SCENE IV. The Queen's closet.
Enter QUEEN GERTRUDE and 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.
Lines said hastily, since he is trying to instruct Gertrude quickly before Hamlet arrives
[Within] Mother, mother, mother!
I'll warrant you,
Fear me not: withdraw, I hear him coming.
At this point, Gertrude still has the mistaken notion that she can reason with Hamlet and it gives her a false sense of confidence when she says “Fear me not” to Polonius.
POLONIUS hides behind the arras
Enter HAMLET
Now, mother, what's the matter?
Said very unassumingly
Hamlet, thou hast thy father much offended.
Mother, you have my father much offended.
A tone of irony and sarcasm in this line but also “with an idle tongue by the next line”
Come, come, you answer with an idle tongue.
Still trying to play the stern mother card here, thinking she can scold him in a way
Go, go, you question with a wicked tongue.
Rude tone. Maybe walking away from her and then turning around as he says the line.
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.
Definitely using cheap shots and sarcasm to talk “daggers” to his mother in this line.
Nay, then, I'll set those to you that can speak.
An uneasy tone here, since she is realizing his anger and sensing his tone.
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.
Most likely motioning his mother to sit down and sounding very insistent and talking quickly and intensely, judging by her fear in the next line.
What wilt thou do? thou wilt not murder me?
Help, help, ho!
Obviously an alarmed tone here.
[Behind] What, ho! help, help, help!
[Drawing] How now! a rat? Dead, for a ducat, dead!
Realizing they are being watched and assuming the man is Claudius, Hamlet here thinks he finally has his chance to kill Polonius in a sinful act.
Makes a pass through the arras
Falls and dies
Gasping for breath and shocked
Nay, I know not:
Is it the king?
As Hamlet realizes what he has done, he is shocked at his own brutality
O, what a rash and bloody deed is this!
A bloody deed! almost as bad, good mother,
As kill a king, and marry with his brother.
Rising from his shock, he shoots this comment at his mother as almost an accusation.
She is shocked by not only his comment itself but also the timing of his harshness towards her.
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.
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.
As Hamlet realizes whom he has killed, he turns his anger toward Polonius and starts yelling at his corpse.
What have I done, that thou darest wag thy tongue
In noise so rude against me?
Losing her tone of innocence, Gertrude is actually angry in this line.
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.
These lines are said very quickly as his emotion and anger come out and he slowly moves towards his mother as he yells at her.
Ay me, what act,
That roars so loud, and thunders in the index?
Look here, upon this picture, and on this,
The counterfeit presentment of two brothers.
Using gestures like holding out both hands like a scale to measure the worth of the two
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. Look you now, what follows:
Volume and passion increases as he talks about Claudius.
Here is your husband; like a mildew'd ear,
Blasting his wholesome brother. Have you eyes?
Walking or pacing as though he can’t sit still, turning and yelling the lines.
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,
Even though he is technically addressing her, it’s almost as if he is rambling on as if she is not there, senseless in his anger.
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.
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.
This is the first point where she acknowledges her own mistakes. She therefore loses any sternness or confidence in her voice and manner
Nay, but to live
In the rank sweat of an enseamed bed,
Stew'd in corruption, honeying and making love
Over the nasty sty,--
He is still thinking that he has not dealt the final blow to Gertrude and so uses these lines as the final jabs to her character.
O, speak to me no more;
These words, like daggers, enter in mine ears;
No more, sweet Hamlet!
Crying out in grief and sincerely begging him. The daggers almost signifies that Hamlet has accomplished his goal and she is visibly and audibly torn by his words.
Voice starts quieter and then increases in intensity with each line, building up to the last accusation.
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!
This is her loudest and most passionate/desperate line, yelling it louder than anything else so far.
A king of shreds and patches,--
Tone completely altered as he sees the ghost
Enter Ghost
Save me, and hover o'er me with your wings,
You heavenly guards! What would your gracious figure?
She is utterly shocked by his change of tone and words.
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!
Ghost’s voice is calm and soft, directly contrasting the tone of the rest of the scene.
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.
His tone is also calm now, confusing Gertrude further.
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 speaks to him very very questioningly and the thought seems to creep back into her mind that Hamlet may not be entirely stable mentally.
On him, on him! Look you, how pale he glares!
His form and cause conjoin'd, preaching to stones,
Would make them capable. <Speaks to the ghost now>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.
He finally realizes she cannot see the ghost. His tone is very puzzled at first.
Nothing at all; yet all that is I see.
Increasingly upset that she cannot see the ghost.
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!
At this point, he is desperate for his mother to see the ghost. Not only to allay his own concerns but also to prove that he is not hallucinating to his mother.
Exit Ghost
This the very coinage of your brain:
This bodiless creation ecstasy
Is very cunning in.
Gertrude is almost insistent and hopeful as she says these lines. Even though she thinks Hamlet is hallucinating, part of her still hopes his hurtful comments toward her are due to his insanity.
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.
O Hamlet, thou hast cleft my heart in twain.
In his closing words to his mother, Hamlet turns back to his father’s ghost’s advice about his mother. He finally feels satisfied that he has taken enough jabs at his mother and so passes on the ghost’s advice as well as some of his own. He thinks she will listen since she is so mentally exhausted from their conversation.
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. 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 does know he has sinned by killing Polonius but he is also certain that he will pay for that sin only after he has done what he feels is just.
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.
Hamlet gives his mother these instructions not only to make a final insult to her behavior but also to set up the “climax” of his plot to kill Claudius. He knows with Polonius’s death, the motions of his and Claudius’s plans will be accelerated. Also on another level, though, he probably knows his mother is unlikely to share this conversation with Claudius.
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.
Gertrude still doesn’t know how to face what she has done and it is far too hard for her to relay Hamlet’s harsh words about her character to anyone, let alone her co-conspirator.
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