!
HAMLET
[Drawing] How now! a rat? Dead, for a ducat, dead!
Makes a pass through the arras
LORD POLONIUS
[Behind] O, I am slain!
Falls and dies
Just before I die, I hope I have the time to say "O, I am slain."
QUEEN GERTRUDE
O me, what hast thou done?
HAMLET
Nay, I know not:
Is it the king?
QUEEN GERTRUDE
O, what a rash and bloody deed is this!
HAMLET
A bloody deed! almost as bad, good mother,
As kill a king, and marry with his brother.
angevin2 asked me how I was so sure that the Player Queen's lines in Scene II were meant to be the speech Hamlet wrote for the play; there are two reasons. One, all that guff about how she's never ever ever no way no sir not in a million years nuh-uh going to re-marry after her husband's death adds up to exactly sixteen lines, and Hamlet said he was going to write twelve or sixteen lines. Two, Hamlet's line there, "kill a king and marry with his brother," is a close reflection of what the Player Queen says: "a second time I kill my husband dead when second husband kisses me in bed." In both lines, Hamlet is equating the wife's remarriage with the act of murdering the first husband, even though as far as I can tell he never, even to himself, accuses Gertrude of knowing or participating in the king's murder. The fact that the second marriage seems, to him, a crime almost, if not just as horrible---well. The fact that Hamlet is special like the bus is not news to me.
QUEEN GERTRUDE
As kill a king!
HAMLET
Ay, lady, 'twas my word.
Lifts up the array and discovers POLONIUS
Thou wretched, rash, intruding fool, farewell!
I took thee for thy better: take thy fortune;
Thou find'st to be too busy is some danger.
That is a pathetic fucking epitaph right there, but, alas, not unjust.
Leave wringing of your hands: peace! sit you down,
And let me wring your heart; for so I shall,
If it be made of penetrable stuff,
If damned custom have not brass'd it so
That it is proof and bulwark against sense.
QUEEN GERTRUDE
What have I done, that thou darest wag thy tongue
In noise so rude against me?
Yeah, that's quintessential Mom-talk right there.
HAMLET
Such an act
That blurs the grace and blush of modesty,
Calls virtue hypocrite, takes off the rose
From the fair forehead of an innocent love
And sets a blister there, makes marriage-vows
As false as dicers' oaths: O, such a deed
As from the body of contraction plucks
The very soul, and sweet religion makes
A rhapsody of words: heaven's face doth glow:
Yea, this solidity and compound mass,
With tristful visage, as against the doom,
Is thought-sick at the act.
QUEEN GERTRUDE
Ay me, what act,
That roars so loud, and thunders in the index?
I really think she has no idea what he's going on about, at this point. But she gets it in the next instant.
HAMLET
Look here, upon this picture, and on this,
The counterfeit presentment of two brothers.
See, what a grace was seated on this brow;
Hyperion's curls; the front of Jove himself;
An eye like Mars, to threaten and command;
A station like the herald Mercury
New-lighted on a heaven-kissing hill;
A combination and a form indeed,
Where every god did seem to set his seal,
To give the world assurance of a man:
This was your husband.
Just in case we've forgotten, the old king was GRAVE and WARLIKE. Honestly, this description, along with the first description Hamlet gives of him in act one scene two, is what has grounded my impression of Hamlet's father as possibly a very impressive and effective king, but really rather impossible for his wife and son to know or love very well on any kind of personal level. Hamlet, of course, has the self-awareness of a catnip mouse, and hasn't disentangled his complicated feelings about his father from his complicated feelings about...everything else, so whenever he talks about the old king it is with a startling lack of attention to his own subtext.
Look you now, what follows:
Here is your husband; like a mildew'd ear,
Blasting his wholesome brother. Have you eyes?
Could you on this fair mountain leave to feed,
And batten on this moor? Ha! have you eyes?
FFS, Hamlet, it's not like she divorced him. Was she supposed to continue to batten on a fair mountain that was actually in the process of decomposing?
You cannot call it love; for at your age
The hey-day in the blood is tame, it's humble,
And waits upon the judgment: and what judgment
Would step from this to this?
LOL, OLD PEOPLE SEX. You know, I think the vast majority of Hamlet's problems stem from an inability to understand his own mind and feelings, but he's a veritable paragon of self-awareness compared to how hard he fails at understanding Gertrude.
Sense, sure, you have,
Else could you not have motion; but sure, that sense
Is apoplex'd; for madness would not err,
Nor sense to ecstasy was ne'er so thrall'd
But it reserved some quantity of choice,
To serve in such a difference. What devil was't
That thus hath cozen'd you at hoodman-blind?
Eyes without feeling, feeling without sight,
Ears without hands or eyes, smelling sans all,
Or but a sickly part of one true sense
Could not so mope.
So Hamlet, is your point here that she shouldn't have remarried at all, shouldn't have married your uncle, or that she just ought to have married someone you thought was attractive? You have yet to accuse him of being anything other than less hot and less dignified than your dad. Granted, the word "subjective" doesn't seem to be in your vocabulary, but I believe that's a flaw in royalty generally.
O shame! where is thy blush? Rebellious hell,
If thou canst mutine in a matron's bones,
To flaming youth let virtue be as wax,
And melt in her own fire: proclaim no shame
When the compulsive ardour gives the charge,
Since frost itself as actively doth burn
And reason panders will.
"It is completely unfair that my mother is a total skank, when Ophelia won't even put out."
QUEEN GERTRUDE
O Hamlet, speak no more:
Thou turn'st mine eyes into my very soul;
And there I see such black and grained spots
As will not leave their tinct.
Which is a little bit weird, because, as I said, he hasn't actually accused her of much of anything yet. Just, you know, remarrying. In my head, this is supporting evidence for my theory that Gertrude has suspected something fishy about her first husband's death all along, maybe even connected it to Claudius, but is just so much better pleased with her new life that she's never let herself think about it too hard.
HAMLET
Nay, but to live
In the rank sweat of an enseamed bed,
Stew'd in corruption, honeying and making love
Over the nasty sty,--
QUEEN GERTRUDE
O, speak to me no more;
These words, like daggers, enter in mine ears;
No more, sweet Hamlet!
Yes, thank you Gertrude, I really want him to shut up too. Jesus, that was gross.
HAMLET
A murderer and a villain;
A slave that is not twentieth part the tithe
Of your precedent lord; a vice of kings;
A cutpurse of the empire and the rule,
That from a shelf the precious diadem stole,
And put it in his pocket!
Finally he gets around to accusing somebody of an actual crime. And I would just like to pause and express humble appreciation of the phrasing. "A cutpurse of the empire," etc. Ladies and gentlemen, please remove your handkerchiefs for this moment of drool.
QUEEN GERTRUDE
No more!
HAMLET
A king of shreds and patches,--
Enter Ghost
THERE IT GOES AGAIN. Oh my God, I think the Ghost's entrances are my favorite part of the whole play. They make OMGWTFBBQ into an art form.
Save me, and hover o'er me with your wings,
You heavenly guards! What would your gracious figure?
He appeals to heaven to protect him from his father. How interesting is that?
QUEEN GERTRUDE
Alas, he's mad!
Wasn't that the whole point?
HAMLET
Do you not come your tardy son to chide,
That, lapsed in time and passion, lets go by
The important acting of your dread command? O, say!
Ghost
Do not forget: this visitation
Is but to whet thy almost blunted purpose.
But, look, amazement on thy mother sits:
O, step between her and her fighting soul:
Conceit in weakest bodies strongest works:
Speak to her, Hamlet.
I've been thinking all along during this read through that if it weren't for the fact that Marcellus, Bernardo, and Horatio also saw the ghost, I would just assume that the entire interview in act one scene four was a figment of Hamlet's imagination, a visible manifestation of his conscience or sub-conscious or something. This appearance of the ghost's feels even more like...one of those. Surely on some level of Hamlet's mind he's thinking "holy shit, if I keep mouthing off to my mom like this, I'm gonna get my face smacked." And then...BOOM, ghost. And Gertrude can't see him---why on earth not, when she has so much closer a connection to him than Horatio, et al?
HAMLET
How is it with you, lady?
QUEEN GERTRUDE
Alas, how is't with you,
That you do bend your eye on vacancy
And with the incorporal air do hold discourse?
Forth at your eyes your spirits wildly peep;
And, as the sleeping soldiers in the alarm,
Your bedded hair, like life in excrements,
Starts up, and stands on end. O gentle son,
Upon the heat and flame of thy distemper
Sprinkle cool patience. Whereon do you look?
HAMLET
On him, on him! Look you, how pale he glares!
His form and cause conjoin'd, preaching to stones,
Would make them capable. Do not look upon me;
Lest with this piteous action you convert
My stern effects: then what I have to do
Will want true colour; tears perchance for blood.
Poor Hamlet, doesn't want to cry in front of his dad. :-(
Those first two and a half lines do ravish the ear, don't they?
QUEEN GERTRUDE
To whom do you speak this?
HAMLET
Do you see nothing there?
QUEEN GERTRUDE
Nothing at all; yet all that is I see.
HAMLET
Nor did you nothing hear?
QUEEN GERTRUDE
No, nothing but ourselves.
HAMLET
Why, look you there! look, how it steals away!
My father, in his habit as he lived!
Look, where he goes, even now, out at the portal!
Exit Ghost
It strikes me that Gertrude's inability to see the ghost must have been something of a shock and a disappointment for Hamlet, who had his vision confirmed by two other eyewitnesses last time.
QUEEN GERTRUDE
This the very coinage of your brain:
This bodiless creation ecstasy
Is very cunning in.
HAMLET
Ecstasy!
My pulse, as yours, doth temperately keep time,
And makes as healthful music: it is not madness
That I have utter'd: bring me to the test,
And I the matter will re-word; which madness
Would gambol from.
Hamlet, I think, is unaware of the degree to which his pretended madness has overspilled its boundaries and become madness in fact.
Mother, for love of grace,
Lay not that mattering unction to your soul,
That not your trespass, but my madness speaks:
It will but skin and film the ulcerous place,
Whilst rank corruption, mining all within,
Infects unseen. Confess yourself to heaven;
Repent what's past; avoid what is to come;
And do not spread the compost on the weeds,
To make them ranker. Forgive me this my virtue;
For in the fatness of these pursy times
Virtue itself of vice must pardon beg,
Yea, curb and woo for leave to do him good.
Er, my print copy says "flattering unction", so I'll go with that. Here's another incredibly gross but extremely affecting extended simile, for which I do thank you, Hamlet, but as far as I'm concerned it is well past time you went to England, because you need a change of scenery like nobody's business. A little mortal peril will do you good.
Also, there you and Claudius go using the same metaphor again. HAHAHAHA you're related whether you like it or not.
QUEEN GERTRUDE
O Hamlet, thou hast cleft my heart in twain.
HAMLET
O, throw away the worser part of it,
And live the purer with the other half.
I like how Hamlet either a) only thinks women need to be virtous or b) is so overcome by the flashy, florid sin of fratricide that silly little sins like killing Polonius by accident don't even signify in his brain anymore.
Good night: but go not to mine uncle's bed;
Assume a virtue, if you have it not.
Oh my GOD, Gertude, how are you not slapping his face so hard that his eyeballs switch sockets? HOW IS THIS YOUR BUSINESS, YOU LITTLE SHIT?
That monster, custom, who all sense doth eat,
Of habits devil, is angel yet in this,
That to the use of actions fair and good
He likewise gives a frock or livery,
That aptly is put on. Refrain to-night,
And that shall lend a kind of easiness
To the next abstinence: the next more easy;
For use almost can change the stamp of nature,
And either the devil, or throw him out
With wondrous potency.
You know, for all the noise Gertrude keeps making about Hamlet's words striking her to the heart, she never says exactly what she feels guilty for. But Hamlet either takes it for granted that she's regretting marrying Claudius, or doesn't care whether she repents or not, as long as she stops sleeping with him. She never does agree to do this, incidentally, though Hamlet hardly seem to notice. He's saying, in essence, that the substance of virtue is in action, not intent, which conclusion bears a striking similarity to the one Claudius came to in the previous scene, where he realizes that he can mouth prayers of repentance all day long but, until he gives up the things he gained by sinning, his repentance will only be hollow. From which we may infer that Hamlet and Claudius's brains work very much alike, and also that Hamlet is a HOWLING HYPOCRITE. Or maybe just that he is dimly aware of what his own problem is, but not fully enough for the awareness to be of any use to him.
Once more, good night:
And when you are desirous to be bless'd,
I'll blessing beg of you.
"Please be my Mommy again and not Claudius's smokin' hot girlfriend?"
For this same lord,
Pointing to POLONIUS
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.
I will bestow him, and will answer well
The death I gave him.
Prophecy, or intent? I think Hamlet is very sorry for killing Polonius---right now. In a few minutes, though, it will have traveled to some other less-often-visited portion of his mind, and by the time he sets Rosencrantz & Guildenstern up for their deaths, it's all just practice for what he hopes to do to Claudius.
So, again, good night.
I must be cruel, only to be kind:
Thus bad begins and worse remains behind.
One word more, good lady.
QUEEN GERTRUDE
What shall I do?
HAMLET
Not this, by no means, that I bid you do:
Let the bloat king tempt you again to bed;
"The bloat king." How Hamlet does harp on these images of Claudius as a being of self-indulgence and excess. Remember, boys and girls, HAMLET DOESN'T LIKE FUN.
Pinch wanton on your cheek; call you his mouse;
And let him, for a pair of reechy kisses,
Or paddling in your neck with his damn'd fingers,
Make you to ravel all this matter out,
That I essentially am not in madness,
But mad in craft.
Um, Hamlet, I really, really don't think you have to worry about that. I seriously doubt that Gertrude was planning to walk out of this room and tell anyone that you're not crazy.
QUEEN GERTRUDE
Be thou assured, if words be made of breath,
And breath of life, I have no life to breathe
What thou hast said to me.
HAMLET
I must to England; you know that?
QUEEN GERTRUDE
Alack,
I had forgot: 'tis so concluded on.
GERTRUDE: *secret sigh of relief*
HAMLET
There's letters seal'd: and my two schoolfellows,
Whom I will trust as I will adders fang'd,
They bear the mandate; they must sweep my way,
And marshal me to knavery.
And seriously, who thought that was a good idea? In Claudius's pocket they may be, but they're still not, you know...awesome.
Let it work;
For 'tis the sport to have the engineer
Hoist with his own petard: and 't shall go hard
But I will delve one yard below their mines,
And blow them at the moon: O, 'tis most sweet,
When in one line two crafts directly meet.
This man shall set me packing:
I'm not saying I give a shit about Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, but I do acknowledge that Hamlet's a great deal wilder against them than they deserve, really.
I'll lug the guts into the neighbour room.
Mother, good night. Indeed this counsellor
Is now most still, most secret and most grave,
Who was in life a foolish prating knave.
Come, sir, to draw toward an end with you.
Good night, mother.
Exeunt severally; HAMLET dragging in POLONIUS
To just read it, it's startling to remember all of a sudden that the whole time Hamlet and Gertrude have been having this conversation, Polonius's dead body has been lying there in front of them leaking blood all over the floor. And Hamlet's afraid that Gertrude's going to tell people he's not really mad. Special like the bus, dude.
Tomorrow: Act 4, Scene 1, in which Gertrude and Claudius make flaily gestures.