I’m not always the most INTO the meter of the text. I love that it’s there and when I’m performing it, I will get INTO it – but in this context, it hardly ever pops out at me as something to discuss.
This time is different, though.
There’s something about the rhythm of this pair of lines that sounds like a nursery rhyme to me. Maybe it’s the feminine endings, or the regular irregularity or the words, maybe.
It’s like a 2 line story.
Like one of to those super short stories that are popular these days.
The meter of this whole speech is incredibly disjointed. One gets the sense that this event has sent Claudius into a little bit of a fluster. And yet he pulls out this sort of regular 2 line story in the middle of it.
Friends both, go join you with some further aid.
See, I wondered, when the king just called for Guildenstern and the stage directions say “Enter Rosencrantz and Guildenstern” if this was just an editorial decision to include Rosencrantz. But then I read this line, in which it feels fairly clear that the king is now speaking to them both – and is purposefully including Rosencrantz, when he ignored him earlier. Or maybe it’s not that Guildenstern is preferred by the King. Maybe it’s that they are so quick to enter that the King doesn’t have time to call for Rosencrantz. They’re so fast, they spare him the call. But even if that is so, the king STILL calls Guildenstern first. And Rosencrantz appears with him.
Ho, Guildenstern!
Ho, ho! The Guildenstern plot thickens!
The king calls for Guildenstern
But not Rosencrantz.
This supports my theory about Guildenstern’s transformation and possible deal with the king. He’s somehow earned preferential treatment from the king. He must have given him something – earned his trust by higher levels of betrayal of Hamlet, perhaps?
I’m not sure – but I do think Rosencrantz’s head would be an interesting place to be at this moment in the play.
He comes in with Guildenstern when Guildenstern is called for. And neither of them says a word. But what is Rosencrantz thinking when the King calls only Guildenstern?
Does he know something is up?
Does he feel slighted?
Wonder what happened?
I wonder what happened. The King has them wrapped around his finger.
and this vile deed We must with all our majesty and skill Both countenance and excuse.
Why though? Are the people of Denmark going to rise up and protest the murder of a high state official by a member of the royal family? Seems to me that Royals have people killed all the time and no one says a thing about it. It is one of the distinct advantages of being a royal. Claudius is making it sound like it’s going to be quite a difficult PR job to excuse Hamlet from the murder. But would it? I mean, Hamlet is beloved by the people. The laws are pretty loose for royals. He’s already got a great madness excuse in the making.
Who is he trying to impress here? Gertrude?
Why not just turn the authorities loose on him?
(Well, aside from the fact that his way will actually kill Hamlet and trying his nephew/stepson in a court might reveal some facts that the king might not want revealed.)
The sun no sooner shall the mountains touch But we will ship him hence;
This is a lovely way to tell time – and poetic, too.
Actually practical and it sounds good.
Which is quite beautiful for a moment that is actually so dark.
Hamlet’s shipping hence is a death sentence.
I wonder if there’s a way to utilize this kind of time telling in an urban setting.
I can’t see any mountains here.
The garbage trucks no sooner shall rustle down the streets.
The sun no sooner shall the fires escape touch.
The rats no sooner shall have gone to bed
The neighbor no sooner shall start shouting
But it will be dawn.
O Gertrude, come away!
Where ARE they going? Is there, like, an official sending people to England chamber? And why does Gertrude have to go there?
This scene takes place in Gertrude’s closet, after the murder. This “Come away” – makes sense. I mean, yes, by all means get a witness to a crime out of the horrible location where it happened. But – the entrance seems to suggest that there is some passage of time between the closet scene and this one – that maybe it’s in an entirely different location – in which case – Away is weirder.
‘A weeps for what is done.
A note I read on this scene suggested that this bit about Hamlet weeping over Polonius’ body was the first time we actually see the melancholy Dane being actually sad. I thought this was curious because we don’t actually see this and it seemed obvious to me that Gertrude is lying about Hamlet weeping in order to soften the possible consequences of the murder.
But what feels obvious to me may not in fact be the case. If it were so – when would this weeping happen? As he’s dragging the body out of Gertrude’s closet? Seems like an entirely different state than that hyped up manic place we previously saw Hamlet in. It’s interesting. How would one interpolate weeping into that scene in order to make Gertrude honest?
O’er whom his very madness, like some ore Among a mineral of metals base, Shows itself pure.
This is such an odd metaphor. The madness is now shining out of Hamlet like gold in a pile of junk metal? Extended, it would seem to imply that Hamlet is the junk metal and the madness is the gold? I think the junk is REALLY meant to be all the rumors flying around his madness – but it’s a little bit clunky. The oddness of this metaphor seems to me to reflect how confused Gertrude is at this point
To draw apart the body he hath killed;
This sounds so animal somehow – like Hamlet is a lion dragging his kill to his lair. There’s something about calling Polonius “the body” and the action of “drawing apart” that has that effect. I know drawing apart means removing but it SOUNDS like a combination of drawing and quartering and ripping apart. It isn’t delicate language.
Maybe this is why the Queens adds the lie about Hamlet weeping over his deed – because she has gone too far in describing his kill.
Where is he gone?
This is all the king really wants to know. Is Hamlet lurking about waiting to kill HIM? Where will he find him so he can send him to England? What happened to Polonius is not really his concern. Nor what Gertrude’s gone through in witnessing it. He is interestingly uninterested in the details of this crime. He just wants to know where Hamlet is.
The Hamlet Project 