In a tropical Botanical Garden, Hilo, Hawaii, USA (photo (c) Ulrike Boehm; all rights reserved)
Act III, Scene 4 (Hamlet and Gertrude).
The play's most difficult scene for me to watch or even just think about – in a way, even more so than Hamlet's interactions with Ophelia. Because I respond to visual impulses much more strongly than to those that I hear and, much as I wish it weren't so, this scene, too, has simply glaring overtones of violence, and, yes, even of rape; even if the latter is generally not (nor should it be, in my view) explicitly acted out. And unlike in Ophelia's account of the Prince's intrusion into her bedchamber (where – at least in a stage production – I don't have to visually confront what actually happened), or in Get thee to a nunnery (where, though piling abuse upon abuse on Ophelia, Hamlet at least initially is the offended party, not the offender), here there is no way out; here I am forced to watch. And I find it all the more difficult just because I don't buy into the notion of an Oedipean relationship of any sort between Hamlet and his mother. For it is one thing – albeit not a small one, either – to assume such a relationship, and then take it one step further into a physical, and for a 1940s movie like Sir Laurence Olivier's, daringly explicit confrontation amidst the sheets of her bed. But it is, to me at least, still a far more grievous transgression to see a son who has at every conceivable opportunity expressed his utter disgust with his mother's perceived immorality suddenly engage in a form of abuse that conceivably comes extremely close to matching this very attitude.
The first thing that happens after Hamlet enters his mother's bedchamber, of course, is that he kills Polonius – not intentionally, at least not as far as his victim's person is concerned; but nevertheless, it is a killing. (And I do think he really believes he is going after Claudius; even if this seems hard to imagine considering that he has just left his uncle in purported prayer in another room. But who knows, maybe there is a shortcut from that room to Gertrude's bedchamber ... you know what those ancient castles were like.) Still, rash and bloody deed though it is, and although Hamlet is truly shocked about its outcome, in the scene's choreographing as a whole it amounts to nothing more than foreplay – albeit a potent stimulant indeed.
"A bloody deed – almost as bad, good mother, as kill a King, and marry with his brother" Hamlet responds to Gertrude's horrified comment on the killing. And here, I imagine, the world comes to a complete and total standstill for her – and we see it in her reaction. She just freezes. Because Hamlet has put the unspeakable horror of her situation into words, and she simply can no longer shut her eyes to the connection between her first husband's death, her son's behaviour towards Claudius, and the meaning of the "play within the play." And yet ... it is just too much to take it in all at once. She stares at Hamlet. "As kill a King?," she answers in a low voice, almost unable to speak at all. "Ay, lady, it was my word," he confirms, likewise in a low voice, himself on the point of exasperation as well. Gertrude makes a last gesture of denial – maybe an aborted shake of her head, maybe that wringing of her hands which he then comments on – and it is this which pushes him over the edge. He had been kneeling next to the dead body of the "wretched, rash, intruding fool" Polonius, closing the dead Counsellor's eyes in a final gesture of regret. Now he abruptly rises, walks over to Gertrude (who is standing next to her bed, where he had made her sit down once before already), and harshly shoves her back down into the sheets: "Peace! sit you down and let me wring your heart; for so I shall if it be made of penetrable stuff." And now Gertrude's last remaining defences are quickly and mercilessly crushed.
What have I done that thou dar'st wag thy tongue
In noise so rude against me?
"No, Hamlet, please. Don't do this. No! Help ... no! Mercy! Oh, please ..."
Such an act
That blurs the grace and blush of modesty;
Calls virtue hypocrite; takes off the rose
From the fair forehead of an innocent love,
And sets a blister there; makes marriage vows
As false as dicers' oaths. O, such a deed
As from the body of contraction plucks
The very soul, and sweet religion makes
A rhapsody of words! Heaven's face doth glow;
Yea, this solidity and compound mass,
With tristful visage, as against the doom,
Is thought-sick at the act.
But towering over her, he rapidly works himself into a state of extreme passion, pouring out all the grief and revulsion he has kept bottled up for the past three months; in language just bursting with the imagery of tainted love, base sexual instinct, and sin. And yet, even this is only the beginning.
Ah me, what act,
That roars so loud and thunders in the index?
[Whimpering]: "Why, Hamlet ... what's gotten into you ... why are you doing this??"
Look here upon th's picture, and on this,
The counterfeit presentment of two brothers.
See what a grace was seated on this brow;
Hyperion's curls; the front of Jove himself;
An eye like Mars, to threaten and command;
A station like the herald Mercury
New lighted on a heaven-kissing hill:
A combination and a form indeed
Where every god did seem to set his seal
To give the world assurance of a man.
This was your husband. Look you now what follows.
Here is your husband, like a mildew'd ear
Blasting his wholesome brother. Have you eyes?
Could you on this fair mountain leave to feed,
And batten on this moor? Ha! have you eyes
The two brothers – symbols of the enormity of Gertrude's downfall, from nothing short of godly perfection to abscess personified; echoing the description given by the murdered King himself three months earlier. Hamlet shoves the pictures into her face one by one, forcing her to look.
You cannot call it love; for at your age
The heyday in the blood is tame, it's humble,
And waits upon the judgment; and what judgment
Would step from this to this? *//* Sense sure you have,
Else could you not have motion; but sure that sense
Is apoplex'd; for madness would not err,
Nor sense to ecstacy was ne'er so thrall'd
But it reserv'd some quantity of choice
To serve in such a difference. *//* What devil was't
That thus hath cozen'd you at hoodman-blind?
*//* Eyes without feeling, feeling without sight,
Ears without hands or eyes, smelling sans all,
Or but a sickly part of one true sense
Could not so mope. *//*
She, whose very age should forbid her to still be engaging in this kind of mad, unnatural pursuit of physical rapture and excitement (and the version of the Second Quarto rubs it in even more brutally than the First Folio).
O shame! where is thy blush? Rebellious hell,
If thou canst mutine in a matron's bones,
To flaming youth let virtue be as wax
And melt in her own fire. Proclaim no shame
When the compulsive ardour gives the charge,
Since frost itself as actively doth burn,
And reason panders will.
This is the end of all decency; this is nothing but pure and everlasting perdition. [He rudely pushes her backwards and holds her down, his eyes consuming her on the very pitch point of emotion.]
O Hamlet, speak no more!
Thou turn'st mine eyes into my very soul,
And there I see such black and grained spots
As will not leave their tinct.
A last, desperate plea for mercy.
Nay, but to live
In the rank sweat of an enseamed bed,
Stew'd in corruption, honeying and making love
Over the nasty sty!
Climax: the quintessence of depravity ...
O, speak to me no more!
These words like daggers enter in mine ears.
No more, sweet Hamlet!
... tearing her up inside; if only by his words.
A murtherer and a villain!
A slave that is not twentieth part the tithe
Of your precedent lord; a vice of Kings;
A cutpurse of the empire and the rule,
That from a shelf the precious diadem stole
And put it in his pocket!
A gush, now more impulse than controlled by willpower.
No more!
Abject despair.
A King of shreds and patches! –
Save me and hover o'er me with your wings,
You heavenly guards! What would your gracious figure?
Alas, he's mad!
Only when it is already too late; when the worst is already over, she is saved from further disgrace by the Ghost's intrusion. (And of course he is wearing his nightgown; the way he, her lawful former husband, would have entered her bedchamber.) Hamlet is terrified at the Ghost's appearance. Gertrude is terrified at her son's behaviour, which she now truly concludes cannot be anything but madness – and seeing the scene enacted by Sir Laurence Olivier, initially you can't help but agree with her, because Sir Laurence never once shows us the Ghost himself: the beginning of his appearance is seen from Gertrude's perspective, i.e., we don't see the Ghost either, only Hamlet's side of the Prince's interaction with him, and as the Ghost withdraws, we look back on the Prince and Gertrude through his eyes.
Do you not come your tardy son to chide,
That, laps'd in time and passion, lets go by
Th' important acting of your dread command?
O, say!
Guilt – guilt – guilt ... over the neglected vengeance as much as over what he has just done to his own mother, and which so expressly went against his father's commands as well (not to mention against the very decency, decorum and morality he has been demanding of her).
Do not forget. This visitation
Is but to whet thy almost blunted purpose.
But look, amazement on thy mother sits.
O, step between her and her fighting soul
Conceit in weakest bodies strongest works.
Speak to her, Hamlet.
Sadness, almost more than reproach. (Again, particularly beautifully rendered by Paul Scofield in Franco Zeffirelli's movie.)
How is it with you, lady?
Alas, how is't with you,
That you do bend your eye on vacancy,
And with th' encorporal air do hold discourse?
Forth at your eyes your spirits wildly peep;
And, as the sleeping soldiers in th' alarm,
Your bedded hairs, like life in excrements,
Start up and stand an end. O gentle son,
Upon the heat and flame of thy distemper
Sprinkle cool patience! Whereon do you look?
On him, on him! Look you how pale he glares!
His form and cause conjoin'd, preaching to stones,
Would make them capable. – Do not look upon me,
Lest with this piteous action you convert
My stern effects. Then what I have to do
Will want true colour – tears perchance for blood.
To whom do you speak this?
Do you see nothing there?
Nothing at all; yet all that is I see.
Nor did you nothing hear?
No, nothing but ourselves.
Why, look you there! Look how it steals away!
My father, in his habit as he liv'd!
Look where he goes even now out at the portal!
The epitome of the imperfect family: the rightful royal family reunited for an instant, yet fatally fragmented by Gertrude's inability to see her former husband, which in turn is brought about by her indecorous marriage to Claudius. – Another flawed trinity: three persons physically present, one of whom however cannot communicate with one of the others; plus a fourth person symbolically present as the cause of that inability to communicate. Set in Act III, Scene 4, immediately after Hamlet's sparing of that same fourth person's life, and although that person is none other than an instrument of darkness, and of the most unholy of all trinities, that of hell itself.
This is the very coinage of your brain.
This bodiless creation ecstasy
Is very cunning in.
The suspicion of insanity made explicit ...
Ecstasy?
My pulse as yours doth temperately keep time
And makes as healthful music. It is not madness
That I have utt'red. Bring me to the test,
And I the matter will reword; which madness
Would gambol from.
... and rebutted, once and for all.
Mother, for love of grace,
Lay not that flattering unction to your soul
That not your trespass but my madness speaks.
It will but skin and film the ulcerous place,
Whiles rank corruption, mining all within,
Infects unseen. Confess yourself to heaven;
Repent what's past; avoid what is to come;
And do not spread the compost on the weeds
To make them ranker. Forgive me this my virtue;
For in the fatness of these pursy times
Virtue itself of vice must pardon beg –
Yea, curb and woo for leave to do him good.
Now calmer again, Hamlet implores his mother to put an end to her sinful physical relationship with Claudius.
O Hamlet, thou hast cleft my heart in twain.
Gertrude lets him see the wounds that he has caused her (if only psychologically) – but she does not expressly accede to his plea.
O, throw away the worser part of it,
And live the purer with the other half,
Good night – but go not to my uncle's bed.
Assume a virtue, if you have it not.
*//* That monster, custom, who all sense doth eat
Of habits evil, is angel yet in this,
That to the use of actions fair and good
He likewise gives a frock or livery,
That aptly is put on. *//* Refrain to-night,
And that shall lend a kind of easiness
To the next abstinence; *//* the next more easy;
For use almost can change the stamp of nature,
And either [master] the devil, or throw him out
With wondrous potency. *//* Once more, good night;
And when you are desirous to be blest,
I'll blessing beg of you. – For this same lord,
I do repent; but heaven hath pleas'd it so,
To punish me with this, and this with me,
That I must be their scourge and minister.
I will bestow him, and will answer well
The death I gave him. So again, good night.
I must be cruel, only to be kind;
Thus bad begins, and worse remains behind.
Hamlet insists ...
*//* One word more, good lady. *//*
... and is already almost on his way out, when he recalls a last important detail.
What shall I do?
Submission.
Not this, by no means, that I bid you do:
Let the bloat King tempt you again to bed;
Pinch wanton on your cheek; call you his mouse;
And let him, for a pair of reechy kisses,
Or paddling in your neck with his damn'd fingers,
Make you to ravel all this matter out,
That I essentially am not in madness,
But mad in craft. 'Twere good you let him know;
For who that's but a queen, fair, sober, wise,
Would from a paddock, from a bat, a gib
Such dear concernings hide? Who would do so?
No, in despite of sense and secrecy,
Unpeg the basket on the house's top,
Let the birds fly, and like the famous ape,
To try conclusions, in the basket creep
And break your own neck down.
Sarcasm, to drive home the need for secrecy even more forcefully – and Hamlet knows only too well how quickly secrets are unveiled in the heat of passion.
Be thou assur'd, if words be made of breath,
And breath of life, I have no life to breathe
What thou hast said to me.
Gertrude's promise ... which we expressly see her keep only in Sir Laurence Olivier's movie, however, where she turns away from Claudius when he unburdens himself at the end of Ophelia's first "mad" scene ("O Gertrude, Gertrude, When sorrows come, they come not single spies. But in battalions!") Hamlet's and Gertrude's exchange now turns to the Prince's impending voyage to England and the dangers associated with that. For the moment, mother and son are reconciled.
Copyright 2002 – 2009: Ulrike Böhm, all rights reserved.
