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Back to the action. Claudius and Gertrude have left the scene at Polonius’s urging, and the old chamberlain approaches Hamlet, who is walking through reading a book. Remember, Hamlet’s garb and manner are off-putting and slack, very unprincely. It might be helpful to imagine Hamlet as if he were an alcoholic on a binge, being perhaps a bit unshaven and unkempt and raw of manner, though we know he is not drunk. It has been two months since he met with the ghost of his dead father, and he accordingly feels estranged from Claudius’s court, from everyone, and he still does not know what to do about the call for revenge.
The following is based on Marvin Rosenberg’s discussion of the scene with the smoothing influence of my imagination.
Polonius is wary of the newly strange and uncertain prince, and he is tender in his approach, as if Hamlet were more like a feral cat:
How does my good Lord Hamlet?
Hamlet does not care to waste time and thought on this meddling old fool, and so he speaks disdainfully with scarcely disguised contempt, as he focuses harder on his book:
Well, God-a-mercy.
Polonius is seriously doubtful about Hamlet’s state of mind. He asks,
Do you know me, my lord?
Hamlet bitterly plays with double-meanings. He says,
Excellent well. You are a fishmonger.
Thus Polonius is indulged in his fancy that the young prince is practically barking mad, while at the same time Hamlet is obviously displaying his wits in full force. The association of fishiness with women is long held, and it certainly goes back to Shakespeare’s time. Hamlet is not unaware that Polonius is, in a blunt and harsh sense, trying to sell his daughter into high royalty, working to broker a marriage between Ophelia and the prince. Polonius takes Hamlet literally:
LORD POLONIUS
Not I, my lord.
HAMLET
Then I would you were so honest a man.
LORD POLONIUS
Honest, my lord!
HAMLET
Ay, sir; to be honest, as this world goes, is to be
one man picked out of ten thousand.
LORD POLONIUS
That's very true, my lord.
Hamlet seeks to break away again, but Polonius sticks to him. Rosenberg writes, “Hamlet, unable to dislodge this leech, turns on him, with mad talk of breeding, copulation between the sun and a dead bitch. Maggots for children.”
HAMLET
For if the sun breed maggots in a dead dog, being a
god kissing carrion,--Have you a daughter?
LORD POLONIUS
I have, my lord.
HAMLET
Let her not walk i' the sun: conception is a
blessing: but not as your daughter may conceive.
Friend, look to 't.
Rosenberg gives us this note: “Hankins reports the folk-belief that the sun could indeed induce pregnancy: nubile daughters were ‘shut up in darkness for several weeks.’”
In reaction to this heated talk, Polonius does not leave, but he does break away for an aside. I favor the interpretation that has Claudius and Gertrude in the wings observing, and that Polonius steps back to them to relate this aside.
How say you by that? Still harping on my
daughter: yet he knew me not at first; he said I
was a fishmonger: he is far gone, far gone: and
truly in my youth I suffered much extremity for
love; very near this. I'll speak to him again.
The King and Queen have had enough and leave, and Polonius walks back to engage Hamlet anew:
What do you read, my lord?
Perhaps in exasperation, Hamlet answers:
Words, words, words.
We see this pattern of thrice repetition a couple of times in this dialogue, and the strongest reading may be to see that by the third repetition, Hamlet attains a self-awareness, cutting through his own whimsical irony, penetrating to a deeper self-truth. In this instance, he is indeed just reading and toying with words, rather than acting and doing and making good on his promise to his slain father.
Polonius plows on:
What is the matter, my lord?
At this point, Hamlet may be lost himself on his levels of meaning and irony, confused as to whether Polonius has caught onto his personal trail of meaning, as he asks:
Between who?
But Polonius knows nothing of Hamlet’s inner turmoil, probing again:
I mean, the matter that you read, my lord.
Hamlet reorients himself and resumes his verbal game:
Slanders, sir: for the satirical rogue says here
that old men have grey beards, that their faces are
wrinkled, their eyes purging thick amber and
plum-tree gum and that they have a plentiful lack of
wit, together with most weak hams: all which, sir,
though I most powerfully and potently believe, yet
I hold it not honesty to have it thus set down, for
yourself, sir, should be old as I am, if like a crab
you could go backward.
In another aside, this time to himself (and the audience) only, Polonius shows that although he regards Hamlet to be largely mad and lost, he does catch the malicious intent behind these verbal headwinds:
Though this be madness, yet there is method in’t.
Apparently, they are in that part of the court that has an open-air walkway, and Polonius continues to engage Hamlet in an earnestly helpful tone:
Will you walk out of the air, my lord?
Rosenberg notes that “fresh air was thought to be unhealthful for the mad.”
Hamlet shoots back:
Into my grave.
This may have come straight off the top of his head, a fired shot of whimsy, but this is another moment in which Hamlet can be seen to have unwittingly spoken a sharper truth about himself and his uncertain fate, and he feels the chill of it, that the grave indeed hangs open for him.
Polonius continues to play the straight man:
Indeed, that is out o’ the air.
Then Polonius gives another aside, again just to himself and the audience:
How pregnant sometimes his replies are! a happiness
that often madness hits on, which reason and sanity
could not so prosperously be delivered of. I will
leave him, and suddenly contrive the means of
meeting between him and my daughter.
Polonius may also be unwittingly hitting on how Hamlet’s responses have indeed sometimes proven more pregnant than even he intended. In any case, Polonius is finally ready to leave this encounter:
My honourable lord, I will most humbly take my leave of you.
In his parting words, Hamlet seems to, once again, open himself to another biting reverie about his own dour fate:
You cannot, sir, take from me any thing that I will
more willingly part withal: except my life, except
my life, except my life.
I fancy that maybe, in this, he also has some feeling for the good possibility that he may be losing Ophelia's love, if not his physical life.
Polonius says:
Fare you well, my lord.
Hamlet then curses Polonius to his departing back, so as to be doubtlessly overheard:
These tedious old fools!
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern then enter the scene, and Polonius obligingly directs them to Hamlet, no doubt with a snarl of disdain of his own:
You go to seek the Lord Hamlet; there he is.
And we will leave the action there.
The following is based on Marvin Rosenberg’s discussion of the scene with the smoothing influence of my imagination.
Polonius is wary of the newly strange and uncertain prince, and he is tender in his approach, as if Hamlet were more like a feral cat:
How does my good Lord Hamlet?
Hamlet does not care to waste time and thought on this meddling old fool, and so he speaks disdainfully with scarcely disguised contempt, as he focuses harder on his book:
Well, God-a-mercy.
Polonius is seriously doubtful about Hamlet’s state of mind. He asks,
Do you know me, my lord?
Hamlet bitterly plays with double-meanings. He says,
Excellent well. You are a fishmonger.
Thus Polonius is indulged in his fancy that the young prince is practically barking mad, while at the same time Hamlet is obviously displaying his wits in full force. The association of fishiness with women is long held, and it certainly goes back to Shakespeare’s time. Hamlet is not unaware that Polonius is, in a blunt and harsh sense, trying to sell his daughter into high royalty, working to broker a marriage between Ophelia and the prince. Polonius takes Hamlet literally:
LORD POLONIUS
Not I, my lord.
HAMLET
Then I would you were so honest a man.
LORD POLONIUS
Honest, my lord!
HAMLET
Ay, sir; to be honest, as this world goes, is to be
one man picked out of ten thousand.
LORD POLONIUS
That's very true, my lord.
Hamlet seeks to break away again, but Polonius sticks to him. Rosenberg writes, “Hamlet, unable to dislodge this leech, turns on him, with mad talk of breeding, copulation between the sun and a dead bitch. Maggots for children.”
HAMLET
For if the sun breed maggots in a dead dog, being a
god kissing carrion,--Have you a daughter?
LORD POLONIUS
I have, my lord.
HAMLET
Let her not walk i' the sun: conception is a
blessing: but not as your daughter may conceive.
Friend, look to 't.
Rosenberg gives us this note: “Hankins reports the folk-belief that the sun could indeed induce pregnancy: nubile daughters were ‘shut up in darkness for several weeks.’”
In reaction to this heated talk, Polonius does not leave, but he does break away for an aside. I favor the interpretation that has Claudius and Gertrude in the wings observing, and that Polonius steps back to them to relate this aside.
How say you by that? Still harping on my
daughter: yet he knew me not at first; he said I
was a fishmonger: he is far gone, far gone: and
truly in my youth I suffered much extremity for
love; very near this. I'll speak to him again.
The King and Queen have had enough and leave, and Polonius walks back to engage Hamlet anew:
What do you read, my lord?
Perhaps in exasperation, Hamlet answers:
Words, words, words.
We see this pattern of thrice repetition a couple of times in this dialogue, and the strongest reading may be to see that by the third repetition, Hamlet attains a self-awareness, cutting through his own whimsical irony, penetrating to a deeper self-truth. In this instance, he is indeed just reading and toying with words, rather than acting and doing and making good on his promise to his slain father.
Polonius plows on:
What is the matter, my lord?
At this point, Hamlet may be lost himself on his levels of meaning and irony, confused as to whether Polonius has caught onto his personal trail of meaning, as he asks:
Between who?
But Polonius knows nothing of Hamlet’s inner turmoil, probing again:
I mean, the matter that you read, my lord.
Hamlet reorients himself and resumes his verbal game:
Slanders, sir: for the satirical rogue says here
that old men have grey beards, that their faces are
wrinkled, their eyes purging thick amber and
plum-tree gum and that they have a plentiful lack of
wit, together with most weak hams: all which, sir,
though I most powerfully and potently believe, yet
I hold it not honesty to have it thus set down, for
yourself, sir, should be old as I am, if like a crab
you could go backward.
In another aside, this time to himself (and the audience) only, Polonius shows that although he regards Hamlet to be largely mad and lost, he does catch the malicious intent behind these verbal headwinds:
Though this be madness, yet there is method in’t.
Apparently, they are in that part of the court that has an open-air walkway, and Polonius continues to engage Hamlet in an earnestly helpful tone:
Will you walk out of the air, my lord?
Rosenberg notes that “fresh air was thought to be unhealthful for the mad.”
Hamlet shoots back:
Into my grave.
This may have come straight off the top of his head, a fired shot of whimsy, but this is another moment in which Hamlet can be seen to have unwittingly spoken a sharper truth about himself and his uncertain fate, and he feels the chill of it, that the grave indeed hangs open for him.
Polonius continues to play the straight man:
Indeed, that is out o’ the air.
Then Polonius gives another aside, again just to himself and the audience:
How pregnant sometimes his replies are! a happiness
that often madness hits on, which reason and sanity
could not so prosperously be delivered of. I will
leave him, and suddenly contrive the means of
meeting between him and my daughter.
Polonius may also be unwittingly hitting on how Hamlet’s responses have indeed sometimes proven more pregnant than even he intended. In any case, Polonius is finally ready to leave this encounter:
My honourable lord, I will most humbly take my leave of you.
In his parting words, Hamlet seems to, once again, open himself to another biting reverie about his own dour fate:
You cannot, sir, take from me any thing that I will
more willingly part withal: except my life, except
my life, except my life.
I fancy that maybe, in this, he also has some feeling for the good possibility that he may be losing Ophelia's love, if not his physical life.
Polonius says:
Fare you well, my lord.
Hamlet then curses Polonius to his departing back, so as to be doubtlessly overheard:
These tedious old fools!
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern then enter the scene, and Polonius obligingly directs them to Hamlet, no doubt with a snarl of disdain of his own:
You go to seek the Lord Hamlet; there he is.
And we will leave the action there.
