Act 4; Scene 7

Another room in the Castle.

Enter King and Laertes.

KING.
Now must your conscience my acquittance seal,
And you must put me in your heart for friend,
Sith you have heard, and with a knowing ear,
That he which hath your noble father slain
Pursu’d my life. Hamlet was trying to kill me, not Polonius. Why doesn’t Laertes wonder why Hamlet wants to kill Claudius? Is he so overwhelmed with his grief?

LAERTES.
It well appears. But tell me
Why you proceeded not against these feats,
So crimeful and so capital in nature,
As by your safety, wisdom, all things else,
You mainly were stirr’d up.

KING.
O, for two special reasons,
Which may to you, perhaps, seem much unsinew’d,
But yet to me they are strong. The Queen his mother
Lives almost by his looks; and for myself,—
My virtue or my plague, be it either which,—
She’s so conjunctive to my life and soul, Again a lie about his affection for Gertrude. He doesn’t stop her from drinking the poisoned wine, proving that he only truly loves himself. I doubt Clytemnestra felt that much affection for Aegisthus either. He was just a means to an end, sort of like when a woman sleeps with their boyfriend’s best friend to get back at him.
That, as the star moves not but in his sphere,
I could not but by her. The other motive,
Why to a public count I might not go,
Is the great love the general gender bear him,
Who, dipping all his faults in their affection,
Would like the spring that turneth wood to stone,
Convert his gyves to graces; so that my arrows, Hamlet is so loved by the common people that if it came to it they would choose Hamlet over Claudius. Why because Hamlet is so special? Probably in part because of their affection for his father.
Too slightly timber’d for so loud a wind,
Would have reverted to my bow again,
And not where I had aim’d them. He fears that if he goes against Hamlet, it will blow back on him, and it does. Foreshadowing.

LAERTES.
And so have I a noble father lost,
A sister driven into desperate terms, Blinded by his lust for revenge, Laertes lets Ophelia run wild. He says he cares for her, but if he did, wouldn’t he be with her, trying to calm her down, pull her back from the edge? It’s a theme, all the men in this play only care for women’s beauty and are overly concerned about their sexuality in Ophelia’s case, or for getting them into bed, as in Gertrude’s case; then they cease to care about them. They are using the women in their lives for their own selfish reasons. Sort of like Agamemnon did with every woman in his life, too, and Apollo did with Cassandra.
Whose worth, if praises may go back again,
Stood challenger on mount of all the age
For her perfections. But my revenge will come.

KING.
Break not your sleeps for that. You must not think
That we are made of stuff so flat and dull
That we can let our beard be shook with danger,
And think it pastime. You shortly shall hear more.
I lov’d your father, and we love ourself, Doubtful Claudius loves no one as much as he loves himself.
And that, I hope, will teach you to imagine—

Enter a Messenger.

How now? What news?

MESSENGER.
Letters, my lord, from Hamlet.
This to your Majesty; this to the Queen.

KING.
From Hamlet! Who brought them?

MESSENGER.
Sailors, my lord, they say; I saw them not.
They were given me by Claudio. He receiv’d them
Of him that brought them.

KING.
Laertes, you shall hear them.
Leave us.

[Exit Messenger.]

[Reads.] ‘High and mighty, you shall know I am set naked on your kingdom. Tomorrow shall I beg leave to see your kingly eyes. When I shall, first asking your pardon thereunto, recount the occasions of my sudden and more strange return.
     HAMLET.’                                                                                                                                                                                            

What should this mean? Are all the rest come back?
Or is it some abuse, and no such thing?

LAERTES.
Know you the hand?

KING.
’Tis Hamlet’s character. ‘Naked!’ Unarmed maybe?
And in a postscript here he says ‘alone.’
Can you advise me?

LAERTES.
I am lost in it, my lord. But let him come,
It warms the very sickness in my heart
That I shall live and tell him to his teeth,
‘Thus diest thou.’

KING.
If it be so, Laertes,—
As how should it be so? How otherwise?—
Will you be rul’d by me?

LAERTES.
Ay, my lord;
So you will not o’errule me to a peace.

KING.
To thine own peace. If he be now return’d,
As checking at his voyage, and that he means
No more to undertake it, I will work him
To an exploit, now ripe in my device,
Under the which he shall not choose but fall;
And for his death no wind shall breathe,
But even his mother shall uncharge the practice
And call it accident. Conniving with Laertes to kill Hamlet and make it seem like an accident. This guy never stops; he’s in a hole and keeps digging deeper and deeper. Like Faustus.

LAERTES.
My lord, I will be rul’d;
The rather if you could devise it so
That I might be the organ.

KING.
It falls right.
You have been talk’d of since your travel much,
And that in Hamlet’s hearing, for a quality
Wherein they say you shine. Your sum of parts
Did not together pluck such envy from him
As did that one, and that, in my regard,
Of the unworthiest siege.

LAERTES.
What part is that, my lord?

KING.
A very riband in the cap of youth,
Yet needful too, for youth no less becomes
The light and careless livery that it wears
Than settled age his sables and his weeds,
Importing health and graveness. Two months since
Here was a gentleman of Normandy,—
I’ve seen myself, and serv’d against, the French,
And they can well on horseback, but this gallant
Had witchcraft in’t. He grew unto his seat,
And to such wondrous doing brought his horse,
As had he been incorps’d and demi-natur’d
With the brave beast. So far he topp’d my thought
That I in forgery of shapes and tricks,
Come short of what he did.

LAERTES.
A Norman was’t?

KING.
A Norman.

LAERTES.
Upon my life, Lamord.

KING.
The very same.

LAERTES.
I know him well. He is the brooch indeed
And gem of all the nation.

KING.
He made confession of you,
And gave you such a masterly report
For art and exercise in your defence,
And for your rapier most especially,
That he cried out ’twould be a sight indeed
If one could match you. The scrimers of their nation
He swore had neither motion, guard, nor eye,
If you oppos’d them. Sir, this report of his
Did Hamlet so envenom with his envy Probably a lie. Wouldn’t Hamlet be at school in Wittenburg?
That he could nothing do but wish and beg
Your sudden coming o’er to play with him.
Now, out of this,— Was Hamlet really jealous of Laertes, or is Claudius just shining him on to get Laertes to fight a duel with Hamlet? Claudius doesn’t care if Laertes gets hurt. He doesn’t care who gets hurt…not Hamlet, not Gertrude, not Polonius, not Ophelia, not his brother. He is selfish and only cares about himself. Hamlet wanted to test himself against Laertes, but that doesn’t mean that he was jealous of him, and he is a mirror image of Laertes, so wouldn’t their skill with a sword be equal?

LAERTES.
What out of this, my lord?

KING.
Laertes, was your father dear to you? The Ghost also asked Hamlet if he cared for his father. So, in this sense, Claudius is like the Ghost leading Laertes to commit a mortal sin, as the Ghost tried to lead Hamlet into committing a mortal sin. Then Claudius is also like an agent of the devil, trying to lead the innocent into wickedness.
Or are you like the painting of a sorrow,
A face without a heart? Do you really care about Polonius, or are you pretending to care as I do about everyone? The inability of a psychopath to understand how people can actually care about others. Playing on Laertes’ love for his father.

LAERTES.
Why ask you this?

KING.
Not that I think you did not love your father,
But that I know love is begun by time,
And that I see, in passages of proof,
Time qualifies the spark and fire of it. Justification of killing his brother and later Gertrude when he could have stopped it. He loved them both once, but that love faded and died esp. Gertrude when she became inconvenient. As Agamemnon loved Iphigenia, Clytemnestra, Briseis, Cassandra, and Chryseis.
There lives within the very flame of love
A kind of wick or snuff that will abate it;
And nothing is at a like goodness still,
For goodness, growing to a pleurisy,
Dies in his own too much. That we would do,
We should do what we would; for this ‘would’ changes. Do what you want at any given moment, because you might be prevented from doing it in the future and be filled with regrets for not having done it…Sounds like the reason why he killed his brother and seized the throne and Gertrude.
And hath abatements and delays as many
As there are tongues, are hands, are accidents;
And then this ‘should’ is like a spendthrift sigh
That hurts by easing. But to the quick o’ th’ulcer:
Hamlet comes back: what would you undertake
To show yourself your father’s son in deed,
More than in words?

LAERTES.
To cut his throat i’ th’ church. Goes against God. Vengeance is mine, sayeth the Lord. These people are supposed to be enlightened and Christians. Would Jesus slit someone’s throat in church? I think not. He didn’t even hate the men who tortured and killed him. Laertes might represent the blood feud (price), where you have to kill a member of a family if a member of that family killed someone in your family. Old ways of the Dark Ages vs the new enlightened ways of the Renaissance.

KING.
No place, indeed, should murder sanctuarize; Again goes against the teachings of Christ and the 10 commandments.
Revenge should have no bounds. But good Laertes,
Will you do this, keep close within your chamber.
Hamlet return’d shall know you are come home:
We’ll put on those shall praise your excellence,
And set a double varnish on the fame
The Frenchman gave you, bring you in fine together
And wager on your heads. He, being remiss,
Most generous, and free from all contriving, Hamlet is as innocent as a babe in the woods, and we are the wolves who will eat him. Innocence betrayed by evil. Like Ophelia was betrayed by her love for Hamlet, a man who goes on to kill her father.
Will not peruse the foils; so that with ease,
Or with a little shuffling, you may choose
A sword unbated, and in a pass of practice,
Requite him for your father.

LAERTES.
I will do’t.
And for that purpose I’ll anoint my sword.
I bought an unction of a mountebank
So mortal that, but dip a knife in it,
Where it draws blood no cataplasm so rare, Hedging his bets. Why would he purchase poison, btw? What’s he going to do with it? I don’t own any poison. I would only buy some if I wanted to use it on someone. I would just keep some lying around just in case I might want to kill someone one day.
Collected from all simples that have virtue
Under the moon, can save the thing from death
This is but scratch’d withal. I’ll touch my point
With this contagion, that if I gall him slightly,
It may be death. Are they serious? I scratch him, and he falls down dead. That won’t look suspicious.

KING.
Let’s further think of this,
Weigh what convenience both of time and means
May fit us to our shape. If this should fail,
And that our drift look through our bad performance. Appearance vs reality
’Twere better not assay’d. Therefore this project
Should have a back or second, that might hold Plan B
If this did blast in proof. Soft, let me see.
We’ll make a solemn wager on your cunnings,—
I ha’t! When in your motion you are hot and dry,
As make your bouts more violent to that end,
And that he calls for drink, I’ll have prepar’d him
A chalice for the nonce; whereon but sipping, And if that don’t work, I’ll poison his drink. Conniving. Poison is the weapon of choice for women, and Claudius is based on Clytemnestra.
If he by chance escape your venom’d stuck,
Our purpose may hold there.

Enter Queen.

How now, sweet Queen?

QUEEN.
One woe doth tread upon another’s heel,
So fast they follow. Your sister’s drown’d, Laertes.

LAERTES.
Drown’d! O, where?

QUEEN.
There is a willow grows aslant a brook,
That shows his hoary leaves in the glassy stream.
There with fantastic garlands did she make
Of crow-flowers, nettles, daisies, and long purples,
That liberal shepherds give a grosser name,
But our cold maids do dead men’s fingers call them.
There on the pendant boughs her coronet weeds
Clamb’ring to hang, an envious sliver broke,
When down her weedy trophies and herself
Fell in the weeping brook. Her clothes spread wide,
And mermaid-like, awhile they bore her up,
Which time she chaunted snatches of old tunes,
As one incapable of her own distress, Ophelia was out of her mind and didn’t try to swim to shore when she fell in the water. So does this mean she wanted to die because most people will try not to drown? They will at least try to get to shore, but she doesn’t even try to save herself. Or is she so out of her mind that she doesn’t realize she is actually in danger of dying?
Or like a creature native and indued
Unto that element. But long it could not be
Till that her garments, heavy with their drink,
Pull’d the poor wretch from her melodious lay
To muddy death. Does Ophelia kill herself on purpose or because she is out of her mind, and it was an accident? Is she really out of her mind, though, or do people just think she’s out of her mind because she’s always singing those silly songs after Polonius’ death? Perhaps she is just in shock after all she has lost one of her parents, the only one she has left and she has just lost the man she loved, and her dreams of the future. Everyone thought Cassandra was mad, too, but she wasn’t; she was just cursed… cursed because she had rejected the love of Apollo. Apollo, the prince of Heaven and the Sun god. She has also lost her father, and like a lot of orphaned children, even adult children, the loss of a parent is like losing an anchor to the world.

LAERTES.
Alas, then she is drown’d?

QUEEN.
Drown’d, drown’d.

LAERTES.
Too much of water hast thou, poor Ophelia,
And therefore I forbid my tears. But yet
It is our trick; nature her custom holds,
Let shame say what it will. When these are gone,
The woman will be out. Adieu, my lord,
I have a speech of fire, that fain would blaze,
But that this folly douts it.

[Exit.]

KING.
Let’s follow, Gertrude;
How much I had to do to calm his rage!
Now fear I this will give it start again;
Therefore let’s follow.

[Exeunt.]