Nota Bene Roundtable Discussion of Shakespeare’s Hamlet: Act Three with Commentary by Sarah Weinman
Act III SUMMARY
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern report to Claudius on Hamlet’s behaviour. Hamlet is eager for Claudius and Gertrude to watch a play that night to which he has added some crucial lines.
Claudius and Polonius eavesdrop on Hamlet’s conversation with Ophelia. Hamlet suspects Ophelia is with her father and Claudius, against him, and is hostile toward her, claiming he never loved her, and that she should go live in a whore house.
From this conversation Claudius determines that Hamlet is neither lovesick nor mad, but rather dangerous. The mime preceding the play which mimics the Ghost’s description of King Hamlet’s death, but it isn’t until the play called "The Murder of Gonzago" is performed, that Claudius reacts in a way which convinces Hamlet of his guilt. Hamlet agrees to speak with his mother in private…well, not quite. Polonius is eavesdropping again, hiding behind an arras in hopes of learning more of Hamlet’s mind.
Claudius admits a growing fear of Hamlet and decides to send him overseas to England with Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. In soliloquy he admits his guilt, lamenting the fact that he can’t escape divine justice…Hamlet comes upon him, but rationalizes his way out of killing him. Stabbing him in the back whilst he is praying would only send him to heaven, not hell where he belongs.
Gertrude tells Hamlet that he has much offended Claudius. Hamlet responds that she has his father much offended. Gertrude cries out afraid Hamlet will kill her, Polonius echoes this and is stabbed through the arras behind which he is hiding. Hamlet continues to express his disgust at his mother’s behavior. The Ghost reappears, telling Hamlet to be gentle with her. She tells Hamlet her heart is cleft in twain. He asks her to refrain from going to Claudius’s bed, and tells her he’s off to England with Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, two schoolfellows ‘Whom I will trust as I will adders fang’d.’
QUOTES AND COMMENTARY by SARAH WEINMAN
Perhaps it’s ironic that Act III has so much of the action, the set pieces most everyone is familiar with – Hamlet’s "To be or not to be" soliloquy", his scathing "get thee to a nunn’ry" remark to the hapless, madness-inclined Ophelia, the stabbing of Polonius – and yet it’s marked the most by inaction. Mostly that of Hamlet, of course, as he keeps coming on stage to say he’ll kill his uncle and then doesn’t do it. He truly embodies the line he speaks in scene II: "For some must watch while some must sleep/Thus runs the world away." Even when he does finally do something and kill Polonius, the action seems to resemble more a farce than a dramatic note, especially with Polonius’s bleating "O, I am slain" as the knife pierces him through the abbas. But why would he think hiding in the abbas was such a good idea? Surely there are more effective ways to eavesdrop? Although, like Ed, I think Polonius gets something of a bad rap, his behavior right before dying doesn’t really help his cause. His own inaction, choosing to remain in the background, does him in.
Central to inaction is passivity, and that is ever clear in Ophelia’s behavior. Yes, Hamlet is cruel and callous towards her, but I was struck anew how his own descent into madness directly affects her own. Between that and her reaction to Polonius’s death in Act IV, Ophelia doesn’t have much chance to choose how she feels or what direction she is supposed to go in. It’s not even an issue of feminism but of being active, and Ophelia doesn’t get to act. Instead she frets of her own woe, ""T’have seen what I have seen, see what I see!" With her mind open, she doesn’t walk through the door of decision but the veil of madness. That’s not exactly fun.
Passivity also shows through in the play within a play. Hamlet, preferring as ever to angst and avoid confrontation, instead stages this elaborate pseudo-allegory that does what it’s supposed to do: show the "truth" of Claudius’s behavior in securing marriage to his murdered brother’s wife. Hamlet seems to be aware of this what with his comment to a horrified Ophelia that "marry, this’ [miching] mallecho, it means mischief." Here we have Hamlet, rubbing his hands in glee like a naughty child, cackling at the mayhem he has set loose. Too bad the joke will be on him by the act’s end as he is preparing to be packed off to England with the jocular Rosencrantz & Guildenstern.
One final thought, less specific to Act III: as this was the first time I read Hamlet since high school I’d completely forgotten that a good half of the play is not actually written in iambic pentameter, instead written as actual spoken-word dialogue. I did try to turn those phrases into i.p. and had to stop because it got too silly. I’m not sure if HAMLET has more or less plain speech than his other plays but the mixing does seem to underscore how much plot, and yet how much movement, the play has. If everyone stopped to give soliloquys the play would go completely dead; instead Shakespeare definitely parceled out his best poetic stuff only when necessary – which, I think, contributes even more to why "to be or not to be" or "O what a rogue and peasant slave am I" or Ophelia’s mad scene endure as near-canon today.
Amateur Reader
Sarah, since you asked, some statistics:
All from Frank Kermode, Shakespeare’s Language, pp. 47-8. There’s matter in this madness. Hamlet uses prose for specific purposes. Hamlet’s faux mad scenes, with Ros & Guild, with Polonius, with
Osric, with the King, are in prose. Note that alone with his mother, Hamlet’s says some wild things, but all in verse. Ophelia’s madness is also in prose, when she’s not actually singing. The gravediggers speak prose, and Hamlet uses prose with them, except for one rhyming passage (Imperious Caesar, dead and turned to clay ). Hamlet switches back to verse when the funeral procession arrives. Finally, all of the theater discussion (II.ii. and III.ii.), the theories of acting, the attack on the boy’s troupe, all this is in prose. And not just from Hamlet – Polonius, too, in the tragical-comical-historical-pastoral
speech.
Do we hear this in the theater? A lot of the effect must be subconscious.
Nigel Beale
Q Why is Hamlet so harsh with Ophelia, calling her a whore? One thought is that he might be projecting anger felt toward his mother over her hasty carnality onto her. Another is that he may possibly have slept with Ophelia. ‘I loved you once. You had me believe so.’ And that: any woman who sleeps with me must be a slut. If you slept with me, you’ll sleep with anyone. A play on Groucho Marx’s famous quip about not wanting to below to a club that accepted him as a member. Could also be a Madonna-Whore complex at work.
B Give me that man That is not passion’s slave. Another reason why Hamlet loves Horatio.
B Oph: Tis Brief my lord. Ham: As a woman’s love.
B Great powerful line: "When churchyards yawn and hell itself breathes out Contagion to this world: now could I drink hot blood, And do such bitter business as the day Would quake to look on."
B For we will fetters put upon this fear.
B Some pissed: "In the rank sweat of an enseamed bed, Stew’d in corruption, honeying and making love Over the nasty sty, — "
B Whom I will trust as I will adders fang’d
B Bestow this place on us a little while. Euphemism for get the fuck out of here.