Monk

Claudius has presumably had a little time to calm his choler and to compose himself. He also has Guildenstern and Rosencrantz at his service and he is ready to take executive action after suffering Hamlet’s turn at being a playwright.

KING CLAUDIUS

I like him not, nor stands it safe with us
To let his madness range. Therefore prepare you;
I your commission will forthwith dispatch,
And he to England shall along with you:
The terms of our estate may not endure
Hazard so dangerous as doth hourly grow
Out of his lunacies.

( Read more... )

Hamlet’s elation over baring naked the conscience of the king is indeed short-lived, as Rosencrantz and Guildenstern return, and I do not think that Hamlet has any more doubts about where they stand. They are the king’s men and not his childhood buddies, and they are come like hunting dogs after the king’s prey.

GUILDENSTERN

Good my lord, vouchsafe me a word with you.

HAMLET

Sir, a whole history.

( Read more... )

Hamlet has pierced into the conscience of the king, and now knows without a doubt that Claudius did kill his father for the crown and his mother. He is understandably elated to have come this far. So, alone with Horatio, he is naturally in a celebratory mood. However, you could say that his troubles have just begun. There remains the little matter of regicide that he has yet to do. He has to kill the king and be able to convince the kingdom that his rash seeming is justice. He also has to make this killing of his mother’s husband seem just in her eyes. Moreover, he knows that Claudius is onto him, and if the man can kill his brother for a crown, then he probably will not have any qualms about killing an annoying nephew to keep that crown. But for now, all is light and heady, with a big job well done.

HAMLET

Why, let the stricken deer go weep,
The hart ungalled play;
For some must watch, while some must sleep:
So runs the world away.
Would not this, sir, and a forest of feathers-- if
the rest of my fortunes turn Turk with me--with two
Provincial roses on my razed shoes, get me a
fellowship in a cry of players, sir?

HORATIO

Half a share.

HAMLET
A whole one, I.
For thou dost know, O Damon dear,
This realm dismantled was
Of Jove himself; and now reigns here
A very, very--pajock.

HORATIO

You might have rhymed.

HAMLET

O good Horatio, I'll take the ghost's word for a
thousand pound. Didst perceive?

HORATIO

Very well, my lord.

HAMLET

Upon the talk of the poisoning?

HORATIO

I did very well note him.

HAMLET

Ah, ha! Come, some music! come, the recorders!
For if the king like not the comedy,
Why then, belike, he likes it not, perdy.
Come, some music!

But already the sinister reality of the court is closing in on Hamlet. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern have returned.

The formal play begins, and the Player King and Player Queen take the stage to sing their song of marital bliss and fidelity.

Player King

Full thirty times hath Phoebus' cart gone round
Neptune's salt wash and Tellus' orbed ground,
And thirty dozen moons with borrow'd sheen
About the world have times twelve thirties been,
Since love our hearts and Hymen did our hands
Unite commutual in most sacred bands.

Player Queen

So many journeys may the sun and moon
Make us again count o'er ere love be done!
But, woe is me, you are so sick of late,
So far from cheer and from your former state,
That I distrust you. Yet, though I distrust,
Discomfort you, my lord, it nothing must:
For women's fear and love holds quantity;
In neither aught, or in extremity.
Now, what my love is, proof hath made you know;
And as my love is sized, my fear is so:
Where love is great, the littlest doubts are fear;
Where little fears grow great, great love grows there.

Player King

'Faith, I must leave thee, love, and shortly too;
My operant powers their functions leave to do:
And thou shalt live in this fair world behind,
Honour'd, beloved; and haply one as kind
For husband shalt thou--

Player Queen

O, confound the rest!
Such love must needs be treason in my breast:
In second husband let me be accurst!
None wed the second but who kill'd the first.

HAMLET

[Aside] Wormwood, wormwood.

Player Queen

The instances that second marriage move
Are base respects of thrift, but none of love:
A second time I kill my husband dead,
When second husband kisses me in bed.

Player King

I do believe you think what now you speak;
But what we do determine oft we break.
Purpose is but the slave to memory,
Of violent birth, but poor validity;
Which now, like fruit unripe, sticks on the tree;
But fall, unshaken, when they mellow be.
Most necessary 'tis that we forget
To pay ourselves what to ourselves is debt:
What to ourselves in passion we propose,
The passion ending, doth the purpose lose.
The violence of either grief or joy
Their own enactures with themselves destroy:
Where joy most revels, grief doth most lament;
Grief joys, joy grieves, on slender accident.
This world is not for aye, nor 'tis not strange
That even our loves should with our fortunes change;
For 'tis a question left us yet to prove,
Whether love lead fortune, or else fortune love.
The great man down, you mark his favourite flies;
The poor advanced makes friends of enemies.
And hitherto doth love on fortune tend;
For who not needs shall never lack a friend,
And who in want a hollow friend doth try,
Directly seasons him his enemy.
But, orderly to end where I begun,
Our wills and fates do so contrary run
That our devices still are overthrown;
Our thoughts are ours, their ends none of our own:
So think thou wilt no second husband wed;
But die thy thoughts when thy first lord is dead.

Player Queen

Nor earth to me give food, nor heaven light!
Sport and repose lock from me day and night!
To desperation turn my trust and hope!
An anchor's cheer in prison be my scope!
Each opposite that blanks the face of joy
Meet what I would have well and it destroy!
Both here and hence pursue me lasting strife,
If, once a widow, ever I be wife!

HAMLET

If she should break it now!

Player King

'Tis deeply sworn. Sweet, leave me here awhile;
My spirits grow dull, and fain I would beguile
The tedious day with sleep.

[Sleeps]

Player Queen

Sleep rock thy brain,
And never come mischance between us twain!

[Exit]

Most knavishly does Hamlet now twist the knife in her mother’s conscience, as if the play’s presentation might be too subtle for one to get the drift. I suppose it should not be a surprise that in crafting his mousetrap that he had his mother in mind as much as Claudius. After all, before Hamlet heard from the ghost and learned of the murder of his father, we know that he was particularly aggrieved by the quick turnaround in his mother’s love. Though, we see in this exchange that Gertrude is a little plucky of character and does not simply melt away in this surprise assault from her son.

HAMLET

Madam, how like you this play?

QUEEN GERTRUDE

The lady protests too much, methinks.

HAMLET

O, but she'll keep her word.

She will keep her word, unlike certain mothers we know. Claudius gallantly stands up for his wife.

KING CLAUDIUS

Have you heard the argument? Is there no offence in 't?

HAMLET

No, no, they do but jest, poison in jest; no offence
i' the world.

Poison? Weren’t we talking about the Player Queen and her pledged fealty to her lord to extend even beyond the grave? Claudius must be thrown off-balance by this apparent confusion. Or is the moody prince purposefully toying with him? What is going on?

KING CLAUDIUS

What do you call the play?

HAMLET

The Mousetrap. Marry, how? Tropically. This play
is the image of a murder done in Vienna: Gonzago is
the duke's name; his wife, Baptista: you shall see
anon; 'tis a knavish piece of work: but what o'
that? your majesty and we that have free souls, it
touches us not: let the galled jade wince, our
withers are unwrung.

[Enter LUCIANUS]

This is one Lucianus, nephew to the king.

Nephew to the king? Wasn’t the play supposed to be about a duke? Another confusion? Or another thrust in some strange game that Hamlet seems to be playing?

Ophelia apparently seeks to diffuse the tension and distract Hamlet, though her efforts will win her only another smutty joke upon her honor, and perhaps a cruel jest that she is mistaken if she thinks he will ever be her husband.

OPHELIA

You are as good as a chorus, my lord.

HAMLET

I could interpret between you and your love, if I
could see the puppets dallying.

OPHELIA

You are keen, my lord, you are keen.

HAMLET

It would cost you a groaning to take off my edge.

OPHELIA

Still better, and worse.

HAMLET

So you miss-take your husbands.

Begin, murderer;
pox, leave thy damnable faces, and begin. Come:
'the croaking raven doth bellow for revenge.'

LUCIANUS

Thoughts black, hands apt, drugs fit, and time agreeing;
Confederate season, else no creature seeing;
Thou mixture rank, of midnight weeds collected,
With Hecate's ban thrice blasted, thrice infected,
Thy natural magic and dire property,
On wholesome life usurp immediately.

[Pours the poison into the sleeper's ears]

HAMLET

He poisons him i' the garden for's estate. His
name's Gonzago: the story is extant, and writ in
choice Italian: you shall see anon how the murderer
gets the love of Gonzago's wife.

OPHELIA

The king rises.

HAMLET

What, frighted with false fire!

QUEEN GERTRUDE

How fares my lord?

LORD POLONIUS

Give o'er the play.

KING CLAUDIUS

Give me some light: away!

POLONIUS

Lights, lights, lights!

[Exeunt all but HAMLET and HORATIO]

The storm has broke and all is out. There are no more secrets between the two mighty opposites. Only one can live, if that many.

The players begin the so-called dumb show, a little scene done in mime.

Enter a King and a Queen very lovingly; the Queen embracing him, and he her. She kneels, and makes show of protestation unto him. He takes her up, and declines his head upon her neck: lays him down upon a bank of flowers: she, seeing him asleep, leaves him. Anon comes in a fellow, takes off his crown, kisses it, and pours poison in the King's ears, and exit. The Queen returns; finds the King dead, and makes passionate action. The Poisoner, with some two or three Mutes, comes in again, seeming to lament with her. The dead body is carried away. The Poisoner wooes the Queen with gifts: she seems loath and unwilling awhile, but in the end accepts his love

Exeunt

OPHELIA
What means this, my lord?

HAMLET
Marry, this is miching mallecho; it means mischief.

OPHELIA
Belike this show imports the argument of the play.

[Enter Prologue]

HAMLET
We shall know by this fellow: the players cannot
keep counsel; they'll tell all.

OPHELIA
Will he tell us what this show meant?

HAMLET
Ay, or any show that you'll show him: be not you
ashamed to show, he'll not shame to tell you what it means.

OPHELIA
You are naught, you are naught: I'll mark the play.

But what does this dumb show mean? Does it not spoil Hamlet’s trap by the way it gives up the gig prematurely? I have read one interpretation, though I cannot recall where, that argues that Hamlet’s lines about mischief and how the players will tell all reflect his bitterness over what the players have done, and that the players did it because they could see how insulting it could be to Claudius and they wished to defuse the matter. I am not inclined to go with this interpretation, but it illustrates the interpretive problem.

We will follow the mainline interpretation which holds that the mime show begins the continuous tightening of the noose around Claudius’s conscience. As Marvin Rosenberg puts it, “The new king [Claudius] is to be confronted, in a prefatory way, with a visualization of his crime; but this is only to plant an uneasiness in him, not to be exacerbated until illuminated with language.”

This is still not a very happy interpretation, but Rosenberg also makes this interesting note, arguing that it is better to have the problem than to lose the mime:

The dumb show has often been cut, a pity, because it provides the ending to the Mousetrap that Hamlet will interrupt, before the Player Queen’s readiness to yield to the poisoner can be seen. The dumb show is a small jewel of drama itself, with expectation, reversals, and climax; the remarkable power of mime to involve spectators serves Shakespeare well here.

And now a player comes to deliver the prologue:

Prologue
For us, and for our tragedy,
Here stooping to your clemency,
We beg your hearing patiently.

[Exit]

HAMLET
Is this a prologue, or the posy of a ring?

OPHELIA
'Tis brief, my lord.

HAMLET
As woman's love.

Hamlet is still riding both Ophelia and his mother hard, as he speaks to be heard by the court, casting his own slings and arrows with his lewd suggestions, talking to them and about them as if they were tavern barmaids. But now the play begins in earnest.

Danish march. A flourish. Enter KING CLAUDIUS, QUEEN GERTRUDE, POLONIUS, OPHELIA, ROSENCRANTZ, GUILDENSTERN, and others

Much pomp and circumstance. Much is being made of Hamlet’s little play. There is the excitement of social festivity and the air practically crackles with electricity. The hope had been that the prince may be coming back to himself and out of his unknowing woe. It is also a critical scene for the real play:

All the preparation for an act and a half leads to this moment: when the great sound, and the panoply, bring the two mighty opposites face to face, for the first time (except perhaps in passing) since act one, scene two [Marvin Rosenberg].

KING CLAUDIUS

How fares our cousin Hamlet?

Hamlet is in antic mood, even seeming manic. He is up and primed. He immediately twists Claudius’s courteous greeting by punning on ‘fares’:

HAMLET

Excellent, i' faith; of the chameleon's dish: I eat
the air, promise-crammed: you cannot feed capons so.

KING CLAUDIUS

I have nothing with this answer, Hamlet; these words
are not mine.

HAMLET

No, nor mine now.

[To POLONIUS]
My lord, you played once i' the university, you say?

LORD POLONIUS

That did I, my lord; and was accounted a good actor.

HAMLET

What did you enact?

LORD POLONIUS

I did enact Julius Caesar: I was killed i' the
Capitol; Brutus killed me.

HAMLET

It was a brute part of him to kill so capital a calf
there. Be the players ready?

ROSENCRANTZ

Ay, my lord; they stay upon your patience.

Now Gertrude will reach out to Hamlet:

Gertrude’s invitation to Hamlet suggests a real affection, something more than conventional display for the court’s sake. [...]

Only we as Gertrude can know how much we care for this unruly son - who has begun the evening by offending Claudius and the old man, and now by indirection, us. Do we care about him? Love him? Will we try to calm him? Appease his madness? Try to neutralize his present belligerence? Prevent further unpleasantness between him and the new husband for whom we must show affection? Make peace between them? Show Hamlet love? Scold him? We have declared ourselves worried by his transformation, have attributed it to our own hasty marriage. What strange thing might he do now? We must enjoy - or seem to enjoy - this play he put on for us.

Through the whole of this long scene we-Gertrude will speak only twice more, briefly; we will endure insults that remind us of our guilt, sense the strange growing uneasiness of our husband, wonder and perhaps agonize at the irrational behavior of this son - almost entirely in silence. In silence we will have to experience and convey, moment by moment, our own progressive anxiety that will contribute to increasing the tension of this scene, and propel us toward the climactic private confrontation in the next scene [in the bed chamber with Polonius behind the arras]. {Marvin Rosenberg}

QUEEN GERTRUDE

Come hither, my dear Hamlet, sit by me.

HAMLET

No, good mother, here's metal more attractive.

LORD POLONIUS

[To KING CLAUDIUS] O, ho! do you mark that?

Polonius is still playing the fishmonger, and Hamlet will relate to Ophelia as though she were little more than a peasant whore.

HAMLET

Lady, shall I lie in your lap?

[Sitting down at OPHELIA's feet.]

OPHELIA

No, my lord.

HAMLET

I mean, my head upon your lap?

OPHELIA

Ay, my lord.

HAMLET

Do you think I meant CoUNTry matters?

OPHELIA

I think nothing, my lord.

HAMLET

That's a fair thought to lie between maids' legs.

OPHELIA

What is, my lord?

HAMLET

Nothing.

Why does Hamlet treat Ophelia so? Why does Shakespeare? If ever the poet deserved to be whipped, Theobald wrote, it was for this. Bradley was shocked by the “disgusting and insulting grossness” of Hamlet’s language. Dover Wilson thought Hamlet’s “savagery towards a gentle and inoffensive child,” treating her like a prostitute, was “inexcusable on the ordinary reading... irreconcilable with everything else we are told about him.” [Marvin Rosenberg]

Mr. Granville-Barker offers a considerate defense: Hamlet is merely holding up the mirror to Polonius and the King, showing everyone at court how Ophelia is being used as sexy bait. It is they who hold out Ophelia as so much juicy meat, and so he is treating her as she is offered, and as she allows herself to be offered. He is also using his bitter feelings to display his antic whims and somewhat disturbing behavior, giving himself more of a shield for other more pointed provocations that he will be offering up shortly, striking closer at the crown. For what he says next is still within earshot of the royal couple and the royal court for all to hear, and there will be more to come.

OPHELIA

You are merry, my lord.

HAMLET

Who, I?

OPHELIA

Ay, my lord.

HAMLET

O God, your only jig-maker. What should a man do
but be merry? for, look you, how cheerfully my
mother looks, and my father died within these two hours.

OPHELIA

Nay, 'tis twice two months, my lord.

HAMLET

So long? Nay then, let the devil wear black, for
I'll have a suit of sables. O heavens! die two
months ago, and not forgotten yet? Then there's
hope a great man's memory may outlive his life half
a year.

Everyone has come to indulge Hamlet and see the show he has put together, and he has put on quite a show himself, slamming and shaming everybody from the King and Queen to Polonius and Ophelia. Fortunately, the trumpet sounds to break off this unrelenting assault by the prickly prince, and the play begins with the dumb show.

The king and queen are coming to the play, and Hamlet has charged others to hasten the players, and, now, what good timing, it’s Horatio. As Mr. Rosenberg relates:

Hamlet, so compressed inward for so long with unspoken passion, can at last pour out his deepest feelings to one whom his soul seal’d for herself. Man may delight him not; but this man delights him.

HAMLET

What ho! Horatio!

[Enter HORATIO]

HORATIO

Here, sweet lord, at your service.

HAMLET

Horatio, thou art e'en as just a man
As e'er my conversation coped withal.

HORATIO

O, my dear lord,--

HAMLET

Nay, do not think I flatter;
For what advancement may I hope from thee
That no revenue hast but thy good spirits,
To feed and clothe thee? Why should the poor be flatter'd?
No, let the candied tongue lick absurd pomp,
And crook the pregnant hinges of the knee
Where thrift may follow fawning. Dost thou hear?

Since my dear soul was mistress of her choice
And could of men distinguish, her election
Hath seal'd thee for herself; for thou hast been
As one, in suffering all, that suffers nothing,
A man that fortune's buffets and rewards
Hast ta'en with equal thanks: and blest are those
Whose blood and judgment are so well commingled,
That they are not a pipe for fortune's finger
To sound what stop she please. Give me that man
That is not passion's slave, and I will wear him
In my heart's core, ay, in my heart of heart,
As I do thee.--Something too much of this.--

There is a play tonight before the king;
One scene of it comes near the circumstance
Which I have told thee of my father's death:
I prithee, when thou seest that act afoot,
Even with the very comment of thy soul
Observe mine uncle: if his occulted guilt
Do not itself unkennel in one speech,
It is a damned ghost that we have seen,
And my imaginations are as foul
As Vulcan's stithy. Give him heedful note;
For I mine eyes will rivet to his face,
And after we will both our judgments join
In censure of his seeming.

HORATIO

Well, my lord:
If he steal aught the whilst this play is playing,
And 'scape detecting, I will pay the theft.

HAMLET

They are coming to the play; I must be idle:
Get you a place.

Rosenberg notes:

We are at the center of the play, but we might as easily be near the very end. The naive spectators wonder if the coming clash may not be final. The storm that has been brewing must beak. The stage begins to fill with people, who infect the air with apprehension. What will this mad - madcap? - prince do now?

Set on going after the king’s conscience, Hamlet is instructing the players. On the surface level, this seems to be a general tutorial by a theater enthusiast on the art of acting. But this is not just theory. He wants the player to do his inserted lines as perfectly as he can, for everything is riding on it. This is not the time to have a clown laughing over his lines. And more than any other role, and any other lines, this has to be acted as realistically and forcefully as possible, for murder must have its tongue. Claudius must be able to see himself in this mirror.

HAMLET

Speak the speech, I pray you, as I pronounced it to
you, trippingly on the tongue: but if you mouth it,
as many of your players do, I had as lief the
town-crier spoke my lines. Nor do not saw the air
too much with your hand, thus, but use all gently;
for in the very torrent, tempest, and, as I may say,
the whirlwind of passion, you must acquire and beget
a temperance that may give it smoothness. O, it
offends me to the soul to hear a robustious
periwig-pated fellow tear a passion to tatters, to
very rags, to split the ears of the groundlings, who
for the most part are capable of nothing but
inexplicable dumbshows and noise: I would have such
a fellow whipped for o'erdoing Termagant; it
out-herods Herod: pray you, avoid it.

First Player

I warrant your honour.

HAMLET

Be not too tame neither,
but let your own discretion be your tutor:
suit the action to the word, the word to the action;
with this special observance,
that you o’erstep not the modesty of nature:
for any thing so overdone is from the purpose of playing,
whose end, both at the first and now, was and is,
to hold, as 'twere, the mirror up to nature;
to show virtue her own feature,
scorn her own image,
and the very age and body of the time his form and pressure.
Now this overdone, or come tardy off,
though it make the unskilful laugh,
cannot but make the judicious grieve;
the censure of the which one must in your allowance
o'erweigh a whole theatre of others.
O, there be players that I have seen play,
and heard others praise, and that highly,
not to speak it profanely,
that, neither having the accent of Christians nor
the gait of Christian, pagan, nor man,
have so strutted and bellowed that I have thought
some of nature's journeymen had made men
and not made them well,
they imitated humanity so abominably.

First Player

I hope we have reformed that indifferently with us,
sir.

HAMLET

O, reform it altogether.
And let those that play your clowns
speak no more than is set down for them;
for there be of them that will themselves laugh,
to set on some quantity of barren spectators to laugh too;
though, in the meantime,
some necessary question of the play be then to be considered:
that's villainous,
and shows a most pitiful ambition in the fool that uses it.
Go, make you ready.

Polonius enters with Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, and Hamlet asks if the King is coming to the play. It is a critical question. As Marvin Rosenberg puts it, “Hamlet - and the naive spectator - wait in suspense. If the King will not come, there will be no mouse for the trap.”

How now, my lord! I will the king hear this piece of work?

LORD POLONIUS

And the queen too, and that presently.

HAMLET

Bid the players make haste.

[Exit POLONIUS]

Will you two help to hasten them?

ROSENCRANTZ GUILDENSTERN

We will, my lord.

Exeunt ROSENCRANTZ and GUILDENSTERN

Hamlet has delivered his ‘to be or not to be’ soliloquy, reconsidering whether he should go through on his Mousetrap, having the edited script of “The Murder of Gonzago” in his hand, and seeing Ophelia, he is doubtful about going through with his revenge mission, which promises to be a suicide mission. Marvin Rosenberg gives us pause to appreciate Ophelia’s dramatic position in the scene, as we have had no soliloquies from her. She just primly waits for Hamlet to arrive, with her father and Claudius hidden away to eavesdrop:

She suffers herself to be used that her mad lover may be overheard. An actress must employ all her skill to show how painful to Ophelia is this unworthy part; to know that, in this interview with her lover, her father and the king are listening to every word; that she is to see him no more when she had so much to say to him; and to feel herself forced to show herself to him in this strange, unnatural attitude, compelled to bear all his reproaches, his bitterness, bordering on brutality, and not daring to breathe a word in vindication of herself.... Instead one commonly sees on the stage a maiden taking everything very quietly.

HAMLET

Nymph, in thy orisons
Be all my sins remember'd.

OPHELIA

Good my lord,
How does your honour for this many a day?

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.

A rebuff! Again. Hamlet can only throw up a wall:

HAMLET

No, not I;
I never gave you aught.

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.

This accusation must seem entirely unfair. Who has put off who? And not once but twice. Of course, this is not entirely fair to Ophelia either, since she has not shut out the prince on her own whims, but is merely obeying her father as a good daughter should.

The logic and general interpretation of the play dictates that Hamlet sometime becomes aware that Polonius and the king must be behind this, and I would think that this point may be best placed here, in this false note of Ophelia’s accusation, as she must be following a script of her own.

This revelation pushes Hamlet down a dark road. Claudius and his treachery is a poison in his life that must be treated after all, having stricken even at his lovelife. One reader, Mr. Kachalov, frames Hamlet’s perspective toward Ophelia this way: “They are poisoning you.... If you are like them, it means there is nothing holy in the world.” She is like Rosencrantz and Guildenstern - an intimate turned into a spy against him. He is angry. He must put Ophelia behind him. He must complete his revenge.

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.

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.

Rosenberg notes:

Most Ophelias suffer the blow: if they have held back tears before, they are likely to weep now. [...] Shakespeare must have intended the shock to Ophelia to be devastating. A foundation on which she has built her life crumbles in the moment. [...] “I loved you not.” This is the surgeon’s knife for most complaints, and many a man has used it coolly and callously.

Confronted by Ophelia’s obvious distress, Hamlet is likely to return with tender sincerity, perhaps caressing her, stroking her hair, her tearful face:

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.

These lines are thought to echo Hamlet’s first soliloquy - How weary, stale, flat and unprofitable seem to me all the uses of this world! - in which he touches upon his deeply morbid streak, what Rosenberg calls his “life-nausea”, calling for a world of no marriages and no breeding.

But then Hamlet catches himself, and realizing that sometimes you have to be cruel to be kind, he focuses back on the intrigues against him and regains his aggression.

Where’s your father?

OPHELIA

At home, my lord.

HAMLET

Let the doors be shut upon him, that he may play the
fool no where but in's own house. Farewell.

These ‘farewells’ are often taken as cues for Hamlet to start leaving, crossing the stage and perhaps even exiting, from which he will return in a huff. You know this kind of argument and its passion in real life, this business of leaving but then deciding that you have one thing more to say, a better parting shot to make, and again and again. So, here we have Hamlet’s first false exit, and Ophelia is left alone on stage, proclaiming tearfully:

O, help him, you sweet heavens!

Then Hamlet storms back, apparently set on burning his bridges with Ophelia.

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.
Get thee to a nunnery, go: farewell.

He stomps off and then decides that he has another good shot to make:

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.

Again he leaves, and Ophelia cries out another prayer:

O heavenly powers, restore him!

Hamlet is not done yet, not by a long shot, as he now speaks with reckless abandon. If Rosencrantz and Guildenstern got nothing from him, he will now give Ophelia practically everything, and Claudius will have a lot to think on indeed.

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.

This time Hamlet leaves for good, and Ophelia gives her most touching lament:

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 musicked 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!

Polonius and Claudius return, and Claudius has heard enough. He has his answer, and he has no hesitancy about acting. Polonius wants one more chance to sift Hamlet, but as Ophelia must be feeling it, she is not the answer. She feels more like a fool.

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: 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?

LORD POLONIUS

It shall do well: but yet do I believe
The origin and commencement of his grief
Sprung from neglected love.

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.

KING CLAUDIUS

It shall be so:
Madness in great ones must not unwatch'd go.

Those that are married already, all but one, shall live?

To be or not to be... that is indeed the question. What does it mean? The first couple of times we come across “Hamlet”, it seems obvious enough. Suicide. To live or not. However, for those who latch on to the play for their own, contrary to normal expectations, with additional readings, the clarity begins to dissipate, the meaning becomes less clear. Such may be the secret of literature that lives forever.

Marvin Rosenberg waxes eloquently on the allure of this soliloquy:

Why is it so much remembered, so much admired? Because it deals with the core of existence? Suggests that we have a choice, to live or die? Because it seeks what is noblest in life? Because it imagines the blessed release from life in a quiet sleep, a return to the serenity of the womb? Because it ponders the dreadful mystery of what lies beyond death? Because it commits us to life? Because it invites us to share the self of the lone victim, the child-adult isolated in a formidable world, with no option but to survive? Because it rehearses the everyday indignities of living? Because it is in its whole a mystery, the mystery of art, seizing our attention with the first abrupt monosyllables, then the noble rhythms, the music of dreams?

We know that Hamlet was sent for and is coming. Polonius and Claudius have baited their trap to pluck Hamlet’s mystery from his breast, as Ophelia is now seated with her book of Christian devotion awaiting him. Hamlet presumably does not know who has called on him. In my imagining of the play, Hamlet sees Ophelia, and the sight of her loveliness gives him pause. He holds back. Perhaps he hides behind a pillar. He has been debating in his soul whether he should go through with his own scheme: the Mousetrap.

In this interpretation, Hamlet’s great speech is not so much about whether he should directly commit suicide, but whether he should act to carry out his scheme and give the player his sixteen or so lines to interpose in the play, to act or not to act. Might it not be easier to live under Claudius’s rule and pretend he had learned nothing from the ghost? If he acts, does he not throw his life in jeopardy, as indeed turns out to be the case?

This reading also works well with Hamlet’s apparent indifference about being able to prove Claudius’s guilt to others, particularly those who would sit in judgment on his murder of Claudius, assuming he even survives the assassination. Maybe he does not even bother harboring such ambitions to prove his case, since he would have only an immaterial ghost for his material witness. Maybe it is suicidal just to go after the king.

I like to think that seeing Ophelia and the promise of her love has moved him to play it safe and just to suffer the torments and anguish of living life under Claudius, the murderer of his father and the usurper of his crown and mother, and so he loses the name of action. Of course, this somewhat happy dream of Ophelia’s love is about to blow up in his face.

This interpretation is good for this year only. I reserve the right to have a different one next year.

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? 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;
For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,
The oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely,
The pangs of dispriz'd 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 these 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?
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.--Soft you now!
The fair Ophelia!

And he steps out and approaches her, walking straight into the trap.