Part II
Acts 4-5
 Scene
 I’m
I
a bit confused about Hamlet’s madness,
to be honest.
 Let’s rewind to line Act 3, Scene 4, (line 185):
 “Or paddling in your neck with his damned
fingers, / Make you to ravel all this matter out
/ That I essentially am not in madness / But
mad in craft.”
 Rewind: “not this”?
 Then,
back to Act 4, Scene 1:
 Gertrude says, “Mad as the sea and wind
when both contend / Which is mightier.”
 Claudius utters an irony: “It had been so with
us, had we been there.” He means to say that
Hamlet would have killed him, had he been
there, which is ironically true.
 Claudius: “It [Hamlet’s murder of Polonius]
will be laid to us…”
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Claudius: “We must, with all our majesty and
skill, / Both countenance [condone] and
excuse.”
“…may miss our name / and hit the
woundless air.”
Scene II
Sidnote II, Page 270
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Scene III
Claudius: “He’s loved of the distracted
multitude, / Who like not in their judgment,
but their eyes. / And where tis so, th’
offender’s scourge is weighed, / But never
the offense.”
“Diseases desperate grown”
 Hamlet
makes many jokes about how
Polonius is being eaten by worms.
 He does this to show that all men die a
similar death, as in Beowulf.
 “Nothing but to show you a king may go by a
progress through the guts of a beggar (in
prose).”
 Hamlet tells Claudius, in a clever way to “go
to hell”.
 Hamlet makes a joke about how Polonius will
stink up the castle!
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Hamlet makes a note that God sees the plans
of men before they take place: “I see a cherub
that sees them.”
Last line of scene III: Haps=Fortune
What does Claudius letter ask of “England”?
“For like the hectic [fever] in my blood he
[Hamlet] rages.”
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Scene IV
At the beginning of the scene, Fortinbras
wants to march through Denmark.
He is a war-monger. First he wants to fights
with Denmark, now he wants to claim a very
unimportant piece of Polish land.
Around line 20, SATIRE, the futile nature of
war.
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Ironically, Young Fortinbras becomes a
motivation for Young Hamlet.
“Rightly to be great / Is not to stir without
great argument, / But greatly to find quarrel
in a straw / When honor’s at the stake.”
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Scene v
A “gentleman” reports that Ophelia is mad.
“She speaks much of her father[….]speaks
things in doubt / That carry but half sense”
“They yawn at it / And botch the words up to
fit their own thoughts…”
Shakespeare had much to say about the
common, the vulgar, the mobs, in this scene
and later on.
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Gertrude: “So full of artless jealousy is guilt, /
It spills itself fearing to be spilt.”
Ophelia’s song…is she chaste? Line 56.
Claudius says of Ophelia, “When sorrows
come, they come not single spies / But in
battalions: first her father slain; / Next your
son gone, […] the people muddied, / thick
and unwholesome in thoughts and whispers /
For good Polonius’ death…”
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Claudius admits that it was a dumb idea to
bury Polonius in secret.
Laertes comes back from France with an
agenda. He is ticked, he wants answers, and
he initially blames Claudius.
“Her brother is in secret come from France, /
Feeds on this wonder, keeps himself in
clouds…”
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The ocean, […], / Eats not the flats (shores)
with more impetuous haste / Than young
Laertes, in a riotous head, / O’erbears your
officers.
“Choose we, Laertes shall be king!”
Claudius (ironic), “There’s such divinity doth
hedge a king / That treason can but peep to
what it would, / Acts little of his will.”
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Laertes: “I dare damnation! To this point I
stand / That both the worlds I give to
negligence. / Let come what comes, only I’ll
be revenged…”
Laertes is passionate and wants to act. He
plays the foil to Hamlet, who is too
philosophical about consequence.
However, as one is about to see, Laertes is
also too easily persuaded (by Claudius) to
delay action.
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Laertes is moved by Ophelia’s madness.
Line 175, a note, the flowers have symbolic
meaning.
Scene VI
“Yet are they [words] too light for the bore of
the matter.”
Hamlet was abducted by sailors, but now
these sailors have letters for the king.
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Scene VII
Claudius, at the beginning of the scene, tells
Laertes that he is innocent of Polonius’ death.
Is this true?
“That he which hath your noble father slain /
Pursued my life.”
Does Claudius know of Hamlet’s plan?!
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Laertes then asks, why didn’t you punish
Hamlet?
Claudius responds, “For two special reasons.”
(1) “The queen, his mother, / Lives almost by
his looks […] She is so conjunct to my life and
soul, / I could not (live) but by her.”
????
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(2) “Why to a public count I might not go / Is
the great love the general gender bear him /
[…] Convert gyves to graces–”
Claudius: “You must not think / That we are
made of stuff so flat and dull / That we can
let our beard be shook with danger / And
think it pastime.”
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Claudius receives a letter that says, HAMLET
IS BACK,” but that letter is somewhat
confusing.
Therefore, Claudius comes up with a “master
plan” to get rid of Hamlet once and for all.
Hamlet will have to fence Laertes, which
should not be a hard match to set up, since
Hamlet envies Laertes skill in fighting.
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Claudius is a great persuader: “What would
you undertake / To show yourself in deed
your father’s son / More than in words?”
Laertes: “To cut his throat i’ th’ church”
Hamlet + Laertes = FOIL
Claudius (ironic) “Revenge should have no
bounds”
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In essence, a wager will be placed on each
side (that of Hamlet and Laertes) and they will
fence to see who wins. We will discuss the
wager later, as it is expounded upon in Act V.
Laertes will choose a rapier that is not
blunted, and will poison the tip.
Claudius comes up with plan B, which is, if
Hamlet is winning for some reason, they will
offer him a drink from a poisoned chalice.
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Ophelia is drowned?
How? Was it an accident? What is the image?
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Scene I
Notice the social register of the clowns
(jesters) is lower. They are intended to be
comical, but they often utter truths, as does
everyone in Hamlet.
Side-note 2: According to church law, those
who die by suicide are to be denied full
Christian funeral rights (which include burial
in consecrated ground).
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“The crowner hath sat on her and finds it
Christian burial.”
The coroner decided it was not suicide.
First Clown (line 14): Logic over suicide.
“If this had not been a gentlewoman, she
should have been buried out o’ / Christian
burial.”
The clown’s riddle: “Who builds stronger than
a mason, a shipwright, or a carpenter?”
Hamlet: “The hand of little employment hath
the daintier sense.”
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“Here’s fine revolution…” (Hamlet)
Notice that Ophelia’s grave has been
previously used…That’s where the discussion
about all the skulls comes from.
To be brief, all Hamlet’s musings essentially
boil down to one thing. Occupation, finance,
and social status matter not in death.
“The age is grown so picked that the toe of
the peasant comes so near the heel of the
courtier he galls his kibe.”
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Funny or ironic statement: “There (England)
the men are as mad as he.”
We find Hamlet is 30.
“Upon what ground?”
“Faith, if ‘a be not rotten before ‘a die –”
Double meaning of rotten.
“To what base uses may we return”
The priest calls Ophelia’s death “suspicious”
G’trude: “I hoped thou shouldst have been my
Hamlet’s wife…”
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Hamlet: “I loved Ophelia. Forty thousand
brothers / Could not with all their quantity of
love / Make up my sum. What wilt thou do for
her?”
Line 275 Nature will take its course
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Scene II
Hamlet: “There’s a divinity that shapes our
ends, / Rough-hew (crudely shape) them how
we will.”
We find that Hamlet actually does something
in Act V. He stealthily finds the letter that
Claudius sent to England. After taking it from
R & G, he rewrites it, reseals it, and replaces
it. The letter now orders to the immediate
killing of R&G.
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“Why, even in that was Heaven ordinant. / I
had my father’s signet in my purse, / Which
was the model of that Danish seal.”
“They are not near my conscience. Their
defeat / Does by their own insinuation grow.”
What is the purpose of Osric?
He is a waffler, but other than that?
Hamlet: “…and many more of the same breed
that / I know the drossy age dotes on –”
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What is the wager of the fight? The odds?
Hamlet: “We defy the augury (divination).
There is special providence in the fall of a
sparrow [….] The readiness is all; since no
man of aught he leaves knows, what is ‘t to
leave betimes?
Hamlet’s apology (LINE 204)
Hamlet and Laertes fence. Hamlet is winning
3-0, which is obviously unexpected.
G’trude: “The Queen carouses to thy fortune,
Hamlet.”
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G’trude is poisoned (dies).
Laertes: [Aside] “And yet it is almost against
my conscience.”
Laertes: “I am justly killed with my own
treachery.”
Hamlet kills Claudius.
Hamlet: “Mine and my father’s death come
upon thee, / Nor thine one me.”
Hamlet tells Horatio to “Report me and my
cause aright / To the unsatisfied.”
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Hamlet recommends Fortinbras the new king.
Hamlet dies.
We find that R&G are dead.
Horatio explains the tragedy.
Fortinbras: “For me, with sorrow I embrace
my fortune.”
Hamlet would have “proved most royal.”