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.
Subtext: Polonius is telling Queen Gertrude to tell Hamlet that what he has done has been nothing but trouble for him and his family. He is almost begging Gertrude to correct her son and chastise him.HAMLET
[Within] Mother, mother, mother!
QUEEN GERTRUDE
I'll warrant you,
Fear me not: withdraw, I hear him coming.
Subtext: Gertrude nods to Polonius and pushes him away quickly, but gently.POLONIUS hides behind the arras
Enter HAMLET
HAMLET
Now, mother, what's the matter?
QUEEN GERTRUDE
Hamlet, thou hast thy father much offended.
Subtext: Pause after Hamlet speaks. Then Gertrude speaks slowly but firmly.HAMLET
Mother, you have my father much offended.
Subtext: Hamlet looks his mother in the eye very firmly and answers back quickly. He is angry. QUEEN GERTRUDE
Come, come, you answer with an idle tongue.
Subtext: Gertrude becomes nervous, and tries to defend herself through her words. She becomes agitated.HAMLET
Go, go, you question with a wicked tongue.
Subtext: Hamlet becomes even angrier and begins pacing.QUEEN GERTRUDE
Why, how now, Hamlet!
Subtext: Gertrude fakes her concern and tries to prepare for verbal self-defense. HAMLET
What's the matter now?
QUEEN GERTRUDE
Have you forgot me?
Subtext: She is trying to change the subject.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.
Subtext: Hamlet says this strongly and angrily. He means that he knows clearly who she is and clearly of the crime she has committed.QUEEN GERTRUDE
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.
Subtext: Hamlet approaches his mother very closely and utters these words in a quiet, but strong whisper to his mother. He is challenging his mother.QUEEN GERTRUDE
What wilt thou do? thou wilt not murder me?
Help, help, ho!
Subtext: Gertrude visibly panics. She understands that Hamlet is in much pain and is very serious about his anger. She begins to panic and move away from Hamlet. She thinks Hamlet is going to hurt her. LORD POLONIUS
[Behind] What, ho! help, help, help!
Subtext: Polonius also begins to panic for Gertrude’s, his Queen’s, safety. He moves to look what is happening. HAMLET
[Drawing] How now! a rat? Dead, for a ducat, dead!
Subtext: Hamlet becomes angry. He thinks it is Claudius and becomes enraged. He thrusts his sword into the curtains. Makes a pass through the arras
LORD POLONIUS
[Behind] O, I am slain!
Subtext: He dies after he says his words. Falls and dies
QUEEN GERTRUDE
O me, what hast thou done?
HAMLET
Nay, I know not:
Is it the king?
Subtext: I thought it was the King.QUEEN GERTRUDE
O, what a rash and bloody deed is this!
Subtext: Queen is shocked.HAMLET
A bloody deed! almost as bad, good mother,
As kill a king, and marry with his brother.
Subtext: Hamlet is not visibly disturbed. He is still calm and in this bloodlust he is still angry about his mother and Claudius.QUEEN GERTRUDE
As kill a king!
Subtext: This act is as bad as killing a king!HAMLET
Ay, lady, 'twas my word.
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.
Subtext: Oh! I thought it was Claudius. But oh well, you deserved it anyway. He is showing that he is ruthless and not thinking. QUEEN GERTRUDE
What have I done, that thou darest wag thy tongue
In noise so rude against me?
Subtext: Gertrude is becoming confused and scared. She asks what has gotten into Hamlet’s mind. 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.
Subtext: Hamlet is telling his mother that she has committed a horrible act that should be punished. He is explaining why is becoming so angry and that his mother should not be schocked or confused. QUEEN GERTRUDE
Ay me, what act,
That roars so loud, and thunders in the index?
Subtext: The Queen is “playing dumb”. 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. 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.
Subtext: Hamlet points to a painting that hangs in the room to explain the Queen’s crime as a symbolic act. He compares the two men in the painting to his father and uncle and shows the disgust he feels. 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.
Subtext: Gertrude breaks down and stops trying to hid from the truth. She is feeling the sin that she has committed and starts to feel remorse.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,--
Subtext: Hamlet doesn’t stop. He continues to attack his mother. He compares his mother’s bed to a pig sty-representing sin and filth. Hamlet spits.
QUEEN GERTRUDE
O, speak to me no more;
These words, like daggers, enter in mine ears;
No more, sweet Hamlet!
Subtext: Gertrude is crying and asking Hamlet to stop speaking. 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!
Subtext: Hamlet continues his rant. He attacks his uncle verbally. QUEEN GERTRUDE
No more!
HAMLET
A king of shreds and patches,--
Subtext: Hamlet continues to yell. Enter Ghost
Save me, and hover o'er me with your wings,
You heavenly guards! What would your gracious figure?
Subtext: What can I do for you father?
QUEEN GERTRUDE
Alas, he's mad!
Subtext: Gertrude thinks Hamlet is crazy, because she can not see the ghost.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!
Subtext: Tell me why you came father!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.
Subtext: Don’t forget what you need to do: exact revenge. The Ghost is telling Hamlet to keep talking to 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?
Subtext: The Queen is confused again about how Hamlet is acting. She does not see the Ghost but sees Hamlet talking to the air, in an odd state. She is becoming confused and scared. 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.
Subtext: Hamlet is afraid at how angry the ghost looks at him.QUEEN GERTRUDE
To whom do you speak this?
Subtext: Who are you talking to?HAMLET
Do you see nothing there?
Subtext: You don’ see anything? Hamlet is a little confused. QUEEN GERTRUDE
Nothing at all; yet all that is I see.
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!
Exit Ghost
QUEEN GERTRUDE
This the very coinage of your brain:
This bodiless creation ecstasy
Is very cunning in.
Subtext: Hamlet you are imagining this. 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.
Subtext: Hamlet is telling his mother that he is not crazy or imagining anything. Hamlet is becoming impatient and extremely angry. He begins to pace the room and yell. QUEEN GERTRUDE
O Hamlet, thou hast cleft my heart in twain.
Subtext: Hamlet you broke my heart.
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. 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.
Subtext: Hamlet is telling his mother to take the good part of her heart and try and repent for her sins. He tells his mother to either forget Claudius or try and make amends. Hamlet apologizes about Polonius’s death in an uncaring way, almost using him to prove a lesson. 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.
Subtext: Don’t go to bed with Claudius and let him poison your mind and continue the disgusting sin. Try to escape from his poisoning. Hamlet tells this to his mother in a bitter way.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.
Subtext: Gertrude tells Hamlet that she feels dead after what she has heard from him. Gertrude is sincerely telling Hamlet how she feels and has left her pretense behind.
