Act 3; Scene 4

Another room in the Castle.

Enter Queen and Polonius.

POLONIUS.
He will come straight. Look you lay home to him,
Tell him his pranks have been too broad to bear with, Reign him in
And that your Grace hath screen’d and stood between
Much heat and him. I’ll silence me e’en here.
Pray you be round with him. He can’t help but give her advice, useless advice.

HAMLET.
[Within.] Mother, mother, mother.

QUEEN.
I’ll warrant you, Fear me not.
Withdraw, I hear him coming.

[Polonius goes behind the arras.]

Enter Hamlet. What is the one scene that you wish was in the Orestia: Electra confronting her mother about killing Agamemnon. Here it is.

HAMLET.
Now, mother, what’s the matter?

QUEEN.
Hamlet, thou hast thy father much offended.

HAMLET.
Mother, you have my father much offended.Clytemnestra offended Agamemnon with an axe.

QUEEN.
Come, come, you answer with an idle tongue.

HAMLET.
Go, go, you question with a wicked tongue.

QUEEN.
Why, how now, Hamlet?

HAMLET.
What’s the matter now?

QUEEN.
Have you forgot me?

HAMLET.
No, by the rood, not so.
You are the Queen, your husband’s brother’s wife,
And, would it were not so. You are my mother. He wishes she were different. She has failed him. Failed to live up to his expectations of how she should act and wishes she were the woman he thought she was. Appearance vs. Reality.

His words are those of a son who despises his mother because she has betrayed his father, as Clytemnestra betrayed Agamemnon with Aegisthus. An Electra complex is where a girl “falls in love” with her own father and wishes to replace her mother in her father’s bed but because Shakespeare didn’t know what an Electra complex was or what an Oedipal complex was, he couldn’t have made it fit for the character of Hamlet. Hamlet does not wish to kill his mother or replace her in his father’s affections much less his bed. He is not angry or jealous of Claudius because Gertrude chose him over Hamlet or his father to share her bed. Hamlet wishes to kill Claudius not because he is motivated by an unrequited Electra complex or an unrequited Oedipal complex; he wishes to kill Claudius simply because Claudius killed his father. In the Orestia, Apollo, the god of truth, tells Orestes that he must kill Clytemnestra and avenge his father which means that both Orestes and Electra are justified in their desire to punish Clytemnestra for murdering Agamemnon. Electra does not have an Electra complex either because she neither consciously nor unconsciously wants to sleep with Agamemnon at least not unless she is into necrophilia. She’s aware that he is dead. Perhaps she is trying to prove her love for her father and in that sense, she cannot imagine forgiving Clytemnestra for the murder of Agamemnon. She wants justice as Hamlet wants justice but like Hamlet, Electra does not act against her father’s murderer right away…because she is female or because she is a mere child as Hamlet at the beginning of the play is a mere child, well a teenager but definitely not a man? Honestly I doubt if an Electra complex or an Oedipal complex really exists mainly because of the way Freud worded the definition of them…I don’t think that there is something there but that it is not motivated by sex (three year olds have no concept of the sexual act) in other words they don’t want to replace the mother or father in the opposite parent’s bed but rather in their affections. Either Freud misspoke or we misunderstood what he was trying to convey. Then there is the question of the parent’s role in both the Oedipal and Electra complex. Both parents know about sex in the sense that they are attracted to the opposite sex but I doubt the feelings they have for their children is sexual: A woman sees her son as a male she can love  unconditionally without the added element and pressure of sex as does the father with his daughter. Both can love the child with the knowledge that the child will love them back unconditionally and never betray them, at least for a while. Additionally a small child would die without the parent and perhaps it’s self preservation that motivates the child rather than sex. It’s the protective instinct that motivates the parent, their desire to protect the child. It’s not sexual. The parent perhaps sees their partner in the child and thus the child becomes someone that they need to protect unlike the grownup parent they represent.

QUEEN.
Nay, then I’ll set those to you that can speak.

HAMLET.
Come, come, and sit you down, you shall not budge.
You go not till I set you up a glass
Where you may see the inmost part of you.

QUEEN.
What wilt thou do? Thou wilt not murder me? As Orestes murdered Clytemnestra? Isn’t that the last thing a mother would think her son would do?
Help, help, ho!

POLONIUS.
[Behind.] What, ho! help, help, help!

HAMLET.
How now? A rat? [Draws.]
Dead for a ducat, dead! What do you catch with a mouse trap? But he has not caught the rat he wanted to catch.

[Makes a pass through the arras.] Ophelia is based on Cassandra. Cassandra’s father was run through with a sword by the son of a murdered father, Prince Neoptolemus, Achilles’ son.

POLONIUS.
[Behind.] O, I am slain!

[Falls and dies.]

QUEEN.
O me, what hast thou done?

HAMLET.
Nay, I know not. Is it the King?

[Draws forth Polonius.]

QUEEN.
O what a rash and bloody deed is this!

HAMLET.
A bloody deed. Almost as bad, good mother,
As kill a king and marry with his brother.

QUEEN.
As kill a king?

HAMLET.
Ay, lady, ’twas my word.—
[To Polonius.] Thou wretched, rash, intruding fool, farewell!
I took thee for thy better. Take thy fortune,
Thou find’st to be too busy is some danger.—
Leave wringing of your hands. Peace, sit you down,
And let me wring your heart, for so I shall,
If it be made of penetrable stuff;
If damned custom have not braz’d it so,
That it is proof and bulwark against sense.

QUEEN.
What have I done, that thou dar’st wag thy tongue
In noise so rude against me? What have I done to warrant they way you are talking to me?

HAMLET.
Such an act
That blurs the grace and blush of modesty, Gertrude is immoral and weak like Eve was weak in the Garden of Eden. Like Clytemnestra was weak while Agamemnon was off fighting the Trojan War?
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 Clytemnestra did with Agamemnon? Gertrude violated her marriage vow too.
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.

QUEEN.
Ay me, what act,
That roars so loud, and thunders in the index?

HAMLET.
Look here upon this 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, My father was like a god. Hamlet idolizes his father but his father was just a man like any other man He had his faults but Hamlet refuses to see them, He’s an idealist who because of his father’s death is having his ideals, everything that he once believed to be true, ripped away. Like Electra refuses to see Agamemnon’s faults. Idealism vs reality
A station like the herald Mercury Hamlet compares his father to Greek gods. Why not a man like say Julius Caesar or Alex the Great?
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. Typical step-kid behavior; hating on the stepfather because they aren’t their real dad.
Here is your husband, like a mildew’d ear How could you lower yourself to embrace Claudius who is a murderer and evil? And nowhere near the man your first husband was. Aegisthus wasn’t considered an equal to Agamemnon either.
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?
You cannot call it love; for at your age Is he saying that because of her age, she should not feel desire? Typical of a teenager who cannot believe his parents enjoy sex. Or is it that she should be more temperate because she does not suffer from the immediacy of youth whose passions rage because of hormones
The hey-day in the blood is tame, it’s humble,
And waits upon the judgement: and what judgement Hypocritical because he tells her she should be ruled by reason not emotions and he just killed someone by blindly striking out without knowing who it was or even why they may have deserved to die and who in fact did not deserve to die (P committed no sin other than stupidity unlike R. and G, who will soon commit treason against the rightful heir of the throne).
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 Ironic because he fears the ghost is devilish and trying to lure him into doing evil. Accusing her of his own faults.
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. 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. YYou are guilty of the sin of lust when you should be virtuous.

QUEEN.
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.

HAMLET.
Nay, but to live
In the rank sweat of an enseamed bed,
Stew’d in corruption, honeying and making love
Over the nasty sty.

QUEEN.
O speak to me no more;
These words like daggers enter in mine ears;
No more, sweet Hamlet.

HAMLET.
A murderer 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!

QUEEN.
No more.

HAMLET.
A king of shreds and patches!—

Enter Ghost.

Save me and hover o’er me with your wings,
You heavenly guards! What would your gracious figure?

QUEEN.
Alas, he’s mad. Because she doesn’t see the ghost, is he really there? Maybe the ghost is a figment of Hamlet’s imagination.

HAMLET.
Do you not come your tardy son to chide,
That, laps’d in time and passion, lets go by
The important acting of your dread command?
O say!

GHOST.
Do not forget. This visitation
Is but to whet thy almost blunted purpose. Did the ghost come to spur Hamlet into action against Claudius or to gloat that he has tricked Hamlet into committing a mortal sin?
But look, amazement on thy mother sits.
O step between her and her fighting soul. Do what I told you and quit wasting time.  Avenge me.
Conceit in weakest bodies strongest works. Gertrude is like all women weak but only men think that
Speak to her, Hamlet.

HAMLET.
How is it with you, lady?

QUEEN.
Alas, how is’t with you, She does not see the ghost; like no one could see Mephistopheles except Faustus. Or perhaps the ghost is a hallucination and that is why only Hamlet can see it.
That you do bend your eye on vacancy,
And with the incorporal air do hold discourse?
Forth at your eyes your spirits wildly peep,
And, as the sleeping soldiers in the 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?

HAMLET.
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.

QUEEN.
To whom do you speak this?

HAMLET.
Do you see nothing there?

QUEEN.
Nothing at all; yet all that is I see.

HAMLET.
Nor did you nothing hear?

QUEEN.
No, nothing but ourselves.

HAMLET.
Why, look you there! look how it steals away! Like it did earlier when the cock crowed.
My father, in his habit as he liv’d!
Look where he goes even now out at the portal. The ghost never is seen again. Is this because Hamlet by killing Polonius has sentenced his soul to eternal damnation and thus the ghost’s true agenda has been accomplished? Or is it because Hamlet disobeyed him and lit into Gertrude?

[Exit Ghost.]

QUEEN.
This is the very coinage of your brain.
This bodiless creation ecstasy
Is very cunning in. This is the cause of his madness and he is mad in her opinion. So she decides to humor him, placate him by agreeing with anything he wants, in the hopes that one day he will no longer be mentally ill.

HAMLET.
Ecstasy! He thinks it is easier for her to accept that he is mad then to believe that she has done something wrong.

My pulse as yours doth temperately keep time,
And makes as healthful music. It is not madness Crazy people never think they’re crazy. They think everyone else is crazy.

That I have utter’d. Bring me to the test,
And I the matter will re-word; which madness
Would gambol from. Mother, for love of grace,
Lay not that flattering unction to your soul
That not your trespass, but my madness speaks. Don’t try to blame this on my madness; your guilt is your own.
It will but skin and film the ulcerous place,
Whilst rank corruption, mining all within, Repent of your incestuous deeds before they destroy you but I will not repent my murder of an unarmed man even though it will eventually destroy me and everyone I care about.
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.

QUEEN.
O Hamlet, thou hast cleft my heart in twain.

HAMLET.
O throw away the worser part of it,
And live the purer with the other half.
Good night. But go not to mine 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 tonight, Refrain tonight, The first night you abstain from engaging in incest will be the hardest; it will get easier after that.
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 curb the devil, or throw him out
With wondrous potency. Once more, good night,
And when you are desirous to be bles’d,
I’ll blessing beg of you. For this same lord
[Pointing to Polonius.]
I do repent; but heaven hath pleas’d it so, Doesn’t really mean it. Like Claudius his words are hollow and empty. God didn’t make him kill Polonius; he chose to do it. He acted recklessly and in anger.
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: Is that was he was doing with Ophelia too?
Thus bad begins, and worse remains behind. Is that a prediction like one of Cassandra’s predictions?
One word more, good lady.

QUEEN.
What shall I do?

HAMLET.
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, Again the Mousetrap
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, Don’t tell Claudius but I’m not really mad. I’m putting on. But then again, crazy people don’t think they are mad; they think everyone else is mad.
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.

QUEEN.
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. I won’t tell him.

HAMLET.
I must to England, you know that?

QUEEN.
Alack,
I had forgot. ’Tis so concluded on.

HAMLET.
There’s letters seal’d: and my two schoolfellows, I’ll deal with Rosencrantz and Gildenstern harshly. Why? He could just as easily have them thrown into prison but he chooses to have them beheaded. Treason must be punished by death and since he is the true heir of his father’s throne, they are acting treasonously against him.
Whom I will trust as I will adders fang’d,—
They bear the mandate, they must sweep my way
And marshal me to knavery. Let it work;
For ’tis the sport to have the enginer
Hoist with his own petard, and ’t shall go hard
But I will delve one yard below their mines
And blow them at the moon. O, ’tis most sweet,
When in one line two crafts directly meet.
This man shall set me packing.
I’ll lug the guts into the neighbour room.
Mother, good night. Indeed, this counsellor
Is now most still, most secret, and most grave,
Who was in life a foolish prating knave.
Come, sir, to draw toward an end with you.
Good night, mother.

Part of me wonders if Hamlets’ “madness” was influenced by Cassandra even more so than Ophelia. Is it possible that Shakespeare stole the only interesting thing about Cassandra and gave it to Hamlet? Everyone thought Cassandra was mad but she was spot on when it came to her predictions. By seeing the ghost is Hamlet seeing a vision, a revelation about the past instead of a premonition of the future. If this is true then wouldn’t the ghost be Apollo whose interaction with Cassandra led to her being a seer? This also fits in nicely with a pagan religion vs. Christianity and follows through with the old ways (in this particular case the Greek pantheon) vs. the new ways (Christianity).

Everyone thinks Hamlet is mad because he thinks Claudius killed his father but he’s not in my opinion. I’m sure there are those who think that he is mad and the whole play is about a young man descending into mental illness. It’s an interesting take but I don’t buy it. I think Hamlet truly sees the Ghost but it is irrelevant whether he did or not, Claudius did kill his father and Hamlet is justified in wanting to avenge his father.