Enter Claudius, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern
Claudius‡
Guildenstern We will ourselves provide†.
Rosencrantz
Claudius
Rosencrantz We will haste us.
Exeunt **Rosencrantz and Guildenstern
Enter Polonius
Polonius‡
Claudius Thanks, dear my lord.
Exit Polonius
[He kneels]
Enter Hamlet
Hamlet‡
Claudius‡
Textual variants
3.3 ] Capell
Explanatory notes
1 I like him not i.e. I do not like the way he is behaving.
1 us i.e. the person of the king.
3 dispatch make ready.
4 along go along. Compare 1.1.26.
5 The terms of our estate The conditions of my position as king.
7 Out of his brows So Q2. ‘[B]rows’ means ‘effrontery’ (which derives from Latin frons = brow). Though ‘effrontery’ is not recorded in the language of Shakespeare’s day in OED, ‘effronted’ (= barefaced, shameless) does exist.
7 ourselves provide make provision for ourselves (to travel to England).
11 The single and peculiar life The life that belongs to the individual only.
13 noyance harm.
14 weal well-being.
16 gulf whirlpool (OED 3).
17 massy massive.
21 annexment adjunct, supplement. A rare word – Shakespeare’s is the first example, and one of only two, in OED.
21 consequence attachment. Again a curious usage.
24 Arm you Prepare yourselves.
28 convey myself secretly move myself.
29 the process what goes on.
29 tax him home censure him severely.
30 as you said Polonius’s transfer of responsibility for the scheme is a matter of prudence as well as deference (see 3.1.175–9).
31 meet suitable.
33 of vantage from a good position.
37 primal eldest curse Cain’s murder of his brother Abel in Genesis 4.10–11.
39 Though inclination … will Claudius cannot pray although his desire to do so is as great as his determination. Thompson and Taylor point out that he may mean that he cannot pray because his desire to do so is matched by his will to sin, as indicated in the next line.
41 double business two incompatible purposes.
41 bound Probably this means ‘directed towards’ (as in ‘bound for England’, 4.6.9), rather than ‘obliged’ or ‘sworn’.
46–7 Whereto … offence? What is mercy for, except to meet crime face to face?
54 effects things acquired or achieved.
55 mine own ambition i.e. those things I was ambitious for.
56 th’offence i.e. the fruits of the offence.
58 shove by thrust aside.
59 wicked prize reward achieved by wicked means.
61 shuffling trickery, sharp practice, deception. See 3.1.67 note.
61 the action lies A legal phrase, meaning that a case is admitted to exist. But it also means that every deed lies exposed to God’s scrutiny.
63–4 Even to … evidence to give evidence even about the worst of our sins. We are witnesses for the prosecution of ourselves; ‘teeth’ is for savagery and ‘forehead’ for effrontery (compare ‘brows’ above, 7).
64 rests remains.
68 limèd The image is of a bird caught by the smearing of a very sticky substance, called birdlime, on twigs and branches.
69 Make assay Claudius is probably addressing himself rather than the angels, since he knows that it is he who must make the effort.
73 pat neatly, aptly.
73 a is Represents a slurred pronunciation of ‘he is’; compare 2.2.185. We would write ‘he’s’, but perhaps the pronunciation was nearer ‘uz’.
75 would be scanned needs to be examined.
79 hire and salary So F. Q2’s ‘base and silly’ is suspect, though it too emphasizes that killing Claudius at this moment would be beneath Hamlet and the demands of revenge.
80 grossly i.e. without consideration or decency.
80 full of bread Malone noted that this was a biblical echo, quoting Ezekiel 16.49: ‘the iniquity of thy sister Sodom, pride, fulness of bread, and abundance of idleness’.
81 broad blown in full blossom.
81 flush vigorous.
83 circumstance … thought ‘circumstance’, as at 1.5.127 and 3.1.1, has the sense of circuitous or circling discourse. The construction here is the familiar Shakespearean use of two nouns for an adjective and a noun, i.e. ‘circumstantial course of thought’ = our course of thought which is necessarily indirect.
88 hent grasp (a rare word). He puts his sword up in its scabbard, promising to lay hold of it at a ‘more horrid’ opportunity.
89 drunk asleep i.e. in a drunken sleep.
91 At game a-swearing Gambling, and cursing the dice or cards as he plays. Although ‘at game’ is not elsewhere used by Shakespeare, there can be little doubt about the correctness of Q2 (followed here) which is supported by Q1, as against F’s paraphrase, ‘At gaming, swearing’.
91 At game a-swearing gambling, and cursing the dice or cards as he plays. Although ‘at game’ is not elsewhere used by Shakespeare, there can be little doubt about the correctness of Q2 (followed here) which is supported by Q1, as against F’s paraphrase, ‘At gaming, swearing’.
92 relish touch, trace.
93–5 trip him … it goes This ambition to bring Claudius to eternal damnation – a speech, said Dr Johnson, ‘too terrible to be read or to be uttered’ – is discussed in the Introduction, 19.
96 This physic Hamlet sees his decision as a medicine temporarily preserving Claudius’s life. Some commentators think the physic is Claudius’s prayer.
Performance notes from Shakespeare in Production
1–27 Rossi, who played Rosencrantz, reports that Guthrie at Minneapolis had Rosencrantz and Guildenstern help the King out of his public garb of office, including a ribbon and medal, into a dressing gown. Guthrie saw the two as ‘just opportunistic climbers … Royalists – loyal to the King and The Establishment … who really don't know what the King's designs are’ (p. 16). As he staged this scene they are at first sincerely deferential. At 10, Guildenstern is kneeling (to tie the King's belt) and at 11 Rosencrantz is buttoning him into his robe (pp. 85–6). Yet in the course of rehearsing this exchange, ‘Rosencrantz became a bit sadistic’. At ‘the cess of majesty’ Guthrie had him ‘slowly advance behind the seated King and speak from behind his right ear, reaching a soft, insinuating climax on “falls,” at which point Claudius winced and made a half-gesture to his ear’ (p. 23). Compare the business Guthrie introduced at 1.5.34.
15 In the Branagh film, trying to soothe the King's choler, Rosencrantz after ‘lives of many’ seems to run dry, looks in vain for help from Guildenstern, then continues to elaborate in the same vein.
27–35 Patrick Stewart on BBC-TV had been able to sustain his self-possession through his interview with Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, in which he was warmly confidential with them, putting his arm around Guildenstern at one point. But when Polonius came in, the King was plainly preoccupied, so much so that he did not express his thanks to Polonius until after he had gone. Finally, his guilty conscience could be contained no longer and he virtually vomited before attempting to pray.
36ff Q1's Claudius wept at the beginning of his soliloquy: ‘O that this wet that falles upon my face/Would wash the crime cleere from my conscience!’
To Morris Carnovsky, who played Claudius at Stratford, Connecticut in 1958, this soliloquy is ‘the revelation of an extremely sensitive and conscience-ridden man’, his final couplet (97–8) ‘a wrenching confession’ (Actor's Eye, pp. 69, 170). Playing opposite Jacobi on stage, Timothy West gave this speech as ‘a dog-tired worrying-away at an old, incurable obsession, packed with self-mockery and self-contempt, the last testament of a man who has already evolved from despair to a deadly cynicism’ (New Statesman, 3 June 1977).
40–4a Michael Pennington, Claudius with Stephen Dillane, shows ‘a touch of Hamlet's own irresolution’ (Country Life, 17 November 1994); ‘like Hamlet he is precariously balanced between guilt, terror and self-control’ (Sunday Times, 13 November 1994).
73ff Davies praised Garrick as the first to reject ‘this horrid soliloquy’ (p. 101); since then it has often been cut. When included, its vengefulness has commonly been mitigated by treating it as a rationalization. In 1763, Thomas Sheridan, a rival of Garrick's in the role, told Boswell that this speech ‘if really from the heart, would make Hamlet the most black, revengeful man. But it coincides better with his character to suppose him here endeavouring to make an excuse to himself for his delay’ (Boswell, London Journal, pp. 234–5). Of Fechter: ‘restrained by reasonable doubt, not vacillation of purpose … he did not kill the King at prayers, because of that Catholic faith which would send this same villain to heaven’. Field adds that Hamlet had feared meeting ‘my dearest foe in heaven’ at 1.2.182 (p. 93). To Tree the speech ‘clearly reveals that tenderer side of Hamlet's nature, which makes him seek for any excuse which may postpone the shedding of blood’ (‘Hamlet’, p. 875).
Of the simplicity of Barrymore's staging: ‘One man is here, one is there. Here are the uplifted hands, there the sword drawn. Here, sick conscience, power, and tormented ambition; there, the torture of conflicting thoughts, the irony, the resolution. Two bodies and their relation to each other, the words, the essential drama, the eternal content of the scene. No tricks, no plausible business’ (New Republic, 6 December 1922, p. 46). Peter Hall: this soliloquy ‘is time suspended, a close-up with voice-over that lasts a few seconds. The speech rushes out while the sword is poised’ (Diaries, p. 191).
93–5 Booth's ‘eyes, naturally jet black, were almost white with light’ (Shattuck, p. 222).
97–8 Pennington comments that this couplet allows an actor playing the King ‘to correct his performance’: ‘If he's veered to self-pity in the main speech, he can toughen these lines up; if he's been too emphatic they can be simple and direct; if too armoured, he is now vulnerable’ (Hamlet, p. 97n).
