Hamlet Act 3 Scene 4: Gertrude and Hamlet's Heart To Heart

Will Larsen joins us to talk Hamlet, and if it lives up to the hype.
Transcript: https://leevineyard.wordpress.com/2021/01/19/transcript-hamlet-act-3-scene-4/

Transcript

Sound of fabric tearing, a sword, and then a thud.

(Lee as) QUEEN GERTRUDE

O me, what hast thou done?

(Will as) HAMLET

Nay, I know not:

Is it the king?

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.

QUEEN GERTRUDE

As kill 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.

QUEEN GERTRUDE

What have I done, that thou darest wag thy tongue

In noise so rude against me?

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.

QUEEN GERTRUDE

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;

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.

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.

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 GERTRUDE

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 GERTRUDE

No more!

HAMLET

A king of shreds and patches,–

Save me, and hover o’er me with your wings,

You heavenly guards! What would your gracious figure?

QUEEN GERTRUDE

Alas, he’s mad!

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!

(Will as) 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.

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?

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 GERTRUDE

To whom do you speak this?

HAMLET

Do you see nothing there?

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!

QUEEN GERTRUDE

This the very coinage of your brain:

This bodiless creation ecstasy

Is very cunning in.

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.

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. Once more, good night:

And when you are desirous to be bless’d,

I’ll blessing beg of you. For this same lord,

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.

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.

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.

HAMLET

I must to England; you know that?

QUEEN GERTRUDE

Alack,

I had forgot: ’tis so concluded on.

HAMLET

There’s letters seal’d: and my two schoolfellows,

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 engineer

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.

End scene music

Lee: Hello listeners, welcome to Scenic Review. That was act 3 scene 4 of Hamlet (maybe you’ve heard of it). My name is Lee Vineyard. You just heard me as Gertrude. Joining us today is Will Larsen as Hamlet (both Prince and ghost). Will is a lifelong student of Shakespeare and the Performing Arts. Hi Will, how are you doing?

Will: I am very glad to be here, Lee. 

Lee: When I asked you to come on the show and I asked you to pick something that you’d like to do you said you wanted to do something from Hamlet. You’ve been looking at Hamlet lately?

Will: Yeah. During the prolonged isolation of the coronavirus era I’ve taken it upon myself to study what many people apparently (I’m not sure what all the hype is about) but they say “Oh it’s such a great play, Hamlet this Hamlet that.” And growing up as I did sort of raised on Shakespeare I’ve always felt a lot of intimidation around that. Hamlet both as a play and as a character is this sort of Monolithic dramatic thing and I only recently had had both the wherewithal as a student actor and the free time to actually, like, sit down with Hamlet and give it the attention it deserves. so I’ve been doing that. I keep my collected works just open to wherever I am in Hamlet. This collected works was my student copy, so it is already all marked up in lots of ways. Any time I find interesting scansion moments you know those just get put in in pencil right away. I’ve got sticky notes sticking out for good monologues. I wasn’t real set on any particular scene, because I don’t know all the lines yet or anything, it’s not like I only know act one and we’ve got to do Hamlet talks to the ghost or something. Might even be act two, act one’s a short one.

Lee:  I talk a big game about hating Hamlet, and I don’t even actually hate Hamlet. I just like other plays more 

Will: And that’s fair, yeah.

Lee: I think Hamlet is overrated, but it’s so highly rated, you know, like, it’s still very good 

Will: I’m trying to figure out what it is about Hamlet that makes it so hyped up, like where does the illusion end and where is there actually something really cool in here. and generally he speaks very precisely, he said in the text to be very depressed and yet also has this very Charming effect on all of the people who aren’t affiliated with a guy who just stole the throne from him basically. 

And he has this tremendously intimate relationship with the audience. The fourth wall is very permeable for Hamlet. The first line he has in the play is an aside. they’ve gone through this court scene, Claudius finally deigns to call on Hamlet basically and say “Why are you still in mourning for the death of your father, my brother, whose job I stole from you,” The line from Claudius is “But now our cousin Hamlet, and our son,” (the royal we of course) Hamlet responds with “a little more than kin, and less than kind.” It’s punny, it is not for Claudius’ ears, it’s for the audience directly. So from the get-go you have this weirdly close relationship with the audience that’s emphasized more by other people’s lines. 

Ophelia I think has the line “The observed of all observers,” which I think is a very interesting thing to keep in your mind if you are playing Hamlet about any time that I am on stage even if it is a two-person scene there is a degree to which I have not only maybe the ghost, who is just in my mind (although other see him but Gertrude doesn’t), you have the audience watching and holding you accountable in a way that, if there is something rotten in the state of Denmark that somebody is not being held accountable. A lot of Hamlet as a play in my initial reading seems to have a lot to do with where the buck stops.

Lee: That’s interesting, that idea of Hamlet’s relationship with the audience taking on that tone of “someone is watching so you are accountable to someone,” Which is pretty different from some of the more villainous characters who have a relationship with the audience. Like Richard III–

Will: Or Iago.

Lee: Yeah.

Will: And there is a sense to which Hamlet makes the audience his co conspirators. he’s not really conspiring in the sense that he’s not doing anything that he considers really evil. he’s hiding things strictly strategically not because there is– it is true that there is a moral value likely to be assigned to “I kind of want to kill the king my uncle” He’s justifying in a lot of ways. but he conceals his Madness– although again notably in this weird relationship not from the audience– conceals his sanity perhaps has a better turn of phrase, from the king and the court.

 It seems like he really is deeply upset that his mother basically sided with his uncle against, he feels, both him and his father. That’s one reason why this scene is a tremendous one to look at in this play. Not only do we get to murder on stage but we’re also dealing with Hamlet’s probably closest interpersonal relationship that he has. Gertrude is the one person we see in this play who Hamlet has known the longest. Ideally he would be able to trust her totally.

Lee: in the context of the rest of the play how does this scene fit in? We sort of jumped in in the midst of things.

 Will: Starting with the middle of my sword in the middle of…someone, behind a curtain.

So in the part of the scene where there are more characters in the beginning of it, specifically there is Polonius and then there is some stabbing. The front end of this scene as you will that we have cut short is pretty short itself and is for the most part this exchange of unpleasantries between Hamlet and his mother where they are– sort of, quibbling might be the proper word — over like who is in the right without actually getting down to the brass tacks of what has happened that has made them so upset with each other. It does seem like based on the way Hamlet speaks to Gertrude earlier in the play, maybe it has been a while since they have had this kind of heart to heart, if she doesn’t know or maybe is ignoring  how upset either old Hamlet’s death or her remarriage has made her son.

 But the part of the scene that we have cut: Polonius tells Gertrude “Hamlet is coming I’m going to hide right here, call for help if he gets crazy,” basically. Hamlet has been acting crazy with a vengeance and that vengeance he thinks is exercised in the first half of the scene when he does start getting a little wild, a little frisky, perhaps a little physical. That’s–

Lee:  A little stabby.

Will: Well. It’s a dangerous thing to get stabby, but he comes out of it pretty quick, fortunately. We’re not to our Act 5 yet, right. 

I would say if you were going to label this sort of the apex of the play, in the sense of a roller coaster apex, this is where it’s all downhill action from here. You have established characters, you have laid out the timeline of who took the crown from whom and when, and found out how. You have confirmed to some degree that this is as true as Hamlet wants it to be, needs it to be. things are about to start moving a lot faster for Hamlet. That’s what a lot of the end of the scene treats on. It’s like, well, this sets some things in motion doesn’t it. I guess this is going to send me off to England, that’s going to be a great excuse for Claudius to do that yep here we go.

Lee: Yeah, you can’t really come back from having stabbed someone. Or at least, you can’t just step away from that with your situation entirely unchanged. 

Will: Mhmm. Hamlet generally I think is described as being well loved by the people. he certainly seems to be a people person given the volume he will speak to anyone who will listen. But yeah, murder will out actions have consequences that kind of thing. And he knows that.

Lee: Yeah he definitely seems very aware of the place this event has in I guess the plot of his life 

Will: Well, and the possible consequences has he gotten it right. Had he stabbed the person he thought maybe hoped, was behind the arras– the curtain– instead of Polonius. The first thing he says when Gertrude asks what did you just do after he– like presumably his dagger is still in the curtain, right. He says “I dont know, is it the king?” And then there’s this weird pause in the pentameter in that line.

So Polonius says, “oh I am slain” Gertrude completes the line. “Oh I am slain,” “Oh me, what hast thou done?” Hamlet says “Nay I know not, is it the king?” 

“Nay I know not, is it the king?” That’s eighth.

So there’s a two-syllable pause in there somewhere possibly at the period. “Nay I know not (dot dot dot fingers crossed) is it the king?” 

Or “Nay I know not is the King” and Gertrude has this moment to give him a look of is that what you were aiming for, really? Oh this is worse than I thought

Lee: And then she follows up back into the meter

Will: Yeah.

Lee: “Oh what a rash and bloody deed is this,” So there’s nothing just complete that pause there.

Will: Yeah, she’s pretty regular throughout the scene.

Lee: Do you think… do you think that moment that pause in the meter is the first time Gertrude realizes that Hamlet is this much at odds with his uncle?

Will: I have spent a lot more time thinking about this from Hamlet’s point of view but it definitely seems from the lines that that’s possible. some of his lines even are saying like don’t smooth this over by just telling yourself that Hamlet is crazy. I know I just talked to a ghost, listen, that’s not true. I’m not mad but mad in craft. how much of that is true is again…sort of iffy

Lee: I know that’s a very popular topic for debate

Will: is he mad, is there a ghost, Etc 

Lee: is there a difference, yeah. 

Will: Right.

Lee: So what do you think are the main challenges in this scene, or opportunities?

Will: There’s the general difficulty of trying to be Hamlet which is: you speak a lot, which is a challenge just for learning lines. And for, you know, crisness, clarity, breathing. Additionally, you know, he is playing royalty who is upset in a noble– like he always makes the point he’s not being petty– he’s trying to do the right thing and trying to point out to his mother that she has not done the right thing.

 And then there’s all the somewhat more obvious challenge of somebody gets stabbed on stage through a curtain and then you have a body on stage to deal with. I think there’s some physical humor to be found in– not false exits exactly but Hamlet getting ready to pull the corpse off and then doubling back as he says he is doing several times in the text. Sort of dark humor there.

 Ane of the things that I feel like we have successfully avoided (at least I did) in thinking about the scene while we performed it was this Oedipus complex idea. I think it’s not textual. I’ve watched the Olivier Hamlet fairly recently and when Olivier played Hamlet he was 40 and the woman playing Gertrude was like 20-25 Maybe. So in that sense, I see Olivier embracing the Oedipus complex that way. But there’s not a lot textually about Hamlet being attracted to his mother in that way. This scene is basically him laying out all of his actual grievances with her. I don’t know that there is even punning support the idea that there’s some sort of Oedipus complex relationship.

Lee: Yeah. An argument could be made that it is inappropriate to be as concerned with your mother’s sexual purity as Hamlet is, but that I think is a different kind of inappropriateness than an Oedipus complex.

Will: And I think that Hamlet’s actual concerns are–  well. This is interpretation and I don’t know how textual this is. To say, in a scene where he just says “how could you go from my father to this oaf” I’m reading between the lines to say this also has to do with the kingship, which you have sort of taken from me by this action. I see it in there glaringly between the lines but it’s not in the lines exactly.

Lee: I think that is, though, an interesting interpretation to carry to it and an interpretation that works well with the rest of the play and makes it to satisfy narrative.

Will: I think so. Hamlet as many Shakespeare plays is a play about who will rule. Hamlet is the next in line for the throne, if we’re going –like if there are no brothers involved, Hamlet who is now old Hamlet’s ghost, would have passed the throne to his son who is an adult man. Of age, capable of ruling. it definitely seems like they pulled a fast one on Hamlet and like Gertrude was part of that

But one thing that you said earlier about bringing an interpretation of a character in with the things that you’re picking up out of the lines directly reminds me how many of Shakespeare’s characters do speak very directly exactly what they are thinking 

Lee: Yeah! Yeah. 

Will: Especially in pentameter. I am told that the distinction between pentameter and prose sometimes indicates that when the character’s speaking in pentameter that’s the truth of their heartbeat. It’s not a constructed thing that they have come up with and are delivering to you now, it is what’s going on with them in the moment. Whereas the prose is a little more structured and refined before it comes out. 

Hamlet is sort of an exception. There’s a lot going on and I think as someone who did not know drama before the play Hamlet and then after to see the change, it might be hard to tell. There’s a scene in Taming of the Shrew that also has a lot more subtext than a lot of Shakespeare plays. Between Petrucio and Kate when they first meet.

Lee: Yeah, I definitely tend to not believe in subtext in Shakespeare plays like, that’s not how Shakespeare works. if something happens generally someone says it in Shakespeare. Like if  a character’s lying they’re going to say that they’re lying. Possibly beforehand.

Will: Yeah probably to the audience beforehand.

Lee: I’m going to do a cunning plan where I lie!

Will: Yeah watch me pull this one off, oh boy.

Lee: Yeah. But there will always be, like, a shade of interpretation. It’s interesting how many different interpretations the text can leave space for. And that’s why it’s fun to see a play multiple times.

Will: Yeah. Fun to be in a play multiple times, each a little differently.

Lee: Yeah!

You said that you have notes of interesting scansion. Where there any in this scene that you made note of?

Will: There’s one, and I think I delivered it accordingly. there’s a spot when Hamlet is really sort of losing it right before the ghost shows up and again the Ghost says like part of what brought me is not only you getting distracted from killing Claudius but you’re upsetting your mother which I asked you earlier not to do. Gertrude is saying ”stop like I’m actually seeing the thing that I have done it’s like stop yelling at me about it” And Hamlet starts going on 

“Nay, but to liveIn the rank sweat of an enseamed bed,Stew’d in corruption, honeying and making loveOver the nasty sty,–”“O, speak to me no more;These words, like daggers, enter in mine ears;No more, sweet Hamlet!”“A murderer and a villain;A slave that is not twentieth part the titheOf your precedent lord; a vice of kings;A cutpurse of the empire and the rule,That from a shelf…”

Some of that there at least is sort of overflowing the ten syllables and varying the rhythm in the middle of them in really fun and interesting ways that seems to me to just crave that extra emphasis of “Stewed in corruption, honeying and making love/ Over the nasty sty”

Lee: definitely feels like that’s meant to be stress on the first syllable, on stewed.

Will: Mhmm.

Lee: Instead of, what, like,

“Stew’d in corruption, honying and making love–”

No, no that doesn’t work.

Will: Right, and it’s a little bit of that Mad King Leontes syndrome where you’re talking yourself into this sort of crazy place where your meter gets all weird.

So in Hamlet’s description of the two lockets; this is something that maybe was not obvious if you were not reading along in your collected works and looking at textual notes, but when Hamlet says:

“Look here, upon this picture, and on this,The counterfeit presentment of two brothers.”

He’s describing, it seems like he is wearing a locket that contains a little bitty painting of his dad, and Gertrude, as is the fashion, (Hamlet talks about courtiers in the court in a different scene) Gertrude has a picture of Claudius in her little locket. And so in this speech Hamlet has emphasis on some words that usually are just sort of transitory and don’t merit much emphasis. He says he had Hyperion’s curls, he looked like Jove, he looked like Mars, he looked like Mercury.

“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”

And so on. the end of it is “would step from this to this.” again the articles are getting more attention than they otherwise would.

Lee: Yeah, you don’t expect there to be emphasis on a word like ‘is’ or ‘was’ unless there’s a reason for it, in this case that comparison.

Will: He’s twisting the meaning on that point precisely. and later he works himself up a little bit into 

What devil was’tThat 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 senseCould not so mope.

He’s saying, “your judgment was all out of whack” and his meter is proportionately out of whack. 

Eyes without feeling, feeling without sight,Ears without hands or eyes, smelling sans all,

Emphasis on the ‘or’ is mine, but I prefer it.

Lee: and then that Short line

Could not so mope.

Which I think you can do as all stressed.

Will: It has a follow up to it but it’s still not a full line of pentameter. Yeah definitely would be fun to — “could. not. so. mope.”just one two punch through all four of those

Lee: Get it as close to five feet as you can make it.

Will:  there is one place where the pentameter hits really regular in a way that makes sense with all the emphasis that I really quite like. after the ghost has come and gone, Hamlet says 

For this same lord,I do repent: 

And the fact that ‘do’ carries so much weight makes it seem genuine, you know the heartbeat is really coming.

but heaven hath pleased it so,To punish me with this and this with me,That I must be their scourge and minister.

And it’s the line “to punish me with this and this with me” that inversion of “I am being punished with the fact that to my mind at least the crown has been stolen, my would-be girlfriend’s dad is conspiring with my uncle who stole the crown from me. I am finished with this and I also am the agent of punishment who has punished one of those two very deeply already.

Lee: There’s a fair number of shared lines here, which makes sense when you have a scene with two characters who have a close relationship and it’s a scene it’s about their relationship, that they’re going to have shared lines.

Will: And they are finally having a heart to heart that has been put off for a long time it seems. Most of the time the shared lines do, for the most part, fit into the meter.

Lee: Is there anything else about the scene or about Hamlet you wanted to bring up?

Will: Well we started right after the action itself, but this scene is sort of the axis Mundi of the play. it is the like, no going back. killing Polonius is what gets Hamlet, at least officially, sent to England. it is what drives Ophelia to Madness perhaps, at least partly. it is definitely one of several things that gets Lertes very mad at Hamlet and get him back to basically be the sword in claudius’s hand against Hamlet, who by the time he shows up at Ophelia’s grave and says “behold, it’s me Hamlet the Dane (that’s right that’s what they call the King around here and that’s what I’m saying about myself)”

By the end of this play it does seem pretty obvious that Hamlet knows things are about to get very stabby as you have said. and this scene is the moment where he first sort of has that realization that he’ll get to an Act 5, that the Readiness is all. you know, if it be not to come, it will be now if it be not now yet it will come. he already knew he was getting sent to England and sort of how to deal with that but this– maybe he doesn’t get the happy ending after making this mistake. Maybe the best he can aim for is themixed ending.

Lee: “Oh, this is a revenge tragedy, that’s the genre.”

Will: Well. It is and it– There are other two person scenes that we can look at in later episodes with Laertes where he is sort of this ideal Revenger. he doesn’t have this moral gray area within his actions or within his sense of his actions that Hamlet does. When he talks in this scene about:

“Forgive me this my virtue,” (perhaps gesturing to the corpse he has just made)“For in the fatness of these pursy timesVirtue itself of vice must pardon beg,Yea, curb and woo for leave to do him good.”

Hamlet is realizing that he really doesn’t have a lot of great options. it seems like this scene is where those gears finally click in his head. he kills a man on stage and that is going to have consequences. I think his sort of direct experience with that prepares a little bit for his doom.

There are other good two person scenes with Laertes and Claudius where they’re doing a more prototypical or more generic revengers tragedy storyline, the same way that Hamlet has his sort of parallel Revenge story but also has this weird self-scrutiny that gets shared with the audience in a way that Laertes does not. he waffles towards the end, thank goodness, giving Hamlet an excuse to get real stabby.

I don’t know, this scene would probably have to come into consideration if we did talk about Claudius and Laertes because this is the Inception of that murderous urge for Revenge. This play has a lot of talking about revenge, from old Hamlet who slew old Fortinbras in Norway back in the day, to the murder of Hamlet’s father ehich happened sort of immediately before the actions of this play, to the murder that causes Hamlet’s murder basically happening right in the middle of it. and it just all sort of finally– all three of those murders finally come together. everybody is dead who was accountable for all of them by the end of the play. a balance of sort, albeit unfavorable perhaps to the ruling class in Denmark, has been restored.

Lee: Yeah that’s sort of the classic sense of a tragedy, that it at least at a certain point it, or sometimes from the very beginning, there’s a momentum towards the catastrophe; that it’s all in motion towards whatever tragic end and the new equilibrium it’s moving into.

Will: and I don’t know that you can say that stabbing Polonius is a tragic flaw exactly, but the kind of momentum that you’re talking about where blood begets blood and murder will out is a thing that is is woven very deep into the a, b, and c plots of this play. 

Where Young Hamlet goes out to avenge Old Hamlet’s was murder. In doing so he commits murder that will propel Leartes to do his damnedest murder him, Young Hamlet. all the while the murder of old Fortinbras is very present in Young Fortinbras’ offstage mind, leading troops which we see and hear about a little bit here and there until they are on the stage and occupying the Danish throneroom. This is a multi revenge for sure.

Lee: It’s convenient for Young Fortinbras that he doesn’t have to do the the murder in revenge himself.

Will: It’s true, but it is surprisingly relevant when you have the ghost talking about things like I was sent into the next world unhousel’d, unanel’d, with all of my sins still fresh on my head, basically. And you would have to admit, murdering a person is a sin, and that’s a specific murder that Old Hamlet did that is very much (forgive the expression) coming back to haunt them.

Lee: Yeah, that is an interesting fulfilament of that early plot thread of Old Hamlet having sins coming in at the very end of the play that I hadn’t noticed before.

Will: Shakespeare does a lot of good everybody-suffering-from-the same-thing.

Lee: That classic theatrical device: suffering.

Will: The sort of like fractal expansion of “oh, everybody has this murder problem, at every level.”

Lee: Everybody has this murder problem.

Will: Everyone gets stabby sometimes, Lee, and there’s just nothing to do about it except minimize as much as you can. Try not to act with vice, lest vice come to stab at you.

Lee: that is such a good moral lesson and I think we can close on. Alright, you can find Will hiding out in the woods.

Will: Smoke bomb! you may be able to find me on this podcast, fingers crossed knock on wood, but other than that don’t get your hopes up. 

Lee: I think I established in the first episode that the closer is just saying “curtains,” so I think I have to stick with that. So … curtains.

Will: Curtains.

Lee: Goodbye audience.