Enter King, Queen, Polonius, Ophelia, Rosencrantz, Guildenstern, Lords
Claudius
Guildenstern‡
Gertrude Did he receive you well?
Rosencrantz
Guildenstern‡
Gertrude *Did you assay him
Rosencrantz
Polonius‡ ’Tis most true,
Claudius
Rosencrantz
*Exeunt Rosencrantz and Guildenstern
Gertrude‡ I shall obey you.
Ophelia Madam, I wish it may.
[Exit Gertrude with Lords]
Polonius
Claudius (Aside) Oh, ’tis too* true.
55.1*Exeunt Claudius and Polonius
55.2*Enter Hamlet
Hamlet‡
Ophelia Good my lord,
Hamlet No, not I*,
Ophelia
Ophelia My lord?
Ophelia What means your lordship?
Ophelia Could beauty, my lord, have better commerce than with* 110honesty?
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.‡‡‡
115Ophelia‡ 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.
Hamlet Get thee to a* nunnery† – why wouldst thou be a breeder of 120sinners? 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 125crawling between earth and heaven*? We are arrant knaves all*, believe none of us. Go thy ways to a nunnery. Where’s your father†?‡‡‡‡‡
Ophelia‡ At home my lord.
Hamlet‡ Let the doors be shut upon him, that he may play the fool nowhere* but in’s own house. Farewell.
Hamlet 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. Or if thou wilt needs marry, marry a fool, for wise men know well enough what monsters† 135you make of them. To a nunnery go, and quickly too. Farewell.‡‡
Hamlet I have heard of your paintings* too*, well enough. God hath* given you one face* and you make yourselves* another. You jig†, you †amble*, and you lisp*, you nickname* God’s creatures, and †make your 140wantonness your ignorance*. Go to, I’ll no more on’t, †it hath made †me mad. I say we will have no mo*† marriages*. Those that are married already, all but one shall live, the rest shall keep as they are. To *a nunnery, go. Exit‡‡‡‡‡
ophelia‡
Claudius‡
Exeunt
Textual variants
3.1 ] Act III. Scene I. Q 1676
Explanatory notes
1 drift of circumstance steering of roundabout enquiry. Compare Polonius’s ‘encompassment and drift of question’, 2.1.10. For ‘circumstance’ (which means circuitous talk, as in 1.5.127), Q2 reads ‘conference’.
2 puts on Claudius may intuit that Hamlet is assuming a guise of madness.
3 Grating The physical action of roughening by scraping and rasping.
7 forward disposed, inclined.
8 crafty madness an affected madness (see ‘mad in craft’ at 3.4.189). This affected madness is also cunning, in that it protects Hamlet from revealing more than he wishes.
13–14 Niggard … reply Rosencrantz is anxious to cover up the cross-examination which led to the disclosure that they were being employed by Claudius. Unfortunately, this leads him into contradicting Guildenstern about Hamlet’s readiness to answer questions.
14–15 assay … To i.e. try him with the suggestion of.
17 o’er-raught (over-reached) came up to and passed, overhauled.
21 This night This conversation is taking place on the day after the events of the previous scene. See 2.2.493.
26 edge keenness (of appetite).
27 on to So F. Q2 reads ‘into’, but the sense of ‘drive … on’ is ‘urge on’, as contrasted with ‘drive me into a toil’ at 3.2.314–15, where the image is of penning in a hunted animal.
29 closely secretly, applying to Claudius’s purpose. But when Hamlet arrives he shows no knowledge of having been ‘sent for’.
31 Affront come face-to-face with.
32 Lawful espials This extra-metrical phrase occurs only in F, where it appears in a parenthesis at the end of 31. An ‘espial’ is a spy.
33, 44 bestow ourselves station or position ourselves.
34 frankly freely, without obstacle.
43 Gracious i.e. your grace (to the king) – not a usual form of address.
44 this book a prayer-book (see 47, 89).
45 colour provide a pretext for.
46 loneliness being alone.
47 devotion’s visage a face expressing devoutness.
50 How smart … conscience Claudius confirms for the audience that he is guilty and, for the moment, conscience-stricken. He does not, however, identify his crime or sin.
52 to the thing that helps it as compared with the cosmetic adornment.
56 To be, or not to be Concerning the placing of this soliloquy and the nunnery scene which follows, see the Textual Analysis, 270. For a discussion of the soliloquy itself, see Introduction, 41–2.
56 that is the question There are many opinions on the precise question posed by ‘to be …’ They tend to fall into two categories: (1) Hamlet is debating whether or not to take his own life; and (2) Hamlet is considering the value or advantages of human existence.
57 in the mind to suffer ‘to endure mentally’. The phrasing sets pain suffered in the mind against bodily action.
58 slings missiles (by metonymy: that-which-throws standing for that-which-is-thrown; Latin funda could similarly mean either sling or slingshot). A sling may be a hand-sling, a ballista, or even a cannon.
59–60 take arms … by opposing end them The alternative to patient endurance of earthly woes is to fight against them and to be destroyed in the process. The result is ‘self-slaughter’, whether direct or indirect.
63 consummation completion, fitting end, or conclusion.
65 rub impediment (from the game of bowls).
67 shuffled … coil got rid of the turmoil of living. There is a sense of malpractice or fraudulence here, as there is in the use of ‘shuffled’ at 3.3.61 and 4.7.136, where it implies ‘manipulat[ion] with intent to deceive’.
68 respect consideration.
69 of so long life so long-lived.
70 time the times; compare 1.5.189.
74 of th’unworthy takes receives from unworthy people.
75 quietus discharge or acquittance of accounts (from the law phrase quietus est); frequently used in connection with death, probably because of the original Latin sense of repose and peace.
76 a bare bodkin a mere dagger. (‘bodkin’ was the name for sharp pointed instruments with various different uses; probably Hamlet is not being very specific.)
76 fardels burdens.
79 bourn boundary, frontier.
80 No traveller returns For many commentators, the Ghost’s appearance in Elsinore contradicts this portrayal of the afterlife. But, as Jenkins points out, the Ghost’s confinement to ‘fast in fires’ hardly counts as a return. Hamlet’s phrasing echoes biblical, classical, and humanist treatments of the after-life.
80 puzzles the will i.e. brings it to a halt in confusion; ‘puzzle’ was a stronger word than it is now.
83 conscience the inner knowledge of right and wrong (though many commentators claim it means ‘introspection’ or fear of punishment).
83–8 It is in these lines that, for the first time in the soliloquy, Hamlet turns, if indirectly, to the question of killing Claudius, and, as in the second soliloquy, he upbraids himself for being tardy. Thinking too much about the rights and wrongs of suicide stultifies the impulse to do away with oneself: thinking too much about rights and wrongs stultifies all action, including the one he’s supposed to be engaged in.
84 native hue natural colour or complexion.
85 sicklied o’er unhealthily covered.
85 cast tinge, tint. Though Hamlet has in mind the pallor of a sick man, the nearness of ‘o’er’ and ‘cast’ suggests also the pallor of clouds staining the face of the sun, as in Sonnet 33.
85 thought contemplation. Thinking causes the sickness of inaction.
86 pitch height, scope.
87 With this regard On this account.
88 soft you As usual, ‘soft’ as a verb in the imperative means ‘restrain yourself, leave off, be cautious’. Compare 1.1.126, 1.5.58, 3.2.353, 4.2.3, 4.4.8, 4.7.153, 5.1.184.
89 Nymph Perhaps a sarcastic, perhaps a tender, way to address Ophelia.
91 for this many a day It is often pointed out that Ophelia had met Hamlet yesterday as she reported in 2.1. But that was an unsettling interview, and the line registers Ophelia’s nervousness about being placed in front of Hamlet on behalf of Claudius and Polonius.
93 remembrances keepsakes, gifts.
98 of so sweet breath composed ‘breath’ can here mean ‘utterance’ or ‘language’; Ophelia may refer to words either spoken or written.
99 Their perfume lost The sweetness of both the words and the gifts has disappeared, because of the unkindness of the giver.
103 honest chaste. Hamlet’s sudden, violent change of topic and tone may indicate that he suspects her in a more general sense, perhaps for not mentioning her own part in the breach between them. Some editors suggest that Hamlet recognizes that she has become Claudius and Polonius’s ‘decoy’ (Wilson).
107–8 your honesty … your beauty your virtue should not allow your beauty to converse with it. (An alternative gloss is ‘your virtue ought to keep away those who want to chat with your beauty’; if that is correct, then Ophelia misunderstands him.)
117 inoculate our old stock The image is from grafting fruit trees or bushes. We cannot so engraft a new stem of virtue onto the old sinful trunk as to eradicate all trace of our previous nature.
117 relish have a touch or tinge.
119 Get thee to a nunnery Some commentators hear the ‘fairly common Elizabethan slang sense “brothel”’ (Shakespeare’s Bawdy). This sense does not erase from the passage the word’s standard meaning (convent). It gives focus to Hamlet’s attack on both men and women, including himself and Ophelia, for the kinds of moral frailty exemplified in sex and reproduction. Only in a convent will Ophelia be able to resist the inclinations of her own nature – or be protected from the desires of men such as Hamlet.
120 indifferent honest moderately virtuous.
122 proud, revengeful, ambitious Hamlet’s depiction of his own sinfulness may be part of his antic display, but it contains a nugget of truth.
126 Where’s your father? Some commentators think that Hamlet knew all the time he was being watched; some think he guessed it early in the interview; some think he learns it here.
132–3 be thou … thou shalt not escape calumny Regardless of her actual behaviour, Ophelia will be slandered for unchasteness.
134 monsters i.e. horned cuckolds, husbands with cheating wives.
138 jig This may refer more to singing than dancing. Compare Love’s Labour’s Lost 3.1.11–12 (Riverside), ‘to jig off a tune at the tongue’s end’.
138–9 you amble, and you lisp you walk and talk affectedly.
139–40 make your wantonness your ignorance pretend your licence is just simplicity and innocence.
140–1 it hath made me mad Hamlet calls attention to his emotional extremity.
141 mo more.
141–2 Those … all but one shall live All married couples, except one, may remain married, but all single people are to stay single (‘the rest shall keep as they are’). The exception is the marriage of Gertrude and Claudius, which Hamlet will end with the king’s death.
146 Th’expectancy The hope.
147 glass … form the ideal image of self-construction (self-fashioning) and the model of behaviour by which others shape themselves and their actions.
148 Th’observed of all observers Looked up to respectfully by all who turn to others for guidance. ‘Observe’ is a difficult word: see note to 1.5.101. Although it is possible that this could mean ‘one who is watched attentively by all who note men carefully’, the context of the previous line suggests the older meaning of ‘observe’.
153 blown youth youth in full bloom.
154 Blasted with ecstasy Destroyed by madness.
155 At the end of this line some copies of Q2 print ‘Exit’. Q1 also has Ophelia leave at this point.
156 affections emotions.
159 sits on brood Like a bird sitting on eggs – see ‘hatch’ in the next line.
164 tribute A historically imperfect reference to payment supplied by the English to save land from Viking attacks.
169 fashion of himself his own proper way of behaving.
177 round direct and outspoken.
179 find him not fails to discover his secret.
182 Madness … Though Claudius has just doubted the sincerity of Hamlet’s madness (158).
Performance notes from Shakespeare in Production
0 At Minneapolis Guthrie began the scene offstage with Claudius ad-libbing shouts at Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, furious at their failure to find out the cause of Hamlet's ‘confusion’. Taken at a fast pace, the high-energy scene followed the first interval; Guthrie said, ‘This will wake ‘em up after the break’ (Rossi, pp. 17–18).
7 In rehearsals for the Burton production, Gielgud urged Redfield as Guildenstern, to be ‘smug with achievement’. Reading the scene much as Guthrie had, Redfield at first resisted this note because Guildenstern's report was one of failure (Letters, p. 85). Since the King concludes by urging the two to continue their surveillance, Guildenstern might in the course of the scene become confident of being in the King's good graces.
10 In the Branagh film Gertrude here and at 14b–15a seems a bit insistent about drawing them out, although she is less overtly impatient than Claudius.
12 Redfield saw Guildenstern as an ‘honest reporter’ whereas Rosencrantz was deviously trying ‘to put a good face on things’ (Letters, p. 85).
13 Evans: ‘Modifying this’ (G. I. Hamlet, p. 104).
21b–3 Evans: ‘Claiming the credit for himself’ (G. I. Hamlet, p. 104). ‘Philistine’ Michael Bryant, with Day Lewis, was ‘at first all middle-brow assurance that the drama – not something adults take seriously – will be pleasantly innocuous’ (Independent, 18 March 1989).
28–49 Irving excused Ophelia from complicity in the plot since much of what is said might have been spoken apart from her. At 43–9, Irving accordingly pictured Polonius as turning back and forth between Ophelia and the King, as he alternates between directing her where to walk and proposing to him, as an aside, that they ‘bestow’ themselves, then telling her to read upon a book and returning to him to moralize about hypocrisy (‘Notes … no. 2’, p. 525). A problem with this interpretation is that 45–6a, which Irving did not cut, seems to presuppose some knowing participation on Ophelia's part.
31a Unwilling to join in the plot (Daily Telegraph, 2 May 1907), and struggling with herself (C. Russell, Marlowe, p. 322), Marlowe here has a ‘shocked expression’ and at 36b ‘shows pain’ (promptbook).
37b Evans: ‘Kissing him’ (G. I. Hamlet, p. 105).
38–42 Defending Ophelia's ‘half willing’ complicity, Helena Faucit points out the Queen's hope at 40b–1 that her ‘virtues/Will bring him to his wonted way again’ (Female Characters, p. 13).
54 Q2 has Hamlet enter before Polonius's last line rather than after it as in F. In Q1 he enters still earlier, before Ophelia is instructed to ‘read on this book’. Calling attention to these early entrances, Irving felt that Hamlet here had ‘a half-awakened sense’ of the eavesdropping but this awareness only ‘faintly lingered in his mind’. Not until 126 does he remember that he is watched (‘Notes … no. 2’, p. 524).
55 With Macready, Ophelia turns the leaves of her missal, ‘her back being turned towards Hamlet’ (promptbook 29). Left alone, Marlowe shows ‘great distress’: ‘extends hand tenderly toward Hamlet, hurried exit, glancing back left [where Hamlet enters]’ (promptbook). Tree: ‘From her coign of vantage [a small arbor] Ophelia listens to the self-torturings of Hamlet … and she falls upon her knees praying over her lover’ (‘Hamlet’, p. 869). Jacobi, Pryce, and Branagh addressed the speech directly to Ophelia.
56–88 From the beginning this soliloquy has been regarded as special. It was frequently referred to by Shakespeare's contemporaries. It is the one speech from the play that Samuel Pepys chose to memorize. Its first line may well be the best-known single line in Shakespeare and indeed in world drama. Actors have sought to make it seem fresh (and to discourage auditors from reciting it with them). Mochalov, for example, ‘did not enter slowly, sunk in deep meditation, but came in almost running in a state of extreme nervous excitement, and then, stopping, cried: “To be or not to be” – and after several minutes of contemplation threw himself into an armchair, and uttered despairingly – “that is the question”’ (Speaight, Stage, p. 113).
With Garrick, ‘Hamlet, who is in mourning … comes on to the stage sunk in contemplation, his chin resting on his right hand, and his right elbow on his left, and gazes solemnly downwards. And then, removing his right hand from his chin, but, if I remember right, still supporting it with his left hand, he speaks’ (Lichtenberg, Visits, p. 16). Joshua Steele in 1775 contrasted Garrick's delivery of this speech with ‘the stile of a ranting actor’. The volume of the latter ‘swelled with forte and softened with piano’ whereas Garrick's delivery was ‘nearly uniform, something below the ordinary force, or, as a musician would say, sotto voce’ (Essay, p. 47). Steele recorded in his own system of notation (which I have translated into modern musical symbols) the ponderous rhythm – perhaps influenced by Quin (p. 14) – in which he himself spoke the first line (p. 40):
With this, Steele contrasted Garrick's lighter and more conversational delivery:
Garrick used a downward intonation for ‘to be’ in ‘or not to be’ and for ‘question’. His rhythm for 60–1 was:
At 63 Garrick spoke ‘heir to’ with an upward intonation in such a way as to ‘give the idea of the sense being suspended, for the thought which immediately follows’ (pp. 47–8).
Kean was not ‘a grim debater of the pro and con of suicide: he was the man of misery driven by his loathing of life and the villany of those about him to escape all further ills by death’ (Examiner, 20 March 1814). Macready entered: ‘his hands behind him, the right hand clasping the left wrist like a vice, the eyes fixed in a gaze of concentrated abstraction’ (Kirk, ‘Tragedies’, p. 614). His delivery ‘in its disjointed reasoning and restless inner manner, conveys the idea of a man whose mind is but ill at rest’ (Theatrical Journal, 29 August 1840, p. 301). Fechter brought on an unsheathed sword as though contemplating suicide (Field, p. 105). Booth entered with his right hand on the back of his head. He sat, clasped his hands, and began to speak. At ‘by opposing’ he struck his breast; at ‘there's the rub’ he rose; at ‘cowards of us all’ he crossed right; at ‘enterprises’ he turned left (promptbook 111). Richard Burton, playing Booth in the film The Prince of Players, largely follows this choreography. Gielgud sought to place the speech in a line of progression: ‘the effect of despondency in “to be, or not to be” is a natural and brilliant psychological reaction from the violent and hopeless rage of the earlier speech [2.2.501–58]’ (Gilder, p. 55). Gielgud explained to Burton: ‘First he lashes himself for his own stupidity and then he becomes despondent and feels that he doesn't care one way or another and tries to determine if everything is worth it’ (Sterne, p. 68). Radovan Lukavsky, who played Hamlet in Prague in 1959, described the progression in his diary: ‘Either the King is a murderer or the Ghost is a damned soul … Hamlet's will to action is struggling. – And suddenly the desire simply to get away from it all, the longing for peace, to sleep, and never wake up’ (quoted in Rosenberg, p. 482).
In Q1 there is no such difficulty since in it this soliloquy precedes the ‘play's the thing’ soliloquy. Often the first interval comes just before this scene, lessening the abruptness of Hamlet's changing moods.
65 ‘Kemble prolonged the word dream “meditatingly”’ (Boaden, p. 101). Kevin Kline said ‘to sleep’ with a smile and sigh of satisfaction, then a change to a tone of concern at ‘perchance to dream’.
67 Burton made a downward sweep of his hands and a sway of his body to suggest ‘shuffling’.
72a Irving saw here a reference to ‘the poor girl to whom he has been compelled to appear heartless’ (‘Notes … no. 2’, p. 526).
76–82 Burton delivered this section almost as a lecture to the audience. Having whipped out a dagger after ‘bare bodkin’, Branagh in the film unknowingly for a moment points it right at Claudius, who is hiding behind a two-way mirror.
79 Salvini slowly pointed a finger downward – ‘Hamlets traditionally cast their eyes heavenward at this line instead of pointing in the direction of the grave’ (Carlson, Shakespearians, p. 84).
80 J. B. Booth emphasized returns (Gould, p. 60).
83 Stephen Dillane ‘gives a weary shrug of resignation, as if admitting that even the suicide option is closed down’ (Country Life, 17 November 1994).
88 Charles Kemble emphasized Hamlet's ‘mingled anguish’. His daughter Fanny, who acted Ophelia with him, was moved to tears by his tenderness, compassion, and ‘self-scorning’. (Journal, i, pp. 148–9).
At the Moscow Art Theatre ‘Kachalov's subtext in his encounter with Ophelia is “They are poisoning you. I should reveal to you what monstrous thing is tormenting me, but I cannot and will not. If you are like them, it means there is nothing holy in the world.” So, he imbues his voice with pity and understanding, not revulsion and contempt. His subtext for “Are you honest?” is “I want to show her to her face that I know all”’ (Senelick, p. 165).
88b Irving spoke these words as if about to develop a further thought which was interrupted when he saw Ophelia (Winter, Shakespeare, p. 358).
90a Barrett emphasized my (Shakespeariana, p. 37).
92 Hamlet's realization that he is being spied upon may well have originated around 1820 with J. B. Booth, the earliest instance so far discovered (Sprague, Actors, pp. 153–4). Clearly Kemble did not practice it. His promptbook does not indicate a ‘call’ for the King and Polonius until 119 (Promptbooks, p. 39). At this point Edwin Booth like his father sees the King and Polonius as they hide behind the hangings (Shattuck, p. 190).
92b When he spoke the third ‘well’, Maurice Evans's ‘voice broke and he turned quickly from Ophelia and the audience, as if suddenly shaken by the irony of his own reply. It was a revealing flash of anguish and in the contracted shoulders and instinctive lift of the hand to the face one had the impression of tears rising to the surface and with an effort suppressed’ (Williamson, Old Vic, p. 28). Kevin Kline, touched by Ophelia's ‘many a day’, spoke the three words tenderly, reaching towards her (televised 1990). In the Branagh film, Hamlet and Ophelia (Kate Winslet) kiss at this point, ‘a moment of bliss’ (Screenplay, p. 78) ‘but then she breaks away’.
93 With Walter Hampden Hamlet starts to go; Ophelia stops him, ‘forcing herself’ to begin ‘My lord’ (promptbook).
93–4 Of Terry, The Academy found ‘her lingering over the love- gifts’ to be ‘true, direct, and tender’ (7 November 1874, p. 19).
95 While Ophelia was returning his remembrances Forrest caught a glimpse of the eavesdroppers (promptbook).
101 Of Irving: Terry recalled ‘With what passionate longing his hands hovered over Ophelia’ (p. 104).
101b Kate Terry with Fechter: ‘Ophelia raises packet [of letters] to her lips, is about to kiss them, when she seems to remember she is watched. She drops her arms slowly and offers them to him’ (promptbook). In the Branagh film ‘he lashes out at the letters, sending them flying’ (Screenplay, p. 79)
103–17 Irving saw behind Hamlet's lines his consciousness of his mother's contaminating guilt. He realizes that Ophelia ‘is lost to him for ever’ (‘Notes … no.2’, pp. 528, 527).
112 Marlowe ‘shrinks’ at ‘bawd’ (promptbook).
113b–14a After ‘paradox’ Fechter ‘paused, looked sadly at the letters in his hand returned by the woman Hamlet loved’, and then continued, emphasizing now (Field, p. 105).
114b Pryce emphasized did (Observer, 6 April 1980). Branagh in 1992 underscored his last sentence by picking up one of the love-letters Ophelia had returned (Shakespeare Bulletin, Fall, 1994, p. 7).
115–118 ‘Those who ever heard Mrs. Siddons read the play of Hamlet, cannot forget the world of meaning, of love, of sorrow, of despair, conveyed in these two simple phrases’ (Jameson, Characteristics, p. 204).
118 Vanity Fair praised the ‘pathos and regret’ of Terry's delivery of this line (18 January 1879, p. 33). Marlowe: ‘despairingly’ (promptbook).
118b Kate Terry with Fechter: ‘As Ophelia turns away dejectedly, Hamlet suddenly takes her hand affectionately. She turns to him joyously. Hamlet drops her hand and says “Get thee to a nunnery”’ (promptbook).
120ff Booth ‘stands looking partly down at her, partly out from her, scowling a little as if in selfcondemnation; he seems to be reaching ahead in his thought and only partially conscious of the words he is actually speaking’ (Shattuck, p. 192).
Marlowe protests Hamlet's self-accusations, placing her hand on his shoulder after 121, 124a, and 126a. The first two times he ‘retreats’ from her; the third, he throws her away from him (promptbook).
122 Barrett darted ‘revengeful’ at the arras (Shakespeariana, p. 37).
125 Of Booth, Robins wonders: ‘Did any one, before or since, ever make meanness the reptile that he showed it, with his slight, dragging emphasis on “crawling”?’ (‘Hamlet’, p. 916).
Barrymore ‘paused after the word “earth”, and, by surrounding Ophelia's face with his hands and lowering his voice to a tone of longing tenderness, conveyed that she was “Heaven”’ (MacCarthy, Theatre, p. 59).
125b–6 Of Lillian Gish with Gielgud: Hamlet's ‘words are harsh but his tone is tender. He is not thinking of what they mean – not thinking at all. Their bodies sway toward each other – for a moment it seems as though their natural affection would break the nightmare spell, but “Go thy ways to a nunnery” cuts Ophelia to the quick and she walks away’ (Gilder, p. 155).
126 To the Daily Telegraph reviewer, it was solely the expression on Marlowe's face that told Hamlet they were being spied upon (2 May 1907).
With Barrymore, after ‘Go thy ways to a nunnery’, ‘Hamlet abruptly turned away from the weeping Ophelia and began to leave the stage … Polonius had intermittently been peeking out from behind his column to see what was going on … This time Hamlet's sudden move to leave caught Polonius unprepared … In a flash, Hamlet looked to Ophelia (who was unaware of what had passed), back to the column, back to Ophelia again, and in perfect fury shouted, “Where's your father?”’ (Grebanier, Actor, pp. 220–1).
127 Faucit thought that Ophelia ‘fears to tell the truth, lest, in this too terrible paroxysm of madness which now possesses him, Hamlet might possibly kill her father’ (Female Characters, p. 15), a fear that of course proves premonitory. Oscar Wilde thought he detected an expression of ‘quick remorse’ on Terry's face at this point (quoted by Wingate, Heroines, p. 305), but the reviewer who found that ‘the innocence of her reply … leaves no doubt that this Ophelia is an unconscious agent’ (Standard, 31 December 1878) seems closer to the mark since Irving goes to elaborate lengths to place the best possible construction on her apparent lie (‘Notes … no. 2’, p. 525). Of Booth's silent response to Ophelia's words: ‘no reproach could be so terrible as … the pain of the face he turns from her’ (Calhoun, ‘Booth’, p. 81). Alec Guinness at the Old Vic responded with a ‘sorrowful shake of the head with a half smile’ (Crosse, Diaries, xvii).
128–9 Barrett hurled this speech at the arras (Shakespeariana, p. 37).
133 Marlowe: Here and each time hereafter, Hamlet's ‘get thee to a nunnery’ (at 135 and 142) comes after Marlowe has extended her arms to him ‘appealingly’ (promptbook).
134b ‘Indicates with a gesture the cuckold's horns’ (Booth's studybook). Burton also made the gesture.
136 Marlowe: ‘desperately’ (promptbook). The line ‘seemed torn out of a stricken soul and from that time her disaster was foreshadowed upon us not as the weakness of a commonplace intellect overthrown, but as the inevitable and only possible ending of a great and shattered life’ (C. Russell, Marlowe, p. 323).
138–9 Booth: ‘“You jig, you amble, and you lisp“ (he is holding his right hand before him palm upward, and on each of these stressed words he gives it a little outward jerk such as cardplayers do when dealing’ (Shattuck, p. 194).
139–40 Jonathan Pryce kissed Harriet Walter brutally, then, ‘starts pushing her up against the wall, his hand to her breast, then down to her crotch – she and he finally wind up on the floor – he, reeling away in disgust and anger – wiping his mouth in self-disgust’ (Gilbert, ‘Pryce’).
140–1 Branagh emphasized hath (Country Life, 14 July 1988), as did Jacobi, who directed Branagh, in his BBC-TV portrayal.
142 Macready made Hamlet ‘walk up close to the King's place of concealment, and there vociferate his parting speech’ (Hackett, Notes, p. 157).
143 Following Kean's famous return to kiss Ophelia's hand, subsequent Hamlets have rung their own changes on the business. Fechter turned mutely with outstretched arms and Ophelia advanced ‘as if to embrace him’ but ‘suspicion again hardens him, and he waves her off’ (Orchestra, 28 May 1864). To Tree ‘the tragedy of the situation lay in the fact that Ophelia goes to her death ignorant of Hamlet's love’. As she sobs, he returns unobserved, ‘tenderly kisses one of the tresses of her hair, silently steals from the room’ (‘Hamlet’, p. 871).
144ff As Ophelia Mrs. Siddons was praised for ‘her expression of grief mixed with terror at the behaviour of Hamlet’ (St. James Chronicle, 3–5 March 1772). Terry spoke these lines as ‘the epitaph, not of her lost love, but of Hamlet's shattered reason’ (Punch, 11 January 1870, p. 10). With Pryce, Harriet Walter's ‘perplexed and guilt-ridden sense of responsibility … provides a fully understandable transition to Ophelia's subsequent madness, which for once seems a perfectly logical development’ (Plays and Players, May, 1980).
148 Glenda Jackson shouted here ‘as if to the spying king and father’ (Shakespeare Survey, 19 (1966), p. 115).
156–69 In the Branagh film, Polonius (Richard Briers) comforts Ophelia, cradling her in his arms, stroking her head.
163b–4 E. S. Willard as Barrett's King added the explanation in the fear ‘that the old courtier may suspect the scheme he has formed’ (Evening Standard, 17 October 1884, p. 3).
180b–1a In the Richard Chamberlain TV version (1970), Michael Redgrave's hitherto genial Polonius here turned ruthless.
*†Enter Hamlet and two or three of the Players
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 our* 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 5very torrent, tempest, and, as I may say, whirlwind* of your passion*, you must acquire and beget a temperance that may give it smoothness. Oh, it offends me to the soul to hear* a robustious† periwig*-pated† fellow tear a passion to totters*†, to very rags, to split* the ears of the groundlings†, who for the most part are capable of† 10nothing but inexplicable dumb-shows† and noise. I would* have such a fellow whipped for o’erdoing Termagant† – it out-Herod†s Herod. I Pray you avoid it.‡
i Player I warrant your honour.
Hamlet Be not too tame neither, but let your own discretion be your 15tutor. 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 anything so o’erdone* 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, 20and the very age and body of the time his form and pressure†. Now this overdone, or come tardy off†, though it makes* 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. Oh, there be players that I have seen play, and heard others 25praise* and that highly, not to speak it profanely, that neither having th’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†.‡
Hamlet Oh 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† 35the 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. ‡
*Exeunt Players
*Enter Polonius, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern
How now my lord, will the king hear this piece of work?
Polonius And the queen too, and that presently†.
Rosencrantz Ay my lord.
Exeunt Rosencrantz*** and Guildenstern
Hamlet What ho*, Horatio!
Enter Horatio
Horatio Here sweet lord, at your service.
Horatio
Hamlet Nay, do not think I flatter,
Horatio Well my lord†.
*Sound a flourish
*Danish march (trumpets and kettle-drums). Enter King, Queen, Polonius, Ophelia, Rosencrantz, Guildenstern and Other Lords attendant, with his Guard carrying torches‡
Hamlet Excellent i’faith, of the chameleon’s dish†: I eat the air, promise-crammed. You cannot feed capons† so.
90Hamlet And what* did you enact?
Polonius †I did enact Julius Caesar. I was killed i’th’Capitol. Brutus killed me.
Gertrude Come hither my dear* Hamlet, sit by me.
Hamlet No good mother, here’s metal more attractive†.
Polonius Oh ho, do you mark that?
Hamlet Lady, shall I lie in your lap?
Hamlet I mean, my head upon your lap?
Ophelia Ay my lord.
Ophelia I think nothing my lord.
Ophelia What is, my lord?
Hamlet Nothing†.
Ophelia You are merry my lord.
Hamlet Who, I?
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’s two hours.
Ophelia Nay, ’tis twice two months† my lord.
115Hamlet‡ 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, but byrlady*† a must* build churches then, or else shall a* suffer not thinking on†, with the †hobby-horse, whose epitaph is, ‘For O, 120†for O, the hobby-horse is forgot.’
120.1****†Hoboys play. The dumb-show enters‡
120.2Enter a King and a Queen, very lovingly, the Queen embracing him. *She kneels and makes show of †protestation unto him. He takes her up, and declines his head upon her neck. *He lies him down upon a bank of flowers. She, seeing him asleep, leaves him. Anon *comes in *another man, takes off his crown, kisses it, *pours poison in *the sleeper’s ears, and *leaves him. The Queen returns, finds the King dead, *and makes passionate action. The poisoner, with some *two or three mutes, *comes in again, *seeming to *condole with her. The dead body is carried away. The poisoner woos the Queen with gifts. She seems *†harsh awhile, but in the end accepts *his love.* Exeunt
Ophelia What means this my lord?
*Enter Prologue
*Ophelia Will a 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.
Ophelia‡ ’Tis brief my lord.
135.1Enter the Player King and Queen
Player King
*Player Queen
Player King
Player Queen Oh confound the rest!
*Player Queen
Player King
Player Queen
205Hamlet‡ If she should break it now!
Player King
Sleeps
Player Queen Sleep rock thy brain,
Hamlet‡ Oh but she’ll keep her word.
Hamlet No, no, they do but jest, poison in jest, no offence i’th’world.
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 220*touches us not. Let the galled jade winch†, our withers† are unwrung†.
This is one Lucianus, nephew to the king†.
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.
225Ophelia You are keen† my lord, you are keen.
Ophelia Still better and worse†.
Hamlet So you mistake† your* husbands. Begin, murderer. Pox*, leave thy damnable faces and begin. Come, †the croaking raven doth 230bellow for revenge.‡
Lucianus‡
Pours the poison in his ears
Hamlet‡ **A poisons him i’th’garden for’s* estate†. His name’s Gonzago. The story is extant, and written* in very choice* Italian. You shall see anon how the murderer gets the love of Gonzago’s wife.
Gertrude How fares my lord?
Polonius Give o’er the play.
Claudius‡ Give me some light. Away!
245.1Exeunt all but Hamlet and Horatio‡
250Would 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.
Horatio You might have rhymed.
Horatio Very well my lord.
Hamlet Upon the talk of the poisoning†?
Enter Rosencrantz and Guildenstern‡
265Hamlet‡ Ah ha*! – Come, some music! Come, the recorders!
Guildenstern‡ Good my lord, vouchsafe me a word with you.
270Hamlet‡ Sir, a whole history.
Guildenstern The king, sir –
Hamlet Ay sir, what of him?
Guildenstern Is in his retirement marvellous distempered†.
Hamlet‡ With drink sir?
Hamlet Your wisdom should show itself more richer to signify† this to his doctor*, for, †for me to put him to his purgation† would perhaps plunge him into far more* choler.
Guildenstern Good my lord, put your discourse into some frame†, 280and start*† not so wildly from my affair.
Hamlet I am tame† sir, pronounce.
Guildenstern‡ The queen your mother, in most great affliction of spirit, hath sent me to you.
Hamlet You are welcome.
285Guildenstern Nay good my lord, this courtesy is not of the right breed. If it shall please you to make me a wholesome† answer, I will do your mother’s commandment. If not, your pardon† and my return shall be the end of my business*.
Hamlet Sir, I cannot.
290*Rosencrantz What, my lord?
Hamlet Make you a wholesome answer*; my wit’s diseased. But, sir, such answer as I can make, you shall command†, or rather, *as you say, my mother. Therefore no more, but to the matter. My mother, you say.
Hamlet‡ O wonderful son that can so stonish* a mother! But is there no sequel at the heels of this mother’s admiration? Impart*.
Rosencrantz‡ My lord, you once did love me.
305Rosencrantz Good my lord, what is your cause of distemper? You do surely* bar the door upon* your own liberty† if you deny your griefs to your friend.
Rosencrantz How can that be, when you have the voice of the king 310himself for your succession in Denmark?
Hamlet Ay sir*, but while the grass grows† – the proverb is something *†musty.
Enter the Players with recorders
Oh, the recorders*. Let me see one*. To withdraw with you† – Why do you go about to recover† the wind of me, as if you would drive 315me into a toil?‡
Guildenstern O my lord, †if my duty be too bold, my love is too unmannerly.
Hamlet I do not well understand that. Will you play upon this pipe?
Guildenstern My lord, I cannot.
Guildenstern Believe me I cannot.
Hamlet I do beseech you.
Guildenstern I know no touch of it my lord.
Hamlet ’Tis* as easy as lying. Govern these ventages† with your fingers* 325and thumb*, give it breath with your mouth, and it will discourse most eloquent* music. Look you, these are the stops.‡
Guildenstern But these cannot I command to any utterance of harmony. I have not the skill.
Hamlet Why look you now how unworthy a thing you make of me. 330You would play upon me, you would seem to know my stops, you would pluck out the heart of my mystery†, you would sound me from my lowest note to the top of* my compass – and there is much music, excellent voice, in this little organ†, yet cannot you make it speak*. ’Sblood*, do you think I* am easier to be played on than a pipe? Call 335me what instrument you will, though you can fret† me*, you cannot play upon me.‡‡‡
Enter Polonius
God bless you sir.‡
Polonius My lord, the queen would speak with you, and presently†.
Hamlet Methinks it is like a weasel.
Polonius It is backed like a weasel.
Polonius Very like a whale.
345*Hamlet Then I will* come to my mother by and by†. – †They fool me to the top of my bent. – I will come by and by.
*Polonius I will say so. Exit
Hamlet‡ By and by is easily said. – Leave me, friends.
Exeunt all but Hamlet
Textual variants
3.2] Scene II Capell
81 SD ] This edn; Enter Trumpets and Kettle Drummes, King, Queene, Polonius, Ophelia. Q2; Enter King, Queene, Polonius, Ophelia, Rosincrance, Guildensterne, and other Lords attendant, with his Guard carrying Torches. Danish March. Sound a Flourish. F
135 SD ] P. Alexander; Enter King and Queene Q2; Enter King and his Queene F
147 Following this line Q2 inserts For women feare too much, euen as they loue,
Explanatory notes
0 SD two or three So F. Q2 gives ‘three’; for Shakespeare’s MS to be so specific against an MS with theatre influence is remarkable, especially as there is no need for three players. Probably a compositor’s omission.
1 The time is the evening of the same day. Hamlet now appears sane and utterly intent on the acting of his play.
3 I had as lief It would be as agreeable to me that.
4 thus Hamlet makes the exaggerated gestures he criticizes.
4–6 in the very torrent … acquire and beget a temperance Hamlet describes an acting process by which the actors should obtain, even as they generate intense emotion, a balance and control that they should then convey in their performance.
7 robustious rough and rude.
8 periwig-pated wearing a wig.
9 groundlings Audience members who stood in the open yard of the amphitheatre, admission to which was the least expensive option.
9 are capable of have a capacity for, can understand.
10 inexplicable dumb-shows Shakespeare does not use ‘inexplicable’ elsewhere. The context of dumb-shows, by which Hamlet invokes old-fashioned spectacles, suggests ‘meaningless’.
11 Termagant A deity supposed to be worshipped by Muslims, invoked to signify a user of excessive or senseless terms.
11 Herod Ruler of Judaea from 37 BCE to 4 BCE; familiar as a ranting tyrant in the medieval biblical cycles who ordered the slaughter of children in an attempt to kill Jesus Christ.
15 Suit … action ‘action’ is used here in two different senses, both belonging to the theatre. First, it means acting – in its fullest sense of an actor’s management of himself on the stage, and not just gesture (OED 6). In the second phrase, it means the action of the play. ‘[W]ord’ also has two meanings; first, the language of the play, and, in the second phrase, the actor’s speech. Hamlet instructs the Player to let his acting be governed by what he is given to speak, and to let his speech be governed by what he is given to act.
16 modesty restraints, limitations, measure. Compare 2.2.400.
17 from away from.
18 mirror Reveals things not as they seem, but as they really are.
19 scorn i.e. that which is to be scorned.
20 the very … pressure i.e. gives an impression of the shape of our times in the clearest detail. Many commentators think that ‘very age’ and ‘body of the time’ are separate and parallel phrases, but the run of the sentence clearly puts ‘age and body’ together.
21 come tardy off done inadequately or imperfectly.
21 unskilful ignorant and undiscerning.
22 censure judgement.
22–3 of the which one of one of whom.
23 your allowance i.e. what you will permit or sanction, hence ‘your scale of values’.
27–8 nature’s journeymen These bad actors must have been made not by God (hence Hamlet’s ‘not to speak it profanely’), but by some of Nature’s hired men, little better than apprentices.
29 abominably Spelt in Q2 and F ‘abhominably’, indicating what, from a false etymology, they thought the word meant: ‘away from the nature of man’.
30 indifferently reasonably well.
34 necessary question i.e. essential part of the plot.
38 presently immediately.
44 e’en Emphatic, like modern ‘absolutely’.
44 just Not ‘judicious’ but ‘honourable’, ‘upright’.
45 my conversation coped withal my encounters with people have brought me in touch with.
48 Scan ‘That nó revénue hást but thý good spirits’.
48 spirits inner qualities.
50–1 The courtier kissing his patron’s hands and bowing is pictured, in beast-fable fashion, as a fawning dog licking and crouching – though the dog is nowhere specifically mentioned.
50 candied sugared.
50 absurd ridiculous in its vanity and self-love. Accent on first syllable.
51 pregnant ‘quick, ready, prompt’ (Johnson).
52 thrift (‘thriving’) profit, prosperity.
54–5 And could … herself From the time Hamlet’s soul could be discriminating in her choice amongst men, she has marked you out. So Q2. F’s meaning is different: ‘and could discriminate amongst men, her choice hath marked you out’.
55 sealed … herself In the legal sense, put a lawful seal on you as her property; hence, ‘solemnly attested that you are hers’. There are biblical resonances as well with Ephesians 4.30, 2 Cor. 1.22, and Rom 11.5, 28 (see Naseeb Shaheen, Biblical References in Shakespeare’s Plays (Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1999), 549).
59 blood and judgement passion and reason.
59 commeddled mixed together; ‘meddle’ is common, but ‘commeddle’ is rare, and F gives ‘commingled’.
61 stop Note produced by closing a finger-hole in a wind instrument (Shakespeare’s Words).
66 circumstance circumstances, details.
69–70 Even with … uncle i.e. use your most intense powers of observation in watching my uncle; ‘comment’ stands for the power to comment.
70 occulted hidden.
71 unkennel come into the open. The word was used of dislodging or driving a fox from his hole or lair.
71 in one speech Thompson and Taylor point out that this could refer either to Hamlet’s inserted lines (2.2.493–4) or to the anticipated admission of guilt by Claudius (2.2.542–5).
72 a damnèd ghost … seen the ghost which we have seen came from hell (and was an impostor and a liar).
73 my imaginations what Hamlet’s mind has suggested to him in the wake of the conversation with the Ghost. To have given credence to the Ghost, and built on its tale, shows a disease of his mind.
74 Vulcan’s stithy In classical mythology, Vulcan is the god of fire, and thus his stithy (= forge) was regarded as hellish.
77 In censure of his seeming in weighing up his appearance. They will have to infer from his outward expression what he is actually feeling.
77 Well my lord Expresses Horatio’s concurrence and approval.
78 If a steal aught i.e. if he conceals anything.
80 idle Not ‘unoccupied’, but ‘idle-headed’ = crazy.
81 SD F’s rich version of this grand entry shows how the theatre worked on the bare essentials given by Shakespeare (as recorded in Q2). The two versions have been conflated by suggesting that F’s ‘Danish March’ was, in fact, played by Q2’s ‘Trumpets and Kettle Drummes’. F’s ‘Sound a flourish’ has also been separated from the main body of the SD, since it is the warning flourish that alerts Hamlet to the entry.
82 fares Hamlet chooses to understand this in its alternative sense of being fed.
82 cousin Any close relation. OED notes that the term was often used by a sovereign to another sovereign, or to one of his nobles. Compare 1.2.117, ‘our cousin and our son’. Hamlet and Claudius now come together for the first time since the second scene of the play.
83 the chameleon’s dish The chameleon was supposed to live on air.
84 capons castrated cocks, fattened for the table.
85 have nothing with gain nothing from.
85–6 are not mine do not belong to my question.
91–2 I did enact … killed me For this as an allusion to Shakespeare’s own Julius Caesar, see Introduction, 7–8.
93 part action (compare 2 Henry IV 4.5.63 (Riverside)) – but also, continuing the theatre-language, ‘part to play’, role.
93 calf Commonly used for a dolt or stupid person.
97 metal more attractive literally, a substance more magnetic; figuratively, a person more appealing. But ‘mettle’ (the spelling in both Q2 and F) means also ‘disposition’, ‘spirit’.
103 country matters the sort of thing that goes on among rustics in the country; coarse or indecent things; sex (with a pun on the first syllable of country).
107 Nothing ‘Thing’ was commonly used to refer to the sexual organ of either men or women; ‘nothing’ was also used to refer to the female genitals.
111 your only jig-maker i.e. ‘there’s no one like me for providing farcical entertainments’.
114 twice two months Compare 1.2.138 – it was then less than two months since the former king’s death: a further indication of the gap in time between Acts 1 and 2.
115–16 let the devil … sables ‘sables’ means the fur of a northern animal, the sable, which is brown. But ‘sable’ is also the heraldic word for ‘black’. So this is a typical riddling remark of Hamlet’s. Since his father has been dead so long, the devil can have his mourning garments and he will start wearing rich furs – but, by the pun, he will actually continue mourning.
118 byrlady Compare 2.2.388. This is F’s spelling. Q2’s ‘ber lady’ may represent Shakespeare’s spelling and pronunciation.
119 not thinking on being forgotten.
119–20 hobby-horse … forgot The hobby-horse was one of the additional characters in the Morris dance in the traditional English summer festivities. A man wore a huge hooped skirt in the likeness of a horse. The phrase ‘the hobby horse is forgot’ is very common (see OED) and nearly always had a sexual connotation (see Othello 4.1.154 (Riverside); Winter’s Tale 1.2.276 (Riverside)). A. Brissenden (RES xxx (1979), 1–11) describes how the horse used to sink to the ground as though dead, then come to energetic life again. So the hobby-horse does not die to be forgotten, but comes back with a vengeance, like Hamlet’s father.
120 SD The versions of the dumb-show in Q2 and F differ in three ways: (1) Q2 accidentally omits what is almost certainly part of the original SD (chiefly ‘She kneels…unto him’, 2–3); (2) F firms up for stage presentation, altering the music, identifying characters (‘Fellow’, ‘King’, ‘Mutes’), and inserting exits; (3) F substitutes more familiar and descriptive words like ‘loath and unwilling’ for ‘harsh’.
What is printed here is an eclectic version, accepting some changes from F, but preserving Q2’s language.
There are three problems about the dumb-show. (1) It is most unusual for a dumb-show to mime the action of the entire play to follow; (2) Did Hamlet know the dumb-show was going to be presented? (3) Why does Claudius not react? As regards (1), the show clearly puzzles Ophelia, and is therefore probably meant to seem rather peculiar. As regards (2), although Hamlet’s ensuing remarks can be interpreted as showing anger towards the players, they do not in the least demand that interpretation, and it is safer to assume that the sponsor of the play knew what was going to take place. (3) There are many ways of explaining Claudius’s silence, but an impassive, or nearly impassive, Claudius is theatrically very effective, providing an enigma for Hamlet and Horatio, as well as the audience.
120.1 Hoboys Oboes.
120.3 protestation solemn vow.
120.10 harsh i.e. she is disdainful, cross.
122 miching mallecho Another insoluble problem. ‘[M]iching’ is F’s word; Q2 has ‘munching’. ‘[M]iching’ is a good English word meaning ‘skulking’; ‘mallecho’ (Q2, Mallico; f, Malicho) may be for Spanish malhecho, a misdeed.
123 Belike … play? ‘Perhaps this dumb-show explains what the play is about?’
125 they’ll tell all It would seem unnecessary to point out that this is a joke, but some have taken it as a sign of Hamlet’s anxiety lest his scheme should be sabotaged.
127 any show … Hamlet continues his bawdy innuendos.
129 naught wicked.
133 posy inscribed motto or rhyme; a shortened version of ‘poesie’, which is how the word is spelt in F and Q1.
135 SD King … Queen According to Hamlet in 216–18, it is a Duke called Gonzago and his wife Baptista. F makes an effort to call the Queen-Duchess ‘Bap.’ or ‘Bapt’ in speech headings – no doubt to distinguish her from Gertrude – but does nothing to alter ‘King’. Interestingly, Q1 calls them Duke and Duchess throughout.
136 Phoebus’ cart The chariot of the classical god of the sun, i.e. the sun.
136–9 The emphasis on thirty years of marriage has been compared with the emphasis on Hamlet’s age as 30 at 5.1.122–38.
137 Neptune’s … Tellus’ orbèd ground The ocean and the sphere of the earth, the globe.
138 borrowed sheen reflected light.
140 Hymen God of marriage.
146 distrust you worry about your health.
148 Fear and love go together in a woman. Either they are both non-existent, or they are both present in full. For Shakespeare’s hesitations here, see Textual Analysis, 255–6.
150 proof experience, trial.
151 sized in size.
152–3 These two lines are omitted in F. See Textual Analysis, 255–6.
155 leave to do cease to perform.
161 None wed … first No explicit accusation or indictment of Gertrude for the murder of Hamlet Sr has been made so far in the play. (Hamlet accuses her at 3.4.30.)
162 wormwood Artemisia absinthium, a bitter herb.
163 instances motives.
164 thrift profit, advancement.
167–78 The whole of this speech makes gnomic comments on Hamlet’s own predicament.
169 Purpose is … memory The fulfilment of plans depends on memory.
170 Of violent birth Very strong at the beginning.
170 validity health and strength.
175–6 in passion … purpose lose Extends the sentiment of 169, only now the fulfilment of a plan depends upon the maintenance of emotional fervour.
177–8 The violence … destroy Repeats the preceding couplet. Violent grief and joy, when they cease, destroy the ‘enactures’ or actions which are associated with them.
179–80 Where joy … accident Those who have most capacity for joy have most capacity for grief, and the one changes into the other on the slightest occasion.
181 for aye for ever.
187 hitherto to this extent.
187 tend attend, wait.
189 try make trial of.
190 seasons As in 1.3.81, ‘to season’ means ‘to cause change by the passage of time’, usually ‘to ripen’, but here simply ‘changes (him into)’.
193 devices schemes, plans.
200 anchor’s cheer the fare of an anchorite or religious hermit.
200 scope limit.
201 opposite opposing force.
201 blanks blanches, makes pale. Not used elsewhere by Shakespeare.
207 spirits vital spirits.
211 doth protest makes protestation or promises.
213–14 Is there … no offence i’th’world Claudius is probably asking whether there is anything censorable in the play, but Hamlet chooses to interpret it as a question about whether there is something criminal in it. Hamlet’s assurance that it is only a mock-crime includes the first verbal mention of poison in the inset play.
216 Tropically As a trope, a figure of speech.
219 free innocent. See 2.2.516.
220 Let … winch ‘galled jade’ is a poor horse with saddle-sores, ‘winch’ = ‘wince’. It was a common saying that it was the galled horse that would soonest wince (Tilley H700).
220 withers The high part of a horse’s back, between the shoulder-blades.
220 unwrung not pressed tight, pinched or chafed. See OED wring ν 4.
221 nephew to the king In identifying Lucianus thus, Hamlet brings together past and future: Claudius’s killing of his brother, and his own projected killing of his uncle.
223–4 I could … dallying I could act as a chorus in explaining what goes on between you and your lover if I could see the dalliance or flirting in the form of a puppet show. Many commentators suspect some indecent secondary meaning in ‘puppets’, which is fully in keeping with Hamlet’s treatment of Ophelia. The explanation may well lie in Q1’s ‘poopies’. It has been shown by H. Hulme that ‘poop’ meant the female genitals (Hilda M. Hulme, Explorations in Shakespeare’s Language: Some Problems of Lexical Meaning in the Dramatic Text (New York: Barnes & Noble, 1963), 114). That the word could mean ‘rump’ is clear from OED, and the obscene use is probably only an extension of that meaning, probably to the genital organs of either sex.
225 keen sharp and bitter.
226 groaning of childbirth or loss of maidenhead. ‘[E]dge’ = sexual appetite.
227 Still better and worse Ophelia refers to Hamlet’s continual ‘bettering’ of her meaning, i.e. ‘Always a “better” meaning with a more offensive slant’.
228 mistake i.e. mis-take, trick: ‘with such vows (for better or for worse) you falsely take your husbands’.
229–30 the croaking … revenge Simpson noted (NV) in 1874 that this was a ‘satirical condensation’ of two lines from The True Tragedy of Richard III (printed 1594): ‘The screeking raven sits croaking for revenge, / Whole herds of beasts come bellowing for revenge’ (Malone Society Reprint, 1892–3).
231 apt ready.
232 Confederate season i.e. this moment of time is his ally, and his only witness.
233 of midnight weeds collected put together from weeds gathered at midnight; ‘[C]ollected’ refers to the mixing of the weeds, the concoction, and not the picking. Compare 4.7.143.
234 Hecat Hecate, goddess of witchcraft.
234 ban curse.
235 dire property baleful quality.
236 usurp So F. Q2 reads ‘usurps’, but it is quite clear from the syntax that Lucianus is invoking the poison to work.
237 estate position (as king). Compare 3.3.5.
241 false fire gunfire with blank charge.
245 Lords Q2 gives this to Polonius; F to ‘All.’ The royal guard came in bearing torches (81 SD above); Claudius orders these torchbearers to light him to his own quarters.
246–9 Why, let …world away This song or ballad has not been identified.
247 ungalled uninjured.
248 watch keep awake.
250 this The success of the performance?
250 forest of feathers The plumes which were a derided feature of the gallant’s outfit were a notable feature of theatre costume.
251 turn Turk with me To ‘turn Turk’ is to renounce one’s religion, apostasize or become a renegade; ‘with’ has here the sense of ‘against’ (as we still use it in ‘fight’ or ‘compete’ with someone). So the phrase means ‘renege on me’, or ‘renounce and desert me’.
251 provincial roses Roses orginating either from Provins in northern France or from Provence. (Jenkins in a long note strongly defends the latter origin.) Hamlet is speaking of rosettes and not the real flowers.
251 razed shoes Shoes which were ‘razed’, ‘rased’ or ‘raced’ were ornamented by cuts or slits in the leather.
252 fellowship partnership; the technical term was a ‘share’.
252 cry pack (of hounds).
255 Damon Known from classical literature as a paragon (with Pythias) of friendship.
256 dismantled stripped, divested; i.e. the realm lost Jove himself (sovereign god of the Romans) as king.
258 pajock T. McGrath, in 1871 (cited in NV), cleverly suggested that ‘pajock’ is the ‘patchock’ used by Edmund Spenser in A View of the Present State of Ireland (ed. W. L. Renwick (London: Scholartis Press, 1934), 64) in a context suggesting a despicable person: ‘as very patchocks as the wild Irish’. This is supported by OED sv Patchcock. In the following line, Horatio suggests that he expected Hamlet to finish with a rhyme, likely ‘ass’.
263 Upon the talk of the poisoning May refer either to Lucianus’s words (231–6) or to Hamlet’s outburst (237–9).
264 SD So placed by F. Q2 places it later, after 268. F shows Hamlet pointedly ignoring Rosencrantz and Guildenstern by calling for music and singing a little song.
266–7 if … perdy It has been suggested that this is an echo of the lines in The Spanish Tragedy (4.1.197–8), also referring to a revenger’s playlet, ‘And if the world like not this tragedy, / Hard is the hap of old Hieronimo’. (‘Perdy’ = by God.)
273 distempered out of humoral balance. But the word was also used as a euphemism for being drunk, as Hamlet’s bland enquiry indicates.
275 choler anger.
277 purgation The practice, based on humoral theory, of getting rid of the excess yellow bile that has distempered Claudius. See 1.4.27.
277 signify announce.
277–8 for me … more choler the way in which I would cure him of his distemper would make him much angrier.
279 frame ordered structure.
280 start make a sudden movement, like a startled horse.
281 tame subdued; i.e. a manageable horse that will not ‘start’.
286 wholesome healthy, i.e. sane.
287 pardon permission (to leave).
292 command have at your service.
296 admiration wonder.
301 were she … mother In sane conversation, this would go with a refusal to obey.
304 pickers and stealers hands. From the Catechism in the Book of Common Prayer: ‘To keep my hands from picking and stealing’.
306 bar … liberty Rosencrantz means Hamlet would be more free in his mind, less burdened, if he would communicate his problems.
308 I lack advancement Hamlet brazenly offers the explanation which Rosencrantz and Guildenstern had previously suggested and which he had denied (2.2.241–4).
311 while the grass grows – While waiting for the grass to grow, the horse starves. As Hamlet indicates, this is an old proverb (Tilley G423).
312 SD So Q2. F’s modification of this direction and the subsequent dialogue cut down the number of characters necessary. See Textual Analysis, 266–8.
313 To withdraw with you Hamlet moves Rosencrantz and Guildenstern aside with him.
314 recover gain. The huntsman will try to move to the windward of his prey, and so get the animal, scenting him, to run away from him and towards the trap.
316–17 if my duty … unmannerly ‘If my respectful attention seems to you too bold, you accuse love of being ill-mannered’.
324 ventages vents, i.e. finger holes of the recorder.
331 mystery the skills of a particular craft. I.e. you would learn the innermost secret of my working, as a musician would learn the secret of playing the recorder.
333 this little organ the recorder.
335 fret ‘frets’ are the raised bars for fingering on a lute, providing a pun with ‘irritate’.
338 presently immediately.
339 see yonder cloud This scene is supposed to be taking place indoors at night. But Shakespeare has already puzzled the difference between inside and outside in scenes between Hamlet and Polonius (see 2.2.201).
345 by and by presently, quite soon.
345–6 They fool me … bent They tax to the uttermost my capacity to play the madman.
349 witching time bewitching time, time of sorcery and enchantment. The reference is to the witches’ sabbath, when their ceremonies conjured up the devil in physical form.
351 Now could I drink hot blood Witches were supposed to open the graves of newly buried children whom their charms had killed, boil the bodies, and drink the liquid. Drinking of blood was one of the most frequent charges against witches. See Reginald Scot, Discovery of Witchcraft (London, 1584), E1.
353 Soft That’s enough! (see 3.1.88 note).
354 nature natural feelings (as regards his mother). Compare 1.5.81.
355 Nero Tyrannical Roman emperor who contrived the murder of his mother.
358 My tongue … hypocrites Hamlet establishes the disjunction between what he will say and what he feels or wishes.
359 shent castigated, punished (by rebuke or reproach).
360 give them seals i.e. by deeds.
Performance notes from Shakespeare in Production
0 Kean ‘enters with the players at his heels’, as if continuing ‘an easy mannered conversation’ (Finlay, Miscellanies, p. 223). Booth at the Winter Garden entered ‘reading a paper (presumably the speech which he had written for insertion in the play); this he rolled up as he began the “advice,” using it in gesticulations, and handing it to the First Player when he dismissed him’ (Mason 110).
1ff Irving did not ‘advise’ the players; he gave a royal ‘order’ (Terry, p. 104). Burton in 1964 spoke these lines not as reflections on the nature of dramatic art but as a set of rapidly delivered commands for the ambush of the King.
3–4 Irving here mimicked a gesture of the First Player in 2.2 (Towse, ‘Irving’, p. 666).
18–19 Irving paused, seeking the right word, then at ‘nature’ raised his hand in triumph over his head (Terry, pp. 104–5). Gielgud paused before ‘mirror’, seeking the clearest simile, then seemed to hold one in his hand (Gilder, p. 161).
36 Following ‘uses it’ Q1 uniquely specifies some interpolations by which a clown might try to get a laugh, from familiar catch-phrases and punch-lines from jests attributed to Richard Tarlton, the famous Elizabethan clown, to ‘blabbering with his lips’. The Q1 Prince seems to relish enumerating them. Does, he, in mimicry, blabber with his own lips? For the complete passage see The Three-Text Hamlet.
44ff Booth ‘takes him by both hands and bends upon him a look of love and trust … It is beautiful to see how he relies upon Horatio, keeps him near him in his trials, turns his eyes upon him often. He loved to clasp his hand, to exchange glances with him’ (Garland, ‘Lecture’, p. 29).
Supporting Henry Ainley in an all-star production in 1930, Godfrey Tearle as Horatio was variously praised as ‘manly’, ‘loyal’, ‘burly-tender’ – his ‘quiet distinction’, ‘muted integrity’ and ‘grave and commanding’ demeanour contrasting with Ainley's outbursts (Empire News, 27 April 1930). Agate also saw in him the ‘unalloyed spirit which Hamlet might so easily have been’ (Sunday Times, 27 April 1930).
In 1953 Burton gave this speech ‘with a gentle warmth and a touch of self-consciousness’ (Shakespeare at the Old Vic, London: Black, 1954, p. 54).
59–61 Irving was felt to be referring to himself (Academy, 7 November 1874, p. 519).
61–2 Of Gielgud: Hamlet's ‘words describe not only what Horatio is, but what he himself is not’ (Gilder, p. 163).
64a ‘As I do thee’ (Barrymore's studybook).
64b ‘With a gentle reserve’ (Tree, ‘Hamlet’, p. 873). Barrymore broke off his effusion to Horatio ‘with half-reluctant shyness’ (MacCarthy, Theatre, p. 57). With Burton in 1964 the half-line, prompted by a laugh off-stage of the court, meant: ‘we must not dally, must hurry’.
80 Macready ‘assumed the manner of an idiot, or of a silly and active and impertinent booby, by tossing his head right and left, and walking rapidly across the stage five or six times before the foot-lights and switching his hankerchief – held by a corner – over his right and left shoulder alternately, until the whole court have had time to parade and be seated’ (Hackett, ‘Notes’, p. 158). Ian McKellen in 1972 similarly twirled his handkerchief at this point (Trewin, Five & Eighty, p. 155).
82sd Both Q2 and F have the stage direction immediately before 80. Q2 reads: Enter Trumpets and Kettle Drummes, King, Queene, Polonius, Ophelia; F reads: Enter King, Queene, Polonius, Ophelia, Rosincrance, Guildensterne, and other Lords attendant, with his Guard carrying Torches. Danish March. Sound a Flourish. Edwards has moved all but the ‘Flourish’ to 82. The ‘Danish March’ almost certainly involved trumpets and kettle drums. In The Magnificent Entertainment, Thomas Dekker described the 1603 coronation procession of King James and Queen Anne of Denmark: ‘to delight the Queene with her owne country Musicke, nine Trumpets, and a Kettle Drum, did very sprightly & actiuely sound the Danish March'. It may be that, as they sometimes did for the playhouses, royal trumpeters themselves played the same march at the Globe (Long, Music, pp. 119–20).
Staging of the play scene involves three centres of attention: the players; the King and Queen (seated), usually with Polonius (standing); and Ophelia (seated), Hamlet (on the floor at her feet), usually with Horatio (standing). The most common arrangement – there are instances in each century, especially the nineteenth – is to perform the playlet upstage centre, with the royal party downstage on one side and the Hamlet group on the other. This is the arrangement shown in two illustrations of eighteenth-century performances (Merchant, Shakespeare, pp. 46–7; Burnim, Garrick, pp. 164–5). Kemble in 1804 followed it (Promptbooks, p. 47). So did Macready (shown in Daniel Maclise's 1842 painting), except that in it Hamlet turned his back to the playlet while scrutinizing the King, a practice followed by Irving as well. The 1925 Birmingham Repertory production varied the pattern by placing the King and Queen on a bench facing the players, with their backs to the real audience.
Sometimes the royals have been placed on a dais or other elevation upstage centre with the players downstage and the Hamlet group on one side or the other. So they are shown in two eighteenth-century depictions (Merchant, Shakespeare, pp. 46–7). Commenting on Garrick, The Theatrical Review observed of the playlet that it ‘has been been usual for the Actors of it, to perform with their backs to the King and Queen’ (May, 1763). In Prague in 1927 this placement was used, with the players in silhouette.
Instead of the usual triangle, a twentieth-century pattern has distributed the three centres of attention in a diagonal. For example, in the 1937 Olivier/Guthrie production, the King and Queen are on high, stage left, while the players are in the centre at a middle level, and Hamlet and Ophelia, downstage right. For pictures of many of these arrangements, plus others, see Mander and Mitchenson, Hamlet, pp. 70–87.
What all these stagings have in common is the prominence given the Prince. At the beginning of the play he is invariably physically below the King and Queen, usually because he is downstage but always because he is sitting on the floor. The choreography of the scene shows his rise, literally as well as figuratively. Also Hamlet stands out because where the other characters are fixed in their assigned places, he has more and more been free to move about. First it was Kean and his famous ‘crawl’, emulated by some of his nineteenth-century successors. By 1935 Gielgud was much more active. As the King and Queen sat on thrones at the upper landing watching the players on the main stage, Hamlet roamed by way of the throne-area from one middle-landing vantage-point to the other, focusing first on the Queen, then on the King.
Many of these features were pushed to exciting extremes in the 1912 Moscow Art Theatre production. The King and Queen are high and remote, the players are on the narrow apron with their backs to the real audience. Kachalov's Hamlet is especially identified with the deep trap which runs the width of centre stage; he places Horatio on the edge of the apron from where he can observe the King from behind a pillar. Hamlet darts around the whole stage (in rehearsal Craig had told him that ‘Hamlet's movement must be like lightning cutting across the stage’). From his place at Ophelia's feet upstage, he leaps up and rushes into the trap to watch the dumb show, with his back to the King and with only his upper body visible, blindingly spotlighted. Later he returns to Ophelia, then the Queen, then back to the trap. Kachalov found the scene exhausting to play, not only because of these moves but because of the need to project his voice from the extremes of the stage, which had been opened to its full length and breadth.
82–120 Stanislavsky advised Kachalov that in this passage Hamlet ‘wants to slap the king in the face, but without revealing that it is a slap in the face; ditto to Polonius, ditto to Ophelia’ (Senelick, p. 142).
87a Fechter waved his hand, showing that those words ‘had passed into the air for all time’ (Field, p. 107).
87b–93a In the Branagh film, the two play this passage as if it were patter in a double-act, warming up the audience (Screenplay, p. 87).
94 To take off the rudeness of this line, Charles Kemble ‘tells Polonius “it was a brute part,” and then walks away, chuckling to himself over the remainder of the joke – “to kill so capital a calf there”’ (New York Evening Post, 18 September 1832).
115 Pryce's Hamlet ‘does a huge double-take on “So long?”’ (Gilbert, ‘Pryce’).
120sd Edwards amalgamates Q2 and F. Among other differences Q2 stipulates ‘trumpets’ rather than F's ‘hoboys’. Q2's Queen is less demonstratively loving to her husband (Q2 does not include F's ‘very lovingly’ or ‘She kneels and makes show of protestation unto him’) while Q2's King is more demonstrative towards her (where F has simply ‘Queen embracing him’, Q2 continues ‘and he her’). Q2's Queen is initially more resistant to the poisoner (‘harsh’ rather than F's ‘loath and unwilling’). The Q1 stage direction is much shorter than the other two; its Queen shows no affection at all.
The dumb show has customarily been cut in performance, thereby avoiding the risk of diminishing by repetition the impact of the climactic Mousetrap while obviating the question of why Claudius's conscience is able to resist the miming of his crime yet succumbs to the spoken version. Even when the dumb show is performed, this question is commonly sidestepped by freely adapting the scenario in such a way as to make it inexplicable and thus unthreatening, even ludicrous – as in the Williamson film, which features acrobats with funny noses and a maypole (bewilderingly, in this version it is the player Queen, not her lover, who uses one of its streamers to strangle the player King). Or Claudius may simply be inattentive. For the 1930 Gielgud production, its director saw the King as ‘enjoying his liquor; thus in the manner of our own late-comers to the stalls, he misses the point of the dumb show’ (Williams, Years, p. 162). For Burton Gielgud had the King at first preoccupied by ‘socializing with the Courtiers who regard the play as quaint and amusing’ (Sterne, p. 214). Even though Burton then takes away Claudius's goblet and forces him to watch, the King betrays no sign of guilt. Why not here but later? Presumably because Gielgud has omitted from his dumb show the reenactment of the poisoning. Yet allowing the King to witness the full dumb show as written can provide what Granville-Barker called ‘the first round of the war of nerves between Prince and King’ (Prefaces, p. 88). So a self-possessed King, like Patrick Stewart in the BBC-TV production, can help to build suspense by winning this opening round, appearing imperturbed, indeed vastly amused, when first confronted by the reenactment of his crime.
In the Olivier film the dumb show (which follows the originals closely) is substituted for the spoken version. The drawback is that although the King winces at the poisoning he does not break until after the whole dumb show is over, thus lessening Shakespeare's emphasis on the ‘talk of the poisoning’.
127–8 Gielgud directed Burton to ‘emphasize the alliteration in “Be not you ashamed to show,” so that the line sounds very bitter and bawdy. The court is shocked, but let's have one lady laugh lewdly at that’ (Sterne, p. 117).
134–5 ‘Most Hamlets insult Ophelia by hurling this reply at her. Fechter gave it as if communing with his own thoughts, and looked the while toward his mother’ (Field, p. 107).
160ff Guthrie at Minneapolis directed the scandalized Court to begin whispering here, growing more intense at 165–6, and – undaunted by the Player King's attempt to silence them – building to 204. All the while they are drawing apart from the King so that by the end of the playlet, they are all huddled together in back of Hamlet, leaving ‘the lone figure of the King’ (Rossi, pp. 48–9). At 237SD Claudius gasps uncontrollably, abruptly cutting off the whispering, and in this silence Hamlet can very softly say: ‘He poisons him i’ the garden for his estate’ while Claudius registers a series of fearful reactions after each phrase (Rossi, pp. 28–9).
162 Macready addressed ‘That's wormwood’ to Horatio (promptbook 37) as did Fechter (Field, p. 107).
205 Fechter: ‘to King and Queen’ (Field, p. 107). Irving spoke this line to Ophelia: he ‘looks at her and grows sad’ (Terry's rehearsal book).
212 On BBC-TV Jacobi emphasizes her.
213b With Frank Benson, Claudius addressed this question to Polonius (World, 7 March 1900).
216 Wilks was praised for ‘The Gayety, the unforc'd, soft, becoming negligence, with which, reclining at the Feet of Ophelia and toying with her Fan as if genteely Insignificant, He kept a Guard upon his Uncle's eye and watch'd (unnotic'd) the Effect of his Play's Influence’ (Prompter, 24 October 1735). Kemble used the same business (H. Martin, Remarks, pp. 6–7). Finlay adds that Kemble ‘answered the questions as to the name and plot of the play carelessly, as if they were interrupting his situation, and as if he took no interest in the play farther than that he had casually seen it’. In contrast, Finlay faulted Kean for dividing his attention between the play (which Hamlet already knew) and the King to the neglect of Ophelia (Miscellanies, p. 227). Fechter carries the manuscript pages of The Murder of Gonzago when giving his advice to the players and during the playlet uses it as a screen while he watches the King (Morning Chronicle, 23 March 1861).
216a Barrymore paused before and after saying ‘The Mousetrap’ (promptbook 156).
229ff Kachalov brought his face closer and closer to the King's, hypnotizing him with his eyes and voice, his tone rising to a shout for the first time in the performance until the King in panic calls for ‘light!’ As the King flees ‘in a series of ludicrous leaps’ along with the Court, the Prince wraps himself in the Player King's cloak: ‘capering and electrifying the house with … a kind of antic mummery whose hysteria concealed horror’ (Senelick, p. 167).
231–6 When J. B. Booth delivered these lines, playing Lucianus to Charles Kean's Hamlet, ‘each word dropped poison’ (Gould, p. 64). Here as earlier in the playlet, Gielgud beat ‘the measure of Lucianus’ lines as though he would whip them forward to their desperate goal’ (Gilder, p. 169). Branagh in 1992/3 took the vial from Lucianus and himself poured the poison in the Player King's ear (Cahiers Elisabethains, October, 1993, pp. 72, 78); in the film he turns on Claudius with the phial (Screenplay, p. 93).
233a–9 With Macready, when the poisoner produces a phial, the King starts; when the poison is poured (237), he covers his face with both hands; at ‘murderer’ (239) he rises (promptbook 129). Reviewers commented on the ‘strange fire’ in Macready's eyes, which were ‘fixed with serpent-fascination on the king’ (New Monthly Magazine, 1 July 1821, p. 333). He seemed to ‘read the thoughts that moved within his guilty uncle's breast; and when he starts up, and with a cry of exultation follows the craven and flying murderer to the door, the audience seemed relieved from a spell’ (Theatrical Journal, 5 September 1840).
237b–9 Barrymore ‘leans closely over King, speaking in his ear. King becomes terror-stricken, gives shriek’ (promptbook 156).
240–3 With Barrymore these lines were ‘all spoken simultaneously, characters all moving at the same time’ (promptbook 156).
240 With Irving, after the king rises, the Academy explains: ‘it is not so much by his rising, nor by Ophelia's words of surprise, as by the actor's [Irving’s] seething excitement, that you perceive the enterprise has succeeded’ (7 November 1874). In the end ‘he leaps in momentary wildness’ upon the vacant throne, ‘with an hysterical yell of triumph’ (Scott, Hamlets, p. 40).
241 Of Gielgud: ‘the house was really excited, and with that genuine excitement of a crowd when a goal is scored in a Cup final’ (Sunday Times, 11 May 1930, p. 6).
244 Playing opposite Derek Jacobi in the BBC-TV production, Patrick Stewart here coolly called for light, then held the torch to Hamlet's face, which Jacobi covered with his hands. When (like the First Player at 2.2.475) Jacobi then revealed his grinning, antic face, Stewart glanced around and shook his head as if to say ‘You see how impossible my nephew is …’ At the talk of the poisoning, his hand had gone up and down several times as if he wanted to shield his eyes but was restraining the impulse. Except for this momentary break, however, he kept his self-control.
245 ‘The Quarto [Q2] gives the line “Lights, lights, lights!” to Polonius only, while the Folio has “All.” It is very evident that in practice the cry for lights might well be started by Polonius but must be taken up by “All”’ (Webster, Shakespeare, p. 131).
245sd With Booth ‘the Players on the platform stage … stare in amazement and retire in doubt and chagrin’ (Shattuck, p. 217).
246 Gielgud ‘tears the “dozen or sixteen lines” into a thousand pieces and scatters them abroad’ (Gilder, p. 169).
246–58 Of Irving: ‘his body swaying the while from side to side in irrepressible excitement’ he recites the doggerel stanzas; at 258 he referred to Ophelia's peacock-feathered fan, which he still retained (Towse, ‘Irving’, p. 666).
248–9 Garrick always ‘wound up his burst of exultation … by three flourishes of his pocket-handkerchief over his head, as he paced the stage backwards and forwards. It was once remarked, as an extraordinary deviation, that he added a fourth flourish’ (Cole, Charles Kean, i, p. 283). Davies wished he would vary the practice (iii, pp. 93–4). Describing Macready, Forster caught the irony of the aftermath: ‘As he stands there, in the flushed excitement of a triumph, we feel that he is satisfied with the discovery alone … and that to act upon it was as far from his thoughts as ever’ (Dramatic Essays, p. 11).
264sd So F and Q1. Q2 has Rosencrantz and Guildenstern enter later, at 269. The earlier entrance allows for unspoken interaction. Edwards suggests that Hamlet ‘pointedly ignores’ them. Or, if unobserved, they may have a chance to appraise the situation and exchange looks. Or perhaps the earlier entry simply gave them more time to cross the large Elizabethan stage.
265 ‘Fechter tore the leaves from his play-book and scattered them in the air … he put his hand to his throat as if choking. “Ah, ha!” became a gasp; he leaned upon Horatio and, for relief, for solace, called for music’ (Field, p. 108). Of Booth: ‘the “ah“ is an indrawn sound like a moan, the “ha“ an expulsion of breath like a low, sorrowful, but triumphant laugh’ (Shattuck, p. 209).
268 Of Macready: as usual after his ‘highest flights of passion’ he subsided into his natural gentleness; ‘he drooped his head upon Horatio's shoulder, and asked in the tone of a sick man for some music’ (Lady Pollock, Macready, p. 107).
269 In the 1964 Burton production, Gielgud directed Redfield, who had been exaggeratedly servile and alarmed, to: ‘bully Hamlet now! You must tell him off! He's behaved disgracefully – let him have it! … You’ve got the King on your side now. You’re not afraid of Hamlet any more’ (Redfield, Letters, p. 90).
270–8 Irving delivers 270 ‘with choler’ and through 278 ‘he is apparently full of high spirits – blazing away all the while’ (Terry's rehearsal book – the notes for this scene are not in Terry's hand).
274 Macready said these words rapidly, not as a question but as an ‘exclamation denoting an unquestionable conclusion’ (Hackett, Notes, p. 159).
282 Redfield with Burton in 1964: ‘the que-e-en, your mo-o-ther’, as if to say: ‘surely you’ll pay attention to her'.
297 Forbes-Robertson spoke ‘O wonderful son …’ with ‘tender melancholy’ (Daily News, 13 September 1897, p. 6).
301a–2 Macready gave a ‘long pause’ after ‘mother’ (promptbook 37). Booth: ‘This is [Hamlet’s] first use of the royal plural. He is resolved now to assume his rights’ (studybook). He spoke ‘trade’ with a ‘hard, sarcastic tone, implying in the word a reproach for their conspiracy against him’ (Shattuck, p. 211).
303–8 With Forbes-Robertson ‘Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are sharply differentiated, the former being the more sympathetic of the two. When (after the play) he appeals to Hamlet by their mutual friendship the Prince appears to be about to make some confidence to him when he catches the sinister look of Guildenstern fixed upon him and turns it off with an obviously affected “I lack advancement”, and his indignation in the “recorders” passage which immediately follows is directed only against Guildenstern’ (Crosse, Diaries, ii, 1898).
308 With Gielgud this line ‘is not merely a statement, but a proclamation of his thwarted right to power’ (Gilder, p. 171).
313 In rehearsal with Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, Stanislavsky ‘moved back and forth, forcing them to chase him like foxhounds. He led this “chase” at a hectic tempo and then suddenly stopped short, tossing them a line, so that Rosencrantz and Guildenstern with no time to halt crashed into him’ (Senelick, p. 143).
325 Burton rolled the ‘r’ in ‘brrreath’ up the scale.
330 Irving: ‘dropping all humorous banter and blazing out’ (Terry's rehearsal book).
334a Irving: ‘breaking a pipe across his knee’ (Terry's rehearsal book). Of Forbes-Robertson: ‘Unlike Irving he does not smash the recorder on his knee.’ Instead of rage he projected ‘a quiet sense of superiority over the two courtiers who foolishly fancied that it would be easy to play on him’ (Graphic, 18 September 1897, p. 374).
336 At this point Irving threw away the two pieces of his pipe (Terry's rehearsal book). Then he interpolated the sponge passage from 4.2.11–19, with Rosencrantz ‘angry’ at ‘Take you me for a sponge?’ and Hamlet emphasizing ‘Sponge, you shall be dry again’ with an added ‘you shall!’ At 337, he, in backing up, came upon Polonius. He turned and spoke the line, bowing low (Terry's rehearsal book).
337 With Booth, in these four words, ‘there is such weariness, there is such scorn of this miserable, dishonest, luxurious court, there is such despair of a noble nature set upon by ignoble natures, there is such impatience of this last crafty, unscrupulous, lying courtier, that the grace of speech is more bitter than a curse’ (Calhoun, ‘Booth’, p. 81).
339ff ‘Ion Swinley [as Hamlet] watched the camel-backed cloud through all the changes Hamlet suggests while Ernest Milton, with mocking attention, ‘never looked away from the old man's foolish, assenting face’ (Queen, 2 July 1924). In the Branagh film Polonius's manner towards ‘cold-eyed’ Hamlet moves from ‘barely civil’ to ‘vicious’ (Screenplay, p. 98).
343 Forrest paused after ‘or’ ‘as if rummaging for a simile’ (promptbook).
348b Irving spoke the word ‘friends’ with sarcasm. He wishes Horatio goodnight ‘very tenderly, though rather absently and wearily – extending his hand which Horatio kisses’ (Terry's rehearsal book). With Barrymore, too, Hamlet and Horatio exchanged goodnights (promptbook 156).
349ff Irving: Large bell strikes 12 (promptbook). After the ironic comedy of the ‘clouds’ exchange, Kingsley meant to shock the audience by abruptly floating ‘that black-magic, terrifying Halloween thing on this sea of laughter’ (Maher, Soliloquies, p. 84). Pennington sees Hamlet's ‘melodramatic rhetoric’ here as a retreat from action, ‘making himself an actor whose deeds are only gestures’; accordingly, he spoke it wearing a Player's cloak, as – he points out – Dillane would wear the Player King's crown and Fiennes a Player's mask (Hamlet, p. 92n).
351–6 Kevin Kline spoke 351–3a in a ‘spooky stage-whisper’; at ‘soft’ the ‘elation and energy’ of the first lines was checked by his straining resolve not to harm his mother: ‘Let me be cruuu-elll, not unnaturrrrell’ (Maher, Soliloquies, p. 193).
353a George Grizzard makes ‘an underhand stabbing motion’ then checks it (Rossi, p. 85).
357 Warner unbuckled his sword belt (Maher, Soliloquies, p. 57).
Enter Claudius, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern
Claudius‡
Guildenstern We will ourselves provide†.
Rosencrantz
Claudius
Rosencrantz We will haste us.
Exeunt **Rosencrantz and Guildenstern
Enter Polonius
Polonius‡
Claudius Thanks, dear my lord.
Exit Polonius
[He kneels]
Enter Hamlet
Hamlet‡
Claudius‡
Textual variants
3.3 ] Capell
Explanatory notes
1 I like him not i.e. I do not like the way he is behaving.
1 us i.e. the person of the king.
3 dispatch make ready.
4 along go along. Compare 1.1.26.
5 The terms of our estate The conditions of my position as king.
7 Out of his brows So Q2. ‘[B]rows’ means ‘effrontery’ (which derives from Latin frons = brow). Though ‘effrontery’ is not recorded in the language of Shakespeare’s day in OED, ‘effronted’ (= barefaced, shameless) does exist.
7 ourselves provide make provision for ourselves (to travel to England).
11 The single and peculiar life The life that belongs to the individual only.
13 noyance harm.
14 weal well-being.
16 gulf whirlpool (OED 3).
17 massy massive.
21 annexment adjunct, supplement. A rare word – Shakespeare’s is the first example, and one of only two, in OED.
21 consequence attachment. Again a curious usage.
24 Arm you Prepare yourselves.
28 convey myself secretly move myself.
29 the process what goes on.
29 tax him home censure him severely.
30 as you said Polonius’s transfer of responsibility for the scheme is a matter of prudence as well as deference (see 3.1.175–9).
31 meet suitable.
33 of vantage from a good position.
37 primal eldest curse Cain’s murder of his brother Abel in Genesis 4.10–11.
39 Though inclination … will Claudius cannot pray although his desire to do so is as great as his determination. Thompson and Taylor point out that he may mean that he cannot pray because his desire to do so is matched by his will to sin, as indicated in the next line.
41 double business two incompatible purposes.
41 bound Probably this means ‘directed towards’ (as in ‘bound for England’, 4.6.9), rather than ‘obliged’ or ‘sworn’.
46–7 Whereto … offence? What is mercy for, except to meet crime face to face?
54 effects things acquired or achieved.
55 mine own ambition i.e. those things I was ambitious for.
56 th’offence i.e. the fruits of the offence.
58 shove by thrust aside.
59 wicked prize reward achieved by wicked means.
61 shuffling trickery, sharp practice, deception. See 3.1.67 note.
61 the action lies A legal phrase, meaning that a case is admitted to exist. But it also means that every deed lies exposed to God’s scrutiny.
63–4 Even to … evidence to give evidence even about the worst of our sins. We are witnesses for the prosecution of ourselves; ‘teeth’ is for savagery and ‘forehead’ for effrontery (compare ‘brows’ above, 7).
64 rests remains.
68 limèd The image is of a bird caught by the smearing of a very sticky substance, called birdlime, on twigs and branches.
69 Make assay Claudius is probably addressing himself rather than the angels, since he knows that it is he who must make the effort.
73 pat neatly, aptly.
73 a is Represents a slurred pronunciation of ‘he is’; compare 2.2.185. We would write ‘he’s’, but perhaps the pronunciation was nearer ‘uz’.
75 would be scanned needs to be examined.
79 hire and salary So F. Q2’s ‘base and silly’ is suspect, though it too emphasizes that killing Claudius at this moment would be beneath Hamlet and the demands of revenge.
80 grossly i.e. without consideration or decency.
80 full of bread Malone noted that this was a biblical echo, quoting Ezekiel 16.49: ‘the iniquity of thy sister Sodom, pride, fulness of bread, and abundance of idleness’.
81 broad blown in full blossom.
81 flush vigorous.
83 circumstance … thought ‘circumstance’, as at 1.5.127 and 3.1.1, has the sense of circuitous or circling discourse. The construction here is the familiar Shakespearean use of two nouns for an adjective and a noun, i.e. ‘circumstantial course of thought’ = our course of thought which is necessarily indirect.
88 hent grasp (a rare word). He puts his sword up in its scabbard, promising to lay hold of it at a ‘more horrid’ opportunity.
89 drunk asleep i.e. in a drunken sleep.
91 At game a-swearing Gambling, and cursing the dice or cards as he plays. Although ‘at game’ is not elsewhere used by Shakespeare, there can be little doubt about the correctness of Q2 (followed here) which is supported by Q1, as against F’s paraphrase, ‘At gaming, swearing’.
91 At game a-swearing gambling, and cursing the dice or cards as he plays. Although ‘at game’ is not elsewhere used by Shakespeare, there can be little doubt about the correctness of Q2 (followed here) which is supported by Q1, as against F’s paraphrase, ‘At gaming, swearing’.
92 relish touch, trace.
93–5 trip him … it goes This ambition to bring Claudius to eternal damnation – a speech, said Dr Johnson, ‘too terrible to be read or to be uttered’ – is discussed in the Introduction, 19.
96 This physic Hamlet sees his decision as a medicine temporarily preserving Claudius’s life. Some commentators think the physic is Claudius’s prayer.
Performance notes from Shakespeare in Production
1–27 Rossi, who played Rosencrantz, reports that Guthrie at Minneapolis had Rosencrantz and Guildenstern help the King out of his public garb of office, including a ribbon and medal, into a dressing gown. Guthrie saw the two as ‘just opportunistic climbers … Royalists – loyal to the King and The Establishment … who really don't know what the King's designs are’ (p. 16). As he staged this scene they are at first sincerely deferential. At 10, Guildenstern is kneeling (to tie the King's belt) and at 11 Rosencrantz is buttoning him into his robe (pp. 85–6). Yet in the course of rehearsing this exchange, ‘Rosencrantz became a bit sadistic’. At ‘the cess of majesty’ Guthrie had him ‘slowly advance behind the seated King and speak from behind his right ear, reaching a soft, insinuating climax on “falls,” at which point Claudius winced and made a half-gesture to his ear’ (p. 23). Compare the business Guthrie introduced at 1.5.34.
15 In the Branagh film, trying to soothe the King's choler, Rosencrantz after ‘lives of many’ seems to run dry, looks in vain for help from Guildenstern, then continues to elaborate in the same vein.
27–35 Patrick Stewart on BBC-TV had been able to sustain his self-possession through his interview with Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, in which he was warmly confidential with them, putting his arm around Guildenstern at one point. But when Polonius came in, the King was plainly preoccupied, so much so that he did not express his thanks to Polonius until after he had gone. Finally, his guilty conscience could be contained no longer and he virtually vomited before attempting to pray.
36ff Q1's Claudius wept at the beginning of his soliloquy: ‘O that this wet that falles upon my face/Would wash the crime cleere from my conscience!’
To Morris Carnovsky, who played Claudius at Stratford, Connecticut in 1958, this soliloquy is ‘the revelation of an extremely sensitive and conscience-ridden man’, his final couplet (97–8) ‘a wrenching confession’ (Actor's Eye, pp. 69, 170). Playing opposite Jacobi on stage, Timothy West gave this speech as ‘a dog-tired worrying-away at an old, incurable obsession, packed with self-mockery and self-contempt, the last testament of a man who has already evolved from despair to a deadly cynicism’ (New Statesman, 3 June 1977).
40–4a Michael Pennington, Claudius with Stephen Dillane, shows ‘a touch of Hamlet's own irresolution’ (Country Life, 17 November 1994); ‘like Hamlet he is precariously balanced between guilt, terror and self-control’ (Sunday Times, 13 November 1994).
73ff Davies praised Garrick as the first to reject ‘this horrid soliloquy’ (p. 101); since then it has often been cut. When included, its vengefulness has commonly been mitigated by treating it as a rationalization. In 1763, Thomas Sheridan, a rival of Garrick's in the role, told Boswell that this speech ‘if really from the heart, would make Hamlet the most black, revengeful man. But it coincides better with his character to suppose him here endeavouring to make an excuse to himself for his delay’ (Boswell, London Journal, pp. 234–5). Of Fechter: ‘restrained by reasonable doubt, not vacillation of purpose … he did not kill the King at prayers, because of that Catholic faith which would send this same villain to heaven’. Field adds that Hamlet had feared meeting ‘my dearest foe in heaven’ at 1.2.182 (p. 93). To Tree the speech ‘clearly reveals that tenderer side of Hamlet's nature, which makes him seek for any excuse which may postpone the shedding of blood’ (‘Hamlet’, p. 875).
Of the simplicity of Barrymore's staging: ‘One man is here, one is there. Here are the uplifted hands, there the sword drawn. Here, sick conscience, power, and tormented ambition; there, the torture of conflicting thoughts, the irony, the resolution. Two bodies and their relation to each other, the words, the essential drama, the eternal content of the scene. No tricks, no plausible business’ (New Republic, 6 December 1922, p. 46). Peter Hall: this soliloquy ‘is time suspended, a close-up with voice-over that lasts a few seconds. The speech rushes out while the sword is poised’ (Diaries, p. 191).
93–5 Booth's ‘eyes, naturally jet black, were almost white with light’ (Shattuck, p. 222).
97–8 Pennington comments that this couplet allows an actor playing the King ‘to correct his performance’: ‘If he's veered to self-pity in the main speech, he can toughen these lines up; if he's been too emphatic they can be simple and direct; if too armoured, he is now vulnerable’ (Hamlet, p. 97n).
Enter Gertrude and Polonius‡
Polonius‡
Gertrude I’ll warrant* you, fear me not. Withdraw, I hear him coming.
[Polonius hides himself behind the arras*]
Enter Hamlet
Hamlet‡ Now mother, what’s the matter?
Gertrude
10Hamlet‡
Gertrude
Hamlet
Gertrude
Hamlet What’s the matter now?
Hamlet No by the rood†, not so.
Hamlet
Kills Polonius
Gertrude Oh me, what hast thou done?
Hamlet
Gertrude‡
Hamlet
Hamlet **Ay lady, ’twas my word†.
[Lifts up the arras and reveals the body of Polonius]
Hamlet Such an act†
Gertrude O Hamlet, speak no more.
Hamlet‡ Nay, but to live
Gertrude Oh speak to me no more.
Hamlet A murderer and a villain,
Gertrude No more!
Enter Ghost‡
Hamlet‡
Ghost
Hamlet How is it with you lady?
Hamlet‡
Hamlet‡
Gertrude
Hamlet
Gertrude‡
Exit Ghost
Gertrude
Hamlet Ecstasy?*
Gertrude‡
Hamlet‡
Gertrude‡ What shall I do?
Hamlet
Gertrude
Hamlet
Gertrude *Alack,
Hamlet
Textual variants
3.4 ] Capell
Explanatory notes
3.4 This is generally known as the ‘closet scene’ (see 3.2.299), a closet being a private apartment. See Introduction, 45.
1 lay home to him charge him to the full.
3 screened acted as a fire-screen – as the sentence goes on to illustrate.
4 I’ll silence me Dowden thought this ironical, since it is Polonius’s shout (24) that causes his death. Q1’s reading is gruesomely apt, ‘I’le shrowd myself behind the arras.’
5 round See 3.1.177.
6 Mother, mother, mother! Not in Q2, though in keeping with Hamlet’s behaviour.
14 forgot me forgotten who I am.
14 the rood the cross of Christ.
17 can speak Is this the understatement ‘will have something to say to you’?
18 Come, come This is much more than the ‘now then!’ of Gertrude’s ‘Come, come’ (12), as it prompts Gertrude to think she is under threat (21).
18 budge move away (to fetch the others).
19 glass a mirror, this time one which reveals actions in their sinful nature. See notes to 3.2.18 and 3.1.147.
24 rat proverbially associated with spying or chicanery (Tilley).
24 Dead for a ducat Possibly, as Kittredge suggests, a wager, i.e. ‘I’ll bet a ducat I kill it.’
30 As kill a king? … word It is extraordinary that neither of them takes up this all-important matter again. Gertrude does not press for an explanation; Hamlet does not question further the queen’s involvement. In Q1, Hamlet reiterates the fact that his father was murdered (‘damnably murdred’), and the queen says ‘I never knew of this most horride murder.’
32 I … thy better Hamlet thought he was striking at Claudius.
37 brazed made brazen, hardened like brass.
38 proof armour.
38 sense feeling.
40 Such an act In the speech which follows, Hamlet quite certainly implies the breaking of marriage vows (see note to 1.5.46). But when Gertrude directly asks him ‘what act?’ (51), he does not directly answer ‘adultery’, but charges her with inconstancy, immoderate sexual desire, and a lack of any sense of value, in exchanging King Hamlet for Claudius. He does not pursue the charge of adultery, but nothing he says shows him forgetting it.
42 rose A figurative rose, symbol of true love.
44 sets a blister there Assumed to mean the burn-mark from the branding of a harlot on the forehead, with the backing of Laertes’s speech at 4.5.119–20, ‘brands the harlot / Even here, between the chaste unsmirchèd brow’. But Shakespeare is probably speaking figuratively, thinking of the forehead as the place which declares innocence or boldness (compare 3.3.7). The ‘blister’ then would indicate disease or taint. It was not the custom in Elizabethan times to brand prostitutes in the face, though this dire punishment was threatened by Henry VIII in 1513 and by the Commonwealth in 1650.
46 contraction pledging, making vows or contracts.
48 rhapsody a medley, a miscellaneous or confused collection.
48–51 Heaven’s face … at the act i.e. the skies blush with shame, and the huge earth itself, with a countenance as sad as if it were doomsday, is distressed in mind by your act.
49 Yea So F. Q2, substituting ‘O’er’ (‘Ore’) for ‘Yea’, treats the visage as belonging to the glowing sun and supplies ‘heated’ for ‘tristful’.
52 index table of contents (prefixed to a book).
53 this picture, and … this Hamlet displays images of Hamlet Sr and Claudius to Gertrude – he may point to two different portraits or tapestries hung on the wall or he may show her miniatures or lockets.
54 counterfeit presentment i.e. portraits, representations in art.
56 Hyperion See 1.2.140.
56 front forehead.
57 Mars in classical mythology, Roman god of war.
58 station stance, way of standing.
59 New-lighted Newly alighted.
60 combination i.e. of divine qualities.
61 set his seal place his confirming mark.
64 ear of corn.
65 Blasting Blighting.
67 batten feed and grow fat. (Not an easy thing to do on moorland. The ‘fair mountain’ is faintly biblical: Wilson suggests an undertone of ‘blackamoor’ in ‘moor’.)
69 heyday excitement.
69 blood passions, sexual desire.
71–6, 78–81 F makes two major excisions in the remainder of this speech. See Textual Analysis, 257–8.
71–6 Sense … difference Hamlet allows that Gertrude has ability to reason, but says that this ability was so severely impaired that she was unable to distinguish between Claudius and her former husband.
73 apoplexed paralysed.
74 thralled in thrall, enslaved.
76 serve … difference i.e. to assist in differentiating between the two men.
77 cozened … hoodman-blind deceived you in a game of blindman’s buff. (The devil substituted Claudius for King Hamlet when the blindfold Gertrude chose him.)
81 mope move around aimlessly, in a daze or trance.
82 Rebellious hell Hamlet’s way of conflating sexual desire with the defiant as well as punitive force of hell, or his suggestion that the powers of hell encourage lower urges to rebel against judgement and reason.
83 mutine incite mutiny (OED ν 2).
84–5 To flaming youth … fire The argument runs that it is no good insisting on virtue as a rigid and unbending guide of conduct in the young, when age gives such a bad example. Virtue, in these circumstances, becomes a soft wax melting in the fire of youthful ardour.
86 gives the charge signals the attack.
88 reason panders will reason assists the passions to obtain their ends.
90 grainèd engrained, deep-dyed.
91 leave their tinct surrender their colour.
92 enseamèd The word has to do with ‘grease’. Its commonest context in Shakespeare’s time was scouring or purging animals, especially hawks and horses, of (it was thought) superfluous internal grease or fat. But ‘enseam’ could also mean not to remove but to apply grease, especially to cloth. The least disgusting meaning here would therefore be ‘greasy’. It is more than likely, however, that what is uppermost in Hamlet’s mind is the idea of evacuated foulness. The echo ‘semen’ is surely present. The bed is greasy with offensive semen.
93 Stewed cooked. Shakespeare combines the heat, sweat, and greasiness with the odium of the brothels, widely known as ‘the stews’.
93 honeying … sty i.e. covering over foulness with sweet words and endearments; ‘making love’ has its usual pre-1950 sense of courtship, love-talk; sty is an area for swine (OED 3.1) but is also understood as a place of moral pollution generally (OED 3.3).
97 tithe tenth part.
98 vice clown or trickster of the old drama.
99 cutpurse pickpocket, thief.
102 shreds and patches i.e. the patchwork costume of the stage-clown.
107 lapsed … lets go by failed or neglectful in the timely and passionate pursuit of revenge. If ‘lapsed’ = apprehended or arrested, then Hamlet is saying that he is taken or surprised by the Ghost.
108 important Neither ‘momentous’ nor ‘urgent’; compare All’s Well 3.7.21, ‘his important blood will not deny’. We have no adjective which has the same sense of demanding or insisting: ‘The acting – so urged on me and required of me – of your dread command’.
110 blunted purpose Hamlet is misusing his energies or is being distracted from the central goal of revenge. Compare Sonnet 95: ‘the hardest knife, ill-used, doth lose his edge’.
111 amazement utter bewilderment. Compare 3.2.296.
113 Conceit Imagination.
118 spirits wildly peep ‘In moments of excitement the spirits or “vital forces” were thought to come, as it were, to the surface, and to cause various symptoms of agitation’ (Kittredge).
119 as the sleeping … alarm like soldiers startled out of sleep by a call to arms.
120 hair (considered plural).
120 like life in excrements ‘excrement’ can be either what is voided from, or what, like hair and nails, grows out of, the body. Probably ‘as though there were independent life in such outgrowths’.
121 an end A common form of ‘on end’.
124 how pale he glares He is gazing fixedly with a ghastly expression; ‘glares’ is not necessarily an angry stare, ‘pale’ is several times used by Shakespeare in connection with a dying or lack-lustre look of the eyes. Schmidt compares Troilus 5.3.81, ‘Look how thou diest, look how thy eye turns pale.’
126 capable receptive, sensitive.
127 piteous action behaviour which excites pity.
128 effects intended deeds (seen as issuing from anger and indignation). At their first meeting, the Ghost warned Hamlet not to pity him (1.5.5), presumably taking the same view that pity is not a state of mind likely to generate violent action.
129 true colour The ‘effects’ of pity would be colourless tears instead of blood. (The Ghost’s reappearance seems to be weakening Hamlet’s resolve instead of strengthening it.)
136 in his habit as he lived in the clothes he wore when alive.
138 very mere.
139 ecstasy madness.
140 cunning skilful.
145 gambol from spring away from.
146 unction healing oil or ointment.
148 skin and film serve as a skin and film over.
149 mining undermining.
152 spread … weeds She is not to use the good words of Hamlet as an encouragement to her vice, by supposing them to proceed only from his madness.
153–6 Forgive me … good Hamlet is self-justifying in his apology, saying, in effect, ‘I am sorry I have to apologize for speaking like this: virtue ought not to cringe before vice, but it is necessary because vice is so dominant these days.’
154 pursy This is the same word as ‘pursive’ and it meant both short of breath and flatulent; it could be conveniently applied to a person who was grossly out of condition, panting, belching, and breaking wind. Compare Timon of Athens 5.4.12, ‘pursy insolence shall break his wind’. As OED indicates, the word had connotations of corpulence. The words ‘fatness’ and ‘pursy’ move towards each other in meaning, suggesting in sum an overweight, pampered person in poor physical condition.
156 curb bow, make obeisance (Fr. courber).
162–6 This passage is not present in the Folio. See Textual Analysis, 259.
162–6 That monster … put on Custom is a monster who destroys sensitivity or reason, and thus leads to devilish habits; but also an angel, in that he can make us accustomed to good actions; ‘aptly’ = readily.
168–71 This passage is not present in the Folio. See Textual Analysis, 259.
170 either … the devil A verb is missing. Many editions supply ‘master’ from the 1611 quarto.
172–3 when you are … beg of you When you are contrite enough to ask God’s blessing (or perhaps Hamlet’s), I’ll seek your blessing (as is appropriate for a son).
174–6 heaven … minister It is the will of heaven, in making me the agent of their chastisement, that I myself should be punished by being the cause of Polonius’s death, and that Polonius should be punished in his death at my hands.
177 answer well i.e. give good reasons for. Jenkins also gives ‘atone for’.
179–80 I must be cruel … behind The remarkable change of tone in this couplet led one editor to suggest they were spoken aside. They do indeed have a meditative quality, and, in this recognition of the heaviness of his task, they resemble the couplet at the end of Act 2 – ‘The time is out of joint …’. His own cruelty repels him; he sees the death of Polonius as the bad beginning of a vengeance that will yet be ‘worse’.
183 bloat bloated, swollen (with drink).
184 wanton wantonly, lasciviously.
185 reechy soiled, emitting smoke or other foul smells (OED).
187 ravel … out unravel, disentangle.
189 in craft by design.
189–92 ’Twere good … concernings hide Sarcastic. A respectable queen, as you consider yourself to be, has of course no reason to keep a secret from her loathsome husband.
191 paddock frog or toad.
191 gib tom-cat (an abbreviation of ‘Gilbert’; the ‘g’ is hard).
193 secrecy discretion.
194–7 Unpeg … neck down Oddly enough, there is no record of this fable. It more or less explains itself, however. An ape takes a birdcage onto a roof; he opens the door and the birds fly out. In order to imitate them, he gets into the basket, jumps out and, instead of flying, falls to the ground.
196 To try conclusions To test results.
197 down Either an intensifier – ‘utterly’ or ‘completely’ – or adverbial – ‘falling down’.
198–200 In Q1, the queen promises also to assist Hamlet in his revenge.
201 I must to England Though Hamlet has not yet been told explicitly of Claudius’s plan to send him away (see 3.1.163, 3.3.4).
203–11 There’s letters … meet These nine lines are not found in F. See Textual Analysis, 260–1.
205 sweep my way clear a path for me.
207 engineer one who constructs or designs military machines or contrivances, especially for use in sieges. Q2 gives it the normal spelling for the time, ‘enginer’.
208 Hoist i.e. blown up.
208 petar bomb. Also ‘petard’.
208 an’t and it.
211 in one line The image is of the mine and the countermine.
212 This man … packing The murder of Polonius will make the king send me off immediately.
217 draw … with you conclude our discourse.
Performance notes from Shakespeare in Production
Until the twentieth century this was known as the ‘closet scene’ (see 3.2.299). Since Barrymore in 1922 gave it an oedipal reading, the episode has come to be called the ‘bedroom scene’. And Gertrude's bed has more and more become the site for the encounter between mother and son; especially on film and television, many of their exchanges in recent decades have taken place as they lie together on the bed. (Although an illustration of the scene in Rowe's 1714 edition shows a double bed, royal closets did not ordinarily include a bed.)
0sd Michael Redgrave (1949) had a maidservant place the Queen's chestnut-red wig on a block, revealing that Gertrude had grey hair, business borrowed from Poel's production of Fratricide Punished (Redgrave, Mind's I, pp. 190–1).
1–5 With Burton Gielgud directed Cronyn: ‘Hamlet might come at any moment’ (Sterne, p. 39).
8 Q1's Hamlet voices his suspicion: ‘I’le tell you, but first weele make all safe’.
10 J. B. Booth emphasized you and my father (Gould, p. 65).
14a Clare Higgins, with Rylance, paused before ‘me’, as if to mean ‘How could you?’ (Gilbert, ‘Rylance’).
15 On BBC-TV Claire Bloom slapped Jacobi's face.
17 Irving caught the arm of the Queen (Georgina Pauncefort), as she crossed the stage (Terry's rehearsal book). After slapping Mel Gibson's face, Glenn Close started to exit but was stopped by a great roar by Gibson.
20 When J. B. Booth said ‘in-most’ its sound ‘greatly prolonged on the first syllable, was like a searching probe of steel’ (Gould, p. 65).
21b Robert Helpmann gave a ‘glance at his sword’ in 1944 – ‘bewildered, frightened, half-realising how dangerously near he might have been to this’ (Williamson, Old Vic, p. 170).
27 ‘Quick’ (Terry's rehearsal book).
29 Claire Bloom, playing the Queen opposite Derek Jacobi, holds that she here for the first time realizes that Claudius committed the crime (BBC-TV Hamlet, p. 25).
31 J. B. Booth gave each word of this line separately, with ascending emphasis, ‘in tones of mingled grief and anger’ (Gould, pp. 65–6). Fechter used ‘a tone of almost affectionate pity’ (Examiner, 20 April 1861).
33 On BBC-TV Jacobi spoke very loudly, as if Polonius were deaf.
53 If the frontispiece to Rowe's 1709 edition reflects stage practice, the ‘presentments’ at that time may have been portraits on the wall. However, Davies states that ‘It has been the constant practice of the stage, ever since the Restoration, for Hamlet, in this scene, to produce from his pocket two pictures in little, of his father and uncle, not much bigger than two large coins or medallions’ (p. 106). Kean was the first to have the Queen wear a miniature of her second husband around her neck; Finlay wished that Kean too wore a miniature of his father (Miscellanies, p. 228). Fechter did just that, from his first appearance giving prominence to the medallion of King Hamlet that he wore on a chain; here he ‘placed his miniature of his father side by side with his mother's miniature of Claudius’ (Cook, Hours, p. 262). Macready introduced full length paintings not only of King Hamlet and Claudius but of the Queen and the Prince; he had the Ghost enter suddenly, ‘gliding through the arras of his own picture as if the warrior of the canvas had stepped from his frame’ (Examiner, 22 March 1840). As all concerned imagine the pictures, Irving ‘points straight out before him in audience’ (Terry's rehearsal book). For fuller details about earlier treatments of the pictures, see Sprague, Actors, pp. 166–9; for later treatments, see Rosenberg, pp. 676–7.
55–63a Jacobi directed Branagh in 1988 to slow the pace of this passage, lose himself in admiration of his remembered father, and thus vary the general ‘hectoring’ tone (Branagh interview on US National Public Radio, January, 1997).
61 J. B. Booth emphasized every (Gould, p. 66).
64 As he showed the picture Alec Guinness ‘shrank as though his hand had touched foulness’ (Sunday Times, 20 May 1951).
65 Michael Redgrave had produced from his pocket a coin with Claudius's head on it which he contrasted with the miniature of his father, which he wore in a locket. He here ‘thrust them at the Queen, almost ramming them in her face’ (Mind's I, p. 191).
71 Gielgud directed Burton to ‘inflect the first “this” favorably to indicate your father and color the final “this” repulsively to indicate Claudius’ (Sterne, p. 39).
86 Garrick emphasized compulsive (Vickers, Critical Heritage, iv, p. 426).
91–103 Irving delivers this passage ‘working it up tremendously – excitedly; “The laws of Climax”’; then, with a tremendous pause, he speaks ‘whisperingly, “Save me …”’ (Terry's rehearsal book).
92 Stephen Dillane, with Gwen Taylor as Gertrude, ‘actually makes her smell “the rank sweat”’ (Daily Telegraph, 7 November 1994). Recent Hamlets (Jacobi, Gibson, Fiennes among them) have here simulated one form or another of sexual intercourse.
101 Of Fechter: ‘One moment more and the passion that made a corpse of Polonius might have wreaked vengeance on the guilty Queen’ (Field, p. 95).
101sd Q1: ‘Enter the ghost in his night gowne’.
102 Large bell strikes One (Irving promptbook). In the Zeffirelli film, Glenn Close here gave Mel Gibson a long kiss, whether from passion or from the need to stop his hurtful words.
102–4 Of Betterton: ‘This is spoke with arms and hands extended, and expressing his concern, as well as his eyes, and whole face’ (Gildon, Betterton, p. 74). Macready ‘broke from the most intense and passionate indignation to the lost and bewildered air, and with a face of unearthly horror and tones of strange awe, tremblingly addressed the spirit, or pointed towards him with silent finger’ (New Monthly Magazine, 1 July 1821, p. 333). For Bernhardt (1899), by means of a transparent painted gauze and a change of lighting, the Ghost in the closet scene materialized from the portrait of King Hamlet on the wall; when it disappeared and only the painting remained, the Prince passed his hands over it, seeking to bring his father back. On Barrymore's American tour during the closet scene a white light enveloped the Prince and a picture of Reginald Pole as the Ghost was projected onto Hamlet ‘to convey the effect of the Ghost taking possession of Barrymore’ (promptbook 156): ‘He went rigid, his voice hoarse like the voice of the Ghost. When the light left him, he dropped to his knees, as though released from the grip of the spirit’ (Kobler, Damned, p. 179). In the 1976 Albert Finney/Peter Hall production, the Ghost's ascent by the trap was masked from the audience by the prince and queen; as Richard David describes the complex effect when the Ghost thus, unexpectedly, appears:
Hamlet, by now kneeling at his mother's knee, looks at the Ghost over her shoulder; she, all tenderness for her son suddenly seized in this paroxysm of madness, has no consciousness of his father's presence. The three reactions, Hamlet's intense, Gertrude's all maternal solicitude, the Ghost in painful hope against hope that sufficient memory of their bond may linger in his wife to make her aware of him, built up a strange chord …
104 Emma Lazarus praised Salvini for ‘the sudden break in his voice as he appeals to the “heavenly guards” to save and shield him, the attitude of awe and adoration which he instantaneously assumes’ (Century Magazine, November 1881, p. 116).
106 Irving spoke this line ‘most tenderly, never taking his eyes off the Ghost’ (Terry's rehearsal book).
111ff With Barrymore, ‘the relation of Hamlet to his mother and through her to the ghost was achieved by his moving toward the ghost on his knees and being caught in his mother's arms’ (New Republic, 6 December 1922, p. 46). With Branagh (1992) Gertrude stands behind Hamlet stroking his hair while he reaches across the bed to hold the Ghost's arm, which he has held out to his son: ‘the portrait of the ruined family’ (Shakespeare Bulletin, Fall, 1994, p. 6).
114 Serjeant John Adams remembered that ‘Kemble's hand was always on his mother's arm – her eyes fixed on him – his own on the Ghost; and when the Ghost desired him to address her, he did so mechanically, without looking at her or moving a muscle’ (Cole, Charles Kean, i, p. 276). J. B. Booth also kept his eyes on the Ghost (Gould, p. 68).
121–3 ‘Wiping [his] brow’ (Irving's studybook).
124 J. B. Booth spoke ‘On him, on him’ ‘as if she must see the figure also’ (Gould, p. 68). Booth's Queen, Fanny Morant, ‘turns so slowly and with such anxious hesitancy, and seeing nothing is so startled and overcome that a sympathetic thrill of terror runs through the audience’ (World, 9 January 1870). With Irving in 1874 Georgina Pauncefort gave ‘a terrific shriek’ as if she had caught a glimpse of the Ghost; the business was soon discarded (Graphic, 7 November 1874, p. 443). In the Pennington/Barton production, Hamlet grabbed the Queen's head and forced her to look ‘On him’ (Pennington, Hamlet, p. 102n), at which Barbara Leigh-Hunt to her horror actually saw the Ghost, but then repressed the experience (Daily Mail, 18 September 1981). Rosenberg adds that she put her hands over her ears when the Ghost spoke and that Leigh-Hunt supported this interpretation to him by citing Gertrude's reference at 4.1.5 to ‘what have I seen tonight’, which she delivered ‘with a shudder’ (p. 698). Playing the Ghost in 1994 Pennington almost succeeded in touching the Queen's hand ‘until she recoiled as if at an electric shock’ (Hamlet, p. 102n).
126 Irving spoke ‘imploringly’ (Terry's rehearsal book).
131 Booth paused after ‘nothing’ then ‘pointing slowly toward the Ghost, “there?”’ (promptbook 111). Irving's delivery was very much the same (Graphic, 7 November 1874, p. 443). With Irving in 1878 Pouncefort spoke this line as she was ‘turning – and looking straight at the Ghost’ (Terry's rehearsal book).
134–5 While Booth stares at his mother's face, he does not notice that the Ghost has crossed the stage. When at 135a he looks at the spot where the Ghost has been and sees nothing, he gasps and starts backward, his hand flies to his forehead and his eyes are full of terror. He turns about, drawing the Queen with him, until he sees the Ghost’ (Shattuck, p. 233).
137 Kemble ‘threw himself passionately, yet fondly forward, as if to catch and detain the form so revered, so lamented’ (H. Martin, Remarks, p. 7).
140 F only.
141–2 Booth as if taking his own pulse holds his wrist out to her (Shattuck, p. 234). Burton is less assured: ‘Fearful for a moment that she may be right, he feels his pulse, convincing himself of his own sanity’ (Sterne, p. 233).
145ff On the verge of tears throughout the scene, Nicol Williamson at last weeps uncontrollably and at 172–3 is joined in weeping by his mother.
145b–7 ‘Kemble knelt in the fine adjuration to his mother … As an affectionate son, he is endeavouring to awake all the feelings of the mother in her, to combat the delusion of her guilty attachment’ (Boaden, pp. 102–3). Irving ‘casts his head upon his mother's lap’ (Russell, p. 49). He spoke 145b ‘imploringly’ (Terry's rehearsal book).
157 ‘Breaking down and weeping bitterly’ (Terry's rehearsal book).
158–60a Forrest ‘compressed into his utterance, in one indescribable mixture a world of entreaty, command, disgust, grief, deference, love, and mournfulness’ (Alger, Forrest, p. 756). Of Irving: ‘An ocean of tenderness to her. Eyes – voice – breaking’ (Terry's rehearsal book). Forbes-Robertson, ‘resting his mother's head on his breast, tenderly kisses her’ (Stage, 16 September 1897, p. 14–15). Olivier in the film kissed Gertrude (Eileen Herlie) tenderly on the temple.
172–3a Kemble accented be and beg, Henderson blest and the second you (Boaden, p. 103). When Fanny Morant with Booth, ‘raises both hands as if in benediction, he pushes her hands away as if preventing a sacrilege. He rises slowly and with dignity: “When you (prolonged) are desirous to be blessed, I'll blessing beg of you” (Shattuck, p. 235). In the Olivier film the Queen kissed Hamlet on the cheek and lightly on the lips. On BBC-TV Jacobi's inflection of these lines acknowledged that Claire Bloom, although troubled, was not persuaded to refrain from sex with the King and thus was not yet ready to be blessed.
173b–4a Macready wept (Pollock, Macready, p. 107). Irving emphasized do (Academy, 12 December 1874).
179 Stage tradition ended the scene here. Of Macready: when Gertrude starts to leave but returns for a last embrace, Macready motions her to stop: ‘the memory of his dead parent was a sacred thought, and would not allow him to enfold in his embrace her who, even now, held communication with his murderer’ (Theatrical Journal, 29 August 1840, p. 313). At this line, Booth tenderly takes his mother in his arms and says the words in such as way as to make clear that his earlier harshness has ‘cut his heart and feelings no less than hers’ (Shattuck, p. 237). Olivier in the film pressed the side of his head to his mother's bosom, then rested it in her lap as she cradled him with her hands.
181ff Of Gielgud, seeing the Queen move towards the door and thus to the King: ‘His anger rises in a sudden tide, stirring once more the dregs of deep-rooted loathing. His words, again, sting and slash’ (Gilder, p. 189).
181b Judi Dench, with Day Lewis, addressed this line to herself, ‘acknowledging the discovery within herself of unsuspected depths she could not fathom’. During the preceding speech her ‘climactic kiss’ with Hamlet had been ‘a naked and mutual acknowledgement of desire that shocked her’ (Shakespeare Survey 43, 1991, p. 196). Julie Christie in the Branagh film is here utterly vulnerable, all her society-matron defences down, ‘on the edge of a breakdown’ (Screenplay, p. 111).
189–200 With Guthrie in Minneapolis, George Grizzard delivers his lines ‘jokingly, and the Queen [Jessica Tandy] begins to laugh in a strange way. She continues the laughter during her speech … both are on the verge of hysteria’ (Rossi, p. 41).
200 After this declaration of loyalty by Clare Higgins with Rylance, there was a long silence as he kisses her, passionately (Gilbert, ‘Rylance’, p. 13).
213 After this line and before he walks apart Olivier and his mother kiss one another fully on the lips.
218 Barrymore paused between ‘good night’ and ‘mother’ – with a suggestion of ‘please forgive me’ (Spectator, 28 February 1925, p. 319). With Gielgud, as his mother flees the room ‘his braggadoccio drops from him like the false mask that it is. He sways against the wall, his head and shoulders sink. For a moment he looks after her and then, with repressed anguish, the one word “Mother” – the cry of a child left in the dark’ (Gilder, p. 187). As Rylance jauntily dragged off dead Polonius, he bid his mother a final ‘good night’ through teeth clenched on his dagger.
