Michael:

The first act seems dominated by the Ghost. He appears in three of the five scenes, and is discussed in one more.

As has been often noted, the first line of the play is a question, though just a challenge by the guard coming on duty to the one he’s replacing. There are a few puzzling comments that suggest unease among the soldiers. Francisco says he is “sick at heart” in addition to being cold. Horatio says that “a piece of him” is present when Barnardo asks if he’s there. That may be just a joke — though what does it mean? — but suggests his disquiet. Horatio describes the reasons for the warlike preparations that they’re all aware of, but we don’t hear any more of the slaying of old Fortinbras by Hamlet’s father in a single combat and the seizure of some Norwegian territory by the Danish state, at least until the very end when young Fortinbras suddenly enters to seize the now empty throne.

In fact, the political background is conspicuous by its absence in the play as it unfolds. Old Hamlet is not concerned by it, but by his murder by his brother. The political situation comes up when Claudius dispatches Cornelius and Voltemand to old Norway to encourage him to rein in young Fortinbras, but this is very quickly dealt with. There will be a scene when Hamlet sees
Fortinbras leading an army to capture some paltry bit of territory, but his concern is the oddness of the endeavor.

But the appearance of the Ghost and its refusal to speak puts a sense of strangeness and dread around the court scene that follows. Claudius gives a very public sort of accounting for what must be troubling people, his sudden marriage to the queen of the old king, whom he calls his “dear brother,” and the formulations, “mirth in funeral” and “dirge in marriage” — mirth and dirge seem almost to rhyme — seem disquieting. Clearly, Hamlet is dressed in mourning, perhaps the only one, because the Queen encourages him to “cast his nightly color off.” (I can never read this line without remembering the line in Branagh’s film, “In the Deep Midwinter,” in which the character who’s playing the Queen says she’s always afraid she’ll say “cast thy colored nighty off.”) Hamlet insists that the appearance of mourning may not distinguish him, but he has that within which passes such show. Claudius’ speech reproving Hamlet shows a monumental insensitivity to his mourning, but suggests as well a political divide between them. Hamlet agrees not to go back to Wittenberg, but in deference to his mother. But then Claudius’ declaring that his celebratory drinking will be underscored by cannons going off suggests more of the impropriety of “mirth in funeral.” What kind of guy wants to have a cannon shot off when he drinks, especially when his brother has just died?

But then Hamlet’s first soliloquy surprises by its opening, that he wishes his mourning, oddly called his “sullied flesh,” would simply cause his death or that he could kill himself. The death of a father would surely cause sadness, maybe depression, but such a yearning for death is extreme. But that extremity comes from his mother’s immediate marriage to her brother-in-law.
And now perhaps we begin to see the reason for the unease expressed by the soldiers. Hamlet speaks of “incestuous sheets.” Is it incestuous? The immediate marriage does suggest previous adultery.

Hamlet’s immediate cheering up when he sees Horatio and the other two is striking. Right away he makes a joke of the marriage: it was thrift so that the funeral baked meats could serve as cold leftovers for the wedding. But then he immediately indicates the pain it caused, but in the odd idea that he would rather wish to see his dearest foe in heaven than that day of marriage. Then there’s quick dialogue as Horatio recounts the appearance of the Ghost and Hamlet quizzes him on it. When the others leave, Hamlet confesses his suspicion of foul play. But why? Does the hasty marriage suggest that to him?

Scene 3 advances the sense of divisive relations in the court. Laertes is concerned by apparent courting of his sister by Hamlet, and after Laertes leaves, their father reiterates that, eventually forbidding Ophelia to see Hamlet. Okay, Hamlet is an unhappy, depressed young man, but why should he be so mistrusted? There is his political status and the position this puts his potential marriage in. But is this sufficient for their mistrust? Polonius’ characterization is expressed by his beginning to hurry Laertes’ departure, then detaining him with a barrage of good but conventional advice. We may suspect that his warning about Hamlet is part of this conventional caution.

The next two scenes seem almost part of the same scene, in which Hamlet confronts the Ghost and the Ghost commits him to revenge. Tucked into the beginning is Hamlet’s response to Horatio’s surprise at the cannons going off: it’s Claudius’ drinking custom and confirms our sense that this is an odd and maybe egomaniac practice. But then it leads Hamlet to describe what may seem almost an account of tragic flaw. Is that what this is? What does he mean by it?

When the Ghost appears, Hamlet seems elated, excited almost beyond control. It may be this that leads his friends to try to restrain him from following the Ghost. But follow he does, and the Ghost assures him that he is the Ghost of his father and that he’s suffering in purgatory. So it’s not a Protestant ghost. What the Ghost describes is both the horror of his suffering and the horror of his murder. There’s no possibility but that this would create an extreme response in Hamlet, and it not only confirms Hamlet’s darkest thoughts but stirs an even greater horror at the physical effects of his murder.

So what are we to make of the Ghost’s concluding words: “But howsomever thou pursues this act, / Taint not thy mind, nor let thy soul contrive/ Against thy mother aught. Leave her to heaven.” What is “this act”? Do we notice that the Ghost doesn’t actually say that Hamlet should kill Claudius? We assume that’s what he means. But the Ghost is not a damned spirit and enjoins him not to taint his own mind, which surely must occur if he assassinates his uncle. And how could he spare his mother if he kills her husband? Is Hamlet’s mind already to some degree tainted? Could the Ghost not have tainted his mind in all the language about purgatorial suffering and the horror of his murder and the betrayal by his mother?

Is this a revenge play? What could the revenge be?

Understandably, Hamlet doesn’t want his friends to speak of the encounter with the Ghost. They of course did not hear what the Ghost spoke, and Hamlet tells them only that it was an “honest”

ghost. But maybe the oddest thing at the end of the scene is the movement of the Ghost as he insists the friends swear never to reveal the event. Hamlet, or the actor playing him, speaks of the Ghost as “truepenny”, as “this fellow in the cellerage,” that is, under the stage. The reference to the theater is very strange.

Dusty:

I don’t think I noticed before how long the first act is, more than 850 lines. Having come to Hamlet from several other Shakespeare plays, I am struck with how much richer and more complex it is. By the end of Act 1 there are several centers of interest besides the Ghost, and we are thinking about Hamlet in relation to three other young men, Horatio, Fortinbras, and Laertes, who are not just foils but, at least in the case of the latter two, constitute subplots that closely parallel the main plot. Horatio and Hamlet are fellow students at Wittenberg, but Hamlet’s imagination is more wide ranging than the skeptical Horation with his “philosophy.” Laertes, like Hamlet, asks for permission to return to his life abroad; and like Hamlet is spied on by his “father.” “Young Fortinbras,” like “Young Hamlet,” has lost his royal father, and Norway, like Denmark, is now ruled by his uncle. Already in Act 1 Hamlet is invited, and we too are invited, to consider the relationship between thought, word, and act that becomes all-important later: “a will not his own,” “act of fear,” “actions that a man might play.”

You’re right about the dominant presence of the Ghost in Act 1. Wasn’t it Maynard Mack who drew attention to the first line, and suggested that the play, “in the interrogative mood,” is preoccupied (“Who’s there?) with questions of identity?

You suggest that the “political background” of the play is conspicuous by its absence. Here I disagree. What struck me this time is that this is very much a play about “the state” of Denmark, and about royal rule and succession in the kingdom. Who is the real king? The third line is “Long live the king!” — which is a little creepy when the dead king seems to be alive. “The King that’s dead” (1.1.41) even suggests that though he is dead he is still the king. At 1.2. 191 Horatio refers to “the king your father.” And Hamlet addresses the Ghost as “King, father, royal Dane” (1.4.45). Who is “the Dane” (1.1.15) to whom the soldiers are liegeman. Claudius declares that he is “the Dane” (1.2.44), and later Hamlet will declare that he is “Hamlet the Dane.”

Why was Old Hamlet succeeded by his brother and not by his son? The Ghost is said to be a “usurper” (1.1.47), but soon enough we think of Claudius as the usurper. Claudius seems not to have any children of his own, even though in public he refers to Hamlet as his “son” (1.1.64) — later in talking to Gertrude he says Hamlet is “your son.” It’s interesting that Claudius says “my cousin Hamlet, and my son,” but not “. . . my son, and heir.” A few lines later Hamlet is “Our chiefest courtier, cousin, and our son” (1.2.117), but again not “heir.” At the end of the play Hamlet is remembered as one who, had he been “put on [the throne] . . . would have proved most royal.” As early as 1.3 Laertes , in warning Ophelia off of Hamlet, seems to think of Hamlet as royal: on his choice of wife “depends/ The safety and health of this whole state” (1.3.21). Is there a buried parallel between the “o’erhasty” Claudius-Gertrude marriage, and Polonius’s concern about an ill-advised (and “o’erhasty”?) Hamlet-Ophelia marriage?

Relations with Norway also seem prominent in Act 1, and in Act 2. Soldiers are standing watch because Denmark guard against war with “ambitious Norway.” The Ghost may have something to do with an upcoming war (1.1.108). Fortinbras seeks to regain land that Norway lost to Denmark in an earlier war. The Ghost is thought to bode some eruption to “our state” (1.1.69). Claudius publicly declares that Denmark is a “warlike state” (1.2.9). In the end, this will prove to be the case: the royal family of Denmark is wiped out, and Claudius will be succeeded by the foreigner Fortinbras.

You are right that the politics of the play, both domestic and foreign, recede as we get into Act 2, but I think they are always there, in the background, and reemerge at the end. There is something “rotten” at the core of the state, which makes the state all the more vulnerable to foreign conquest.

In 1.2 it’s notable that Claudius, to give him credit, decides to negotiate with Norway rather than go to war. And his negotiation proves very successful, as we find out in Act 2. You’re right that Claudius is “insensitive” to Hamlet’s situation in his big speech in 1.2, but it’s a public address, designed to consolidate his power as the new king, and, because delivered in public, is perhaps appropriately larded with commonplaces about sons losing fathers. What I find interesting is that Claudius speaks to Laertes before he speaks to Hamlet. Maybe that’s to set up the sharp contrast between the situation of the two young men: Claudius gives Laertes permission to return to France but denies Hamlet permission to return to Wittenberg.

In his soliloquy Hamlet is distressed by his father’s death and his mother’s hasty remarriage. But I don’t think he gives any sign that he fears foul play or suspects an affair between Claudius and Gertrude. The sheets are “incestuous” because marriage to your dead husband’s brother was thought by some to be too close. The Ghost does not accused Gertrude of complicity or of adultery. Hamlet seems shocked when the Ghost tells him of “murder,” but at some level he knew something was wrong: “O, my prophetic soul.”

I had not noticed before that Hamlet saying he will write down the Ghost’s words in his “tables” parallels the scene in which Polonius delivers the kind of commonplaces to Laertes that are typically found in one’s “tables.”

Why is Horatio so late in arriving in Denmark for old Hamlet’s funeral?

Is it odd that Hamlet confers with Horatio, Marcellus, and the others about the Ghost, suggesting that he will work with them, but then declares, at the end of the act, that “I was born to set it right”?

At the end of the act Hamlet tells his friends that he will put on an “antic disposition,” but they already think he was acting strangely with his “wild and whirling words” (1.5.133) and behaving in an “antic” manner with the “old mole” in “the cellarage.” This is perhaps the first of several moments when we wonder whether Hamlet is in fact mad or just pretending to be mad.

Dusty:

Act 2 is another long act, and 2.2. itself is more than 600 lines long. (The longest scene in Shakespeare?) 2.1 and 2.2 are artfully laid out: in both scenes a father figure instructs spies to report back about a son. This shows that in Denmark you can’t trust anybody: the fathers don’t think they can trust the sons, and the sons should not trust the fathers. (Hamlet already knows he shouldn’t trust Claudius, and he sees through Rosencrantz and Guildenstern right away.) The spying spreads more widely when Polonius plans to spy on Hamlet.

In previous readings I have found myself wondering whether Hamlet was play-acting or was really in emotional distress. The reported meeting between Hamlet and Ophelia now seems to be to be a piece of acting, designed to throw Claudius and Polonius off the track. They notice a “transformation,” and aren’t sure what to make of it. It’s “lunacy” or “distemper.” But even Claudius and Polonius think Hamlet might be up to something: there is some “method” in Hamlet’s “madness.” His replies are “pregnant.”

When Hamlet meets Ros. and Guild. he drops his antic manner, which seems to confirm that he has simply been acting. On the other hand, once he realizes that they are spying, he seems to put on another disguise: he has “lost all his mirth.” This appears to be an act, but it’s in fact rather similar to what Hamlet earlier said when he was alone, and how “weary, stale, flat, and dishonorable” everything seems. So on balance I think Shakespeare keeps the audience guessing.

Why does Hamlet tell R and G that Claudius and Gertrude are “deceived” (2.2.385)? Isn’t it his objective to keep them in the dark? Why does he say to R and G that he is only mad north by northwest?

Much of the long 2.2 is devoted to the traveling players. Hamlet is immediately interested. Does that mean that he is easily distracted from his purpose, or is he always planning and plotting? We hear a lot about children actors (a topical reference). And it’s appropriate for Hamlet, who is playing a part, to be interested in acting. But it does go on for rather a long time. I suspect that this scene is cut in modern productions, and is of less interest to a modern audience than an Elizabethan one.

Hamlet is interested in the speech about Pyrrhus killing Priam especially because at a crucial moment Pyrrhus “did nothing” and because of Hecuba’s clamor, and the weeping actor. It also appears that Hamlet already has a plan — to put on “The Murder of Gonzago.” This leads directly to “O what a rogue and peasant slave am I . . .” in which Hamlet berates himself for “saying nothing,” then swears vengeance, and then turns back on himself because the swearing is just “words” and not actions.

It’s odd that at 601 Hamlet seems to stumble on the idea that “the play’s the thing.” Had he not already at 547 proposed “The Murder of Gonzago”? Maybe we can resolve the inconsistency by deciding that at 548 he wanted to see the play privately to inspire himself to revenge, and at 601 now thinks that he should invite Claudius because he might well unintentionally reveal his guilt.

It’s also odd that at 611 Hamlet now speculates that the Ghost “may be a devil.” This is the first we’ve heard of this. He had previously concluded that the Ghost was indeed the spirit of his father, and a truth teller. Why does he now suddenly decide that the Ghost’s message needs to be confirmed? It’s moments like this that invite the audience to consider that Hamlet “delays” and seems to be hesitant to “act.”

Michael:

I think Act III is even longer, almost 900 lines. The play must be one of the longest of Sh’s, and in performance it’s virtually always cut. We did see an uncut version some years ago in London, Branagh playing Hamlet, and I think it went for nearly five hours. I’m sure there’s much in Act 3 that would be cut, including some of “The Murder of Gonzago.” But the ending of the play within the play makes very clear why Claudius is so disturbed.

Yes, I think it was Maynard Mack who drew attention to the first line. Hamlet’s identity, and his state of mind, are surely a preoccupation of the play.

I may have overstated that the political background is conspicuous by absence, but it’s in an odd relation to the concern about Hamlet and the demand for revenge. In 2.1 Voltemand reports that Old Norway didn’t know that young Fortinbras intended an invasion of Denmark, but having now discovered it, presumably from Voltemand and Cornelius’ embassy, has received F’s assurance that he won’t undertake this. So Old Norway is so happy about this that he gives Fortinbras 60,000 crowns and permission to use his army against the Polacks and asks for permission to pass his army over Denmark. A recently hostile army, now 60,000 crowns richer, to pass over territory that Fortinbras just now intended to invade?! And Claudius says “it likes us well”! It may be rather negligent negotiation.

I think the reason Hamlet hasn’t succeeded his father is that Denmark is an elective monarchy, not hereditary, and Hamlet complains at some point that Claudius popped in between “the election” and himself. Claudius seems to promise his support for Hamlet, and Fortinbras wants to take over Denmark at the end. A coup or forcing the election?

Hamlet does seem rather cruel to Ophelia, though he later confesses that he loved her. But that cruelty must contribute to her eventual fate. And he gets even harsher with her in the following act, with the nunnery speech.

I don’t think Hamlet stumbles on the idea of “the play’s the thing”; he just delivers his sense that this will be a way of determining his course. He’s already asked the player if he could work in something he would write for the play, and his idea that the Ghost could be a devil he attributes to his own state of mind, which seems careful in view of his sense that he could be damned for action he is tricked into.
Yes, I think Hamlet veers back and forth between enacting his antic manner and seeming quite rational, even sometimes rather elated and witty, as with R & G and Horatio, and with the players as well.

I wonder what we are to make of all the metatheatricality, beginning with the “fellow in the cellerage” and continuing in his discussion with R & G about the earth being the “sterile promontory” – that’s the stage – and the heavens an “overhanging firmament,” an “excellent canopy,” and “majestical roof fretted with golden fire.” And of course all the discussion of the theatrical innovations are part of this. The long speech that Hamlet begins by quoting, which is taken up by the player, elicits Hamlet’s thoughts about motivation and acting and his self-blame about his own acting.

Michael:

In Act 3 it’s interesting that Hamlet’s “To be or not to be” is a soliloquy that’s presumably overheard by Polonius and the King as well as by Ophelia. Its center seems to embrace acting, but the thoughts of afterlife lead to conscience, which is then diminished as the native hue of resolution is “sicklied o’er with the pale cast of thought.” Is that pale cast of thought a good thing or a bad thing? Should he just act in this enterprise of great pith and moment? The rhetoric of the soliloquy seems to spur action. But the opposite thoughts of judgment and the afterlife seem to rein him in. I think again of that “taint not thy mind” command.

Ophelia’s speech is, I think, the only characterization we have of the earlier Hamlet. She describes him as the ideal renaissance courtier and laments his and her loss of that.

With Hamlet’s advice to the players, I think back to his “rogue and peasant slave” speech, where he seems to fall into exactly the kind of acting he reprehends at the climax of the soliloquy. And of course the groundlings, whose ears might be split, might already have been split, are right there in front of him. His reference to Herod is another metatheatrical moment, one that has preoccupied me, and presumably was known to at least some in the audience. And in what follows we may have Hamlet expressing some of his creator’s opinions about the purpose of playing.

Hamlet’s praise of Horatio as the perfect stoic perhaps expresses some of what Ophelia had valued in Hamlet himself, in particular the man who is not passion’s slave. Where does this leave the revenger?

Did the actor who is playing Polonius play Julius Caesar the previous season? A metatheatrical in-joke?

In a modern production we could get away with just the dumb show, which expresses the essence of what Hamlet wants Claudius to see. But the actual play does make explicit what the Ghost has described. Can we identify the speech that Hamlet wrote and asked the player king to insert? What the player king speaks about mutability could be Hamlet’s. Or maybe what the player queen speaks in apparent response? Or both?

When “Lucianus” comes in after the interruption, he speaks in an archaic theatrical style, very different from the earlier language. What do we make of Hamlet’s forcing of the play’s conclusion? Is Claudius responding to this or to the play itself? In terms of Hamlet’s purpose, it probably doesn’t make a serious difference. He has what he wanted. And Horatio confirms it.

What follows with R & G breaks Hamlet’s friendship with them. And his mocking of Polonius seems a similar elated mood. The king’s decision to send Hamlet to England with R & G will be taken as understood by Hamlet in his discussion with Gertrude (surely a slip on Sh’s part). He learns of it later, doesn’t he?

The end of this scene is, I think, the central irony of the play. Claudius attempts to pray for forgiveness, admits his guilt, and kneels in apparent prayer. Hamlet enters at this final point and considers enacting his revenge. Now he could do it “pat,” and says he will do it. It will fulfill his revenge. But then he imagines Claudius’ apparent prayerful state will cause him to be saved. So he further imagines himself as the instrument of Claudius’ redemption. And consequently puts his sword up. If this isn’t tainting his mind, against which the Ghost warned him, nothing is. The irony is that Claudius has been unable to pray; his death at this point might well have been his damnation.

And immediately Hamlet goes to his mother. And he begins by casting her guilt directly at her. We don’t have a stage direction at l. 20, but Gertrude expresses her fear at his violent action in throwing her down or into a chair, fearing her murder. Her fear causes her to cry out, which causes Polonius to reveal himself, which causes Hamlet to use his sword to kill him. And so the second part of the Ghost’s injunction is violated. Moreover he has, unintentionally, become Claudius, a murderer, to Ophelia and Laertes. The rest of the scene has Hamlet not leaving her to heaven and the thorns that in her bosom lodge. Understandable no doubt, but not as he was commanded.

Dusty:

I too noticed that Act III is very long (four of its five scenes over 100 lines), as opposed to Act IV (where five of the seven scenes are under 100 lines). Is it typical for Shakespeare to vary the lengths of his acts like this?

You’re right about the elective monarchy, but it’s curious that Shakespeare only reveals that point, and other details about succession, late in the play, in 4.5 (“Laertes shall be king”), 5.2 (“. . . ‘tween the election and my hopes”), and 5.2 (“. . . the’election lights/ On Fortinbras”). In 3.2 Rosencrantz says that Hamlet “has the voice of the king for the succession in Denmark.” It’s not clear what that means — will Claudius name him king or recommend him as successor? In any case, the matter of succession is muddy until late in the play.

Yes, Hamlet veers back and forth from sensible/rational to “antic.” But I think he is never “mad.” When teaching the play I routinely used to ask my students if they thought Hamlet was play-acting or was really deranged, and asked them to consider evidence that suggested one or the other. This time I find myself thinking that Hamlet is always clear-eyed and conscious of what he is doing. Sometimes he acts impulsively, and sometimes is full of self-doubt, but I think a strong case can be made that he is never out of his mind.

I don’t know what to make of the metatheatricality, apart from the fact that the play recurrently suggests that Hamlet and others are play-acting, “putting on” an act, pretending, either for good or ill: Hamlet tells Gertrude to “assume a virtue, if you have it not” and that “use can almost change the stamp of nature.” The gap between playing and acting can be quite small: an actor “plays” the role of the player king who plays the role of king. Even “put on” is ambiguous. In 3.1 Hamlet is said to “put on” confusion. In 5.2 Fortinbras says that if Hamlet had been “put on” (i.e., made king), he would have “proved most royal.”

I too think it significant that “To be or not to be . . .” is a soliloquy that is overheard. I think the standard view is that the speech offers a window into Hamlet’s mind. But I think that’s much too simple. My sense is that Hamlet knows he is being overheard, and is here doing more of his play-acting, so as to throw Claudius and Polonius off the scent, to make them think that he is suicidal and cowardly, unlikely to carry out his resolutions or to act. It’s not clear whether the speech succeeds. Claudius concludes that Hamlet is neither love-lorn nor mad, and senses that he is dangerous.

One element of the content of the speech seems inconsistent with what we know of Hamlet’s thinking. In Act 1 he frankly notes regretfully that self-slaughter is a sin. Here in 3.1 he says nothing about sin or judgment or an afterlife in heaven or hell. Instead, he says he has no idea what comes “after death”: it’s an undiscovered country. But maybe Hamlet’s play-acting comes close to the ‘truth’ of what he is in fact feeling: we know from other speeches that he at least imagines that his love for Ophelia has been “despised,” and that he is troubled by the gap between “will” and “action.”

One other detail in the speech needs to be spoken carefully by an actor. “To die, to sleep — /No more. . ” might seem to hint that death is not sleep but the end of sleep. But in the context of the full sentence it has to mean, at least primarily, that death is “no more” than sleep. So that “no more” is voiced in a light and dismissive tone. Or do the words in fact look forward to the next stage of Hamlet’s speech: that “the sleep of death” is not like other sleep, but perhaps invaded by dreams, and to the stage after that, in which death seems to be “something” dreadful?

I too paused over Hamlet’s praise of Horatio as a man who is not “passion’s slave.” I thought back to “To be, or not to be .. .”, with its catalogue of sufferings that most men will find unbearable. By contrast, Horatio, “in suff’ring all . . . suffers nothing.” Hamlet’s praise of Horatio invites at least two thoughts: one, that Horatio, for better and worse, is quite different from Hamlet (and would not make a very good revenger), and two, that Hamlet in fact aims at Horatio’s Stoicism, and largely succeeds. (The second thought would support the idea that “To be . . .” does not in fact represent Hamlet’s mind, but is only play-acting.)

In 3.2 what is the speech of eight or ten lines that Hamlet asks to have inserted in the player king’s part? Is it lines 261-66?

I love your idea that the actor who originally played Polonius had played Julius Caesar the previous season.

Yes, it’s odd that Hamlet forces the play’s conclusion, like a child insisting on telling the end of a story before the storyteller has finished. It would appear to be an instance of his impulsiveness, his over-eagerness. A modern director might want to have Claudius give himself away before Hamlet speaks those last linesj.

I think the scene with Rosencrantz and Guildenstern makes clear that Hamlet is fully rational, and that he can put on or drop his “antic disposition.” So too does the scene with Gertrude, where Hamlet says he is only “mad in craft.”

In 3.3 it’s odd that Rosencrantz gets such a long speech about the effects that a king has on the people (and the consequences of a king’s death).

What strikes me now about Hamlet’s reaction to the praying Claudius is that he (Hamlet) seems to have forgotten completely what he had a little earlier said comes “after death.” Here Hamlet seems certain that if you are killed while praying you will go to heaven, and if you are not you will go to hell. That appears to confirm the idea, which includes no heaven or hell, that “To be . . .” is play-acting. If we take Christian beliefs in the afterlife seriously, as the play seems to from the outset (the Ghost in purgatory), then Hamlet has a legitimate reason not to kill the king at this point. And indeed in the next scene Hamlet, so he thinks, kills the king as he is hiding behind the arras. (Had it been the king, I suppose the play would have been over — because Claudius would be removed and Laertes would have no grievance.)

Why is it only Hamlet who sees the Ghost? Presumably because the Ghost is only present to Hamlet — i.e., is a projection of his brain. (This represents a change in “the rules” about ghosts, since several people see the Ghost back in Act 1.) In a sense the Ghost serves to remind Hamlet of the need to act, but he had just acted very impulsively only a few lines earlier.

Dusty:

Act IV represents a change of pace, and a change of scene. After 4.3 Hamlet is mostly absent (except for a brief moment in 4.4). It is Claudius who is more prominent, appearing in 4.3 (where he gets a soliloquy),4.5, and 4.7. (He was also prominent in 3.1 and 3.3 where he gets a soliloquy).

In 4.1 Gertrude, as she promised, assures Claudius that Hamlet is mad. In 4.2 Hamlet tells Rosencrantz that he is the “son of a king” but in 4.3 Claudius tells Hamlet that he is “thy loving father.” The brief 4.4 seems designed to compare Hamlet who delays with Fortinbras who acts. But it’s not obvious to me that Hamlet has grounds to accuse himself. Is his revenge “dulled” and is Hamlet really acting like a beast or a coward, or with “craven scruples”? Is he not now under some constraint? Has he not acted when he had the opportunity? Are his thoughts not already “bloody”? In any case, is Fortinbras really a model of “rightly great” conduct? Is it “great” to wage for and spill blood for a “straw”? Even Hamlet’s words seem to suggest he is not sure. “Rightly to be great/ Is not to stir without great argument . . .” — but editors note that Hamlet must have meant to say “Rightly to be great/ Is not not to stir . . . but greatly to find quarrel in a straw/ When honor’s at the stake.” Maybe Hamlet is trying to say that being “great” requires action of some kind rather than finding reasons not to act.

4.5 is Ophelia’s big scene, and a long one. In her first appearance she seems to be distressed both by Hamlet’s cold behavior and by her father’s death, but in her second appearance (after Laertes has arrived) she seems mostly distraught about her father’s death. Her madness, Laertes notes, is “more than matter,” recalling Claudius’s comment that there is “method” in Hamlet’s madness.

In this scene, and especially in 4.7, Claudius sees that he can make use of Laertes. Claudius assures Gertrude that she need not fear for Claudius’s life, because “there’s such divinity doth hedge a king/ That treason can . . ./ Act little of his will.” This looks back to Rosencrantz’s speech about kings and forward to Hamlet’s quite different comment that “there ‘s a divinity that shapes our ends.”

The short 4.6 with Hamlet and the business about the letters moves the plot along, as does 4.7, another long scene, this time with Claudius and Laertes. Just as Hamlet had asked himself why he has delayed to act, so his foil Laertes asks Claudius why he has delayed in acting. There’s some comedy in this scene, as Claudius lays out for the rather slow-witted Laertes a revenge plot. Laertes is “lost,” says he will be ruled” by Claudius, but his repeated questions suggest that he doesn’t catch on. At one point Claudius in exasperation has to ask him if he wants to revenge his father’s death. It is probably significant that it is Laertes who comes up with the idea of the unblunted and poisoned foil (which leads in the end to his own death) and Claudius who comes up with the back-up plan of the poisoned chalice (which leads to the death of Gertrude).

The report of Ophelia’s death seems to make clear that it was an accident: she was gathering flowers, and leaned out too far over the water. We’ll hear more about that in the first scene in Act 5.

Michael:

I’m not entirely sure, maybe nobody is, but I tend to think the act divisions are not necessarily authorial but introduced by the compositors as they set text for printing. For Sh. the reality of the play was, I expect, the acted script rather than the printed text.

I think Claudius seems to promise his support to Hamlet for the election at 1.2.109, “You are most immediate to our throne . . .” And his desire to keep Hamlet close to him, rather than letting him go back to Wittenberg, may come of this. This would connect with what Rosencrantz says at 3.2. It might make election less clear if Hamlet is off in Wittenberg when the succession becomes open. So Claudius’ disinclination to let Hamlet return to Wittenberg may not be ill nature, but a political move.

I agree that Hamlet is rational and clear-eyed about what he’s doing, or mostly so, and the only qualification might be his emotional state after hearing the Ghost’s account of what he suffered in the murder, and what he suffers now in his purgatorial punishment. Hamlet does seem to go out of control emotionally in the soliloquy at 2.2.519-20, and his earlier longing for death in the first soliloquy suggests emotional fragility. To me this connects with his decision not to kill Claudius when he has the chance when he sees him in apparent prayer. If he were calm and Horatio-like he would see that this is the perfect moment and that Claudius’ spiritual state is not his concern. In fact if Claudius has committed a murder, he still would have a good deal of purgatorial purging ahead even if he has confessed and been absolved (which he has not). But I feel Hamlet’s possibly irrational anger keeps him from his vengeance. And at the same time Hamlet’s sense of betrayal by his mother also seems to drive him beyond reason. But to me most of the antic disposition seems enacted. What he does with Ophelia in what she reports of his coming to her is harder to gauge; it suggests madness, but her report of it to Polonius and Claudius may fit his desire to seem mad.

I find the “To be, or not to be” quite puzzling. Maybe especially that “No more.” It would seem that “taking arms against a sea of troubles” means death, suicide, and that sleep would mean death. Is “no more” referring not to sleep, but an interjection suggesting a response to living? In this sense, death would seem a reasonable thing since it ends heartache and the other ills. But then the thought that the sleep of death may bring the dreams of an afterlife opposes that easy sense of death as a solution. And then the possibility of dreams in that afterlife — that marvelous “undiscovered country from whose bourn . . .” — keeps us from suicide and makes us suffer those slings and arrows. I take it that “conscience” means consciousness, not the modern meaning, and that the “native hue of resolution” means the end of suicidal impulses and the acceptance of the pale cast of thought. What’s odd is that the opposing of suffering, accepting “enterprises of great pith and moment” (vengeance?) are what choosing death would mean. Is that right? It seems Hamlet is talking himself out of suicide, but what has that to do with his charge of revenge? Unless he means that killing Claudius would lead to his death.

I’m not sure if he means to be overheard by Claudius and Polonius, and if he does, what exactly he means to communicate to them. I’m happy to be enlightened here. In a sense, Hamlet’s rejection of suicide would seem to be an acceptance of the Christian idea that one should not kill oneself, but in a thinking through that’s not at all orthodox and seems even a bit tentative.
Does my reading of the speech accord with yours?

I wonder if Horatio would rather make the ideal revenger in that he’s not passion’s slave, that is, not tempted to extend his vengeance into damnation. Able just to do the job the Ghost demanded. Hamlet cannot just do the job.

I think we must have different lineation, since 261-66 doesn’t correspond to the play-within -the -play in my text. Any parts of the player queen’s speeches could be Hamlet’s, maybe especially the “Nor earth give me food or heaven light” and ff. Since it’s right after this that Hamlet confronts his mother about the play.

Hamlet is surely wrong to conclude that Claudius goes to heaven just because he sees him attempting to pray. Of course he is not fit and seasoned for his passage. And we know shortly that Claudius cannot pray, cannot be forgiven, which is a wonderful irony. I wonder if the Elizabethans thought of the executioner when they saw Hamlet with his raised sword; the executioner was always carefully separated from his act and the spiritual state of his “client.” Hamlet’s non-act is the opposite in his yearning for a “more horrid hent.”

I feel Hamlet is mistaken, tragically so, not to kill Claudius at this point, and Claudius’ failure really to pray or repent is the play’s confirmation of that. If he had killed him instead of Polonius in the next scene, this would have been a proper vengeance, but maybe too accidental? And of course the play would be over.

Is it significant that Hamlet sees the Ghost not in his armor, in warlike guise, but “in his nightgown”? At this point the Ghost seems to complain that Hamlet has missed his chance — is that how we’re to understand “thy almost blunted purpose”? And he tells Hamlet to comfort Gertrude. Hamlet’s “How is with you, lady?” seems a bit lame. But the real question is whether he is fulfilling what the Ghost had earlier told him about leaving his mother to heaven and her own guilt. He does seem to offer comfort, but does he spoil it altogether in ll. 181ff?

That scene with Fortinbras strikes me an almost entirely ironic. Here’s this guy marching off with a huge army to take some portion of territory that’s not worth having, and all because of honor. For a moment we seem to be back with Hector and Troilus. I don’t know what to make of Hamlet’s concluding couplet; is this really the guy we’ve been following? Was this whole scene a mistake?

Ophelia gets two mad scenes in act 4. I think one or the other is often cut in modern productions. But together they do evoke considerable pathos. Now we do seem to see real madness. Her death does seem accidental, not suicidal. But treating it as suicidal creates further irony.

Michael:

5.1 seems to me one of the great comic scenes in Shakespeare, but also a searching commentary on mortality. Hamlet seems to take the grave digger as a kind of tutor on death. We learn that Hamlet was born just as the grave digger came to his profession, which suggests a certain connectedness between them. And just as he’s learned as much as he can of the ironies and emptiness of death, he finds that the grave is for the woman he had loved, and for whose madness — and her death?– he is at least in part responsible.

As he and Laertes grapple over or in the grave, Hamlet does seem at least momentarily mad, as the queen notes. The scene is quickly ended when Hamlet runs off. Earlier it was clear that Claudius and Laertes were planning Hamlet’s murder, so this hangs over the rest of the act.

I wonder what we’re to think of R & G’s fate. Scene 5.2 is largely given over to plot, but when Hamlet tells Horatio what he did to procure their death, Horatio’s only comment is “So Rosencranz and Guildenstern go t’it.” This might express judgment, but it’s certainly a loose thread that a later playwright can pull.

If “comic relief” is real — I’m never sure it is — Osric surely supplies some. In attempting a reconciliation with Laertes, Hamlet protests his madness. Do we believe him? There was perhaps a kind of madness in his rash thrust at Polonius. But was the madness toward Ophelia feigned or real?

I believe critics have felt there’s a calm or resolution that comes over Hamlet after his return. He seems to confess a kind of dread or apprehension to Horatio at 5.2.190. But he continues that he defies augury and accepts whatever fate awaits him. The “special providence in the fall of a sparrow” and the sense that “it” — which I assume is death — is either now or yet to come seems to express a fatalism or acceptance. “The readiness is all” may echo Lear’s ripeness is all.

Of course Claudius’ plot is entirely, or almost entirely (since Hamlet is killed), upended with Gertrude’s quaffing of the poisoned chalice and Laertes’ wounding with the bated sword. Claudius appears doubly poisoned, both by the sword and the poisoned chalice that Hamlet pours down him. Horatio is almost a casualty as well until Hamlet grabs the chalice from him, maybe spills it, and enjoins his post-mortem report, in that memorable formula, “Absent thee from felicity a while, And in this harsh world draw thy breath in pain, To tell my story.”

Horatio’s summary, “So shall you hear . . . ” sounds like a parodic summary of revenge tragedy. But it’s accurate here. Fortinbras says that “with sorrow” he embraces his fortune, but we probably don’t believe that. And what’s he doing here anyway? But it’s a question that we never really care to ask.

So how many questions are we left with at the end of the play? There is the question of Hamlet’s feigned or real madness. I think we decided that the madness is more feigned than real, but why, if feigned, is it directed at Ophelia? Was Gertrude involved with Claudius before the murder of old Hamlet? Why did Hamlet plot the death of R & G? He seems to have felt they betrayed him, but they seemed rather clueless about the whole matter, as Stoppard elaborated. Of course Hamlet finally got his revenge, so the Ghost should be satisfied on that point. What other questions remain?

And of course I’ve raised a good many questions above.

Dusty:

You’re of course right that Claudius says that Hamlet is “most immediate to our throne.” I overlooked that line. Are you suggesting that Claudius wants to make sure that young Hamlet succeeds him, or that Claudius wants to keep his friends close and his enemies closer? Maybe, as you imply, because Hamlet was in Wittenberg when his father was killed, the ‘voters’ figured it made better sense to elect Claudius than Hamlet.

Yes, we have different lineation. My 2.2.519-20 is in the middle of the Player King’s speech. Are you suggesting the words beginning “Am I a coward?”

Hamlet may hesitate to kill Claudius at prayer because he remembers that the Ghost lamented that he was “Cut off even in the blossom of my sin,/ Unhouseled, disapppointed, unaneled/ No reck’ning made, but sent to my account/ With all my imperfections on my head.” It appears to Hamlet that Claudius may be confessing, repenting, asking forgiveness. In 5.2 Hamlet gives orders for the “sudden death” of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, “not shriving time allowed.” So I think there is a reasonable case to hold off from killing the king.

I think Hamlet’s reported behavior to Ophelia suggests enacted love woe — in fact, it displays, as Hamlet no doubt knew, all the standard signs.

“No more” is a puzzle: as you say, in addition to “death is not a big deal, it’s no more than sleep.” it might mean an interjected “no more life.” An actor might have to choose. Interesting that Hamlet imagines that no traveler returns from that undiscovered country, but in fact he thinks his father has just returned.

In order for the words beginning “And thus the native hue of resolution . . .” to make logical — note the “thus” — sense, “resolution” and “enterprises” must refer not to revenge but to suicide. (Critics who think Hamlet “delays” seize on these words, thinking they refer to his planned revenge.)

I continue to think it likely that Hamlet knows or at least suspects that he is being overheard, and wants to make Claudius and Polonius think he is depressed and suicidal but not going to kill himself, and is going to “bear . . . ills.” And I continue to think that the speech seems quite barren of any religious scruple, strikingly so since Hamlet elsewhere thinks in Christian terms about what happens after the death of his father, and what would happen after Claudius’s death (or after Gertrude’s), and says explicitly that self-slaughter is not allowed by God. Again, the absence of Christian scruple in the speech makes sense if we think of it not as revealing his deepest concerns, but as designed to be overheard.

You make a good point about Horatio as better equipped to be a revenger. Hamlet is ill-quipped: he thinks too much and he feels too much. Horatio says Hamlet inquires too closely. Horatio is ready to kill himself and doesn’t think about what might come after.

Yes, Hamlet is hard on his mother — but so was the Ghost. Hamlet in effect channels the Ghost’s angry disgust. And Gertrude is apparently not shaken after Hamlet’s hard words at 182ff. She reacted much more strongly at 89 (“O Hamlet, speak no more . . .”), 96 (“These words like daggers . . .”), and 157 (“thou has cleft my heart in twain”).

4.4 seems to be important because it keeps Fortinbras before our minds as a foil, and because it sets up “How all occasions do inform against me . . .” I agree that the comparison Hamlet makes between himself and Fortinbras is ambiguous. Hamlet seems to sense that Fortinbras is no model, wasting blood and treasure for “a straw.” Is Fortinbras another Hotspur, and is Hamlet another Hal? “Honor” seems to motivate Fortinbras. Does Hamlet think much about it? Polonius talks about Ophelia’s “honor” and Laertes’ “dishonor.” The King says Polonius is “honorable.” Hamlet thinks Danish drinking is a custom that should not be honored, i.e., it would be more honorable to violate the custom than observe it. The word is often used as an honorific (Your honor, honored lord). Laertes refers twice to his “honor” in 5.2.

In 5.1 questions are raised about Ophelia’s death. Maybe she did want to die. Maybe it was an “accident.” But it’s deemed “doubtful.” The discussion enables the gravedigger to analyze the three parts of an “act” — which of course bears directly on Hamlet’s actions.

I wonder why we get such specificity about dates: gravedigger has been sexton for 30 years, and gravedigger since Hamlet was born. If that’s two ways of saying the same things, Hamlet is 30 years old, which seems much too old for a student. So maybe the sexton only took on the additional duties of gravedigger seven years after becoming sexton. And then Yorick has been dead 23 years. Since Hamlet knew him, we do the math and again imagine that Hamlet might be in his late 20s. I’ve assumed “young Hamlet” is maybe 18. The graveyard talk gives us another image of what happens after death: nothing but rotting bodies turning to dust. (No dreaming, no consciousness, no undiscovered country.)

The fighting over Ophelia’s grave is introduced when Hamlet declares that he is “Hamlet the Dane.” Earlier “the Dane” had been a title reserved for old Hamlet and for Claudius. So he is in some sense laying claim to the throne, as he does when he signs and seals a death warrant with Old Hamlet’s ring. When Hamlet challenges Laertes, both the King and Queen think him mad. But he himself later says (in 5.2) that it was his “tow’ring passion” — an emotional response springing from his love for Ophelia. That’s not madness. This is also the first unambiguous evidence that Hamlet truly loved Ophelia.

As for the death of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, Hamlet confesses that he has ordered it, and feels no guilt: they deserved it. So it is odd that in the closing moments of the play Horatio says that Hamlet did not give any commandment for their deaths.

I wonder why we need comic relief in the Osric scene in 5.2, since we had such good comedy in the gravedigger’s scene. Maybe “young Osric” is in the play as false courtier (vs. Hamlet as true courtier). Later in the scene comes that crucial line — “The readiness is all.” It has always seemed a central part of the changed Hamlet. It perhaps suggests that he has moved on from thinking about turning will into act, or refraining from acting, or delaying. Now he just wants to be ready when an occasion presents itself. (I can just as well argue against that point, since Hamlet seemed “ready” to act when he found Claudius at prayer and then thought he was behind the arras.)

Later in 5.2 Hamlet proclaims to Laertes that his earlier offensive action was the result of “madness,” and that’s evidence to support the theory that Hamlet was not just acting/pretending, and a problem for the reader to solve. His distinction between what Hamlet does and what his separate “madness” does recalls the gravedigger’s lines about the man going to the water or the water coming to the man, and the problematic (“doubtful”) death of Ophelia. How you decide whether an act is willed and deliberate(d) comes up again when Laertes says he “acts almost against his conscience.” And it perhaps gets another summary look when Horatio speaks at the end about “accidental judgments, “casual [i.e. chance] slaughters,” and “purposes mistook.” Things happen not because they are planned and willed but because of “providence.” So much for the idea that this is a play about revenge.

I am not sure what to make of Fortinbras’s entry line: “Where is this sight?” Has somebody told him that there is something he should “see”? It’s also curious that his word leads to some back-and-forth between seeing and hearing: “The sight is dismal . . give us hearing . . bodies placed to the view . . . let me speak . . so shall you hear . . . audience . . . cause to speak . . . speak loudly for him . . . such a sight as this.” Speaking is not aligned only with Horatio and seeing only with Fortinbras. But maybe there is a proposed shift from sight (the shocking view of many dead bodies — as in Greek tragedy) to speaking/hearing, telling a true story that will explain this mindless spectacle to future listeners.

As for “absent thee from felicity,” perhaps Hamlet thinks that Horatio thinks that death would be felicitious, but does Hamlet think so? And as for your final questions, I don’t find evidence that Gertrude committed any adultery. Hamlet’s behavior toward Ophelia is difficult to explain. One theory is that he was truly hurt when she followed her father’s instructions and rebuffed him. Another is that he spoke cruelly or tauntingly to her as part of his “antic” act. She is collateral damage, and Hamlet seems to acknowledge that he has some responsibility for her death. He feels less responsibility for the deaths of R and G. Yes, they were somewhat unwitting agents of Claudius, but they were willing to act as his agents and spy on Hamlet. And he’s not repentant for killing Polonius. When you stop and think about it, Hamlet is responsible for a lot of deaths, including those of Laertes and Claudius, but the one he kills with full knowledge and deliberation is Claudius.

Yes, Hamlet got his revenge, and a lot more. And the Ghost must finally be satisfied. Is it odd that Hamlet after the scene in Gertrude’s bedroom seems to forget all about the Ghost? And that Horatio, when he gives the summary of what has happened in the play, says nothing about Hamlet executing the fearful summons and setting things right? Maybe Shakespeare has undermined the whole idea of revenge and revenge play.

I think this play has occasioned more commentary from us than any previous play. More problems that are not fully solved and more questions that are not fully answered.

Michael:

Some quick follow-up on Hamlet questions:
I doubt that Claudius is much concerned about Hamlet’s succession, but I’m sure he wants to keep him close. It’s clear he doesn’t trust him.

Yes, that soliloquy, especially toward the middle where he seems to shout, “Bloody, bawdy villain” ff, and then seems to catch himself. But here if anywhere he seems to go out of control, if only momentarily.

Yes, I agree that Hamlet hesitates to kill Claudius because he remembers what the ghost said, but in my understanding this is exactly why he should not hesitate. The ghost asked for vengeance, not for Claudius’ damnation. Not killing him at this point involves what the ghost had cautioned him against, tainting his mind. And in the very next scene, he appears to offer some violence to Gertrude just before killing Polonius and toward the end of the scene berates her painfully. The ordering of the death of R & G may be an underscoring of this tainting of his mind, and their killing is not endorsed by Horatio.

What you say about the overhearing of the “To be, or not to be” makes sense, and it convinces Claudius that it’s not love-melancholy that troubles Hamlet. That Hamlet means for Claudius to understand it may be signaled by his glancing toward the arras as he speaks. I’ve seen it done where he notices their shoes, but that may be too obvious. And yes, I think the great enterprises and resolution refer to suicide. Hamlet does seem to turn away from suicide — perhaps to confuse Claudius?

I’m still troubled by 4.4 and wonder what it does beyond keeping Fortinbras in the picture. It pulls the rug out from a sense of military honor and the kind of bizarre overreach that Fortinbras is involved with.

I too imagine Hamlet younger than 30. But maybe the point is to associate him with the gravedigger. And the gravedigger draws Hamlet into yet another sense of death. So far we’ve had the Ghost and sleep and the undiscovered country. Now this very basic side, especially the wonder at Yorick.

Yes, Hamlet gets his revenge, but causes other deaths in the process, Polonius, perhaps Ophelia, R & G. Other deaths, Laertes’ and Gertrude’s, seem to come from the others.

In some ways it’s hard to put down the play, and it certainly has drawn a larger volume of commentary and argument from us. We could probably go on and on.

Dusty:

A little more on Hamlet (it’s hard to stop thinking and talking about the play): if you’re right that Hamlet’s mind is “tainted” and that he should have killed Claudius when he had the chance, then at the end of the play Hamlet himself and Horatio must be focusing their attention on later events, because neither one says anything about Hamlet’s failure to act earlier.