Eugène Delacroix (1838) – Act III, scene 2. The play-scene.
Act III, Scene 2 (The Players, and Hamlet with Claudius, Gertrude, Ophelia, and Polonius).
Finally – the moment we have all been waiting for; the tragedy's dramatic centerpiece, simultaneously existing on two levels: that of the Players and the piece performed by them on the one hand, and that of Hamlet, Claudius, Gertrude, Ophelia, and Polonius on the other hand. And here, Hamlet's comments and his in part even direct interactions with the Players on the stage are the element that provides a link between these two levels, just as Horatio's character (and Fortinbras, if you choose to use him) links Hamlet's story to us, the "real" audience, and to Shakespeare himself.
There are a number of questions associated with this scene – to name but a few: Do you set it inside or outside? How do you position your principals in the audience? And how do you use the dumb show, which after all not only shows the murder but also the Queen's ensuing seduction by the Poisoner?
As far as the general setting is concerned, I prefer outside: yes, I know that according to my own Timeline we're in early spring, but climatic aspects can be taken care of by the way the stage is set up; and I'd want to make full use of the darkness of the night – as well as the battlements (and hence, also a visual reference to the Ghost) looming in the background, not only during the stage performance itself but also in conjunction with the "Do you see yonder cloud" business between Hamlet and Polonius afterwards, and of course for the Prince's "'Tis now the very witching time of night" soliloquy which ultimately brings the third act's long second scene and all its unholy doings to a close. – Positioning of the principal characters ... hmm. Shakespeare is explicit as to Hamlet's sitting down at Ophelia's feet; and I do think the maid would more likely be sitting next to her father, who in turn would be placed at Claudius's side; and next to the latter, Gertrude. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, on the other hand, who have entered with Claudius, Gertrude, Polonius, and Ophelia, would most likely find a place somewhere among the courtiers; and so would Horatio, but at a distance from Hamlet's other two schoolfellows (with whom he neither has much in common nor does he particularly seek their company), while at the same time in a spot where he can well observe Claudius, as he has promised Hamlet he will. – Lastly, the dumb show: Shakespeare's stage directions in that respect are (for once) fairly detailed; so I frankly don't see much point in "dumbing" it down to a point where much doubt can remain as to what is really going on. A comparatively explicit presentation would still allow Gertrude to largely remain in denial (she – wooed by her first husband's murderer? Never ...), but for Claudius the entire presentation thus essentially becomes a test of willpower: Is he going to be able to sit through this play with a fairly good notion why Hamlet has ordered this piece and none other, and yet not give himself away with a single gesture? No ... because the performance is just too powerful (and after all, we have seen the day before/i.e., in the previous act, how powerful exactly these Players' performances can be).
For us, and for our tragedy,
Here stooping to your clemency,
We beg your hearing patiently.
Is this a prologue, or the posy of a ring?
Yet, it starts fairly innocuously – to the point that Hamlet even feels obliged to comment on the brevity of the Prologue. But of course Shakespeare knows that after "Pyrrhus and Hecuba" and the dumb show, we, the audience, would be bored to stitches if he actually subjected us to the kind of lengthy and detailed Prologue that would have to precede the play if you were to use one at all in reality (which he himself didn't always do, either, including in "Hamlet" – unless you "untechnically" characterise the first act's entire first scene as such).
'Tis brief, my lord.
As woman's love.
Aaahhh ... ouch. You just have to picture this: After the previous two days' doings, the girl is absolutely terrified of our Prince. And yet, he has nothing better to do than to mock and deride her at every opportunity (publicly, in the presence of the entire court): by the very place he takes at her feet – with his head in her lap, at that – and with comments like the above and his earlier ones about "lying in her lap," "country matters," and "nothing" being "a fair thought to lie between maids' legs." And worst of all, although you'd have to be blind and deaf not to notice her distress, neither her own father (who is sitting right next to her) nor Hamlet's mother (who is too busy flirting with her new husband) step in to put an end to her humiliation. In-con-cei-va-ble. Ophelia must be thanking heaven on her knees for the beginning of the play.
Full thirty times hath Phoebus' cart gone round
Neptune's salt wash and Tellus' orbed ground,
And thirty dozen moons with borrowed sheen
About the world have times twelve thirties been,
Since love our hearts, and Hymen did our hands,
Unite comutual in most sacred bands.
Short version: They've been married for thirty years. (Reminder, although newbies to the story won't learn this until the fifth act: Hamlet is thirty years old. Coincidence? I think not ...)
Phoebus, as you may recall, is another name for Apollo, who through his grandmother, the Titaness Phoebe, was linked to the sun god Hyperion and thus became a major sun deity himself in one of his incarnations. According to Greek and Roman belief the sun was a shining chariot, which daily described a circle from the east to the west (and hidden, at night, returned to the east), driven by the sun god – depending on time, place and occasion, either Hyperion, Helios (Roman: Sol), or Phoebus Apollo. – As for the rest of the mythological and other imagery:
Neptune (Greek: Poseidon): the ruler of the oceans.
Tellus (Greek: Gaia): earth mother.
"Moons with borrowed sheen" – the moon light is so pale because it is merely a reflection of the sun.
Hymen: the god of marriage.
So many journeys may the sun and moon
Make us again count o'er ere love be done!
That's what I call commitment ... (Makes me want to comment right here and now, as Hamlet will indeed do a little later, "If she should break it now!")
"Love be done" obviously not referring to the anticipation of a sudden falling out after sixty (!) years of marriage, but to the wish of thirty more years of marriage pleasures before the union ends by the death of one spouse.
But woe is me! you are so sick of late,
So far from cheer and from your former state.
That I distrust you.
... although that death may be closer than she professes she wants it to be.
Yet, though I distrust,
Discomfort you, my lord, it nothing must;
For *//* women fear too much, even as they love,
And *//* women's fear and love holds quantity,
In neither aught, or in extremity.
Now what my love is, proof hath made you know;
And as my love is siz'd, my fear is so.
*//* Where love is great, the littlest doubts are fear;
Where little fears grow great, great love grows there. *//*
Fie, fie, fie, Master Shakespeare – and my lord Hamlet, since you were the one who picked the play in this instance. "Women's fear and love holds quantity, in neither aught, or in extremity"? Now, I'll grant you, the lady doth protest about as much (and particularly so in the Second Quarto version) as we are to understand Gertrude has been protesting not so long ago; and all that salt of most unrighteous tears seems to have been for naught, the way things are looking now. So I can see your point in choosing this particular play. But let's leave the gender stereotyping and stick to the specific facts of our case ... no more of that "Frailty, thy name is woman" business, alright?
Faith, I must leave thee, love, and shortly too;
My operant powers their functions leave to do.
No indeed, that doesn't sound good at all. Now, the question nagging in the back of my mind is, if he really is this close to death anyway, why can't the Poisoner wait just a little longer? Well, maybe First Husband still looks healthier to the world than he really is. Not that any of this matters greatly to begin with, in light of the fact that (and how) the murder actually takes place; not to mention that the real point about these words are the protestations immediately following them.
And thou shalt live in this fair world behind,
Honour'd, belov'd, and haply one as kind
For husband shalt thou –
O, confound the rest!
Such love must needs be treason in my breast.
Cut ... cut, cut. Hold it right here. Has anyone heard him saying anything about her remarrying just yet? Why can't "For husband shalt thou ..." not have been meant to continue along the lines of "e'er have me, Though in the realm of Hades I be; An honour'd husband's mem'ry shines Forever on his widow's life" (with abject apologies to one certain Will S. for the inferior quality of the supplementary verse)? And yet, she jumps right in, taking it for granted that he is preemptively commenting on a second union of hers (and maybe even blessing it!).
When second husband let me be accurst!
None wed the second but who killed the first.
Err, yes. What's that saying? Be careful what you wish for ... Or, as our Prince would have it:
Wormwood, wormwood!
The instances that second marriage move
Are base respects of thrift, but none of love.
A second time I kill my husband dead
When second husband kisses me in bed.
Gertrude must be beginning to feel very uncomfortable now ... (and even, "I kill my husband dead"? That's strong stuff indeed.)
I do believe you think what now you speak;
But what we do determine oft we break.
Purpose is but the slave to memory,
Of violent birth, but poor validity;
Which now, like fruit unripe, sticks on the tree,
But fall unshaken when they mellow be.
Most necessary 'tis that we forget
To pay ourselves what to ourselves is debt.
What to ourselves in passion we propose,
The passion ending, doth the purpose lose.
True, more often than not – but I wonder, my lord Hamlet: Would this be a good moment to bring up your passionate vows of revenge after your encounter with your father's Ghost? – No, I didn't really think so ...
For the big question – and the Player King will return to this specifically with regard to love a few lines down, as well as again in a more general sense at the end of his response – is indeed whether willpower and determination alone are always enough to carry us through life's adversities and through the passage of time. Note, incidentally, that he nowhere tells his Queen that he disbelieves her sincerity at this very moment – in contrast to Hamlet, who had called his mother's tears "most unrighteous" even when he was alone, and who had previously accused her openly that her professions of grief over her husband's death were never more than put-on in the first place, merely actions that a man might play and but the trappings and the suits of woe. Granted of course, that a little month indeed isn't exactly a long mourning period ...
The violence of either grief or joy
Their own enactures with themselves destroy.
Where joy most revels, grief doth most lament;
Grief joys, joy grieves, on slender accident.
And since we're in the process of revisiting earlier scenes of this play: remember "Though yet the memory of Hamlet our dear brother's death be green"? For this next passage (particularly its last line) clearly picks up not only on the Player Queen's vows of everlasting fidelity that we have just heard but also on the paring of opposites in Claudius's announcement of his marriage to Gertrude (especially "with a defeated joy" and "with mirth in funeral, and with dirge in marriage"); thus drawing not only the symbolic parallel to that marriage which we have known this scene to be from the start, but now confirming that sentiment even linguistically.
This world is not for aye, nor 'tis not strange
That even our loves should with our fortunes change;
For 'tis a question left us yet to prove,
Whether love lead fortune, or else fortune love.
Again, an almost prosaic sense of realism, and this time applied to love in particular. For can we really always claim that love vanquishes those slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, those whips and scorns of time, however great they may be? – This, of course, and merely as an aside, from the man who also gave us yet another sonnet that has recently (re-)gained popularity due to its prominent use in Emma Thompson's adaptation of "Sense and Sensibility":
Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
O no! it is an ever-fixed mark
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.
Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle's compass come:
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error and upon me proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.
(Sonnet 116)
But let me not digress too far ...
The great man down, you mark his favourite flies,
The poor advanc'd makes friends of enemies;
And hitherto doth love on fortune tend,
For who not needs shall never lack a friend,
And who in want a hollow friend doth try,
Directly seasons him his enemy.
In other words ... and not to crack the wind of the poor phrase, running it thus:
God help the rich, the poor can look after themselves.
And:
Wealth makes worship.
And of course:
A friend in need is a friend indeed.
But, orderly to end where I begun,
Our wills and fates do so contrary run
That our devices still are overthrown;
Our thoughts are ours, their ends none of our own.
So think thou wilt no second husband wed;
But die thy thoughts when thy first lord is dead.
In short, are we masters of our destiny, or is life not self-determined at all? One of the questions Hamlet had also pondered in "To be, or not to be." The Player King's outlook is rather skeptical ... and ultimately, for that very reason, much more forgiving than Hamlet's own.
Nor earth to me give food, nor heaven light,
Sport and repose lock from me day and night,
*//* To desperation turn my trust and hope,
An anchor's cheer in prison be my scope, *//*
Each opposite that blanks the face of joy
Meet what I would have well, and it destroy,
Both here and hence pursue me lasting strife,
If, once a widow, ever I be wife!
But this only makes the Player Queen protest all the more strongly (and in the Second Quarto she even gets two extra lines to do so); which in turn as well of course recalls Claudius's earlier repeated professions of muted joy in marrying Gertrude, which had made us only the more suspicious regarding his true thoughts and intentions (which, indeed, he had very shortly thereafter revealed and thus confirmed our suspicions when scolding Hamlet for still being in mourning over his father's death a single month later, and when calling that mourning a fault to heaven, a fault against the dead, a fault to nature.). Can you really blame our Prince for a little snide remark?
If she should break it now!
'Tis deeply sworn. Sweet, leave me here awhile.
My spirits grow dull, and fain I would beguile
The tedious day with sleep.
Sleep rock thy brain,
And never come mischance between us twain!
Well, you at least have to hand this to the Player Queen: She really does mean her vows – she even repeats them after her King has already fallen asleep. Now, Gertrude, on the other hand ...
Madam, how like you this play?
The lady doth protest too much, methinks.
If only she could get herself to sound more convinced here ...
O, but she'll keep her word.
... that is, not the one expressly contained in her many protestations but, of course, the very contrary implied therein. Hamlet at his most cryptical – he almost reminds me of someone watching a mystery or a thriller together with a friend who himself doesn't know the story yet, but who, probably to his own considerable dismay, can more or less guess at the ending after a while due to all the hints which the first guy continuously keeps dropping. No wonder, then, that precisely this is also Claudius's response:
Have you heard the argument? Is there no offence in't?
No, no! They do but jest, poison in jest; no offence i' th'
world.
For Claudius, of course, doesn't buy into any of this at all. He clearly suspects that Hamlet not only knows the play (in classic tragedies, the "argument" was a brief narrative paragraph preceding either the entire play – if it was fairly short – or an individual scene, summing up the contents), but also that the Prince has selected this very piece for a very specific reason. Indeed, the King has already had ample warning to that effect in the dumb show, after all. And except for the very end of our tragedy, this little snippet of dialogue is as close as Hamlet and Claudius will ever come to directly discussing Claudius's deed: as a matter of fact, I believe (although I know this is far from a universally-shared view) that at this point Claudius's suspicions that Hamlet has found him out have already grown into something very near certainty – the enactment of the murder itself is merely the last step that pushes the King over the edge.
What do you call the play?
'The Mousetrap.'
Well, actually it is called "The Murther of Gonzago," at least according to the exchange between Hamlet and the First Player on the previous day. But our Prince just can't leave it alone – he has to go so far as to tell Claudius to his face that the play's sole purpose is to make him trip over his own tongue (or feet).
'Marry, how? Tropically. This play is the
image of a murther 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 touches us not. Let the gall'd jade winch; our withers
are unwrung.
This is one Lucianus, nephew to the King.
And speaking of "tripping," this apparent little slip takes guts indeed. Because what title has he just given Gonzago, the victim-to-be? "Duke." But what is he calling Lucianus's uncle? "The King." And he is not referring to the Player King. It's one thing to do this when only that tedious old fool Polonius is around, who may very well not even catch the reference to the Hyrcanian Beast Hamlet has managed to wiggle into "Pyrrhus and Hecuba" the day before. It's another thing entirely to do this to the very murderer's face ...
You are as good as a chorus, my lord.
And this is yet another one of those instants that just make me want to jump onto the stage (or into the screen, or whatever), pull my girl Ophelia to the side and tell her to just shut up. Social conventions and your perceived need to make conversation be damned, darling ... you're no match for this guy's sharp tongue, haven't you learned that yet? How many more times do you want to get burned? Especially at this pivotal moment – can't you see that that comment was totally unwarranted, and is only going to do you harm once again?
I could interpret between you and your love, if I could see
the puppets dallying.
You are keen, my lord, you are keen.
And you are stuck, my girl ... again. Oh well – what's the use in me saying anything? You can't even hear me ...
It would cost you a groaning to take off my edge.
Still better, and worse.
So you must take your husbands. –
From the playwright's point of view, there seems to be a dual purpose to this little exchange between Ophelia and Hamlet, however: not only is it one more occasion for him to pile on verbal abuse; just as crucially, it also happens while Lucianus is already on the stage – and, I imagine, doing precisely what Hamlet had cautioned the Players earlier not to do: circling the Player King with a lot of elaborate gestures, without really accomplishing much in the way of advancing the scene. Hence Hamlet's subsequent outburst, which now creates a direct bridge between the goings-on on the stage – i.e., in the realm of the Players – and those in the audience – i.e., in the realm of Hamlet, Claudius, Gertrude, Ophelia, and Polonius.
Also, on a related note, since we never expressly learn which is the "speech of some dozen or sixteen lines" that Hamlet himself has inserted into the play, it could conceivably have been any part of the above exchange between Player King and Player Queen – but for one thing, that sounds very much of one piece to me; and in addition, looking at the Player King's views on willpower, love, fidelity, and fortune, which are not necessarily in perfect harmony with Hamlet's own and much more stringent views on the subject, I also doubt that they fit substantively. So in light of all this, and further considering that what we are about to hear very much strikes me as something Hamlet might have written, considering that we are now reaching the play's pivotal moment, and last but not least, also considering the Prince's obvious impatience over Lucianus's pointless dallying, I have to agree with Sir Derek Jacobi's interpretation: The Prince's contribution to the play are the murderer's very own lines.
Begin, murtherer. Pox, leave
thy damnable faces, and begin! Come, the croaking raven doth
bellow for revenge.
Thoughts black, hands apt, drugs fit, and time agreeing;
Confederate season, else no creature seeing;
Thou mixture rank, of midnight weeds collected,
With Hecate's ban thrice blasted, thrice infected,
Thy natural magic and dire property
On wholesome life usurp immediately.
The raven – the bird of death, doom, witchcraft, and the Devil himself ... expressly linked to the idea of revenge. Images of night, pitch-black darkness, sinister doings, and a "rank" mixture made from weeds collected at midnight, as the ingredients of any good witch's potion should be. And then of course Hecate – ancient mythology's three-headed goddess of witchcraft, mother witch herself; and obviously, also with a triple ban in stow – or rather, two triple bans, thus even bringing into play the number six, constitutive of 666 – the apocalyptic "number of the beast" (the Devil). Can you possibly get any more explicit?
Ahem. But now let me see. Where have I ... Oh yes. Of course. In this gentleman's words I suppose ... and even more so, in this little ditty.
(Sorry for diverting you to the side stage reserved for the characters from the Scottish Play there for a moment, but you know what they say about quoting from that other play outside of its actual production. Err, superstitious – me?! Never ...)
In any event, it's kinda fun to catch Shakespeare plagiarising Shakespeare, I think. Well, alright – he also expanded considerably on the subject in the later piece. But at the core it's all already there in "Hamlet"! Which reminds me – lest you accuse me of out-Kempe-ing Will Kempe and making you miss the all-important final sequence:
He 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 murtherer gets the love of Gonzago's wife.
The King rises.
What, frighted with false fire?
How fares my lord?
Give o'er the play.
Give me some light! Away!
Lights, lights, lights!
Thought I'd let you enjoy the last bit without interruption: it's just too much fun to imagine the rising tension, even if you assume that Claudius must have had much more than a premonition of what is coming. And yet – again, except for the principals' comments, there are no stage directions whatsoever; so you are very, very free in how you bring this sequence to its dramatic conclusion. But whatever you do with it ... I have the distinct feeling that Claudius should give no small thanks his venerable Counsellor for stepping in so decidedly, because whatever he himself has been up to at that point, it has had "catastrophe" written over it in huge, capital letters.
Copyright 2002 – 2009: Ulrike Böhm, all rights reserved.
