More on Hamlet

INTRODUCTION
As many critics have pointed out, Act 2 of Hamlet focuses on the efforts of both the “mighty opposites” – Hamlet and Claudius – to spy out the intentions and plans of the other. Thus begins the process of inserting various mediators between the two, all of whom end up dead – Polonius, Ophelia, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.

This fencing takes place in a world of illusion, deceptive rhetoric, and playacting. Though the players do not appear until the end of Act 2, there has already been a great deal of play-acting going on throughout the early scenes of the play. Claudius is playing at King, Gertrude at Queen; Hamlet decides to put on an antic disposition to deflect attention from the true cause of his defect. In acts 2-3, the playacting proceeds apace. Polonius is an actor, bumbling over lines and sometimes correcting his dialogue, but chiefly pretending to befriend Hamlet, and he turns director and audience when he looses his daughter to the prince. Later, Polonius is a spectator of the scene between Hamlet and Gertrude, until he becomes part of the scene – as a corpse (Marjorie Garber makes this point). Claudius also is director and audience, as he watches Hamlet and Ophelia behind the arras and directs Rosencrantz and Guildenstern to play the roles of Hamlet’s schoolfellows. Characters shift from audience to actor, and back again: At the beginning of Act 2 and again early in Act 3, Hamlet is on a stage prepared by Claudius and Polonius. But with the arrival of the players, Hamlet reverses this, becoming a literal director of a play and watching for the king’s reactions to the Murder of Gonzago. Claudius wishes to make of his court a panopticon, from which he can keep the entire population, and especially the Prince, under surveillance.

Not only is this a player’s court, a stage, but it is one where words have lost their normal meanings. From Claudius’ opening speech, we know that words have lost their significance. “Mirth in funeral and dirge in marriage” – he might as well say “fair is foul, and foul is fair.” Language is detached from reality, so that Hamlet can say of his book that it contains only “words, words, words.” Even Claudius’ words of prayer do not get to heaven, where they are directed. As Marjorie Garber says, “The Denmark of this play is a place of inversion and perversion, and there is no greater clue to that fact than the tenor and rhetoric of its language.”

The combination of this failure of language and this theatrical setting lends much of the action the air of a dumb show. As Garber puts it, “the appearance of the Ghost in the first scene is a dumb show, a ‘prologue to the omen coming on,’ a silent gesturing apparition that invites or demands interpretation.” It is no accident that the imperative “speak” is repeated throughout the opening scene, and no accident either that the Ghost ignores it. Garber: “This is the first of several dumb shows in Hamlet. Others, as we’ll see, will include Ophelia’s account of Hamlet’s visit to her chamber, and the literal dumb show that prefaces the crucial Mousetrap play in the third act.” The repeated “dumb show” motif is linked, as we shall see next week, to the play’s emphasis on the “ear.” In a world of spectacle, role-playing, and deceptive rhetoric, how can the truth be known and communicated?

ACT 2, SCENE 1
The theme of spying and eavesdropping is opened by the exchange between Polonius and Reynaldo at the beginning of scene 1. Polonius instructs his servant on the proper way to keep tabs on Laertes. Polonius’ method is indirect, employing white lies, gossip, half-truths to get to the truth. Polonius himself is among those of “wisdom and of reach” who “by indirections find directions out.” Claudius is going to employ similarly indirect methods to seek the cause of Hamlet’s lunacy. Further, this scene makes it clear that Polonius’ apparent support for Laertes’ departure from Elsinore was at least partly hypocritical. He does not trust his son to follow his advice when he gets to France, and needs to keep close tabs on his son even at a distance. The Polonius-Laertes relation is going to be like the relation of Hamlet-Hamlet (both fathers killed, both sons avengers). But for now, Polonius is to Laertes as Claudius is to Hamlet, for Claudius like Polonius will keep his nephew-son’s actions under close surveillance.

This scene also reintroduces the thread of the plot dealing with the love between Ophelia and Hamlet, first introduced in 1.3 as a matter of Ophelia’s and the family’s honor. Here, Ophelia comes to report to her father that Hamlet has come to her in strange apparel, held her sighing and staring, and gone without saying a word. Polonius, as always, considers this evidence of his pet theory that Hamlet is love sick, the very “ecstasy of love” (2.1.201) provoked by Ophelia’s dutiful rejection of Hamlet’s advances. This provides background for Polonius’ later plan to “loose” his daughter where Hamlet will find her, so that he and the king can test his theory.

Garber offers a number of helpful insights on this scene. First, she notes the symmetry between the opening and closing of the scene; 2.1 opens with Polonius seeking reports about his son from a servant, and closes with a report from his daughter about his prince. The scene hints that Ophelia will eventually play a similar role to Reynaldo, one of seeking directions by indirections. Second, she notes that Hamlet’s appearance to Ophelia is a dumb show. Third, she points to “familiar Shakespearean device of the ‘unscene,’ a vivid event that takes place offstage and is reported.” Finally, and most intriguingly, she notes the similarity of Hamlet’s appearance to Ophelia and the Ghost’s earlier appearance to the guards in 1.1: “In its way this is very like the first mysterious appearance of the Ghost: pale, silent, beckoning, waving his arms, disappearing into darkness. Hamlet has in effect become a ghost. And Ophelia’s report of his demeanor is enough of an ‘inexplicable dumb show’ to generate misinterpretations.” This scene might be played to lead the audience to anticipate that Ophelia has seen the ghost; she comes in “affrighted,” as if she had seen a ghost. After all, if Hamlet Sr. is haunting Denmark, why not Ophelia?

Is this antic disposition? Or genuine melancholy? Or the signs of love-sickness. Ophelia’s description of Hamlet’s condition and clothing have often been taken as standard signs of the ecstasy of love, but John Dover Wilson among others doubts that. Instead, he suggests that Hamlet dresses the part of the madman. More generally, the various symptoms Hamlet displays are recognizable as symptoms of melancholy. Bridget Lyons notes: “A mixture of styles was particularly appropropriate for the representation of melancholy, as Burton was also to show. Melancholy was a state that included violent opposites in feeling and behaviour, from total dejection and apathy to hysterical outbursts and frenzy, with swings from one to the other, as the Queen suggests in her descriptions of Hamlet’s supposed ‘fits.’”

ACT 2, SCENE 2
The second scene of Act 2 is huge and highly complicated. The scene changes several times during the course of the scene. It begins with a court scene where the king receives Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, hears Polonius’ theory concerning Hamlet, and receives the returned embassy to Norway. The order of this section sets it off neatly:

King and Queen receive Rosencrantz and Guildenstern
Polonius announces he has determined the cause of H

amlet’s behavior
King and Queen receive the report from the ambassadors to Norway
Polonius lays out his theory and priovides evidence for it

When Hamlet enters, the scene and cast of character changes, as Hamlet engages two of Claudius’ spies: Polonius first, and then Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. During the latter encounter, Hamlet learns of the arrival of the players, asks the Player King to deliver a speech from the story of Aeneas and Dido, and the scene ends with Hamlet alone on stage castigating himself for his lack of passion.

Mark Rose suggests that the scene is unified as a movement from Claudius, who is focused on figuring out the source of Hamlet’s behavior, toward Hamlet, who focuses on testing Claudius and the ghost: “The symmetrical organization encourages us to compare Claudius and Hamlet, for if Claudius is subtle and dangerous, Hamlet is even more so. The scene falls into three long segments: in the first, running 169 lines, Claudius prepares his instruments, Rosencrantz, Guildenstern, and Polonius; in the middle, running 241 lines, Hamlet parries Claudius’ indirect thrusts, meeting and defeating each of the spies; and in the final segment, running 181 lines, he prepares his own instruments, the actors.”

Harry Levin has offered this account of the organization of the latter part of: “the soliloquy is the mirror-opposite of the [Player’s] speech. Both passages are very nearly of the same length, and seem to be subdivided into three movements that run somewhat parallel. But where the speech proceeds from the slayer to the slain, and from the royal victim to the queenly mourner, the soliloquy moves from the suggestive figure to another king and finally toward another villain. And where the speech leads from action to passion, the soliloquy reverses this direction. Where the Player’s diction is heavily external, underlining the fundamental discrepancy between words and deeds, Hamlet’s words are by convention his thoughts, directing inward their jabs of self-accusation. Midway, where the Player curses Fortune as a strumpet, Hamlet falls ‘a’cursing like a very drab.’ Well may he hesitate, ‘like a neutral to his will and matter,’ at the very point where the rugged Pyrrhus paused and did nothing . . . . we may cite the precedent as a justification – if further justification still be needed – for Hamlet’s often criticized delay. While he must hold his tongue, so long as he cannot speak his genuine sentiments, the Player is vocal on his behalf.” This is too schematic, but does indicate that there are both structural and thematic elements binding the scene together.

COURT SCENE
Act 2, scene 2 begins with a king, and near the end there is a Player King. That structural similarity suggests that Claudius himself is being presented as something like a “Player King,” a king intent on keeping up the appearances of stability, strength, and legitimacy. He “seems” to be a king; but “is” he?

His opening remarks are addressed to Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, friends “brought up with him” (2.2.11). His goal is twofold: both to “draw him on to pleasures” and “gather so much as from occasion you may glean.” Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Claudius’ Reynaldo. Claudius’ description of Hamlet’s condition is that he has undergone a “transformation” that has left him entirely a different man – neither internally nor externally the same as he was. It is difficult to believe that Hamlet has really “much talked of you” (2.2.19), as Gertrude claims; nearly as soon as he sees them, he is suspicious. Their eagerness to obey the king’s command reminds us of Ophelia’s promise to obey her father, and sets up an expectation of later parallels between them, expectations that are fulfilled in their deaths. Claudius cannot “dream” of what might have caused the transformation of his nephew-son (2.2.10), and we are reminded that there is more in heaven and on earth than are dreamed of in Claudius’ policy.

The ambassadors from Norway arrive, but before they speak Polonius informs the king that he has determined the cause of Hamlet’s lunacy. He promises to tell them as “the fruit to that great feast” of the embassy’s report – the cherry on top of a day of good news. Dramatically, this creates anticipation to hear Polonius’ news; structurally, it sets the report on Fortinbras in the middle between two references to Hamlet’s state of mind; thematically, it means that the report on Fortinbras is overshadowed by the report on Hamlet, and, vice versa, Hamlet is implicitly compared to the Norweigian Prince.

The report of Voltemand is highly interesting. Not only does he report that Fortinbras was indeed intending an invasion of Denmark, but he reports that he did it deceptively, covering his intention by pretending to be invading Poland. Here, then, we have a vengeful son who intends to kill Claudius because of his father’s death, and who is covering his intention by pretending to be doing something else. Sound familiar? Claudius is to Hamlet as old Norway is to Fortinbras, and Claudius is attempting to figure out Hamlet’s intentions as Norway had done with Fortinbras. So the news about Fortinbras is very good news indeed, for it gives hope that another young prince can be brought to heel.

Polonius’ speech to the King and Queen is played for laughs, and it is a funny speech. The internal contradictions (“brevity is the soul of wit” is part of a verbose speech); the stops and starts (“Mad I call it”); his self-critical evaluation of his own and Hamlet’s language (“a foolish figure” and “‘beautified’ is a vile phrase”) – all combine to make the speech humorous. But the stops and starts have a more serious purpose and probably a more serious origin. Polonius is about to tell the King and Queen that his daughter has spurned Hamlet, and, perhaps more dangerously, that he had to intervene in a relationship that was already beginning to take form. Will the King and Queen take kindly to this? Or will they see it as an act of effrontery, and conclude Polonius has ambitions beyond his ken.

Claudius is not satisfied: He wishes to “try it further” (2.2.159), just as Hamlet himself is not satisfied with the ghost’s testimony. The test will involve pushing Ophelia into the middle of the conflict, so that she becomes, like Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, part of the king’s spy network. Polonius says he will “loose” his daughter (2.2.162), a construction normally used for animals but also used for prostitutes. With that plan, Polonius becomes Pandarus.

PARRY AND THRUST
Polonius shoos the king and queen from the room when Hamlet arrives, intent on trying his own hand at spying out the mystery of the prince. Hamlet’s wits are, however, far too much for the old counselor. John Dover Wilson suggests that Hamlet overheard the plan to “loose” Ophelia; whether that is the case or not, he surely is aware of Polonius’ own theories about his distemper, and takes every opportunity to play up that theme. Wilson also argues that Hamlet employs his antic disposition in order to confirm the various theories about him, all under the cover of his supposed madness.

The opening exchange between Hamlet and Polonius is of this sort. Hamlet initially calls Polonius a fishmonger, a slang term for a procurer of prostitutes. He knows or suspects that Polonius will attempt to use his daughter as a tool, as “bait” to catch Hamlet. When Polonius objects, Hamlet says that being an open pimp would be more “honest,” more straightforward and honorable than the skulking about that is so much a part of Polonius&#8
217; career. (He is always hiding in the wings to see what he can overhear, and it costs him his life.) Honesty is a rare commodity, Hamlet opines, and explains this by the fact that God who gives life can only produce human beings through “dead dogs,” the “carrion” of human beings who are in the grip of original sin. The hint of grotesque reproduction in the image of “maggots in a dead dog” shifts to the question about Ophelia, and the warning that she might “conceive” something very unpleasant. Hamlet of course returns to this in his nunnery rant.

The next exchange is about language. Hamlet claims to be reading satire on old age, which of course is a satire of the old, weak-hammed man with whom he is speaking. His final statement is difficult to grasp. It is not “honest to have it thus set down” in writing, he says, “for” – because – Polonius “shall grow old as I am if, like a crab, you could go backward.” On the surface this is merely an irrelevant crack about time. But Polonius clearly believes that there is something more to it, for this is the comment that provokes his “though this be madness, yet there is method in’t.”

As soon as Polonius leaves, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern appear, ready to play on the pipe that is Hamlet. They are poor players. They have exchanged only the merest pleasantries with Hamlet, sharing a joke about being in the “privates” of strumpet Fortune – whose affections rapidly shift from one favorite to another – when Hamlet begins to suspect their presence in Elsinore. They quickly accuse him of ambition, no doubt fed this line of inquiry by Claudius.

Hamlet’s loss of mirth is genuine; we have already seen it in the soliloquy in 1.2 – the unweeded garden possessed by things rank and gross. He expounds on the dignity of man in like Pico della Mirandola, but concludes that heaven is nothing but a “foul and pestilent congregation of vapors” and that man is nothing but a “quintessence of dust” that brings no delight. He has lost any delight either in the world, the macrocosm, or in man, the microcosm. The incomparable Burton captures this in his description of the sorrow suffered by melancholics: “No sooner are their eyes open, but after terrible and troublesome dreams their heavy hearts begin to sigh: they are still fretting, chafing, sighing, grieving, complaining, finding faults, repining, grudging, weeping . . . vexing themselves, disquieted in mind, with restless, unquiet thoughts, discontent, either for their own, other men’s or public affairs, such as concern them not; things past, present, or to come, the remembrance of some disgrace, loss, injury, abuse, etc. troubles them now being idle afresh, as if it were new done; they are afflicted otherwise for some danger, loss, want, shame, misery, that will certainly come, as they suspect and mistrust.”

PLAYER KING
Hamlet’s interrogation of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern is interrupted in turn by the appearance of the players, announced by Polonius. Hamlet continues his mockery, but here again there is method in ‘t, as Hamlet calls Polonius “Jephthah” after the judge who sacrificed his daughter. This both keeps Polonius focused on Hamlet’s supposed love-sickness and also offers another barely veiled warning about loosing his daughter.

Hamlet asks the First Player to recite a speech from Aeneas and Dido, a multiply appropriate selection. In some versions of the story, Dido’s love for Aeneas is a betrayal of her earlier marriage, and she is thus a Gertrude figure. The story that Aeneas tells, further, is about the fall of Troy, an appropriate cautionary tale for a Denmark where time is disjoint and out of frame. The particular scene is of Pyrrhus’ slaughter of Priam, Pyrrhus here playing the vengeful son who is responding to his father’s death by killing the king of Troy. He comes, like Hamlet himself, in an inky cloak, with “sable arms, black as his purpose.” Hamlet, however, is unable to finish the speech, leaving Pyrrhus poised to strike the blow that he cannot quite strike (the First Player likewise speaks of Pyrrhus standing “like a neutral” and doing nothing). Hamlet’s part of the speech is a perfect exemplar of his own situation. The players are indeed “the abstract and brief chronicles of the time” – not of all times in general, but of Denmark’s time in particular.

Ever the director, Polonius complains that the speech is too long, but Hamlet is also impatient, importantly, to get to Hecuba. The First Player describes a queen undone by the fall of her husband the king, her grief enough to “have made milch the burning eyes of heaven and passion in the gods” – the stars and gods join in her mourning, weeping at the sight. Hamlet is of course particularly interested in Hecuba because of his own mother’s apparent lack of sorrow at his father’s death. Trojan grief – those were the good old days, when men were avengers and women mourners.

ROGUE AND PEASANT SLAVE
The players have moved offstage, and Hamlet again is alone, his conscience stricken by the First Player’s speech. This second soliloquy is a self-castigating rant about his own inability to act. The First Player is able to summon passion and tears for “nothing,” for “Hecuba.” He tries to stir himself to a froth of rage, first by self-reproach and then by ranting against Claudius. But this is still acting, and Hamlet has become his own audience: “This is most brave,” he says, as he describes himself as a whore unpacking the heart with words and cursing like a drab and a stallion. By the end of the speech, he has confirmed his plot to catch Cladius, turning the tables on the surveillance. Hamlet will become audience.