Hamlet (4)
Act II scene ii ff
Claudius now, with Gertrude's co-operation, authorises Rosencrantz and Guildenstern to spy on Hamlet because of his noticeably different behaviour, which is the main snag to his role of semi-madman. They do not know that the King is a murderer and that Hamlet is waiting to kill him and so undertake their task without disloyalty to Hamlet. Their initial motives are respectable even if they hope to win advancement and they recognise that their actions are "practices" (l.38): by the Queen's modified repetition of Claudius' words (ll. 33, 34) they are presented as interchangeable. Claudius is a smooth talker and suggests that there must be triggers for Hamlet's behaviour other than his father's death: he could equally well merely command them to do his bidding but he prefers to persuade and ingratiate himself as he knows he is on dangerous ground. That is why he calls Hamlet his "too-much-changed-son" and is backed in tone and manner by Gertrude.
Polonius enters and claims to have found the cause of Hamlet's strange behaviour but is diplomatically and sensibly prepared to wait until the ambassadors have delivered news of greater import. Gertrude is more perceptive when she says it is "the main/His father's death, and our o'er hasty marriage". This is the only known reason and was enough to disturb Hamlet in the first scene before the meeting with the Ghost. She would not have said this to her husband if she were aware of the murder and so is proven innocent of that crime but culpable of the sin of adultery.
The messengers from Norway bring news applicable to affairs of state: The King of Norway has rebuked his nephew Fortinbras for his planned attack on Denmark and has allowed him to lead his army against the Poles, requesting safe passage from Claudius. The theme of family relationships is here extended to include uncle and nephew as well as father and son and, in the case of Polonius, father and daughter. All these form contrasts with Hamlet's in that they are variations on a norm whereas his is beyond normality. The account also touches on the theme of men of action who do not question but do deeds of courage and military might. Claudius, using the royal plural, is pleased but is about to indulge himself in feasting, a symptom, if excessive, of the soft underbelly of his rule and yet, so far, he has shown himself to be an efficient and courteous monarch.
Polonius senses that the atmosphere is relaxed and conducive to his revelation and so allows himself to become verbose and, almost comically, expansive. Having claimed that "brevity is the soul of wit" (if the play seems full of modern cliches it is because Shakespeare has coined so many memorable and useful phrases in it), he then indulges himself in rhetorical flourishes and long-windedness, before arriving at his diagnosis. Gertrude starts to lose patience: "More matter, with less art", where she means artificial speech but Polonius plays on another meaning: "pretence" before promising to cut out the flourishes, which he simply cannot do as he is enjoying being the centre of attention with his important announcement. He takes out and reads a letter from Hamlet to Ophelia which is oddly worded with more affectations of language, modes of wording being another theme in the drama. The phrases are like Osric's later and add to the leitmotif of repeated incidents in the play as does the literary criticism Polonius delivers which Hamlet echoes to the players later. If the letter were written before she cut him off, it is peculiar in flavour as Hamlet was then, presumably, sincere and direct but if it were written afterwards, it is even more inexplicable because there is no mention of her changed attitude. All this passes without notice in a performance where we are gripped by other tensions. It is possible that he used this over-done courtly style as a compliment and to be different from the colloquial and it does show his awareness of the importance of methods of self-expression.
It is clear that Polonius is well-regarded and respected as "a man faithful and honourable" and he proceeds to deliver an honest though wordily self-justifying account of his own interference in the affair and his motives. He is detailed about the stages of a love-madness (ll. 146 - 150) to add credence to his theory and the royal couple accept it happily as it removes their guilt. Claudius accepts the old man is reliable and they both hit on another plan to spy on the Prince who frequently walks in the lobby for hours at a time. At this point is is very probable that Hamlet enters unseen onto the inner stage of an Elizabethan theatre and overhears the plot before the entry that they notice. This would explain his behaviour when they are eavesdropping later. His dialogue with Polonius is in comic mode but with pointed undertones, a fishmonger being, possibly, a cant word for a procurer, although Hamlet may be using the first word that enters his head which will accentuate his eccentric behaviour. Much of what follows concerns sexuality and flesh and Polonius' claim that he suffered for love in his youth serves only to emphasise how extreme Hamlet's problems are and how removed from the usual difficulties of an affair of the heart. His description of Polonius, disguised as a generalised portrait of any old man, makes an audience smile and is a relief from other tensions, whilst underlining truths as Polonius accepts: "Though this be madness, there is method in it." The thought of a grave enters Hamlet's mind as he cannot forget the Ghost but Polonius is more intent on arranging a trial meeting between him and Ophelia. We note again Hamlet's characteristic speech pattern of repetition: "words, words, words" and "except my life, except my life, except my life", with slowing rhythm and downward intonation (Shakespeare is a master at giving his personalities modes of speech which are subtly differentiated from one another) but he shows his sanity at "These tedious old fools", unfair though that might be.
He is pleased at first to see his old acquaintances, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, though he possibly mistakes one for the other. Sexuality takes over this interchange also with the two courtiers enjoying cheerful, bawdy witticims. They are tactless in claiming the world has grown honest to the dispossessed heir to the throne and Hamlet's mood changes at this point, calling Denmark a prison, rambling and questioning them as they dwell on ambition, raising the usurpation theme which is otherwise largely hidden. Perhaps this leads him to realise they have been sent to spy and to ask them why they are in Elsinore. In broken and brief demands he begs them to be honest with him as he is beginning to realise that there are few people around him that he can trust and is, with justification, becoming suspicious of almost everybody.
After probing them deeply about their function and presence and forcing them to admit their role as spies, he delivers a prose speech about his depression and his former view of Man which is both perceptive and eloquent. This, he says, will save them further deceptions but it also serves to tell the audience how he has changed from someone who believed of a man: "How noble in reason! How infinite in faculty ... how like an angel ... how like a god" whereas now, the earth which also seemed beautiful is "a foul and pestilential congregation of vapours"; this degeneration has caused him to lose interest in his "custom of exercises" [practices/interests/habits] and abandon all delight. This remarkable passage of Renaissance hope and joy turned to despair with its memorable phrases and ringing rhythms is lost on the others who merely smile at a possible bawdiness but the reader and audience accept it as truthful self-analysis, sad and accurate. It serves to establish the pre-fall Hamlet as a normal, active, rounded character whom the actions of others have destroyed and reduced to melancholy, a mood which the contemporary audience would have recognised from general opinion and various books such as Timothy Bright's Treatise of Melancholy. Hamlet's is therefore a known yet particularised case and he is here concealing the individual aspects: the feigned element in his manner; his mother's adultery; his father's murder and Ophelia's desertion of him. He is also deliberately misleading his friends to avoid disclosure of these matters.
When they tell him of the arrival of the players, he seems to realise instantly the possibility of a trap for Claudius: "He that plays the king shall be welcome" but he also aware of the stock characters of a theatrical troupe, including the lady who "shall speak her mind freely". It sounds as if he has knowledge of and interest in drama as one of his many earlier activities. By his detailed interrogation, he discovers that the fashion is now for a group of child actors who mock the adults: this may be a topical reference to a company of rivals to Shakespeare's but it is also an example of the fickleness of popular taste and opinion, a theme which Hamlet makes explicit at ll 346 ff when he dwells again on the replacement of his father by his uncle and notes that those who "would make mows" [grimaces] at him previously now idolise him. He uses ceremonious language in projecting that he will welcome the group cermoniously and gives a hint that his madness is, at least in part, assumed.
When Polonius enters, Hamlet toys with him, teasing and deliberately misunderstanding his words. Polonius garrulously praises this troupe for performance of any possible kind of play as Hamlet pointedly mentions his daughter to keep his suspicions simmering. Yet when the first players enter, we see a glimpse of what he must have been like when he had nothing to bear: open, welcoming, eager and friendly so that the contrast with the wayward manner, now his mode, is underlined. We now see him as a literary critic of discernment with a distaste for flowery and affected language or "sallets" [improper matter] and a love of true sentiments properly expressed. The leitmotif of a play-within-a-play is introduced with its attendant notion of repeated scenes as Hamlet starts to recite. We are aware that Hamlet is a leisurely play, textured and detailed, with no attempt to rush us through to further developments of plot. It is odd that he admires this somewhat overwritten speech but it is about heroes who are men of action: Pyrrhus is a ruthless killer and avenger; Hecuba's mourning contrasts with Gertrude's lack of grief; and the player's ability to weep for an imaginary sorrow seems to rebuke Hamlet. Lines 452 ff are a forward echo to the scene where Hamlet stands over the praying Claudius and does not kill him and lines 468 ff lash out at Fortune or Fate and strike a chord with Hamlet. Polonius' responses are unsophisticated: "This is too long" and he would like it stopped because of the misery. Hamlet is in control and thoughtfully gives instructions for the players' comfort whilst making the vague but disconcerting remark: "After your death you were better have a bad epitaph than their ill report while you live."
Hamlet now has his plan ready and it will involve a play-with-the-play as a trap, including an inserted speech which he will write himself, making us curious to see which lines these will be, This also stresses the theme of artifice and reality as it will clearly resonate with the present facts. He ends on a hospitable note before ruminating on what has happened.
The second soliloquy: "O, what a rogue and peasant slave am I" in fact opens with relief at solitude: "Now I am alone" and one of the several short lines breaking up the blank verse which indicate powerful and uncontrolled emotion. Hamlet has been struck by the player's speech and refers it to himself obsessively, constantly and unreasonably drawing attention to his own delay and inaction whilst rationally waiting for proof the next night about the Ghost's information. The length of the speech and the discussion with the actors also help to give the effect of stagnation. He dwells on false passion, another theme in the play, in that the Player could manifest emotion about a "fiction" whilst he is behaving like a lower order on man: "a rogue and peasant slave." The repetition of the "h" in the lines about Hecuba have the effect of sobs as he contrasts the player's motives with his own. Paradoxically, he does not credit the fact that, even if he were as the Player might be, and were to "drown the stage with tears", this would still not be the action required of him but further procrastination. Nor does he attack the question of whether or not true feelings would be more evident than feigned. This soliloquy approaches metadrama with its references to a "cue" and "stage" and therefore reminds us that he should be acting in the sense of doing not playing a role. His syntax is a mixture of questions and exclamations with anacoluthon [a break in smooth grammar] at l. 554 and elsewhere: "With this slave's offal - bloody, bawdy villain." He imagines insults to his manhood such as tweaking his nose and, in his irrational fixation with his own inadequacy, feels he deserves this as he is "pigeon-livered" [too gentle].
Yet he needs to test the Ghost and its claim of a "damned defeat" and only has to wait a day for this. He works himself up into a near hysterical hatred of Claudius: "Remorseless, treacherous, lecherous, kindless [unnatural[ villain" before collapsing in bitter self-disgust, a miniature of his behaviour throughout as he continues to: "like a whore, unpack [his] heart with words", whilst rebuking himself for so doing. Yet his scheme is sound and opportune and he is putting it into practice quickly: the theme that murder will out will be embodied in a play which has a good chance of exposing Claudius' guilt: "murder, though it have no tongue, will speak/With most miraculous organ" [the voice which will utter involuntarily]. Imagery of disease and wounding occurs: "I'll tent him to the quick" [probe to the depest part of the wound], the idea being that the state is sick because of the murder but so is Hamlet's mind. Quite rationally and in keeping with current opinion, he accepts that the Ghost could be the devil in "pleasing shape" and is intelligently aware that he is vulnerable to deception because of his deranged state of mind: "my weakness and my melancholy". This is not an excuse and the fact he suspected Claudius previous to the encounter on the battlements makes him more likely to believe a possible untruth. He ends with more positive rhythms: "The play's the thing,/Wherein I'll catch the conscience of the king" but the mood which lingers in our minds is the profound hatred of Claudius and himself. The stress in the soliloquies on his delay is not a remnant of an old source; it is endemic and, as it is largely irrational and obsessive, contributes to the theme of disease spreading from the top to all the body politic and his own mind, technically achieved through imagery of illness. Despite the slow pace of the action, tension is constantly maintained as we now await the outcome of the performance and realise that, if it reveals the guilt of Claudius, Hamlet will be obliged to obey the Ghost and act in the sense of do deeds rather than put on a performance of his own.
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Act II scene ii ff
Claudius now, with Gertrude's co-operation, authorises Rosencrantz and Guildenstern to spy on Hamlet because of his noticeably different behaviour, which is the main snag to his role of semi-madman. They do not know that the King is a murderer and that Hamlet is waiting to kill him and so undertake their task without disloyalty to Hamlet. Their initial motives are respectable even if they hope to win advancement and they recognise that their actions are "practices" (l.38): by the Queen's modified repetition of Claudius' words (ll. 33, 34) they are presented as interchangeable. Claudius is a smooth talker and suggests that there must be triggers for Hamlet's behaviour other than his father's death: he could equally well merely command them to do his bidding but he prefers to persuade and ingratiate himself as he knows he is on dangerous ground. That is why he calls Hamlet his "too-much-changed-son" and is backed in tone and manner by Gertrude.
Polonius enters and claims to have found the cause of Hamlet's strange behaviour but is diplomatically and sensibly prepared to wait until the ambassadors have delivered news of greater import. Gertrude is more perceptive when she says it is "the main/His father's death, and our o'er hasty marriage". This is the only known reason and was enough to disturb Hamlet in the first scene before the meeting with the Ghost. She would not have said this to her husband if she were aware of the murder and so is proven innocent of that crime but culpable of the sin of adultery.
The messengers from Norway bring news applicable to affairs of state: The King of Norway has rebuked his nephew Fortinbras for his planned attack on Denmark and has allowed him to lead his army against the Poles, requesting safe passage from Claudius. The theme of family relationships is here extended to include uncle and nephew as well as father and son and, in the case of Polonius, father and daughter. All these form contrasts with Hamlet's in that they are variations on a norm whereas his is beyond normality. The account also touches on the theme of men of action who do not question but do deeds of courage and military might. Claudius, using the royal plural, is pleased but is about to indulge himself in feasting, a symptom, if excessive, of the soft underbelly of his rule and yet, so far, he has shown himself to be an efficient and courteous monarch.
Polonius senses that the atmosphere is relaxed and conducive to his revelation and so allows himself to become verbose and, almost comically, expansive. Having claimed that "brevity is the soul of wit" (if the play seems full of modern cliches it is because Shakespeare has coined so many memorable and useful phrases in it), he then indulges himself in rhetorical flourishes and long-windedness, before arriving at his diagnosis. Gertrude starts to lose patience: "More matter, with less art", where she means artificial speech but Polonius plays on another meaning: "pretence" before promising to cut out the flourishes, which he simply cannot do as he is enjoying being the centre of attention with his important announcement. He takes out and reads a letter from Hamlet to Ophelia which is oddly worded with more affectations of language, modes of wording being another theme in the drama. The phrases are like Osric's later and add to the leitmotif of repeated incidents in the play as does the literary criticism Polonius delivers which Hamlet echoes to the players later. If the letter were written before she cut him off, it is peculiar in flavour as Hamlet was then, presumably, sincere and direct but if it were written afterwards, it is even more inexplicable because there is no mention of her changed attitude. All this passes without notice in a performance where we are gripped by other tensions. It is possible that he used this over-done courtly style as a compliment and to be different from the colloquial and it does show his awareness of the importance of methods of self-expression.
It is clear that Polonius is well-regarded and respected as "a man faithful and honourable" and he proceeds to deliver an honest though wordily self-justifying account of his own interference in the affair and his motives. He is detailed about the stages of a love-madness (ll. 146 - 150) to add credence to his theory and the royal couple accept it happily as it removes their guilt. Claudius accepts the old man is reliable and they both hit on another plan to spy on the Prince who frequently walks in the lobby for hours at a time. At this point is is very probable that Hamlet enters unseen onto the inner stage of an Elizabethan theatre and overhears the plot before the entry that they notice. This would explain his behaviour when they are eavesdropping later. His dialogue with Polonius is in comic mode but with pointed undertones, a fishmonger being, possibly, a cant word for a procurer, although Hamlet may be using the first word that enters his head which will accentuate his eccentric behaviour. Much of what follows concerns sexuality and flesh and Polonius' claim that he suffered for love in his youth serves only to emphasise how extreme Hamlet's problems are and how removed from the usual difficulties of an affair of the heart. His description of Polonius, disguised as a generalised portrait of any old man, makes an audience smile and is a relief from other tensions, whilst underlining truths as Polonius accepts: "Though this be madness, there is method in it." The thought of a grave enters Hamlet's mind as he cannot forget the Ghost but Polonius is more intent on arranging a trial meeting between him and Ophelia. We note again Hamlet's characteristic speech pattern of repetition: "words, words, words" and "except my life, except my life, except my life", with slowing rhythm and downward intonation (Shakespeare is a master at giving his personalities modes of speech which are subtly differentiated from one another) but he shows his sanity at "These tedious old fools", unfair though that might be.
He is pleased at first to see his old acquaintances, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, though he possibly mistakes one for the other. Sexuality takes over this interchange also with the two courtiers enjoying cheerful, bawdy witticims. They are tactless in claiming the world has grown honest to the dispossessed heir to the throne and Hamlet's mood changes at this point, calling Denmark a prison, rambling and questioning them as they dwell on ambition, raising the usurpation theme which is otherwise largely hidden. Perhaps this leads him to realise they have been sent to spy and to ask them why they are in Elsinore. In broken and brief demands he begs them to be honest with him as he is beginning to realise that there are few people around him that he can trust and is, with justification, becoming suspicious of almost everybody.
After probing them deeply about their function and presence and forcing them to admit their role as spies, he delivers a prose speech about his depression and his former view of Man which is both perceptive and eloquent. This, he says, will save them further deceptions but it also serves to tell the audience how he has changed from someone who believed of a man: "How noble in reason! How infinite in faculty ... how like an angel ... how like a god" whereas now, the earth which also seemed beautiful is "a foul and pestilential congregation of vapours"; this degeneration has caused him to lose interest in his "custom of exercises" [practices/interests/habits] and abandon all delight. This remarkable passage of Renaissance hope and joy turned to despair with its memorable phrases and ringing rhythms is lost on the others who merely smile at a possible bawdiness but the reader and audience accept it as truthful self-analysis, sad and accurate. It serves to establish the pre-fall Hamlet as a normal, active, rounded character whom the actions of others have destroyed and reduced to melancholy, a mood which the contemporary audience would have recognised from general opinion and various books such as Timothy Bright's Treatise of Melancholy. Hamlet's is therefore a known yet particularised case and he is here concealing the individual aspects: the feigned element in his manner; his mother's adultery; his father's murder and Ophelia's desertion of him. He is also deliberately misleading his friends to avoid disclosure of these matters.
When they tell him of the arrival of the players, he seems to realise instantly the possibility of a trap for Claudius: "He that plays the king shall be welcome" but he also aware of the stock characters of a theatrical troupe, including the lady who "shall speak her mind freely". It sounds as if he has knowledge of and interest in drama as one of his many earlier activities. By his detailed interrogation, he discovers that the fashion is now for a group of child actors who mock the adults: this may be a topical reference to a company of rivals to Shakespeare's but it is also an example of the fickleness of popular taste and opinion, a theme which Hamlet makes explicit at ll 346 ff when he dwells again on the replacement of his father by his uncle and notes that those who "would make mows" [grimaces] at him previously now idolise him. He uses ceremonious language in projecting that he will welcome the group cermoniously and gives a hint that his madness is, at least in part, assumed.
When Polonius enters, Hamlet toys with him, teasing and deliberately misunderstanding his words. Polonius garrulously praises this troupe for performance of any possible kind of play as Hamlet pointedly mentions his daughter to keep his suspicions simmering. Yet when the first players enter, we see a glimpse of what he must have been like when he had nothing to bear: open, welcoming, eager and friendly so that the contrast with the wayward manner, now his mode, is underlined. We now see him as a literary critic of discernment with a distaste for flowery and affected language or "sallets" [improper matter] and a love of true sentiments properly expressed. The leitmotif of a play-within-a-play is introduced with its attendant notion of repeated scenes as Hamlet starts to recite. We are aware that Hamlet is a leisurely play, textured and detailed, with no attempt to rush us through to further developments of plot. It is odd that he admires this somewhat overwritten speech but it is about heroes who are men of action: Pyrrhus is a ruthless killer and avenger; Hecuba's mourning contrasts with Gertrude's lack of grief; and the player's ability to weep for an imaginary sorrow seems to rebuke Hamlet. Lines 452 ff are a forward echo to the scene where Hamlet stands over the praying Claudius and does not kill him and lines 468 ff lash out at Fortune or Fate and strike a chord with Hamlet. Polonius' responses are unsophisticated: "This is too long" and he would like it stopped because of the misery. Hamlet is in control and thoughtfully gives instructions for the players' comfort whilst making the vague but disconcerting remark: "After your death you were better have a bad epitaph than their ill report while you live."
Hamlet now has his plan ready and it will involve a play-with-the-play as a trap, including an inserted speech which he will write himself, making us curious to see which lines these will be, This also stresses the theme of artifice and reality as it will clearly resonate with the present facts. He ends on a hospitable note before ruminating on what has happened.
The second soliloquy: "O, what a rogue and peasant slave am I" in fact opens with relief at solitude: "Now I am alone" and one of the several short lines breaking up the blank verse which indicate powerful and uncontrolled emotion. Hamlet has been struck by the player's speech and refers it to himself obsessively, constantly and unreasonably drawing attention to his own delay and inaction whilst rationally waiting for proof the next night about the Ghost's information. The length of the speech and the discussion with the actors also help to give the effect of stagnation. He dwells on false passion, another theme in the play, in that the Player could manifest emotion about a "fiction" whilst he is behaving like a lower order on man: "a rogue and peasant slave." The repetition of the "h" in the lines about Hecuba have the effect of sobs as he contrasts the player's motives with his own. Paradoxically, he does not credit the fact that, even if he were as the Player might be, and were to "drown the stage with tears", this would still not be the action required of him but further procrastination. Nor does he attack the question of whether or not true feelings would be more evident than feigned. This soliloquy approaches metadrama with its references to a "cue" and "stage" and therefore reminds us that he should be acting in the sense of doing not playing a role. His syntax is a mixture of questions and exclamations with anacoluthon [a break in smooth grammar] at l. 554 and elsewhere: "With this slave's offal - bloody, bawdy villain." He imagines insults to his manhood such as tweaking his nose and, in his irrational fixation with his own inadequacy, feels he deserves this as he is "pigeon-livered" [too gentle].
Yet he needs to test the Ghost and its claim of a "damned defeat" and only has to wait a day for this. He works himself up into a near hysterical hatred of Claudius: "Remorseless, treacherous, lecherous, kindless [unnatural[ villain" before collapsing in bitter self-disgust, a miniature of his behaviour throughout as he continues to: "like a whore, unpack [his] heart with words", whilst rebuking himself for so doing. Yet his scheme is sound and opportune and he is putting it into practice quickly: the theme that murder will out will be embodied in a play which has a good chance of exposing Claudius' guilt: "murder, though it have no tongue, will speak/With most miraculous organ" [the voice which will utter involuntarily]. Imagery of disease and wounding occurs: "I'll tent him to the quick" [probe to the depest part of the wound], the idea being that the state is sick because of the murder but so is Hamlet's mind. Quite rationally and in keeping with current opinion, he accepts that the Ghost could be the devil in "pleasing shape" and is intelligently aware that he is vulnerable to deception because of his deranged state of mind: "my weakness and my melancholy". This is not an excuse and the fact he suspected Claudius previous to the encounter on the battlements makes him more likely to believe a possible untruth. He ends with more positive rhythms: "The play's the thing,/Wherein I'll catch the conscience of the king" but the mood which lingers in our minds is the profound hatred of Claudius and himself. The stress in the soliloquies on his delay is not a remnant of an old source; it is endemic and, as it is largely irrational and obsessive, contributes to the theme of disease spreading from the top to all the body politic and his own mind, technically achieved through imagery of illness. Despite the slow pace of the action, tension is constantly maintained as we now await the outcome of the performance and realise that, if it reveals the guilt of Claudius, Hamlet will be obliged to obey the Ghost and act in the sense of do deeds rather than put on a performance of his own.
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