I am but hurt.

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Not really, though. From what Laertes has said, the poison on this sword is deadly from the first touch. Does Claudius think he’s immune to it? Or maybe, having been through the bodies of Laertes and Hamlet, the poison has been washed off with blood?

I mean, now that I think about it, it is pretty amazing that it could go through the bodies of two people and retain its potency. I’d think you might need to reapply the poison after each use – but no. It works just as well on all three people it’s used on – and rather than losing potency, it seems to increase – as each subsequent person seems to die more quickly – the first person to get struck is the last to die.

Maybe there’s something in the compound that reacts to blood and increases its potency the more blood it is exposed to. I mean – probably not. I don’t think that could be a real thing – but a fictional thing, sure.

O, yet defend me, friends.

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Ah, yes, Claudius’ mythic friends. They were mentioned in an earlier scene. They’re wise, apparently. But despite “All” chanting “Treason” – he doesn’t really seem to have any friends left. He might count Osric on his team but Osric, we’ve seen, goes where the wind is blowing. (Or takes his hat off according to the reported weather.) But Osric is not in the least bit likely to stick his neck out, especially when the wind is blowing with poisoned swords and poisoned wine in it. Who is Claudius appealing to? The ALL? The mysterious ALL who chanted “Treason!”? That’s who he hopes will defend him? But whoever ALL is – they don’t defend him at all.

Treason!

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Sure does feel like there was a whole lot of treasonous sort of stuff flying around our government those last couple of years. I wasn’t ever too interested in treason and what the lines are before. I was maybe a little more relativist and not so concerned with borders, which seemed sort of arbitrary to me. Now that we’ve experienced a hostile foreign power attempting to interfere in our democratic process, I get why treason is important to recognize and address. It’s not just someone doing a regular old bad thing – it’s someone doing a bad thing that damages the nation. It’s actually awful. And yet – there has been very little done to address all the treasonous acts. They are harder to prosecute as treason, I suppose. So smaller crimes step forward.

Treason!

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Um. Who is this “all”? Did Shakespeare’s company have a large chorus of people who could just be on-lookers?

I mean – first there is the question of what this call of treason is referring to. Is it Hamlet who is committing treason by killing the king? That seems the standard definition. But, there is also the treason that the king himself has committed against his office. In that case, these calls of treason became a sort of cheerleading of Hamlet’s vengeance.

But practically – who is part of this “All”? Laertes is dying and unlikely to shout. Horatio is team Hamlet but it’s hard to imagine him shouting “Treason!” Gertrude is dead and cannot call. Hamlet probably doesn’t say it himself. Claudius might. But he’s got other things to do, like managing his injury. Which, of the people onstage – leaves, essentially Osric. Who is not an all.

Basically we have six people definitely onstage and another person with some troops about to come on.


Did the King’s Men bring back the actors playing Polonius and Ophelia and Rosencrantz and Guildenstern to come be a crowd and shout “treason!”

From what I remember, Shakespeare’s company was made up of about 15 people – which means this “all” here is probably pretty small.

Then, venom, to thy work.

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It is quite right that Claudius is poisoned. I mean, he’s stabbed (or sliced) too but the venom is exactly the right way to kill him, given how much poisoning he does.

What are his weapons?

Poison. Poison poison and poison. It is his real work.

No rapier and dagger for him, no, no. It is poison all the way. And a poisoner ought to meet his end with poison. It is the only justice.

The point envenom’d too!

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This was punctuated on Genius as – “The Point! –envenom’d too!”

Which is just so bizarre and I cannot imagine the editor who would make that choice. I would like to hear a justification for it – but meanwhile, I’m just going with the way it is usually written.

The exclamation point makes sense. But two of them?

Is it an attempt to separate out the unbatedness of the sword and the poisoning of the blade? Because the fact that the sword is sharp is not news to Hamlet at this point. He already knows about that dirty bit of business because he has been wounded with it. He has felt how unblunted that sword is. His flesh has been opened and bled due to the sharp point of the blade. He knows that part. He has already reacted to that surprise by sticking Laertes with the same sharp blade. The NEWS here is that there was poison on the weapon that is currently killing him. The NEWS is that the sword he (probably still) has in his hand is a very dangerous weapon. How dangerous is one of the things he’s just learned here.

The king, the king’s to blame.

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There’s a book that hinges on this line. I think it’s William Ball’s Backwards and Forwards but it could also be referenced in The Actor and the Target. The sense of it is that this line is the one that finally allows Hamlet to pull the trigger on killing Claudius. He’s been carefully trying to test the ghost’s theories, looking for the right moment but it is this evidence from Laertes that opens the door to direct action – to running a sword through him, not to mention forcing the king to drink poison.

It is the trigger line the whole play hinges on.

And yet I’d put money on the probability of some productions cutting it. Because everyone’s likely to cut everything at some point or another. I’m sure there have even been productions that cut the hot speeches. The one I saw most recently just did without the “how all occasions” speech, not to mention the entire Fortinbras plot. And most of the opening scene. Which was the gravest error, I thought. Graver even than cutting the Second Gravedigger.

Thy mother’s poison’d.

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I’d like for Gertrude to come back to life at this point and just sit up and say,

“I JUST said that. Like literally moments ago. I said, “I am poison’d.”

Can’t a woman even report her own death without having her words spoken and then taken more seriously by a man? I mean, what else do I need to say? Run a blood test; it will ALSO confirm that I am poisoned just like I said before. But you need it confirmed by this guy? This unreliable narrator here who has done such things as a) stage a coup in which he broke open doors b) jump in his sister’s grave c) whatever mischief he got up to in France and now d) this using an unbated and unvenomed sword in a friendly duel to kill the prince of Denmark and my son.

It’s a good thing I’m dead because I don’t think I could live like this anymore.”

The foul practice Hath turn’d itself on me.

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This makes me think of the fact that guns are most dangerous for the people who own them. If you own a gun, you yourself are the person most likely to be injured or killed by it – followed closely by others who live with the gun. The person most likely to be killed with a deadly weapon is the owner of that deadly weapon – either by accident or by suicide. Foul practices do tend to turn themselves on their authors, too.