4.2 post-Polonius

  • everything about P’s death is demeaning
  • destroyed in a humiliating tangle and stuffed into a corner by Hamlet
  • Hamlet calls R & G sponges
  • final break:
  • they hate him for his injustice to Polonius and them
  • he hates them for their betrayal

4.3Claudius the politico – contempt for public, strategic timing, how to present events in best light

  • C & H competing for public opinion
  • just like they battle for audience’s favor
  • C has H at his mercy now, after P’s death, so he can let H strut about a bit
  • but does need to know where the body is
  • Who wins this round?
  • some see H as young, defiant hero
  • some see C as wiser, flawed older guy (H a righteous brat)
  • C sends H to England to be killed: “Do it, England!”

4.4Outside world intrudes for the first time

Fortinbras – great personal authority and control, sharp contrast to Hamlet (at his most ambiguous, morally complex moment)

BUT F’s invasion of Poland senseless slaughter

Fortinbras applauded for his decisiveness but criticized for risking 20,000 lives for plot of land

soliloquy 4“How all occasions do inform against me”

anarchy of “rogue and peasant slave” chiseled down to a fine blade of self-reproach

new lucidity for Hamlet, anticipates simplicity of end of play

will himself out of rationality and into the imagined avenger’s role

“My thoughts be bloody, or be nothing worth!”

Where do we stand now? typical of dealings with H – empathy collides with moral shock

the articulation of “To be or not to be” is followed by lousy behavior to Ophelia

the play scene he thinks is a triumph leads to nothing but his own extinction (gives him away)

prayer scene arouses some sympathy for Claudius and acknowledges Hamlet’s weakness

closet scene akin to the nunnery scene in its disrespect for female choice, shows H’s rashness

4.5Denmark without Hamlet

Gertrude is frightened to see Ophelia. Everything to Gertrude is ominous now. She speaks candidly to the audience for the first time.

Ophelia’s mad scene—comments are all about the Danish court, Horatio and the Gentleman worry that she might negatively influence the people, her wild talk may be dangerous.

First line: “Where is the beauteous majesty of Denmark?”

(Where is beauty? True regality? The old glory? Old Hamlet? Young Hamlet?)

Then she hits on the image of the old king: “How should I your true love know / From another one?”

“He is dead and gone, lady”—Polonius and Hamlet Sr.—Ophelia relates her loss to the queen’s

  • Seems/ appearance and reality: “Lord, we know what we are, but know not what we may be.”
  • echoes Hamlet’s earlier words “seems” to Gertrude
  • Her refrain of male sexual duplicity is obvious – implicates Hamlet and Claudius.
  • Most simple and affecting line she has – “I cannot choose but weep to think they would lay him in the cold ground.”
  • Warning: “My brother shall know of it.”
  • Calls everyone “ladies” (echoes Hamlet addressing Claudius as mother?)
  • Claudius then whines and ignores disturbing issues behind what’s going on…
  • Laertes’ entrance – Claudius returns to good form and fends off this bullying, skillfully plays Laertes, makes him a force he can easily aim at Hamlet
  • (Claudius claims King is safe by divinity – he who has poisoned a king!)
  • Ophelia comes again – words disjointed but underlying perceptiveness comes through
  • *She goes out of the play with an undeceived vision of the world around her – the last thing we expected of this submissive, timid girl – and no further means of living in it.

4.6

Letter to Horatio from Hamlet (adventurous language “in the grapple I boarded them”)

Letter to Claudius – Why is he warning the king of his return? Because he is, characteristically, more interested in showing him that he has found out his stratagem than he is in trapping him; and he can hardly wait to tell Horatio what a fearless tactician he has been.

4.7

Claudius wins Laertes round to treachery! Great temptation scene! Laertes’s fall from grace

The intimacy of the two of them weighing up, venturing, withdrawing, defying, deferring, demurring and finally coming together in an unholy alliance brings us, in its realistic tones, close to modern theater and indeed television or film – a relief from the strain of believing in ghosts, plays within plays, etc.

Claudius

switches to confessional

“Queen his mother Lives almost by his looks…I could not but by her.”

“The other motive Why to a public count I might not go Is the great love the general gender bear him”

playing the role of a wise man misunderstood, a decent fellow giving up gracefully

Hamlet’s letter arrives – yikes! He’s back!

Claudius then cooks up the tournament plan – flattering Laertes’s skill, assuring him of security

The corruption of Laertes is the first statement of a recurring theme – PERSONAL HEROISM DECLINING INTO BANAL VIOLENCE – that generates the chaotic end of the tragedy.

  • Gertrude comes in with word of Ophelia’s drowning
  • Claudius only worries about getting Laertes riled up again
  • His naked expediency and lack of interest in Ophelia’s fate completes the breach between himself and his Queen, who is now ennobled by a degree of sympathetic eloquence
  • Does she follow him at this point or not??