A Snarky Victory

SCENE IV. The Queen's closet.

Enter QUEEN GERTRUDE and POLONIUS
LORD POLONIUS
He will come straight. Look you lay home to him:
Tell him his pranks have been too broad to bear with,
And that your grace hath screen'd and stood between
Much heat and him. I'll sconce me even here.
Pray you, be round with him.

Polonius says that Hamlet is on his way to the queen, and that once there, she must confront him about his madness. He says that the Queen should explain to Hamlet that she’s had to defend his madness for too long, which isn’t fair to her. Really though, he doesn’t care so much about her being forced to defend her son as he does about learning the real reason for Hamlet’s madness, and if it is truly out of love for Ophelia.

HAMLET
[Within] Mother, mother, mother!

QUEEN GERTRUDE
I'll warrant you,
Fear me not: withdraw, I hear him coming.

Encouraged by Polonius’s words, she tells him not to doubt her. She is overly confident in her abilities to find out what is truly wrong with her son, both because of her own pride and because of Polonius’s words.

POLONIUS hides behind the arras
Enter HAMLET
HAMLET
Now, mother, what's the matter?

Hamlet is snide, as usual. His tone is meant to offend the Queen.

QUEEN GERTRUDE
Hamlet, thou hast thy father much offended.

Refusing to let his tone shake her, she ignores it and holds her head high, declaring that Hamlet has upset King Claudius with his play modifications.

HAMLET
Mother, you have my father much offended.

Hamlet retorts that the Queen has offended his real father, the murdered king, both by marrying his brother Claudius so soon after his death and by referring to Claudius as Hamlet’s father.

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

She is still trying to keep her composure. She believes that if she ignores his remarks for long enough, he will eventually realize they are not producing an effect and resign himself to answering her questions.

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

Hamlet knows he is getting to her, though, and continues with his snarky word-play. He implies that her motives for asking about him are not pure.

QUEEN GERTRUDE
Why, how now, Hamlet!

Hamlet’s last comment hit home. Unable to contain her anger and frustration, she shouts at him for his disrespect and insistence on avoiding the conversation.

HAMLET
What's the matter now?

Hamlet plays completely cool, even smiles a little in mock-concern as he inquires about her sudden outburst.

QUEEN GERTRUDE
Have you forgot me?

She is trying to remind Hamlet of the respect he owes her as his mother.

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.

Hamlet replies that he knows her, but rather than starting by saying she is his mother, he starts by saying that she married her dead husband’s brother, something he cannot seem to forgive her for. He says the first two lines casually, but when he finally admits that she is his mother, his tone becomes slightly angry.

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

The queen is becoming nervous. Hamlet’s behavior is scaring her; she is no longer confident.

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.

Hamlet’s smile is now sinister as he gestures for her to sit down, but once again, his tone becomes angrier and angrier as he declares that he will put a mirror in front of her so that she may look into her own eyes and see her own wretchedness.

QUEEN GERTRUDE
What wilt thou do? thou wilt not murder me?
Help, help, ho!

The queen has lost all composure and cries out for help.

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

HAMLET
[Drawing] How now! a rat? Dead, for a ducat, dead!
Makes a pass through the arras
Hamlet, already provoked, becomes enraged at the idea that someone is eavesdropping on him. He does not think twice about killing whoever is listening to their conversation.

LORD POLONIUS
[Behind] O, I am slain!
Falls and dies
QUEEN GERTRUDE
O me, what hast thou done?

The queen is in shock and disbelief. She holds a hand to her chest, eyes wide and unable to regulate her breathing.

HAMLET
Nay, I know not:
Is it the king?

Hamlet once again acts cool and collected, as if he had not just murdered a man. His indifference to the murder he’s just committed is terrifying. He is purposefully using the indifferent tone to frighten his mother.

QUEEN GERTRUDE
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.

He wheels on her, his rage returning once again. He proclaims that the sin he has just committed pales in comparison to what she has done. He is convinced that she took part in his father’s murder.

QUEEN GERTRUDE
As kill a king!

She is thoroughly shocked and on the verge of panicking. She is startled by Hamlet’s accusations and now afraid for her own life.

HAMLET
Ay, lady, 'twas my word.

Hamlet is enjoying switching from anger to indifference.

Lifts up the array and discovers 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.

Hamlet feels no remorse.

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 brass'd it so
That it is proof and bulwark against sense.

Though the Queen called Hamlet to extract a confession about his madness, he has turned the tables and wants to “wring her heart” of all its secrets.

QUEEN GERTRUDE
What have I done, that thou darest wag thy tongue
In noise so rude against me?

She is pretending not to be afraid and chastizes Hamlet for speaking so to her.

HAMLET
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.

He is fed up with her act of innocence. He believes she has betrayed his real father and intends to fill her with too much guilt to bear.

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

She is trying to outwit him, asking why, if her act were so detectable, could she herself not know it.

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;
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.

Hamlet lovingly praises everything about his real father, the Queen’s late 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?
You cannot call it love; for at your age
The hey-day 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 ecstasy was ne'er so thrall'd
But it reserved 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.
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.

Hamlet wants to fill her with shame. He taunts her for marrying a man that can never compare to his father. He implies that their love is all a sham. Throughout the speech, he sees that he is affecting her deeply, and he is egged on by this.

QUEEN GERTRUDE
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.

The Queen loses the last of her composure. She admits to the evil of what she has done by marrying Claudius.

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,--

Hamlet is not satisfied, choosing instead to shame her even further. He takes no pity on her.

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

The Queen has fallen to her knees and is covering her ears with her hands, trying to block out Hamlet’s words.

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 GERTRUDE
No more!

She cannot take any more of his harsh words. She is too guilty and ashamed at being forced to examine her own soul, and knowing that her son knows and has lost all respect for her because of it.

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?

Hamlet breaks off midsentence from verbally lashing his mother to speaking to the Ghost.

QUEEN GERTRUDE
Alas, he's mad!

The Queen finally gets a break from the bombardment. She sees nothing. All she knows is that Hamlet suddenly became fascinated with and began talking to something that is not there.

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

Hamlet begs that the Ghost has not come to critisize of punish him for not acting against King Claudius sooner. For the first time since the scene began, Hamlet is not in control of the situation, and this is evident in his facial expression.

Ghost
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.

The Ghost has appeared to remind Hamlet of his passion for revenge. He has also come to change Hamlet’s behavior towards his mother.

HAMLET
How is it with you, lady?

QUEEN GERTRUDE
Alas, how is't with you,
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 hair, like life in excrements,
Starts up, and stands on end. O gentle son,
Upon the heat and flame of thy distemper
Sprinkle cool patience. Whereon do you look?

She laments the change in Hamlet. He is hardly paying attention to her, though, and she eventually inquires as to what he is so distracted by.

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.

Hamlet vows again to fulfill the deed that has been asked of him. He bows his head as he says this, showing the Ghost his utmost respect.

QUEEN GERTRUDE
To whom do you speak this?

His mother is confused. She received no respect, but Hamlet is suddenly talking to something she cannot see and showing respect.

HAMLET
Do you see nothing there?

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

The Queen does not believe that there is anything there.

HAMLET
Nor did you nothing hear?

QUEEN GERTRUDE
No, nothing but ourselves.

HAMLET
Why, look you there! look, how it steals away!
My father, in his habit as he lived!
Look, where he goes, even now, out at the portal!

Hamlet continues to praise the Ghost’s every move, hardly paying attention to his mother.

Exit Ghost
QUEEN GERTRUDE
This the very coinage of your brain:
This bodiless creation ecstasy
Is very cunning in.

She begins to accept that he truly is mad, and that his brain is conjuring up images of his late father.

HAMLET
Ecstasy!
My pulse, as yours, doth temperately keep time,
And makes as healthful music: it is not madness
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 mattering unction to your soul,
That not your trespass, but my madness speaks:
It will but skin and film the ulcerous place,
Whilst 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.

Hamlet is offended that she believed he was seeing things. He then expresses his want for his mother to come clean with all that she has done.

QUEEN GERTRUDE
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 devil, 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 [ ] the devil, or throw him out
With wondrous potency.

He advices his mother to stay away from the king and refuse to engage in any more sinful actions with him.

Once more, good night:
And when you are desirous to be bless'd,
I'll blessing beg of you. For this same lord,
Pointing to POLONIUS
I do repent: but heaven hath pleased 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.
One word more, good lady.

Hamlet has lost focus on the situation and is babbling out loud. He does not even look at his mother, but instead stares off as if he is deep in thought.

QUEEN GERTRUDE
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;
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.

He echoes his want that his mother stay away from the king. Then he defends his madness, saying that everyone has jumped to conclusions. But no one stirred when the Queen married Claudius so close after her husband’s death.

QUEEN GERTRUDE
Be thou assured, if words be made of breath,
And breath of life, I have no life to breathe
What thou hast said to me.

The Queen cannot recover from all that has transpired. She is extremely shaken.

The Need for Attention

In the play Antigone, Sophocles uses overly dramatic characters to take the play from a small rebellion against authority to a tragic ending where only one miserable character remains alive. The entirety of the play could be summed up in the last four lines, when the Choragos says, “There is no happiness where there is no wisdom; / No wisdom but in submission to the gods. / Big words are always punished, / And proud men in old age learn to be wise” (139-42). Many or all of the deaths, however, could have been avoided if only certain characters had not been so blinded by their pride. However, the character that struck me as the most self-centered, the one who could have avoided a drastic amount of damage had she only been less intent to flaunt her good deeds, was Antigone.

Antigone starts the show as a martyr. Though her motives, her want to free her dead brother’s soul, are noble, her manner of doing so makes her seem selfish and in need of attention. In the opening scene, she asks her little sister Ismene to help her bury their dead brother, Polyneices. When her sister expresses her fear of breaking Creon’s law to do so, Antigone responds by viciously attacking her sister, saying, “You may do ask you like, / Since apparently the laws of the gods mean nothing to you” (60-1). According to Christianity, the greatest deed is one that goes unnoticed and is not bragged about by the doer. Right from the start, Antigone flaunts her will to bury her brother and risk execution, even telling her sister, “O tell it! Tell everyone! / Think how they’ll hate you when it all comes out” (69-70). Rather than acting out of pure love, she wants the world to know how courageous she has been for the sake of her brother. After she has been caught and sentenced to death, she still brags about what she has done for her brother, refusing to let Ismene accept any of the guilt. She seems less interested in the idea of commemorating her brother and more in love with the idea of death and pity. When confronting Creon and her sister, she repeatedly says phrases such as, “I belong to Death” (147), as if she needs to remind everyone how brave she has been to bury her brother and face her own premature death. When being led to her cave to die in isolation, she tells those around her, “Look upon me, friends, and pity me / Turning back at the night’s edge to say / Good-by to the sun that shines for me no longer; / Now sleepy Death / Summons me down to Acheron, that cold shore: / There is no bridesong there, nor any music” (5-10). While we can respect Antigone for her desire to honor her brother’s memory and not watch his corpse be devoured by scavenging animals, her need for sympathy, honor, and pretty much any form of attention turns her into a very unlikable character. Had she been more humble, she might have given the readers more of the feeling that she was burying her brother for his sake and not her own.