A Prologue to My Brain

Contents

Part 1 - So Like the King

Questions of the Play

The Rebirth of Hamlet

St Gertrude in the Garden

Hamlet in a Nutshell

To Inherit the Earth

The Honey of His Music Vows

The Madness of Hamlet

Hamlet's Transformation

Old Men in the Book of his Brain

Remembrances in the Book of Their Brains

A Document in Madness

The Mole of Nature

An Honest Ghost?

(1) Hamlet was reborn.

(Extracts from The Rebirth of Hamlet)
. . . .
Hamlet, born to be a death-dealing king, hates his birthright. Thus, throughout the play he regresses back to the womb (the womb of earth - Ophelia's grave), where he is reborn as Hamlet the rational scholar.
. . . .
His father, unable to part from his earthly kingdom, was doomed to walk the night in search of his "extorted treasure in the womb of earth."

There was another reference to treasure in the play: Ophelia's "chaste treasure." Ophelia, like Hamlet, was also untrue to herself by being excessively obedient to her father. She let him tell her what to think. Her very name is an allusion to excessive filial duty.

When Ophelia died, her grave was metaphorically the grave of filial duty - the final inevitable end to which obedience to their fathers brought Ophelia and Hamlet, to their marriage-bed. When Hamlet jumped into Ophelia's grave he was finally giving his father's ghost what it had been seeking - Ophelia's chaste treasure in the womb of earth, the grave of filial duty.

Ophelia's chaste treasure was in her lap

HAMLET

I mean, my head upon your lap?

OPHELIA

Ay, my lord.

HAMLET

Do you think I meant country matters?

Since she is a virgin, Ophelia's lap is undiscover'd cuntry. After she is laid in the womb of earth (her grave), her chaste treasure becomes the undiscover'd country from whose bourn no traveller returns (3,1,87-88). But Hamlet did return - he leaps into her womb of earth, then emerges re-bourn.

After Hamlet leaped into Ophelia's grave, when he's being choked by Laertes, he says,
(5,1,264)

I prithee, take thy fingers from my throat; For, though I am not splenitive and rash, Yet have I have something in me dangerous, Which let thy wiseness fear:

That "something in me" was the last appearance of the Ghost, who had finally been delivered to the grave where he belonged, his extorted treasure in the womb of earth.

"Country matters" also means "cunt mater" because Hamlet metaphorically returns to his mother's womb to be reborn. Hamlet's mother Gertrude is there, channeling St Gertrude of Nivelles, patron saint of mentally ill people (especially those with a rat phobia), travellers, pilgrims, recently dead people, and graves. (See St Gertrude in the Garden.)

It is fitting for Hamlet's mother to be present at his rebirth, to bear him anew:

GERTRUDE (5,1,279)

For love of God, forbear him.

GERTRUDE (5,1,291)

This is mere madness:
And thus awhile the fit will work on him;
Anon, as patient as the female dove,
When that her golden couplets are disclosed,
His silence will sit drooping.

The hatching dove eggs symbolize Hamlet's metaphorical rebirth. The silence symbolizes Hamlet's liberation from the warlike voice of Denmark. Doves are a symbol for peace.

When Hamlet emerges from that womb of earth he is no longer "from himself taken away." He has been reborn as himself, the rational scholar from Wittenberg.

"To Be OR Not to be. That is the question."
"Jesus answered and said unto him, Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God."
John 3:3 KJV

(2) Hamlet averted a war, thereby saving the lives of thousands of his countrymen.

(Extracts from Hamlet in a Nutshell - Hamlet Is an Anti-War Play )
. . . .
A gravedigger was hired on the very day that Hamlet emerged from his mother's womb, which was the same day his father put old Fortinbras into the "womb of earth" (his grave), thus acquiring land "that was and is the question of these wars" and which was Hamlet's inheritance, figuratively a graveyard, like the part of Poland not big enough to cover the dead from the impending war over that same land.

BERNARDO (1.1.121-124)

. . . . so like the king
that was and is the question of these wars.

That is Hamlet's dilemma - whether "to be or not to be," like the Ghost, "so like the king that was and is the question of these wars."
. . . .
Then with his dying words Hamlet proved that he was not "so like the king THAT was and IS THE QUESTION of these wars." He passed his inheritance of blood-soaked dirt along with the voice of Denmark to Fortinbras - without a war, thus saving the lives of thousands of his countrymen.

The arrogant and cowardly Prince Fortinbras, who had sent thousands of commoners to their graves for his "honour." is shocked that, at the Danish court, "so many princes" have died. In contrast, Hamlet has just saved the lives of thousands of commoners by refusing to be so like the "honourable" Fortinbras.

Even to this day, we are still so conditioned to bow to the divine rights of princes and presidents that Hamlet's concession to Fortinbras seems "dishonourable." But why should the common people go to their graves by the thousands for a straw, for a piece of ground not big enough to bury the dead, for the "honour" of pampered princes and pompous presidents?

Summary of the Themes of Hamlet

The main theme of Hamlet is "To thine ownself be true."
Hamlet's Tragic Flaw - http://www.thyorisons.com/#Tragic_Flaw
To Thine Ownself Be True - http://www.thyorisons.com/#Ownself_Be

Hamlet and Ophelia are both untrue to themselves by being excessively obedient to their fathers. The play is about excessive filial duty - it's a filial drama (Ophelia drama).
The Drama Filial - http://www.thyorisons.com/#Drama_Filial
Chaste Treasure in the Womb of Earth - http://www.thyorisons.com/#Chaste_Treasure
An Honest Ghost? - http://www.thyorisons.com/#Dishonest_Ghost
Old Men in the Book of his Brain - http://www.thyorisons.com/#Old_Men
Remembrances in the Book of Their Brains - http://www.thyorisons.com/#Remembrances
The Cause of Hamlet's Lunacy - http://www.thyorisons.com/#Cause_of_Lunacy

When Hamlet is true to himself, he's a rational scholar from Wittenberg. When Hamlet is "from himself taken away," he is Prince Hamlet, the soldier-son of a warlike king, who scoffs at reason as "thinking too precisely." Thus a sub-theme is "reason vs bloody royal tradition."
Reason Motif - http://www.thyorisons.com/#reason
Thinking Makes It So - http://www.thyorisons.com/#Thinking
A Document in Madness - http://www.thyorisons.com/#Document_Madness
God-like Reason Unused Where Kings Lead, Folly Follows - http://www.thyorisons.com/#Folly_Follows

Hamlet's father, his uncle, old Fortinbras, and young Fortinbras all valued dirt over people (as in a graveyard). Thus a major theme is the sin of killing for land. Hamlet's dilemma is whether "to be or not to be," like the Ghost, "so like the king that was and is the question of these wars."
Epitaph for a King - http://www.thyorisons.com/#Kings_Epitaph
To Be Or Not To Be - http://www.thyorisons.com/#To_be
Tis a Vice to Know Him - http://www.thyorisons.com/#Vice
To Inherit the Earth - http://www.thyorisons.com/#Inherit_Earth
The Womb of Earth - http://www.thyorisons.com/#Womb
When Your Clowns Speak - http://www.thyorisons.com/#Clowns

How If I Answer No? - http://www.thyorisons.com/#Answer_No

There is also a theme of purgatory and confession "to be forestalled ere we come to fall," to "avoid what is to come," "lest more mischance on plots and errors, happen."
Confess Thyself - http://www.thyorisons.com/#Confess_Thyself
Leave It To Karma - http://www.thyorisons.com/#Karma
The Majesty of Buried Denmark - http://www.thyorisons.com/#Majesty_Buried
The Rebirth of Hamlet - http://www.thyorisons.com/#Rebirth
Hamlet in a Nutshell - Hamlet Is an Anti-War Play - http://www.thyorisons.com/#Nutshell
Also please see Motifs in Hamlet

Motifs in Hamlet

Please see Motifs in Hamlet

To Be Or Not To Be

To be or not to be what? That is the question.

Hamlet is not agonizing over whether to live or die - he is agonizing over how to avoid damnation.

Hamlet feels bound by filial duty to try to kill King Claudius. To kill a king is a dangerous thing - he is likely to die in the attempt, but Hamlet does not fear death:

HAMLET (1.4.70)

Why, what should be the fear?
I do not set my life in a pin's fee;
And for my soul, what can it do to that,
Being a thing immortal as itself?

However, he does fear damnation:

HAMLET (2.2.609)

The spirit that I have seen
May be the devil: and the devil hath power
To assume a pleasing shape; yea, and perhaps
Out of my weakness and my melancholy,
As he is very potent with such spirits,
Abuses me to damn me: >

Trying to kill a king might be considered a suicide mission and suicide is a mortal sin. Attempting to kill a king would be like taking "arms against a sea of troubles" ).

FIRST CLOWN (5.1.15)

. . . .If the man go this WATER,
and drown himself, it is, will he, nill he, he
goes,--mark you that; but if the water come to him
and drown him, he drowns not himself: argal, he
that is not guilty of his own death

But suppose Hamlet succeeds in killing the king. Would that also be a sin? It would depend on his motives. Was he killing to defend the Danish people against a murderous tyrant?

HAMLET (5.2.73)

. . . . is't not to be damn'd,
To let this canker of our nature come
In further evil?

Or is "this canker of our nature" Hamlet's own ambition?

HAMLET (3.1.73)

To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there's the rub;
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come

HAMLET (2.2.268)

O God, I could be bounded in a nut shell and count
myself a king of infinite space, were it not that I
have bad dreams.

GUILDENSTERN

Which dreams indeed are ambition.

If Hamlet kills Claudius out of ambition, he will inherit the same blood-soaked ground that doomed both his uncle and his father to damnation.

A gravedigger was hired on the very day that Hamlet emerged from his mother's womb, which was the same day his father put old Fortinbras into the womb of earth (his grave), thus acquiring land "that was and is the question of these wars" and which was Hamlet's inheritance, figuratively a graveyard, not big enough to cover the dead from the impending war over that same land.

BERNARDO (1.1.121)

I think it be no other but e'en so:
Well may it sort that this portentous figure
Comes armed through our watch; so like the king
that was and is the question of these wars.

That was Hamlet's dilemma - whether "to be or not to be," like the Ghost, "so like the king that was and is the question of these wars."

Also please see
How to Love Hamlet

A Most Pitiful Ambition

HAMLET (3,2,39-46)

. . . And let those that play
your clowns speak no more than is set down for them;
for there be of them that will themselves laugh, to
set on some quantity of barren spectators to laugh
too; though, in the mean time, some necessary
question of the play be then to be considered:
that's villanous, and shows a most pitiful ambition
in the fool that uses it.

On the surface, "villanous" and "ambition" apply to the "those that play your clowns." However, for the audience, Shakespeare intended a second meaning. The "question of the play" is "villanous ambition."

(See Fine Revolution for the association between "villanous" and Hamlet's ambitious father.)

GHOST (1.5.8)

Pity me not

The word "ambition" in this play always refers to the willingness to kill for land, valuing dirt over people - as in a graveyard.

CLAUDIUS(1,2,21) (1.2.21)

Colleagued with the dream of his advantage,

HAMLET (2,2,268-271)

O God, I could be bounded in a nut shell and count
myself a king of infinite space, were it not that I
have bad dreams.

GUILDENSTERN

Which dreams indeed are ambition,

HAMLET

There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.

Horatio thought it strange that the ghost had returned from his grave, but there is a much deeper meaning to "There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, Than are dreamt of in your philosophy." As Guildenstern later says, "dreams indeed are ambition." After writing his father in the book of his brain, Hamlet is infected with those dreams of ambition. However Horatio represents Hamlet's rational side, before he forgot himself, before he was from himself taken aways, before he was infected by his father's bloody royal ambition. In Horatio's philosophy, there are no dreams of ambition.

HAMLET
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come

Such was the very armour he had on
When he the ambitious Norway combated;

why wouldst thou be a
breeder of sinners? I am myself indifferent honest;
but yet I could accuse me of such things that it
were better my mother had not borne me: I am very
proud, revengeful, ambitious,

some necessary
question of the play be then to be considered:
that's villanous, and shows a most pitiful ambition
in the fool that uses it.

Forgive me my foul murder'?
That cannot be; since I am still possess'd
Of those effects for which I did the murder,
My crown, mine own ambition and my queen.
May one be pardon'd and retain the offence?

Examples gross as earth exhort me:
Witness this army of such mass and charge
Led by a delicate and tender prince,
Whose spirit with divine ambition puff'd
Makes mouths at the invisible event,
Exposing what is mortal and unsure
To all that fortune, death and danger dare,
Even for an egg-shell.

Three Famous Quotations from Hamlet

O, that this too too solid flesh would melt
Thaw and resolve itself into a dew!
Or that the Everlasting had not fix'd
His canon 'gainst self-slaughter!

There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.

To be, or not to be: that is the question:

But what do they really mean?

********

CLAUDIUS (1.2.127)

No jocund health that Denmark drinks to-day,
But the great CANNON to the CLOUDS shall tell,
And the king's rouse the heavens all bruit again,
Re-speaking earthly thunder. Come away.
[Exeunt all but Hamlet]

HAMLET

O, that this too too solid flesh would melt
Thaw and resolve itself into a dew!
Or that the Everlasting had not fix'd
His CANON 'gainst self-slaughter! O God! God!

On the surface:
Hamlet seems to be contemplating suicide.

Dig deeper:
Claudius (Cloud-ius) had just said that he would fire his CANNON to the CLOUDS.

Hamlet already suspected Claudius of murdering his father. Later when he heard it from the Ghost, he said, "O my prophetic soul! My uncle!". If you knew somebody had murdered your father, would you wish for your own death, or for the death of the murderer? If Claudius dissolved into an actual cloud, when he fired his cannon to the clouds he would be committing self-slaughter.

Please see
The Cloud, the Cannon, and in the Cup a Union

********

HAMLET (1.5.185)

There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
Than are DREAMT of in your philosophy.

On the surface:
Hamlet seems to be telling Horatio that the Ghost exists even though ghosts are not a part of Horatio's rational philosophy.

Dig deeper:

HAMLET (2.2.268)

O God, I could be bounded in a nut shell and count
myself a king of infinite space, were it not that I
have BAD DREAMS

GUILDENSTERN

Which DREAMS indeed are AMBITION.

HAMLET (5.2.88)

. . . Dost know this water-fly?

HORATIO

No, my good lord.

HAMLET

THY STATE IS THE MORE GRACIOUS; for 'tis a vice to know him. He hath much land, and fertile: let a beast be lord of beasts, and his crib shall stand at the king's mess: 'tis a chough; but, as I say, SPACIOUS IN THE POSSESSION OF DIRT.

With the combination of these lines, Shakespeare is telling us, with dramatic irony, that Horatio's state is "the more gracious" because he lacks ambition to acquire land. THAT'S the thing that is not DREAMT of in Horatio's philosophy - AMBITION.

********

HAMLET (3.1.64)

To be, or not to be: that is the question:
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them? To die: to sleep;
No more; and by a sleep to say we end
The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to, 'tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wish'd. To die, to sleep;
To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there's the rub;
For in that sleep of death what DREAMS may come
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause:

On the surface:
Hamlet is contemplating suicide.

Dig deeper:
Hamlet is contemplating the possibly suicidal mission of trying to kill a king. He is questioning his own motives. His father and his uncle were both damned to hell by their own ambition for land. If Hamlet kills Claudius out of AMBITION to acquire his land, then Hamlet will be damned by his DREAMS of AMBITON.

BERNARDO (1.1.121)

I think it be no other but e'en so:
Well may it sort that this portentous figure
Comes armed through our watch; so like the king
THAT was and IS THE QUESTION of these wars.

"To be or not to be," like the Ghost, "so like the king THAT was and IS THE QUESTION of these wars" - THAT is Hamlet's dilemma.

Please see
To Be Or Not To Be
Hamlet in a Nutshell - Hamlet Is an Anti-War Play

How to Love Hamlet

Hamlet's Divided Soul

Hamlet was metaphorically and psychologically (and perhaps literally) possessed by the warlike spirit of his dead father.

When he is not "from himself taken away," Hamlet is a rational humanist scholar from Wittenberg. But Hamlet erases that side of himself from the book and volume of his brain and replaces it with the commandment of his warlike father. Thereafter all of Hamlet's soliloquies are really debates between the warring sides of his divided soul. Hamlet is a valiant soldier of the spirit, fighting a desperate internal battle to defend the sovereignty of his soul.

So when listing Hamlet's character traits you need to distinguish between Hamlet the rational scholar and Prince Hamlet the soldier-son of a warlike king.

HAMLET (3.1.32)

I am myself indifferent honest;
but yet I could accuse me of such things that it
were better my mother had not borne me: I am very
proud, revengeful, ambitious,

Hamlet himself is only "indifferent honest" because he knows he was untrue to himself when he erased himself from his brain and wrote his father there. Hamlet, when he is not himself, when when he is possessed by his father's spirt, is "proud, revengeful, ambitious."

HAMLET (5.1.265)

For, though I am not splenitive and rash,
Yet have I something in me dangerous,
Which let thy wiseness fear

HAMLET (5.2.224)

. . . What I have done,
That might your nature, honour and exception
Roughly awake, I here proclaim was madness.
Was't Hamlet wrong'd Laertes? Never Hamlet:
If Hamlet from himself be ta'en away,
And when he's not himself does wrong Laertes,
Then Hamlet does it not, Hamlet denies it.
Who does it, then? His madness: if't be so,
Hamlet is of the faction that is wrong'd;
His madness is poor Hamlet's enemy.

In the "my thoughts be bloody" soliloquy:

Hamlet the scholar says,

(4.4.38)
Sure, he that made us with such large discourse,
Looking before and after, gave us not
That capability and god-like reason
To fust in us unused.

But Prince Hamlet, the soldier-son of a warlike king scoffs at "thinking too precisely on the event" and concludes:

(4.4.68)
My thoughts be bloody, or be nothing worth!

A gravedigger was hired on the very day that Hamlet emerged from his mother's womb, which was the same day his father put old Fortinbras into the womb of earth (his grave), thus acquiring land " that was and is the question of these wars" and which was Hamlet's inheritance, figuratively a graveyard, which, like the part of Poland conquered by Fortinbras, was not big enough to cover the dead from the impending war over that same land.

BERNARDO (1.1.121)

I think it be no other but e'en so:
Well may it sort that this portentous figure
Comes armed through our watch; so like the king
that was and is the question of these wars.

That is Hamlet's dilemma - whether "TO BE OR NOT TO BE," like the Ghost, "so like the king THAT was and IS THE QUESTION of these wars."

For Prince Hamlet the soldier-son of a warlike king, please see
God-like Reason Unused

For Hamlet the rational scholar, please see
Thinking Makes It So
The Election of His Soul
Or I Do Forget Myself

Also see
The Madness of Hamlet

Hamlet's Tragic Flaw

The title says it all: "The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark." Because he was Prince of Denmark he was not free to carve for himself. He was subject to the voice of Denmark - and that voice was sent from Hell to speak of horrors.

Hamlet, like all the other major characters, was untrue to himself. When he was himself, he was like Horatio, a student from Wittenberg. But as he said, "Horatio, or I do forget myself." He did forget himself. He erased himself and his humanist education (all saws of books, all forms, all pressures past, that youth and observation copied there) from his own brain and there in the book and volume of his brain he wrote his father's commandment (the voice of Denmark, sent from Hell to speak of horrors, to breathe contagion, unfolding the secrets of his prison-house that he was forbid to tell to mortal ears). Hamlet was from himself taken away.

Thinking Makes It So

Rosencrantz
We think not so, my lord.
Hamlet
Why, then, 'tis none to you; for there is nothing
either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern interpret "there is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so" to mean moral relativism ("there is no such thing as good or bad - it's all a matter of subjective opinion"). However, Hamlet, although he's contemptuously aware of their moral relativism, means it in another sense: "Morality is the product of reason. You must think in order to determine what is good and what is bad."

Is Hamlet's fate to be good or to be bad? That is the question. When he is not "from himself taken away," Hamlet is a rational humanist scholar from Wittenberg. But Hamlet erases that side of himself from the book and volume of his brain and replaces it with the commandment of his warlike father. Thereafter all of Hamlet's soliloquies are really debates between the warring sides of his divided soul. Hamlet is a valiant soldier of the spirit, fighting a desperate internal battle to defend the sovereignty of his soul.

In the "my thoughts be bloody" soliloquy:

Hamlet the scholar says,
Sure, he that made us with such large discourse,
Looking before and after, gave us not
That capability and god-like reason
To fust in us unused.

But Prince Hamlet, the soldier-son of a warlike king scoffs at "thinking too precisely on the event" and concludes:
My thoughts be bloody, or be nothing worth!

Please see Reason Motif

The Memory Be Green - Hamlet in Historical Context

Government censors tried to prevent plays from saying anything about current events or recent history. Playwrights took that as a challenge - they tried to sneak things past the censors.

The most sensitive topic of the day was the result of a royal divorce about 70 years earlier. King Henry VIII wanted to divorce his wife Catherine because although she'd given him a daughter, Mary, she could no longer have children, and Henry wanted a male heir. Henry asked the Pope to approve the divorce but the Pope refused (mainly because the Vatican was surrounded by the armies of Catherine's nephew, Charles V of Spain). So Henry divorced England from the Catholic Church, made himself the head of the Anglican Church and approved the divorce himself. Then he seized the extensive lands owned by English Catholic monasteries. Those monasteries had accumulated that land over the centuries when wealthy men bequeathed land to the Church in exchange for prayers to help them pass from Purgatory to Heaven. A few years before Henry's divorce, Martin Luther had caused a schism in the Church, founding Protestantism as an alternative to Catholicism, by criticizing the corruption of the Catholic Church. Martin Luther claimed that corruption was caused mainly by the Church practice of selling indulgences (free passes out of Purgatory). Those indulgences had allowed the Church to acquire vast amounts of land throughout Europe. That land now had become a tempting target for European Kings - if they converted to Protestantism they could justify seizing the Church-owned lands within their realms.

So Henry got his divorce and seized the monastery lands and sold them. Thereafter many middle-class Englishmen owned former monastery lands, and thus had a vested interest in keeping England Protestant. Henry's second wife Anne Boleyn gave him a daughter, Elizabeth. Then Henry chopped off Anne's head. Henry went through several more wives, decapitating some, divorcing others, and he finally got a son, Edward. When Henry died young Edward became King Edward VI. But Edward was sickly and died a few years later. He was succeeded by Queen Mary, the Catholic daughter of Catherine. Queen Mary married her cousin Phillip II of Spain (son of Charles V). Mary and Phillip tried to return England to Catholicism, but despite killing a lot of Protestants (hence her nickname, "Bloody Mary"), they were only partly successful, partly because of the resistance of all those middle-class Englishmen who were now owners of former monastery lands. When Mary died, Phillip returned to Spain and Anne Boleyn's daughter became Queen Elizabeth I of England and Catholicism was once again banned in England. English Catholics had to pay heavy fines. Any Catholic priest caught saying Mass was executed for treason. The brother of one of young Shakespeare's teachers was a Catholic missionary who was caught and executed. There is evidence that William Shakespeare's father was a secret Catholic.

In 1588, about 30 years after Mary died, Phillip II sent his Armada to attempt "to recover of us, by strong hand and terms compulsatory, those foresaid lands" (like Fortinbras). Thanks to superior English seamanship and provident bad weather, the Armada was destroyed and England saved, but a dozen years later, when Hamlet steps on the stage, "the memory be green."

Purgatory was a major theme in Hamlet. The ghost of Hamlet's father was in Purgatory, doomed to walk the night trying to recover his "extorted treasure in the womb of earth." Thirty years before (just as there was a 30-year gap between the death of Mary and the launching of the Armada), Hamlet's father had killed Fortinbras' father to gain lands that were Hamlet's inheritance. On that same day, Hamlet was born and a gravedigger was hired. In the play, Hamlet looked into a grave and said, "The very conveyances of his lands will hardly lie in this box; and must the inheritor himself have no more, ha?"

The "necessary question of the play" was "To be or not to be. That is the question." But to be or not to be what? Perhaps the answer was given earlier in the play when Bernardo was describing the ghost of Hamlet's father: "so like the king that was and is the question of these wars." That was Hamlet's dilemma - whether "to be or not to be" . . . . "so like the king that was and is the question of these wars."

That theme still resonates today as nation-states wage war over land, turning those lands into graveyards.
Also see
Terms Compulsatory
How to Love Hamlet

Terms Compulsatory

CLAUDIUS (1.2.17)

. . . young Fortinbras,
Holding a weak supposal of our worth,
Or thinking by our late dear brother's death
Our state to be disjoint and out of frame,
Colleagued with the dream of his advantage,
He hath not fail'd to pester us with message,
Importing the surrender of those lands
Lost by his father, with all bonds of law,
To our most valiant brother.

Thirty years earlier Hamlet's father (old King Hamlet) had slain old King Fortinbras in a fatal duel, winning (by the terms of the duel) a piece of ground to which young Hamlet fell heir. Young Fortinbras therefore must be at least 30 years old. But while old King Hamlet lived, young Fortinbras never dared to attempt vengeance against old King Hamlet nor to reclaim those lands lost by his father, with all bonds of law. But the cowardly young Fortinbras believes (probably correctly) that he has a better chance of reclaiming the land from Claudius. For one thing, Claudius won't challenge him to a personal duel. The two "brave" princes (Prince Fortinbras and King Claudius) can fight it out with no royal bloodshed - just a few thousand underlings.

But old King Hamlet also played an essential part in causing the impending war. If he had been less ambitious and "honourable" he would have turned down old Fortinbras' challenge ( How if I answer 'no'?) and never would have obtained the land that is now the question of these wars.

HORATIO (1.1.93)

. . . Our last king,
Whose image even but now appear'd to us,
Was . . . by Fortinbras of Norway,
. . .
Dared to the combat; in which [old King] Hamlet--
. . .
Did slay this Fortinbras; who by a seal'd compact,
. . .
Did forfeit, with his life, all those his lands
. . .which had return'd
To the inheritance of Fortinbras,
Had he been vanquisher; as, by the same covenant,
. . .
His fell to Hamlet. Now, sir, young Fortinbras,
. . .
Hath . . .
Shark'd up a list of lawless resolutes,
. . . to recover of us, by strong hand
And terms compulsatory, those foresaid lands
So by his father lost: and this . . .
Is the main motive of our preparations,
The source of this our watch and the chief head
Of this post-haste and romage in the land.

BERNARDO

. . .
Well may it sort that this portentous figure
Comes armed through our watch; so like the king
that was and is the question of these wars.

Hamlet later alluded to old Jephtha .

HAMLET (2.2.418)

Am I not i' the right, old Jephthah?
. . .

HAMLET (2.2.426)

. . .
'It came to pass, as most like it was,

"As most like it was" sounds like "so like the king that was."

Hamlet later said "The king is a thing," so substitute "it" for "the king that" and "so like the king that was" becomes "so like it was" which is synonymous with "as most like it was." ("The king is a thing" also helps explain "how the wheel becomes it," derived from "the cease of majesty . . . it is a massy wheel.")

The story of Jephtha, in Judges 11, sounds most like the story of the king that was and is the question of these wars. The Ammonites were preparing for war against Israel to recover land Israel had taken from them, just as young Fortinbras was preparing for war to recover of us, by strong hand and terms compulsatory, those foresaid lands so by his father lost in the fatal duel with old King Hamlet.

Judges 11.12
... What hast thou to do with me, that thou art come against me to fight in my land?

Judges 11.13
...Because Israel took away my land... now therefore restore those lands again

It is worth noting that Shakespeare took pains to let us know that there had been a 30-year interval between the time old Fortinbras died and the time young Fortinbras came to reclaim those lands by strong hand and terms compulsatory. There was also a 30-year interval between the time Queen Mary died and the time her widower, Prince Phillip of Spain, sent the Spanish Armada to attempt to reclaim England by strong hand and terms compulsatory.

Also see
This Eternal Blazon Must Not Be
How to Love Hamlet

How Old Is Hamlet?

HAMLET
. . . .How long hast thou been a grave-maker?
First Clown
Of all the days i' the year, I came to't that day that our last king Hamlet overcame Fortinbras.
HAMLET
How long is that since?
First Clown
Cannot you tell that? every fool can tell that: it was the very day that young Hamlet was born. . .

First Clown
. . .I have been sexton here, man and boy, thirty years.

Hamlet was hired on the same day that his father killed old Fortinbras to win the piece of ground "that was and is the question of these wars." On that same day, a gravedigger was hired. The gravedigger was hired 30 years ago. Therefore, Hamlet is 30 years old.

Why did Shakespeare choose 30 years? I believe he first chose the interval from the death of old Fortinbras to the time young Fortinbras came to recover the lost land "by strong hand and terms compulsatory." He made that parallel the 30-year interval from 1558 (death of Queen Mary of England) to 1588 (the Spanish Armada). In 1588 (just a dozen years before Shakespeare wrote Hamlet) Phillip II of Spain, widower of Queen Mary, had launched the Spanish Armada to attempt to recover England for himself and for the Catholic Church "by strong hand and terms compulsatory."

Doomed to Walk the Night

Why was Hamlet's father doomed to walk the night?

The Ghost himself believed that all he wanted was for Hamlet to revenge his murder. However, the Ghost admitted that he was

Doom'd for a certain term to walk the night,
And for the day confined to fast in fires,
Till the foul crimes done in my days of nature
Are burnt and purged away.

What "foul crimes" had Hamlet's father committed since his last confession (presumably the Sunday before his death)? Bernardo and Horatio believed that the Ghost had been frightened away "like a guilty thing" by the crowing of the cock:

BERNARDO

It was about to speak, when the cock crew.

HORATIO

And then it started like a guilty thing
Upon a fearful summons...

However the Ghost did not flee immediately after the cock crew. It didn't flee until Horatio accused it of walking in death for its "extorted treasure in the womb of earth."

If thou hast any sound, or use of voice,
Speak to me:
If there be any good thing to be done,
That may to thee do ease and grace to me,
Speak to me:

Cock crows
If thou art privy to thy country's fate,
Which, happily, foreknowing may avoid, O, speak!
Or if thou hast uphoarded in thy life
Extorted treasure in the womb of earth,
For which, they say, you spirits oft walk in death,
Speak of it: stay, and speak! Stop it, Marcellus.

That was the sin that was keeping Hamlet's father in Purgatory. Like the biblical rich man and his camel, Hamlet's father was doomed to walk the earth because he could not part with his earthly treasures.

Fine Revolution

HAMLET (5.1.88)

Why, e'en so: and now my Lady Worm's; chapless, and knocked about the mazzard with a sexton's spade: here's fine revolution, an we had the trick to see't.

Within its immediate context this is a rather shallow pun about the turning (revolution) of the fine dirt in a grave, which is also the final revolution of the wheel of fortune. But it becomes more exciting when we take it as a challenge to unearth the subtle motif of wheel puns spun throughout the play.

HAMLET (1.5.134)

There's ne'er a villain dwelling in all Denmark
But he's an arrant knave

HORATIO

There needs no ghost, my lord, come from the grave
To tell us this.

HAMLET

Why, right, you are i th'right,
And so without more circumstance at all
I hold it fit that we shake hands and part,
You as your business and desires shall point you.
For every man has business and desire,
Such as it is - and for mine own poor part,
Look you, I'll go pray.

HORATIO

These are but wild and whirling words, my lord.

These are indeed "whirling words." Shakespeare often wrote of madness but he only used the word "whirling" one other time, and then it didn't refer to madness: "To calm this tempest whirling in the court" (Titus Andronicus,IV,2). He used "whirling" here to alert us to the "fine revolution" of Hamlet's words.

In addition to the usual meaning of "bad guy," "villain" means a person of low birth, as in "I am no villain; I am the youngest son of Sir Rowland de Boys." (As You Like It, I,1) A villain would not live in a palace - he would typically dwell in a village or hamlet. Thus a "villain dwelling" is a Hamlet. (Ever wonder why Shakespeare never punned on Hamlet/hamlet? Here's the missing pun.) So Hamlet and his father (Hamlet Sr) were knaves or naves. One definition of "nave" is the nave of a church. This definition is implicitly used when Hamlet says "and for mine own poor part, Look you, I'll go pray" "Nave" can also be the nave (hub) of a wheel, as in the speech that Hamlet requested from the First Player:

(2.2.502)

Out, out, thou strumpet fortune! All you gods,
In general synod, take away her power;
Brake all the spokes and fellies from her wheel,
And bowl the round nave down the hill of heaven,
As low as to the fiends.

Kings are bound by fortune (fate, birth) to determine the fates of their subjects

ROSENCRANTZ (3.3.16)

The cease of majesty
Dies not alone, but like a gulf doth draw
What's near it with it. It is a massy wheel,
Fixed on the summit of the highest mount,
To whose huge spokes ten thousand lesser things
Are mortic'd and adjoin'd; which when it falls,
Each small annexment, petty consequence,
Attends the boist'rous ruin. Never alone
Did the king sigh, but with a general groan.

BERNARDO (1.1.54)

It would be spoke to.

[The ghost wants more spokes on his nave as he rolls down to hell]

Putting all this together, we see Hamlet cryptically likening himself (as a prince and potential king) to the nave of a wheel. His friends are his spokes, which are perpendicular (i' the right) to the nave. Before his wheel of fortune (his fate) turns anymore (without more circumstance), he wants to break all the spokes from her wheel so that they won't be carried down the hill of heaven with him. (In the original staging, it is likely that Hamlet spun around as he shook hands with Horatio and flung him outward.) He wants to sigh alone (in contrast to Laertes, who brought along a mob when he confronted the king). However, Hamlet is not only the nave of a wheel; he is also the nave of a church (where he'll go pray). He cannot escape death, but he will avoid damnation.

Also see
How the Wheel Becomes It
How to Love Hamlet

How the Wheel Becomes It

POLONIUS

Therefore, since brevity is the soul of wit, (2.2.96-98)
And tediousness the limbs and outward flourishes,
I will be brief

In this bit of dramatic irony, "tediousness" alludes to Polonius ("these tedious old fools" 2.2.235 ). "Wit" alludes to Claudius ("wicked wit and gifts" (1.5.49)). Claudius had been compared to a "massy wheel" ( (3.3.18)).

Polonius, with his meddling, had put himself where Hamlet expected to find a king (behind the arras) and thus metaphorically imitated the nave (center) of a wheel, and so Hamlet cut him short (made him be brief).

POLONIUS

...I went round to work, (2.2.147)

POLONIUS

If circumstances lead me, I will find (2.2.168)
Where truth is hid, though it were hid indeed
Within the centre.

HAMLET

Thou wretched, rash, intruding fool, farewell! (3.4.37)
I took thee for thy better: take thy fortune

HAMLET

Mother, good night. Indeed this counsellor (3.4.231)
Is now most still, most secret and most grave,
Who was in life a foolish prating knave.

Proverbs 10:8

...a prating fool shall fall.

OPHELIA

You must sing 'A-down, adown', an you call him a-down-a.
O, how the wheel becomes it! (4.5.188)

FIRST PLAYER

Out, out, thou strumpet fortune! All you gods, (2.2.502-508)
In general synod, take away her power;
Brake all the spokes and fellies from her wheel,
And bowl the round nave down the hill of heaven,
As low as to the fiends. ...

POLONIUS

This is too long.

HAMLET

It shall to the barber's, with your beard.

OPHELIA

They bore him barefaced on the bier (4.5.179)

(Rosencrantz and Guildenstern also lived "in the middle...In the secret parts of fortune... she is a strumpet ( (2.2.247-251)), Thus, they met a similar fate to Polonius. Polonius was killed in place of the nave Claudius - Rosencrantz and Guildenstern were killed in place of the nave Hamlet.)

Also see
Fine Revolution
How to Love Hamlet

Hell Itself Breathes Out Contagion

The ghost said to Hamlet:

But that I am forbid
to tell the secrets of my prison-house
I could a tale unfold whose lightest word
would harrow up thy soul, freeze thy young blood,
Make thy two eyes, like stars, start from their spheres,
Thy knotted and combined locks to part
And each particular hair to stand on end,
Like quills upon the fretful porpentine:
But this eternal blazon must not be
To ears of flesh and blood. list, list, o list!

But then the ghost went ahead and told the tale anyway and it drove Hamlet mad.

OPHELIA

My lord, as I was sewing in my closet,
Lord Hamlet, with his doublet all unbraced;
No hat upon his head; his stockings foul'd,
Ungarter'd, and down-gyved to his ancle;
Pale as his shirt; his knees knocking each other;
And with a look so piteous in purport
As if he had been loosed out of hell
to speak of horrors.,--he comes before me.

But, in this scene, Hamlet was mute. Unlike his father, Hamlet refused to pass on the madness. He was loosed out of hell to speak of horrors, but he would not speak them to Ophelia.

As Hamlet later said, "hell itself breathes out contagion to this world," but with his silence Hamlet tried to protect Ophelia from that breath of contagion.

The Rest Is Silence

LAERTES

...he...may give his saying deed...no further
Than the main voice of Denmark goes withal.

CLAUDIUS

Be as ourself in Denmark

HAMLET

O God, I could be bounded in a nut shell and count myself a king of infinite space, were it not that I have bad dreams.

Guildenstern

Which dreams indeed are ambition

HAMLET

....To die, to sleep;
To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there's the rub;
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause:

Hamlet is contemplating an attempt to kill the King - which would probably be suicidal. He is questioning his own motives for wanting to kill the King. Would he, like his warlike father and his devious uncle, be killing out of ambition to gain land? If so, his afterlife would be Hell.

Hamlet at heart is just a student who wants to return to Wittenberg. But he cannot breach the custom that unites a king (or his heir) with his kingdom. He cannot reform his old stock. His choice is not his own - he is subject to the voice of Denmark. Both his father and his uncle want him to be like them in Denmark. Hamlet's dilemma is whether to be or not to be . . . . "so like the king that was and is the question of these wars. He kills Claudius only after he knows that he himself is dying, so he can avoid inheriting the kingdom and being dragged into hell by his union with it, as Claudius was.

In the end he finally silences the voice of Denmark (or at least passes it over to Fortinbras - he has my dying voice) - going to his final rest, free from dreams of ambition. The rest is silence.

The Voice of Denmark

When Hamlet said the rest is silence, he meant that he was finally free from the voice of Denmark. When Hamlet was ranting in Ophelia's grave, Gertrude likened his insane ranting to golden couplets and predicted that his sanity/silence would soon return - which it did when he realized that he had from himself taken away (by the voice of Denmark, i.e. his vow to his father that his father's will should live all alone in his brain.

The play had begun with the question, "Who's there?" and the injunction to "Unfold yourself." Hamlet, with his vow to his father had enfolded himself in his father's value-system, just as he enfolded the note in the form of the other, the changling never known. By the end of the play, he had finally unfolded himself.

Osric was a reflection or shadow of Hamlet. Hamlet said, "to know a man well, were to know himself," but he admitted to the vice of knowing Osric. Osric was rich in the possession of dirt - Hamlet was heir to a graveyard. The king wanted to place a wager on Hamlet's head - Hamlet wanted to place a hat on Osric's head. Ophelia sang of Hamlet with a cockle(shell) hat. Osric ran off with "the shell on his head." The old king ordered Hamlet to remember - Hamlet told Osric to remember. Osric's purse was empty, all his golden words were spent. Hamlet's purse, with his father's signet, was finally empty - he was ready for silence.

LAERTES (1.3.28-30)

...he...may give his saying deed...no further
Than the main voice of Denmark goes withal.

HAMLET (2.2.435)

Pray God, your voice, like a piece of uncurrent gold, be not cracked within the ring.

GERTRUDE (5.1.291)

This is mere madness,
And thus a while the fit will work on him,
Anon, as patient as the female dove,
When that her golden couplets are disclosed,
His silence will sit drooping.

HAMLET (5.2.53)

I had my father's signet in my purse,
Which was the model of that Danish seal,
Folded the writ up in form of the other,
Subscribed it, gave't the impression, placed it safely,
The changeling never known.

HORATIO (5.2.134)

His purse is empty already: all 's golden words are spent.

HAMLET (5.2.374)

. . . the rest is silence.

See
How to Love Hamlet

Tis a Vice to Know Him

Hamlet.
Dost know this water-fly?
Horatio.
No, my good lord.
Hamlet
Thy state is the more gracious; for 'tis a vice to know him. He hath much land, and fertile: let a beast be lord of beasts, and his crib shall stand at the king's mess: 'tis a chough; but, as I say, spacious in the possession of dirt.

Hamlet.
...to know a man well, were to know himself.

Horatio does not know Osric, but Hamlet knows him all too well. Horatio represents Hamlet's true unambitious self. Osric represents the man that Hamlet was born to be, the man Hamlet has struggled not to be.

The old king ordered Hamlet to remember - Hamlet told Osric to remember.

Osric was a reflection or shadow of Hamlet. Osric was rich in the possession of dirt - Hamlet was heir to a graveyard.

Hamlet tells Osric to put his hat on his head because 'tis very cold; the wind is northerly. But Osric is reluctant to put his hat on his head. This is echoed by Hamlet's reluctance to let Claudius put a great wager on his head. But the wind is northerly (I am but mad north-north-west. The ghost appeared when yond same star that's westward from the pole had made his course to illume that part of heaven where now it burns [Purgatory?] ), so Hamlet accepts the wager on his head as Osric runs off with the shell on his head. (Ophelia sang of Hamlet with a cockle(shell) hat).

Osric's purse was empty, all his golden words were spent. Hamlet's purse, with his father's signet, was finally empty - he was ready for silence.

I Know a Hawk from a Handsaw - Hamlet and the Spanish Armada

Hamlet (2.2.387-388)

I am but mad north-north-west: when the wind is southerly I know a hawk from a handsaw.

BERNARDO [describing the previous appearance of the ghost of Hamlet's father] (1.1.44-47)

Last night of all,
When yond same star that's westward from the pole
Had made his course to illume that part of heaven
Where now it burns,

The "pole" is the North Star. "Westward from the pole" would be "north-northwest." Thus "I am but mad, north-northwest" means that Hamlet is only mad when under the influence of his father's ghost.

"Pole" might also be an allusion to Reginald Pole, who, as Bloody Mary's Catholic Archbishop of Canterbury, liked to call himself "the Pole Star" because he thought of himself as the guiding star about which the English people revolved. Please see Shakespeare, Breakspear, and Broken Pole (The Prophesy) (Note: I mark my speculations with green italics. The rest is accepted historical fact.)

But Reginald Pole died of a broken heart when Queen Mary died and England reverted to Protestantism. Thirty years later, Queen Mary's widower, King Phillip of Spain sent the Duke of Medina Sidonia with the Spanish Armada to bring England back to the Catholic Church by "strong hands and terms compulsatory." But like Hamlet, Medina was but mad north-north-west: when the wind [was] southerly,) he was sane. On August 8, Saint Dominic's Day, Medina decided that if the wind continued to blow from the south (which it did) he would have to abandon the attack on England. He was unable to recapture the faith of Englishmen by force. He did "it wrong, being so majestical, to offer it the show of violence, for it is, as the air, invulnerable, and [his] vain blows malicious mockery." St Dominic had advocated reasoning with heretics to bring them back to the Church by persuasion rather than burning them. The significance of St Dominic's Day was not lost on English Catholics.

From the context, "I know the difference between a hawk and a handsaw" clearly means "I am in my right mind." However, I don't know why Shakespeare used that phrase to denote sanity. It might be related to the following line in Hamlet's instructions to the players:

HAMLET (3.2.4)

. . . Nor do not saw the air
too much with your hand, thus, but use all gently;
for in the very torrent, tempest, and, as I may say,
the whirlwind of passion, you must acquire and beget
a temperance that may give it smoothness.

In the tempest that had blown his Armada off course, Medina acquired and begat a temperance to abandon his vain blows against England. Perhaps "hand" is a pun on "Armada", similar to "Fort-in-bras" (near French for "strong arm").

It is worth noting that Shakespeare took pains to let us know that there had been a 30-year interval between the time old Fortinbras died and the time young Fortinbras came to reclaim those lands by strong hand and terms compulsatory. There was also a 30-year interval between the time Queen Mary died and the time her widower, Prince Phillip of Spain, sent the Spanish Armada to attempt to reclaim England by strong hand and terms compulsatory.

Elsewhere Hamlet alludes to another war to recover lost land, with his cryptic reference to old Jephtha.

HAMLET (2.2.418)

Am I not i' the right, old Jephthah?
. . .

HAMLET (2.2.426)

. . .
'It came to pass, as most like it was,

"As most like it was" sounds like "so like the king that was."

BERNARDO (1.1.121-124)

. . . . so like the king
that was and is the question of these wars.

That is Hamlet's dilemma - whether "to be or not to be," like the Ghost, "so like the king that was and is the question of these wars."

So like so many kings, his father, or old Jephtha.

The story of Jephtha, in Judges 11, sounds most like the story of the king that was and is the question of these wars. The Ammonites were preparing for war against Israel to recover land Israel had taken from them, just as young Fortinbras was preparing for war to recover of us, by strong hand and terms compulsatory, those foresaid lands so by his father lost in the fatal duel with old King Hamlet.

Judges 11.12
... What hast thou to do with me, that thou art come against me to fight in my land?

Judges 11.13
...Because Israel took away my land... now therefore restore those lands again

And you, the judges, bear a wary eye. (5.2.278)


Also please see
The Memory Be Green - Hamlet in Historical Context
How to Love Hamlet

To Inherit the Earth

Hamlet was born to carry on a line of kings. Those kings were bound to Danish dirt by birth and fate. The liegemen to the Dane were friends to this ground. Claudius exhorted Hamlet to be as ourself in Denmark. The King was synonymous with the land - the majesty of buried Denmark.

Hamlet's father had once fought a duel to the death with old Fortinbras to acquire a piece of ground the inheritance of which fell to young Hamlet.
Hamlet
How long hast thou been a grave-maker?
First Clown
Of all the days i' the year, I came to't that day that our last king Hamlet overcame Fortinbras.
Hamlet.
How long is that since?
First Clown
Cannot you tell that? every fool can tell that: it was the very day that young Hamlet was born

Was this then Hamlet's "inheritance" - a graveyard?

Lord Polonius
Will you walk out of the air [heir], my lord?
Hamlet
Into my grave.

Hamlet (standing over a grave)
The very conveyances of his lands will hardly lie in this box; and must the inheritor himself have no more, ha?

Must the Inheritor Himself Have No More?

Horatio
. . . Did slay this Fortinbras; who by a seal'd compact,
Well ratified by law and heraldry,
Did forfeit, with his life, all those his lands
Which he stood seized of, to the conqueror:
Against the which, a moiety competent
Was gaged by our king; which had return'd
To the inheritance of Fortinbras,
Had he been vanquisher; as, by the same covenant,
And carriage of the article design'd,
His fell to Hamlet.

In other words, the loser lost not only his life but also "all those his lands which he stood seized of." Young Fortinbras' uncle is called "Norway," which implies that his uncle is King of Norway. Old Fortinbras was called "Fortinbras of Norway." Maybe he was the King of Norway, or maybe just the brother of the king. Apparently "all those his lands which he stood seized of" was not all of Norway, because the uncle of young Fortinbras, old Norway, still retained that. Probably the land in question was some small patch of ground that was in dispute between Denmark and Norway.

That land is very important to the plot and theme of the play. Throughout the play, there is a war impending over that same land.

That land was part of Hamlet's inheritance. Hamlet was born on the very day of that fatal duel (thirty years ago), and also on that same day a gravedigger was hired. This implies that Hamlet's inheritance was metaphorically a graveyard. This metaphor is reinforced in couple places:

Polonius (2,2,222-224)
Though this be madness, yet there is method in 't. Will you walk out of the AIR, my lord?
Hamlet
Into my GRAVE.
Polonius
Indeed, that is out o' the AIR.

Hamlet is making a pun on air/heir. He knows that he is heir to a grave.

Hamlet (commenting on a grave) (5,1,103-112)
This fellow might be in's time a great buyer of land, with his statutes, his recognizances, his fines, his double vouchers, his recoveries: is this the fine of his fines, and the RECOVER of his recoveries, to have his fine pate full of fine dirt? will his vouchers vouch him no more of his purchases, and double ones too, than the length and breadth of a pair of indentures? The very CONVEYANCES of his LANDS will hardly lie in this box; and must the INHERITOR himself have no more, ha?

That speech not only reinforces the idea of inheriting a grave, it also contains a couple words that echo lines about Fortinbras RECOVERING the lands his father lost and seeking a CONVEYANCE over Denmark.

Horatio (1,1,108-120)
Now, sir, young Fortinbras,
. . .
. . . to RECOVER of us, by strong hand
And terms compulsatory, those foresaid lands
So by his father lost: and this, I take it,
Is the main motive of our preparations,
The source of this our watch and the chief head
Of this post-haste and romage in the land.

PRINCE FORTINBRAS (4,4,1-4)
Go, captain, from me greet the Danish king;
Tell him that, by his licence, Fortinbras
Craves the CONVEYANCE of a promised march
Over his kingdom

Hamlet's description of Fortinbras' planned attack on Poland also is an apt description of the impending war between Fortinbras and Denmark:

HAMLET (4,4,26-30)
Two thousand souls and twenty thousand ducats
Will not debate the question of this straw:
This is the imposthume of much wealth and peace,
That inward breaks, and shows no cause without
Why the man dies.

HAMLET
Witness this army of such mass and charge
Led by a delicate and tender prince,
Whose spirit with divine ambition puff'd
. . . .
. . . I see
The imminent death of twenty thousand men,
That, for a fantasy and trick of fame,
Go to their GRAVES like beds, fight for a plot
Whereon the numbers cannot try the cause,
Which is not TOMB enough and continent
To hide the slain?

That reiterates the motif that the land at stake in any war is ultimately a graveyard.

Please see
http://www.thyorisons.com/#Nutshell - Hamlet in a Nutshell - Hamlet Is an Anti-War Play
http://www.thyorisons.com/#Rebirth - The Rebirth of Hamlet

Epitaph for a King

Epitaph for a King
(derived from Shakespeare by Ray Eston Smith Jr)

He drank to his union with his land,
Now he's rich in dirt, for all it's worth,
Here he lies in the womb of earth,
A grave man, united with his land.

Explanation:

HORATIO (to the King's Ghost) (1.1.148)

Or if thou hast uphoarded in thy life
Extorted treasure in the womb of earth,
For which, they say, you spirits oft walk in death

CLAUDIUS (1.2.124)

Be as ourself in Denmark. . . .
No jocund health that Denmark drinks to-day,
But the great cannon to the clouds shall tell,
And the king's rouse the heavens all bruit again,
Re-speaking earthly thunder.

HAMLET (1.4.9)

The king doth wake to-night and takes his rouse,
Keeps wassail, and the swaggering up-spring reels;
And, as he drains his draughts of Rhenish down,
The kettle-drum and trumpet thus bray out
The triumph of his pledge.

CLAUDIUS (3.3.54)

. . . But, O, what form of prayer
Can serve my turn? 'Forgive me my foul murder'?
That cannot be; since I am still possess'd
Of those effects for which I did the murder,
My crown, mine own ambition and my queen.
May one be pardon'd and retain the offence?

HAMLET (4.4.61)

. . . I see
The imminent death of twenty thousand men,
That, for a fantasy and trick of fame,
Go to their graves like beds, fight for a plot
Whereon the numbers cannot try the cause,
Which is not tomb enough and continent
To hide the slain?

HAMLET (describing Osric) (5.2.90)

. . . . 'tis a vice to
know him. He hath much land, and fertile: let a
beast be lord of beasts, and his crib shall stand at
the king's mess: 'tis a chough; but, as I say,
spacious in the possession of dirt.

HAMLET (commenting on an open grave) (5.1.110)

The very conveyances of his lands will hardly lie in
this box; and must the inheritor himself have no more, ha?

CLAUDIUS (5.2.266)

Set me the stoops of wine upon that table.
. . . .
The king shall drink . . .
And in the cup an union shall he throw,
Richer than that which four successive kings
In Denmark's crown have worn. Give me the cups;
And let the kettle to the trumpet speak,
The trumpet to the cannoneer without,
The cannons to the heavens, the heavens to earth,
'Now the king drinks . . . .
And you, the judges, bear a wary eye.

HAMLET (forcing Claudius to drink from the poisoned cup) (5.2.336)

Here, thou incestuous, murderous, damned Dane,
Drink off this potion. Is thy union here?

Also see

My Uncle, More Like My Father

How to Love Hamlet

Epitaph for a Peacemaker

Hamlet's epitaph:

Epitaph for a Peacemaker
(derived from Hamlet by Ray Eston Smith Jr)

"To be or not to be so like the king,"
For Hamlet THAT was and is the question.
With Denmark's dying voice Hamlet did bring
The final answer. "NO!" his answer soars
To the heavens, "now END all of these wars!"

Explanation:

" To be or not to be " so like the king,"
For Hamlet THAT was and is the question.
With Denmark's dying voice Hamlet did bring
The final answer. "NO!" his answer soars
To the heavens, "now END all of these wars!"

A gravedigger was hired on the very day that Hamlet emerged from his mother's womb, which was the same day his father put old Fortinbras into the "womb of earth" (his grave), thus acquiring land "that was and is the question of these wars" and which was Hamlet's inheritance, figuratively a graveyard, like the part of Poland not big enough to cover the dead from the impending war over that same land.

With his dying words Hamlet proved that he was not "so like the king THAT was and IS THE QUESTION of these wars." Hamlet passed his inheritance of blood-soaked dirt and the voice of Denmark to Fortinbras - without a war, thus saving the lives of thousands of his countrymen.

The Honey of His Music Vows

Hamlet was utterly sincere when he wrote to Ophelia: (2.2.122)

Doubt thou the stars are fire;
Doubt that the sun doth move;
Doubt truth to be a liar;
But never doubt I love.
. . . .
I love thee best, O most best, believe it.

He " importuned [her] with love in honourable fashion . . . . and [gave] countenance to his speech . . . with almost all the holy vows of heaven."

He would have given her all the vows of heaven if his father hadn't first led him to give a vow from Hell.

GHOST (1.5.199)

[Beneath] Swear.

The Ghost said to Hamlet: (1.5.17)

But that I am forbid
to tell the secrets of my prison-house
I could a tale unfold whose lightest word
would harrow up thy soul . . .
But this eternal blazon must not be
To ears of flesh and blood. list, list, o list!

So then the ghost went ahead and told the tale anyway and it drove Hamlet mad.

But in the closet scene, Hamlet was mute. Unlike his father, Hamlet refused to pass on the madness. He was loosed out of hell to speak of horrors, but he would not speak them to Ophelia.

OPHELIA (2.1.85)

My lord, as I was sewing in my closet,
Lord Hamlet, with his doublet all unbraced;
No hat upon his head; his stockings foul'd,
Ungarter'd, and down-gyved to his ancle;
Pale as his shirt; his knees knocking each other;
And with a look so piteous in purport
As if he had been loosed out of hell
to speak of horrors,--he comes before me.

Hamlet, who had once given Ophelia the honey of his music vows, was now silent. As Hamlet later said, " hell itself breathes out contagion to this world," but with his silence Hamlet tried to protect Ophelia from that breath of contagion.

Laertes had warned Ophelia: (1.3.16)

Perhaps he loves you now,
. . . . but you must fear,
His greatness weigh'd, his will is not his own;
For he himself is subject to his birth:
He may not, as unvalued persons do,
Carve for himself . . .
And therefore must his choice be circumscribed
Unto the voice and yielding of that body
Whereof he is the head. Then if he says he loves you,
It fits your wisdom so far to believe it
As he in his particular act and place
May give his saying deed; which is no further
Than the main voice of Denmark goes withal.

Hamlet, when he was himself, loved Ophelia. But then he erased himself from his own brain and there in the book and volume of his brain he wrote his warlike father's commandment (the voice of Denmark, sent from Hell to speak of horrors, to breathe contagion, unfolding the secrets of his prison-house that he was forbid to tell to mortal ears). Hamlet was from himself taken away.

Hamlet did not want to chain Ophelia to the monster he had become. He did not want to make her, like his mother, imperial jointress to this warlike state, and a breeder of sinners - sinners like his warlike father, his murderous uncle, and his own anguished and divided self.

Also see How to Love Hamlet

He Himself is Subject to his Birth

Laertes
... his will is not his own,
For he himself is subject to his birth

Hamlet
That for some vicious mole of nature in them,
As in their birth, wherein they are not guilty,
Since nature cannot choose his origin

Hamlet
But, to my mind, though I am native here
and to the manner born, it is a custom
More honour'd in the breach than the observance.

Hamlet
O cursed spite that I was born to set it right

Hamlet
it were better my mother had not borne me

Fortune has doomed Hamlet, from birth, to lose his true self for a kingdom of dirt.

Unforced Accord?

CLAUDIUS (Act 1, Scene 2, lines 17-24)
. . . . young Fortinbras,
Holding a weak supposal of our worth,
Or thinking by our late dear brother's death
Our state to be disjoint and out of frame,
Colleagued with the dream of his advantage,
He hath not fail'd to pester us with message,
Importing the surrender of those lands
Lost by his father, with all bonds of law,
To our most valiant brother.

CLAUDIUS (Act 1, Scene 2, lines 8-14)
Therefore our sometime sister, now our queen,
The imperial jointress to this warlike state,
Have we . . . .
taken to wife.

Claudius took his brother's wife, just as he took his brother's life, to gain the power to kill more people to acquire more dirt.

Perhaps Gertrude was no more willing to marry Claudius than Hamlet was willing to stay in Denmark:

CLAUDIUS (Act 1, Scene 2, lines 114-126)
For your intent
In going back to school in Wittenberg,
It is most retrograde to our desire:
And we beseech you, bend you to remain
Here, in the cheer and comfort of our eye,
Our chiefest courtier, cousin, and our son.
QUEEN GERTRUDE
Let not thy mother lose her prayers, Hamlet:
I pray thee, stay with us; go not to Wittenberg.
HAMLET
I shall in all my best obey you, madam.
KING CLAUDIUS
Why, 'tis a loving and a fair reply:
Be as ourself in Denmark. Madam, come;
This gentle and unforced [???] accord of Hamlet
Sits smiling to my heart

HAMLET (Act 2, Scene 2, line 258)
Denmark's a prison.

To be true to themselves, both Hamlet and Gertrude needed to disobey both Claudius and the ghost of Hamlet's father. But it wasn't easy.

Hamlet (Act 1, Scene 4, lines 68-69)
It will not speak; then I will follow it.
Horatio
Do not, my lord.

Hamlet (Act 5, Scene 2, line 194)
I am constant to my purpose; they follow the King's pleasure
. . . .
Horatio (Act 5, Scene 2, lines 202-210)
You will lose this wager, my lord.
Hamlet
I do not think so: since he went into France, I have been in continual practise: I shall win at the odds. But thou wouldst not think how ill all's here about my heart: but it is no matter.
Horatio
Nay, good my lord,--
Hamlet
It is but foolery; but it is such a kind of gain-giving, as would perhaps trouble a woman.
Horatio
If your mind dislike any THING, obey it

(Hamlet had previously said, "The king is a THING." - Act 4, Scene 2, line 28)

Horatio is telling Hamlet to pay attention to his own mind, rather than "follow the king's pleasure." Throughout the play Horatio represents the rational side of Hamlet's mind which is opposed by the bloody traditions of kings - his warlike father and his murderous uncle.

Finally, while forcing Claudius to drink the poison that had killed Gertrude:

HAMLET (Act 5, Scene 2, lines 337-338)
Drink off this potion. Is thy union here?
Follow my mother.

A Breeder of Sinners

Claudius
...your father lost a father,
That father lost, lost his, and the survivor bound
In filial obligation ...

Bernardo
I think it be no other but e'en so:
Well may it sort that this portentous figure
Comes armed through our watch; so like the king
That was and is the question of these wars.

Hamlet
virtue cannot so innoculate our old stock but we shall relish of it

Hamlet is from a long line of warlike kings. It's a custom he would like to breach, but it is difficult to overcome his old stock. If he marries Ophelia and has a son, that son will likely be another death-dealing warrior-king.

Hamlet
...why wouldst thou be a breeder of sinners?

Hamlet
For if the sun breed maggots in a dead dog, being a good kissing carrion,--Have you a daughter?
Polonius
I have, my lord.
Hamlet
Let her not walk i' the sun: conception is a blessing: but not as your daughter may conceive.

Here sun relates to Hamlet's father who was like Hyperion, the sun-god. If Hamlet breeds true to his old stock, he and his son will both be like Hamlet's dead father. If Ophelia conceives a child with Hamlet, she will be breeding sinners -- maggots to eat the dead of future wars.

Polonius
Though this be madness, yet there is method in 't. Will you walk out of the air, my lord?
Hamlet
Into my grave.
Polonius
Indeed, that is out o' the air.
How pregnant sometimes his replies are!

Horatio
Or if thou hast uphoarded in thy life
Extorted treasure in the womb of earth,
For which, they say, you spirits oft walk in death, [Cock crows].

Ophelia
... They say the owl was a baker's daughter.
Lord, we know what we are, but know not what we may be.

There was a legend about a baker who told his daughter to give a loaf of bread to a beggar. She only gave him half a loaf (as Ophelia gave Hamlet part of herself, reserving the greater half for her father). The beggar turned out to be Jesus Christ, who then turned the baker's daughter into an owl. In Shakespeare's time, the owl was a portent of death. (http://raptorsridge.com/greathornedowl.html)

Ophelia
Then up he rose, and donn'd his clo'es,
And dupp'd the chamber door,
Let in the maid, that out a maid
Never departed more.

On the surface, this song has a bawdy meaning. A man opens the door of his room and lets in a virgin. When she leaves the room, she is no longer a virgin. But it also has a deeper, morbid meaning. "Dupped" means "open upward", as with a cellar door, or a coffin lid. So the man let a maid enter his coffin and she never left it, with or without her virginity. This foreshadows the last act, where, rather than Ophelia entering Hamlet's grave, he enters hers. If she hadn't committed suicide before he returned (to Denmark and to himself) , he might have married her. But instead, she came to their marriage "bed" - the grave that had been prepared by Hamlet's grave-digger.

Ophelia
Quoth she, 'Before you tumbled me,
You promised me to wed.'
He answers,
'So would I 'a done, by yonder sun,
And thou hadst not come to my bed.'.

Gertrude
I hop'd thou shouldst have been my Hamlet's wife.
I thought thy bride-bed to have deck'd, sweet maid,
And not have strew'd thy grave.

Chaste Treasure in the Womb of Earth

Hamlet was metaphorically and psychologically (and perhaps literally) possessed by the warlike spirit of his dead father. He had erased himself from the book and volume of his brain and written his father's commandment there. His father was the "voice of Denmark", "loosed out of hell to speak of horrors", to breathe contagion, unfolding the secrets of his prison-house that he was forbid to tell to mortal ears. His father, unable to part from his earthly kingdom, was doomed to walk the night in search of his "extorted treasure in the womb of earth."

There was another reference to treasure in the play: Ophelia's "chaste treasure." Ophelia, like Hamlet, was also untrue to herself by being excessively obedient to her father. She let him tell her what to think. Her very name is an allusion to excessive filial duty.

When Ophelia died, her grave was metaphorically the grave of filial duty - the final inevitable end to which obedience to their fathers brought Ophelia and Hamlet, to their marriage-bed. When Hamlet jumped into Ophelia's grave he was finally giving his father's ghost what it had been seeking - Ophelia's chaste treasure in the womb of earth, the grave of filial duty.

When Hamlet leaped into Ophelia's grave and was choked by Laertes, he said,

I prithee, take thy fingers from my throat;
For, though I am not splenitive and rash,
Yet have I something in me dangerous,
Which let thy wiseness fear:

That "something in me" was the last appearance of the Ghost, who had finally been delivered to the grave where he belonged.

As Gertrude said,

This is mere madness:
And thus awhile the fit will work on him;
Anon, as patient as the female dove,
When that her golden couplets are disclosed,
His silence will sit drooping.

When Hamlet emerged from that grave he was no longer "from himself taken away." He was at last free from the "voice of Denmark." The rest would be silence.

Elegy for the Kissing Carrion

I was struck by an idea so bizarre and so sick that I vowed to take it to my grave without ever giving it voice. And yet that hideous thought grew in my diseased brain like a canker, an abscess, a mole of birth, for which I am not guilty. Now I must pour my contagion into the unsuspecting ear of Earth.

The Ghost walked the night in search of treasure in the womb of earth. He usurped the sovereignty of reason of his son and namesake until, at last, that dutiful son brought him into the bride-bed and grave of filial fidelity, Ophelia, and her chaste treasure in the womb of earth.

For thirty years, the son had spun in dizzying orbit, glowing with the bloody borrowed sheen of his warlike father. He cursed his mother, imperial jointress to this warlike state and breeder of sinners, for ever giving him birth. On the very day his mother had ejected him from her womb into the raw air, his father had vanquished a man into the womb of earth, and won a piece of dirt scarcely big enough for the new gravedigger to bury the dead. To that graveyard, the son fell heir. He was doomed to walk in the air, into his gravid grave. How pregnant his replies were.

Let not your daughter walk in the sun. But her father kept her from the son and kept her for the sun-god Hyperion and she, that god-kissing carrion, did breed maggots in the womb of earth. She let her father tell her what to think and let her brother keep the key to her memory. Her father went round and became the wheel, the knave of majestic Fortune's wheel, down, down in the secret parts of strumpet Fortune, Ophelia's chaste treasure in the womb of earth.

His mother did think to strew her marriage-bed, and indeed she did, her marriage-bed in the womb of earth. Into that final chamber, she entered a virgin, nevermore to depart, virgin or not. But whose grave and marriage-bed was it? The daughter who had once sucked the honey of the son's music vows? The son and heir who had leaped into his inheritance? Or his pompous father who had been licked by the candied tongue of her father, who had gone down, down with pregnant hinges of the knee into the secret parts of strumpet Fortune, Ophelia's chaste treasure in the womb of earth.

The Drama Filial

HAMLET (1.4.35)

His virtues else, be they as pure as grace,
As infinite as man may undergo,
Shall in the general censure take corruption
From that particular fault. The dram of eale
Doth all the substance of a doubt
To his own scandal.

"Dram of eale" has been correctly interpreted as "dram of evil". That is the surface meaning. But the deeper meaning is drama filial (dram-o f-eale, drama Ophelia). Within the context of the play, the drama filial is the Mousetrap, the play that Hamlet hoped would catch the conscience of his father's killer. Hamlet is itself a filial drama, because it is a drama about the conflict between filial duty and being true to oneself. (And in Part 2, I will show how Hamlet is Shakespeare's drama filial about his father and his secret godfather.)

Please see Drama Filial Motif

The Rebirth of Hamlet

A gravedigger was hired on the very day that Hamlet emerged from his mother's womb, which was the same day his father put old Fortinbras into the womb of earth (his grave), thus acquiring land "that was and is the question these wars" (1,1,124) and which is Hamlet's inheritance, figuratively a graveyard, not big enough to cover the dead from the impending war.

Hamlet, born to be a death-dealing king, hates his birthright. Thus, throughout the play he regresses back to the womb (the womb of earth - Ophelia's grave), where he is reborn as Hamlet the rational scholar.

HORATIO [to the Ghost] (1,1,148-149)

Or if thou hast uphoarded in thy life
Extorted treasure in the womb of earth,
For which, they say, you spirits oft walk in death,

HAMLET (1,5,207-208)

. . . . O cursed spite,
That ever I was born to set it right!

LORD POLONIUS (2,2,222-225)

. . . . Will you walk out of the air, my lord?

HAMLET

Into my grave.

LORD POLONIUS

Indeed, that is out o' the air.
Aside
How pregnant sometimes his replies are!

[Note the pun on air/heir.]

HAMLET (3,1,132-140)

. . . I am myself indifferent honest;
but yet I could accuse me of such things that it
were better my mother had not borne me:

HAMLET'S LETTER [read by HORATIO] (4,6,14-15)

Ere we were two days old at sea

KING CLAUDIUS [reading the message from HAMLET] (4,7,46-47)

'High and mighty, You shall know I am set naked on
your kingdom.

KING CLAUDIUS (4,7,54-55)

'Tis Hamlets character. 'naked!
And in a postscript here, he says 'alone.'

Hamlet has metaphorically reverted to a two-day-old baby, and then to a naked newborn.

The play contains a more explicit example of reverting to infancy:

HAMLET (to Polonius)(2.2.219-220)

yourself, sir, should be old as I am, if like a crab you could go backward.

HAMLET (speaking about Polonius)(2.2.391-392)

. . .that great baby you see there is not yet out of his swaddling-clouts.

Polonius' rebirth was aborted when he put himself where Hamlet expected to find the king. This explains the connection between Polonius and Martin Luther ("Your worm is your only emperor for diet" => the Diet of Worms where Luther was outlawed). The Diet of Worms aborted the rebirth of the Catholic Church.

Hamlet was metaphorically and psychologically (and perhaps literally) possessed by the warlike spirit of his dead father. He had erased himself from the book and volume of his brain and written his father's commandment there. His father was the "voice of Denmark", "loosed out of hell to speak of horrors", to breathe contagion, unfolding the secrets of his prison-house that he was forbid to tell to mortal ears. His father, unable to part from his earthly kingdom, was doomed to walk the night in search of his "extorted treasure in the womb of earth."

There was another reference to treasure in the play: Ophelia's "chaste treasure." Ophelia, like Hamlet, was also untrue to herself by being excessively obedient to her father. She let him tell her what to think. Her very name is an allusion to excessive filial duty.

When Ophelia died, her grave was metaphorically the grave of filial duty - the final inevitable end to which obedience to their fathers brought Ophelia and Hamlet, to their marriage-bed. When Hamlet jumped into Ophelia's grave he was finally giving his father's ghost what it had been seeking - Ophelia's chaste treasure in the womb of earth, the grave of filial duty.

Ophelia's chaste treasure was in her lap

HAMLET [to Ophelia] ((3,2,111)

Lady, shall I lie in your lap?

OPHELIA

No, my lord.

HAMLET

I mean, my head upon your lap?

OPHELIA

Ay, my lord.

HAMLET

Do you think I meant country matters?

Since she is a virgin, Ophelia's lap is undiscover'd cuntry. After she is laid in the womb of earth (her grave), her chaste treasure becomes the undiscover'd country from whose bourn no traveller returns (3,1,87-88). But Hamlet did return - he leaps into her womb of earth, then emerges re-bourn.

After Hamlet leaped into Ophelia's grave, when he's being choked by Laertes, he says,
(5,1,264)

I prithee, take thy fingers from my throat;
For, though I am not splenitive and rash,
Yet have I have something in me dangerous,
Which let thy wiseness fear:

That "something in me" was the last appearance of the Ghost, who had finally been delivered to the grave where he belonged, his extorted treasure in the womb of earth.

Hamlet's mother Gertrude is there, channeling St Gertrude of Nivelles, patron saint of mentally ill people (especially those with a rat phobia), travellers, pilgrims, recently dead people, and graves. (See St Gertrude in the Garden.)

It is fitting for Hamlet's mother to be present at his rebirth, to bear him anew:

GERTRUDE (5,1,279)

For love of God, forbear him.

GERTRUDE (5,1,291)

This is mere madness:
And thus awhile the fit will work on him;
Anon, as patient as the female dove,
When that her golden couplets are disclosed,
His silence will sit drooping.

The hatching dove eggs symbolize Hamlet's metaphorical rebirth. The silence symbolizes Hamlet's liberation from the warlike voice of Denmark. Doves are a symbol for peace. (See Hamlet in a Nutshell - Hamlet Is an Anti-war Play.)

When Hamlet emerges from that womb of earth he is no longer "from himself taken away." He has been reborn as himself, the rational scholar from Wittenberg.

"To Be OR Not to be. That is the question."
"Jesus answered and said unto him, Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God."
John 3:3 KJV

Also see How to Love Hamlet

The Cause of Hamlet's Lunacy

POLONIUS (2.2.52)

I have found the very cause of Hamlet's lunacy.

The word "lunacy" is derived from "luna," Latin for moon, because of an old belief that insanity was caused by the moon (or, I believe, in this play's metaphor, being like the moon).

When Polonius finally states the cause of Hamlet's lunacy, a small part of his babbling is "What majesty should be, what duty is," which, unknown to Polonius, really is precisely the cause. Hamlet is mad because duty demands that he become what majesty should be - a king. Yet Hamlet by nature is a man of reason, while kings are by nature "the question of these wars". Filial duty demands that Hamlet reflect the values of his father, but that way lies madness.

Hamlet compared his father to Hyperion. Hyperion was the Greek Titon god of the sun. Laertes compared Hamlet to the moon: "nature, crescent...waxes...If she unmask her beauty to the moon." In the Mousetrap, Hamlet is implicitly related to the moon by "thirty dozen moons with borrow'd sheen." The "thirty" relates to .Hamlet's age. "Borrow'd sheen" is a hint that Hamlet is reflecting his father's values rather than shining with his own true self - and that is indeed lunacy.

POLONIUS (1.3.78)

Neither a borrower nor a lender be; .... This above all: to thine ownself be true.

Polonius' daughter Ophelia had the same tragic flaw as Hamlet - she was untrue to herself by being too obedient to her father.

In 1986 Voyager 2 discovered a new moon of Uranus. Whoever named that moon evidently had a very good understanding of Hamlet - the newly discovered moon of Uranus was named "Ophelia."

Ophelia goes round and round Uranus, without end. "O, how the wheel becomes it."

POLONIUS (2.2.401)

The actors are come hither, my lord.

HAMLET

Buz, buz!

POLONIUS

Upon mine honour,--

HAMLET

Then came each actor on his ass,--

OPHELIA (4.5.199)

they say he made a good end,--

Reflections in a Broken Mirror

Hamlet tells the players to hold the mirror up to nature. He sets up a glass where his mother may see the inmost part of herself. Hamlet, "nature crescent" is metaphorically the moon. His father, like "Hyperion" (the Titan sun-god) is metaphorically the sun. Hamlet the moon with "borrowed sheen" reflects his father the sun. Hamlet by the image of his cause saw the portraiture of Laertes'. To know a man well, were to know himself, but Hamlet confesses to the vice of knowing Osric, who is not quite a reflection but rather a shadow of Laertes, "his semblable is his mirror; and who else would trace him, his umbrage nothing more." Hamlet's bad dreams are ambition, which is merely the shadow of a dream which itself is but a shadow, and monarchs are beggar's shadows. Claudius tells Hamlet to "be as ourself in Denmark". Hamlet and Fortinbras are mirror images of each other. Each named after his father, each has "some rights of memory" to Denmark. Hamlet takes Fortinbras as an example gross as earth to exhort him. Horatio is an image of Hamlet's true soul. "Horatio, or I do forget myself." Polonius "boards" Hamlet and his amber-purging eyes are dishonestly writ down in the book of Hamlet's mind, along with his father and his uncle. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, "so neighbour'd to his youth and havior," take Hamlet's place on the English chopping block. Ophelia calls Hamlet the glass of fashion. Hamlet tells her to remember all his sins in her orisons. She lets Laertes keep the key to her memory and later dies by falling into the glassy stream that is metaphorically reflecting her father's image. Polonius tells Reynaldo, "Observe his [Laertes'] inclination in yourself." Polonius compares himself to Hamlet, "in my youth I suffered much extremity for love." The Mousetrap is the image of a murder. Gonzago is the image of old Hamlet, Baptista the image of Gertrude, Lucianus the image of Claudius.

Also see
The Ugly Truth
To Thine Ownself Be True

The Ugly Truth

Sometimes the truth is ugly, but we need to face it anyway - especially when it's in the mirror.

LORD POLONIUS (3,1,51-62)
. . .
To OPHELIA
Read on this book;
That show of such an exercise may colour
Your loneliness. We are oft to blame in this,--
'Tis too much proved--that with devotion's visage
And pious action we do sugar o'er
The devil himself.
KING CLAUDIUS
[Aside] O, 'tis too true!
How smart a lash that speech doth give my conscience!
The harlot's cheek, beautied with plastering art,
Is not more ugly to the thing that helps it
Than is my deed to my most painted word:
O heavy burthen!

In the following lines, I think Ophelia represents Shakespeare's romantic comedies. But sometimes he has to write something ugly (or tragic) to show the ugly truth.

HAMLET (3,1,113-125))
Ha, ha! are you honest?
OPHELIA
My lord?
HAMLET
Are you fair?
OPHELIA
What means your lordship?
HAMLET
That if you be honest and fair, your honesty should
admit no discourse to your beauty.
OPHELIA
Could beauty, my lord, have better commerce than
with honesty?
HAMLET
Ay, truly; for the power of beauty will sooner
transform honesty from what it is to a bawd than the
force of honesty can translate beauty into his
likeness: this was sometime a paradox, but now the
time gives it proof.

HAMLET (3,2,21-25)
. . .the purpose of playing, whose end, both at the
first and now, was and is, to hold, as 'twere, the
mirror up to nature; to show virtue her own feature,
scorn her own image, and the very age and body of
the time his form and pressure.

HAMLET (3,4,21-23)
Come, come, and sit you down; you shall not budge;
You go not till I set you up a glass
Where you may see the inmost part of you.

QUEEN GERTRUDE (3,4,97-100)
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 (3,4,194)
I must be cruel, only to be kind:

Hamlet finally faced the ugly truth in his own mirror:

HAMLET (5,2,88-94)
. . . .Dost know this water-fly?
HORATIO
No, my good lord.
HAMLET
Thy state is the more gracious; for 'tis a vice to
know him. He hath much land, and fertile: let a
beast be lord of beasts, and his crib shall stand at
the king's mess: 'tis a chough; but, as I say,
spacious in the possession of dirt.v
"Tis a vice to know him," but Hamlet knows him.

HAMLET (5,2,140-142)
I dare not confess that, lest I should compare with
him in excellence; but, to know a man well, were to
know himself.

Horatio does not know Osric, but Hamlet knows him all too well. Horatio represents Hamlet's true unambitious self. Osric represents the man that Hamlet was born to be, the man Hamlet has struggled not to be.

A gravedigger was hired on the very day that Hamlet emerged from his mother's womb, which was the same day his father put old Fortinbras into the womb of earth (his grave), thus acquiring land "that was and is the question of these wars" and which was Hamlet's inheritance, figuratively a graveyard, not big enough to cover the dead from the impending war over that same land.

BERNARDO (Act 1, Scene 1, lines 121-124)
I think it be no other but e'en so:
Well may it sort that this portentous figure
Comes armed through our watch; so like the king
that was and is the question of these wars.

That is Hamlet's dilemma - whether "TO BE OR NOT TO BE," like the Ghost, "so like the king THAT was and IS THE QUESTION of these wars."

To Thine Ownself Be True

A unifying theme of Hamlet is "To thine ownself be true." Of all the main characters, Hamlet is the only one who finally is true to himself. Consequently, of all the main characters, Hamlet is the only one who avoids self-slaughter.

Even Horatio is taught by Denmark to drink deep and so tries to drink the last drops of poison from the cup. But Hamlet saves Horatio so that he can tell Hamlet's story and teach us all not to drink from the cup of self-slaughter.

Fortinbras Sr. and Fortinbras Jr. value land more than they value themselves. Fortinbras Sr did forfeit his life fighting for land. Fortinbras Jr goes to war, exposing what is mortal and unsure to all that fortune, death, and danger dare, even for an eggshell, a little patch of ground that hath no profit in it but the name, that is not tomb enough and continent to hide the slain.

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, willing spokes to the king's nave, are deliverers of their own death warrant.

Polonius is a busybody, minding everybody's business but his own. Thus he was killed by a sword-thrust meant for somebody else.

Laertes subverts his own life so totally and unthinkingly to filial duty that he is willing to go to hell to revenge his father's death. Although he is satisfied in nature with Hamlet's repentance, he continues the fatal duel until by some elder masters [Claudius] he has a voice and precedence of peace. Thus he is fighting not for himself but for a cause borrowed from Claudius.

When Laertes allied himself with Claudius he dulled the edge of his husbandry. Then, in the subsequent duel with Hamlet, Laertes first wounded Hamlet with his poison-tipped sword, then accidentally exchanged swords with Hamlet and was fatally poisoned with his own sword. Thus he was a borrower and lender of swords, and was killed by a lent sword while fighting for a borrowed cause. [We shall see later that Laertes symbolized Christopher Marlowe and that "go far with little" is a paraphrase of Marlowe's "infinite riches in a little room." (The Jew of Malta)]

The tragic flaw of both Gertrude's husbands is that they are unable to part from their earthly kingdoms, not even to save their souls. Gertrude's fatal flaw is that she is unable to part from her husbands, not even to save her soul. "Why, she would hang on him, as if increase of appetite had grown by what it fed on." Thus, "the imperial jointress to this warlike state" is doomed to join her husbands in the blood-soaked graveyard, their "extorted treasure in the womb of earth"

Ophelia lets her brother keep the key to her memory. She does not understand herself so well as it behooves Polonius's daughter, and so she lets her father tell her what to think. When she falls into the water, she makes no attempt to save herself because her true self has already been lost. She dies by falling into a mirror image of her father in the glassy stream.
(See An Envious Sliver)

Both Claudius and Hamlet Sr are unable to separate themselves from their land. So they slaughter their own souls, dooming themselves to be dragged down into hell by their possessions. Hamlet Sr is doom'd to walk the night, to walk in death for extorted treasure in the womb of earth. Claudius could save his soul by sincerely repenting, but he cannot repent because he won't give up his kingdom and he cannot be pardon'd and retain the offense, he finally drinks a poison tempered by himself.

In the end, Hamlet recovers his true self in time to save his soul, although not his life.
(See The Rebirth of Hamlet)

Also please see)
How to Love Hamlet)

The Time Is Out of Joint

Polonius
This above all: to thine own self be true,
And it must follow, as the night the day,
Thou canst not then be false to any man.

Conversely, if day follows night, somebody is being untrue to himself. Just after he has been false to himself by erasing himself from the book of his own brain, as the day is following the night, Hamlet says:
The time is out of joint.

Claudius
. . .our sometime sister, now our queen, The imperial jointress to this warlike state,

Marcellus
What might be toward, that this sweaty haste
Doth make the night joint-labourer with the day:
Who is't that can inform me?
Horatio
That can I;
At least, the whisper goes so. Our last king,
Whose image even but now appear'd to us,
. . . .
Bernardo
I think it be no other but e'en so:
Well may it sort that this portentous figure
Comes armed through our watch; so like the king
That was and is the question of these wars.
Related lines:
Doth make the night joint-labourer with the day:
And it must follow, as the night the day,
The imperial jointress to this warlike state!
O day and night, but this is wondrous strange!
The time is out of joint!
Why day is day, night night, and time is time,

Or I Do Forget Myself

We've seen how Hamlet "wiped away every trivial fond record that youth and observation copied" "in the table of [his] memory" - in other words, how he forgot himself. But what was Hamlet like before he forgot himself?

HAMLET (1.2.164)

Horatio, or I do forget myself!

And what was Horatio like?

HAMLET (3.2.54)

Horatio, thou art e'en as just a man
As e'r my conversation cop'd withal.
................................
...thee, that no revenue hast
But thy good spirits to feed and clothe thee.
.................................
Since my soul was mistress of her choice
And could of men distinguish, her election
Hath sealed thee for herself......
...For thou hast
Been as one, in suffering all, that suffers
Nothing. A man that fortune's buffets and
Rewards hast ta'en with equal thanks.
And blessed are those
Whose blood and judgment are so well co-mingled
That they are not a pipe for fortune's finger
To sound what stop she please. Give me that man
That is not passion's slave and I will wear him
In my heart's core, ay, in my heart of heart,
As I do thee.

Hamlet was unaware at first that he had from himself been taken away, but though he knew not why, he knew that he had lost something:

HAMLET (2.2.308)

...I have of late - but wherefore I know not--lost all my mirth, forgone all custom of exercises; and indeed it goes so heavily with my disposition that this goodly frame, the earth, seems to me a sterile promontory, this most excellent canopy, the air, look you, this brave o'erhanging firmament, this majestical roof fretted with golden fire, why, it appears no other thing to me than a foul and pestilent congregation of vapours. What a piece of work is a man! how noble in reason! how infinite in faculty! in form and moving how express and admirable! in action how like an angel! in apprehension how like a god! the beauty of the world! the paragon of animals! And yet, to me, what is this quintessence of dust? man delights not me: no, nor woman neither, though by your smiling you seem to say so.

That speech contrasts Hamlet's own humanist values ("how noble in reason") with the warlike values ("this quintessence of dust") of his father, which are now occupying Hamlet's brain.

"This quintessence of dust" is linked to Hamlet's father by these lines:

GERTRUDE (1.2.71)

Do not for ever with thy vailed lids
Seek for thy noble father in the dust:

HORATIO (1.1.148)

Or if thou hast uphoarded in thy life
Extorted treasure in the womb of earth,

"A foul and pestilent congregation of vapours" is linked to Hamlet's father by these lines": HAMLET (1.4.51)

. . . why the sepulchre,
Wherein we saw thee quietly inurn'd,
Hath oped his ponderous and marble jaws,
To cast thee up again

HAMLET (3.2.380)

When churchyards yawn and hell itself breathes out
Contagion to this world:

Also see
The Election of His Soul
The Madness of Hamlet

The Election of His Soul

HAMLET (complaining about Claudius) (5.2.69)

He that hath ....
Popp'd in between the election and my hopes

Most people assume that Hamlet's "hopes" are to become king. That's only half right. Hamlet is speaking with a double meaning. The princely side of Hamlet does indeed want to become king (that's the Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark), but the humanist side would rather return to his scholarly life in Wittenberg.

Hamlet's humanist, rational side was represented by Horatio,
Horatio the scholar,
Ho-RATIO whose very name resonates with rationality,
Horatio who warned Hamlet that his father's ghost might deprive his "sovereignty of reason,"
"Horatio, or I do forget myself."

HAMLET (to Horatio): (3.2.58)

.....thee
That no revenue hast but thy good spirits,
To feed and clothe thee?.........
Since my dear soul was mistress of her choice
And could of men distinguish, her election
Hath seal'd thee for herself........
....Give me that man
That is not passion's slave, and I will wear him
In my heart's core, ay, in my heart of heart,
As I do thee

Did Claudius "pop" between Prince Hamlet and the throne? Claudius inherited the throne from Hamlet Sr, a throne that Prince Hamlet (under the influence of the ghost of Hamlet Sr) believed should have remained in the possession of a Hamlet. However, Claudius did name Prince Hamlet as his heir, and urged him to "be as ourself in Denmark." Trying to have Hamlet decapitated was certainly "popping" between him and the throne, but it was also "popping" between Hamlet and his return to Wittenberg.

Did Claudius "pop" between Hamlet and the scholarly lifestyle of Horatio? When Hamlet wanted to return to Wittenberg (to be as Horatio in Wittenberg), Claudius ordered him (via Gertrude) to remain, to "be ourself in Denmark." Then he celebrated that decision with the "pop" of cannon. By making Hamlet his heir, he was cutting him off from Wittenberg, locking him in the prison of Denmark.

Also see
Unpacking the Whore in His Heart's Core - Whore Rational - Horatio
Where Kings Lead, Folly Follows
Horatio vs Rosencrantz & Guildenstern
Or I Do Forget Myself
How to Love Hamlet

Unpacking the Whore in His Heart's Core - Whore Rational - Horatio

When Hamlet was not "from himself taken away," he wore Horatio, the rational student, in his "heart's core." But when he was possessed by his father's bloody spirit, he scoffed at words and rational thought as being "like a whore" (Horatio) "to unpack my heart with words".

HAMLET (2.2.593)

Why, what an ass am I! This is most brave,
That I, the son of a dear father murder'd,
Prompted to my revenge by heaven and hell,
Must, like a whore, unpack my heart with words,

HAMLET (to Horatio) (3.2.72)

. . . Give me that man
That is not passion's slave, and I will wear him
In my heart's core, ay, in my heart of heart,
As I do thee.

Also see
The Election of His Soul

Where Kings Lead, Folly Follows

HAMLET (1.4.68)

It will not speak; then I will follow it.

HORATIO

Do not, my lord.

HAMLET (5.2.194)

I am constant to my purpose; they follow the king's pleasure: if his fitness speaks, mine is ready; now or whensoever, provided I be so able as now.

HORATIO (5.2.202)

You will lose this wager, my lord.

HAMLET

I do not think so: since he went into France, I have been in continual practise: I shall win at the odds. But thou wouldst not think how ill all's here about my heart: but it is no matter.

HORATIO

Nay, good my lord,--

HAMLET

It is but foolery; but it is such a kind of gain-giving, as would perhaps trouble a woman.

HORATIO

If your mind dislike any thing, obey it: I will forestall their repair hither, and say you are not fit.

(Hamlet had previously said, "The king is a thing.")

Horatio is telling Hamlet to pay attention to his own mind, rather than "follow the king's pleasure." Throughout the play Horatio represents the rational side of Hamlet's mind which is opposed by the bloody traditions of kings - his warlike father and his murderous uncle.

Also see
The Election of His Soul

Horatio vs Rosencrantz & Guildenstern

Comparing Horatio to Rosencrantz and Guildenstern is like comparing Einstein to Cheech and Chong. (No offense to Cheech & Chong. I would have said Abbot & Costello, but today's students would probably think those guys were Goldman Sachs partners.)

But somebody Asked, and to every Question there is an Answer (whether right or wrong, profound or profane):

Horatio was much more than a friend - he was a role model. "Horatio, or I do forget myself."
R&G were much less than friends - they were Hamlet's jailers (or gaolers) in the prison of Denmark.
HoRATIO was the voice of reason. R&G were jangling echoes of the voice of Denmark.
Horatio had no dreams of ambition in his philosophy.
R&G interpreted the ambition in Hamlet's bad dreams.
Horatio gave Hamlet his mind. R&G gave Hamlet their heads.
R&G were Hamlet's understudies in what Hamlet transformed into their last act.
Horatio carried on after the last act ended to bring Hamlet's story to the unknowing world.
Hamlet guided R&G on the road to their own self-slaughter.
Hamlet prevented Horatio from drinking deeply from the cup of self-slaughter.

But Horatio's real foil was the Ghost of Hamlet's father and/or Claudius and/or Fortinbras - Rational thought vs bloody thoughts.

Also please see
The Election of His Soul
Where Kings Lead, Folly Follows
Hamlet in a Nutshell
An Honest Ghost?

The Cloud, the Cannon, and in the Cup a Union

CLAUDIUS (1.2.67)

How is it that the CLOUDS still hang on you?

HAMLET

Not so, my lord; I am too much i' the SUN.

The obvious pun is sun / son. Hamlet is too good a son to be cheerful less than two months after his father's death. But there is also a metaphor on clouds and sun. Later in the scene, Hamlet compares his father to Hyperion, the sun-god:

HAMLET (1.2.141)

So excellent a king; that was, to this,
Hyperion to a satyr

Thus sun is a symbol for Hamlet's father, and now clouds is an obvious pun on Claudius. Hamlet is too loyal to his father (too much i' the sun) to shift his loyalty to Claudius (to be under the clouds.) This should prepare the audience for a more subtle pun on CLOUDS / CLAUDIUS:

CLAUDIUS (1.2.127)

No jocund health that Denmark drinks to-day,
But the great CANNON to the CLOUDS shall tell, And the king's rouse the heavens all bruit again,
Re-speaking earthly thunder. Come away.
[Exeunt all but Hamlet]

HAMLET

O, that this too too solid flesh would melt
Thaw and resolve itself into a dew!
Or that the Everlasting had not fix'd
His CANON 'gainst self-slaughter! O God! God!

Hamlet is not contemplating his own self-slaughter, rather he is wishing that Claudius would kill himself. Claudius (cloud) has just ordered his cannon to fire at the clouds. Hamlet wishes Claudius's solid flesh would melt and turn into a dew (a cloud). Then, by aiming his cannon at the clouds, Claudius would be slaughtering himself. But, alas, the Everlasting has fixed His canon (religious law) 'gainst self-slaughter and Claudius has fixed (aimed) his cannon 'gainst self-slaughter - for now.

Later we learn more about the Danish custom of firing cannon when the king drinks:

(1.4.7)

[A flourish of trumpets, and ordnance shot off, within]

HORATIO

What does this mean, my lord?

HAMLET

The king doth wake to-night and takes his rouse,
Keeps wassail, and the swaggering up-spring reels;
And, as he drains his draughts of Rhenish down,
The kettle-drum and trumpet thus bray out
The triumph of his pledge.

HORATIO

Is it a custom?

HAMLET

Ay, marry, is't:
But to my mind, though I am native here
And to the manner born, it is a custom
More honour'd in the breach than the observance.

The custom under discussion is not heavy drinking. The custom is the firing of cannon (ordnance) when the king drinks a pledge. It symbolizes the unity of the king with his kingdom, emphasized with the weapons he uses to obtain and keep that kingdom. It is the King's pledges, not his drinking, that gets Denmark in trouble with other countries. This is the custom that Hamlet would like to breach.

In the end, Hamlet gets his wish. Claudius does metaphorically slaughter himself with his own cannon. To the accompaniment of cannon fire, Claudius drinks from a cup symbolizing his union with Denmark. Shortly thereafter, he drinks from that same cup that he himself had poisoned.

CLAUDIUS (5.2.269)

Let all the battlements their ordnance fire:
The king shall drink to Hamlet's better breath;
And in the cup an union shall he throw,
Richer than that which four successive kings
In Denmark's crown have worn. Give me the cups;
And let the kettle to the trumpet speak,
The trumpet to the cannoneer without,
The CANNONS to the heavens, the heavens to earth,
'Now the king drinks to Hamlet.

CLAUDIUS (5.2.286)

Stay; give me drink. Hamlet, this pearl is thine;
Here's to thy health.
[Trumpets sound, and cannon shot off within]
Give him the cup.

HAMLET (5.2.336)

Here, thou incestuous, murderous, damned Dane,
Drink off this potion. Is thy union here?
Follow my mother.
[Claudius dies]

(5.2.424)
[A dead march. Exeunt, bearing off the dead bodies; after which a peal of ordnance is shot off]

Also see
How to Love Hamlet

The Cannon May Miss Our Name

Was "whale" pronounced like "wheel"? Was "weasel" pronounced like "wassail"? Was "Claudius" pronounced like "cloud-ius"? (I realize that "Claudius" was never spoken in the play, but there must have been some reason for including it in the First Folio. It was probably included in the playbill, so the audience would be prepared for the Claudius/clouds puns.)

CLAUDIUS (1.2.123)

Why, 'tis a loving and a fair reply.
Be as ourself in Denmark. Madam, come. 325
This gentle and unforc'd accord of Hamlet
Sits smiling to my heart; in grace whereof,
No jocund health that Denmark drinks to-day
But the great CANNON to the CLOUDS shall tell,
And the King's rouse the heaven shall bruit again, 330
Respeaking earthly thunder. Come away.
[Flourish. Exeunt all but Hamlet.]

HAMLET

O that this too too solid flesh would melt,
Thaw, and resolve itself into a dew!
Or that the Everlasting had not fix'd 335
His CANON 'gainst self-slaughter!

HAMLET (1.4.9)

The King doth wake to-night and takes his rouse, 635
Keeps WASSAIL, and the swagg'ring upspring reels,
And, as he drains his draughts of Rhenish down,
The kettledrum and trumpet thus bray out
The triumph of his pledge.

HORATIO

Is it a custom?

HAMLET

Ay, marry, is't;
But to my mind, though I am native here
And to the manner born, it is a custom
More honour'd in the breach than the observance.

HAMLET (3.2.368)

Do you see yonder CLOUD that's almost in shape of a CAMEL?

POLONIUS

By th' MASS, and 'tis like a camel indeed.

HAMLET

Methinks it is like a WEASEL. 2255

POLONIUS

It is back'd like a weasel.

HAMLET

Or like a WHALE.

POLONIUS

Very like a whale.

ROSENCRANTZ (3.3.16)

. . . .The cease of majesty
Dies not alone, but like a gulf doth draw
What's near it with it: it is a MASSY WHEEL,

CLAUDIUS (Act 4, Scene 1) (4.1.41b)

[So haply slander-]
Whose whisper o'er the world's diameter, 2670
As level as the CANNON to his blank,
Transports his poisoned shot- may MISS OUR NAME
And hit the woundless air.-

Also see

Fine Revolution
How the Wheel Becomes It
A Camel in My Mind's Eye
The Cloud, the Cannon, and in the Cup a Union
How to Love Hamlet

Extorted Treasure in the Womb of Earth

CLAUDIUS (3.3.54)

... O! what form of prayer
Can serve my turn? 'Forgive me my foul murder?'
That cannot be; since I am still possess'd
Of those effects for which I did the murder,
My crown, mine own ambition, and my queen.
May one be pardon'd and retain the offence?

Claudius knows that he can save his soul if and only if he gives up his earthly kingdom, but he chooses damnation. Hamlet's father has exactly the same problem (but doesn't know it):

GHOST (1.5.80)

Of life, of crown, of queen, at once dispatch'd;
Cut off even in the blossoms of my sin,
Unhousel'd, disappointed, unanel'd,
No reckoning made, but sent to my account
With all my imperfections on my head

Note that the ghost did not ask his son to pray for him (pity me not), which would be the traditional remedy for a soul trapped in purgatory. What imperfections were on his head? What sin had he committed since his last confession? What sin was he still committing?

BERNARDO (1.1.161)

It was about to speak, when the cock crew.

HORATIO

And then it started like a guilty thing

But Bernardo and Horatio are a little off in their recollection of the timing:

HORATIO (1.1.143)

If there be any good thing to be done,
That may to thee do ease and grace to me,
Speak to me:
[Cock crows.]
If thou art privy to thy country's fate,
Which happily foreknowing may avoid,
O! speak;
Or if thou hast uphoarded in thy life
Extorted treasure in the womb of earth,
For which, they say, you spirits oft walk in death,
Speak of it: stay, and speak! Stop it, Marcellus.

The ghost didn't "start like a guilty thing" immediately after the cock crew. The dead king's conscience was not pricked until Horatio guessed his true sin: the ghost was walking in death because he could not bear to part with his "extorted treasure in the womb of earth." Like the rich man on a camel, old King Hamlet cannot enter heaven because he will not give up his earthly kingdom.

Also see

My Uncle, More Like My Father

How to Love Hamlet

My Uncle, More Like My Father

HAMLET (1.2.154)

my uncle, my father's brother, but no more like my father than I to Hercules.

But later we see that Hamlet is very much like Hercules:

HAMLET (1.4.90)

My fate cries out,
And makes each petty artery in this body
As hardy as the Nemean lion's nerve.

The Nemean lion was a mythical beast with an almost invincible hide, which could only be cut by its own claws. After strangling the lion, Hercules fashioned a tunic for himself from its hide, which he cut with its own claws. This is similar to the way Hamlet killed Rosencrantz and Guildenstern with their own message, Laertes with his own sword, and Claudius with his own poisoned cup.

HAMLET (5.1.299)

Let Hercules himself do what he may,
The cat will mew and dog will have his day.

Hercules went mad and murdered his own family, just as Hamlet went mad ( from himself was taken away by the ghost) and murdered his could-have-been father-in-law, indirectly causing the death of his should-have-been wife. The cat will mew refers to the du-cat. Polonius was a rat killed for a du-cat ( a rat? Dead, for a ducat). The dog was Ophelia, the dead dog, the good kissing carrion which when touched by the sun/son (Hamlet) would breed maggots in her bride-bed (her grave).

CLAUDIUS (4.7.92)

...................but this gallant [Lemord]
Had witchcraft in 't, he grew unto his seat,
And to such wondrous doing brought his horse,
As he had been incorps'd and demi-natur'd
With the brave beast

Laertes said of Lemord "I know him well." But, as Hamlet said, "to know a man well, were to know himself." So let's exercise a little poetic license and assign some of Lemord's metaphoric qualities to Laertes. "Lemord" is French for "the death". Demi-natured with a horse is a good description of a centaur. Hercules was killed indirectly by a centaur whom he had previously killed, just as Hamlet was killed by Laertes after he had killed Laertes.

HAMLET (2.2.370)

Do the boys carry it away?

ROSENCRANTZ

Ay, that they do, my lord; Hercules and his load too.

This refers to the competition between the new boy acting companies and the older companies such as Shakespeare's, which performed at the Globe Theater. The emblem of the Globe was a picture of Hercules holding up the Earth (or Globe). (According to the legend, Hercules needed help from Atlas to perform one of his Tasks. So, to free himself for Hercules's Task, Atlas shrugged off the Earth onto Hercules for a while.) This might relate Shakespeare to Hercules, but where is the connection with Hamlet? After Hamlet died, Fortinbras provided the connection by echoing "the boys [captains] carry it [Hamlet/Hercules] away," except this time Hamlet/Hercules/Shakespeare is carried to the stage.

FORTINBRAS (5.2.416)

Let four captains
Bear Hamlet, like a soldier, to the stage

Thus, as Hamlet was like Hercules, so was his uncle like his father. Hamlet's father was valiant, proud, war-like, rash, revengeful, and ambitious. Hamlet's uncle was cautious, intelligent, flexible, devious, manipulative, and ambitious. Their common vice was ambition (for control of dirt). Both were doomed to fast in fires because neither old King Hamlet nor new King Claudius could give up his earthly kingdom.

Also see
Extorted Treasure in the Womb of Earth
Epitaph for a King
How to Love Hamlet

Usurp Your Sovereignty of Reason

How can the dead King Hamlet possibly reclaim his kingdom? His son (born to set it right) can do it for him. That son even has the same name, Hamlet. True, the son has a different mind than his father, but that can be fixed.

HAMLET (1.4.25)

So, oft it chances in particular men,
That for some vicious mole of nature in them,
As in their birth, wherein they are not guilty,
Since nature cannot choose his origin,
By the o'ergrowth of some complexion [mole]
Oft breaking down the pales and forts of reason

HAMLET (to his father's Ghost) (1.5.181)

Well said, old mole! Canst work i'the earth so fast?
A worthy pioneer!"

[A pioneer was a military engineer, whose duties included burrowing under pales (walls) and forts to plant explosives to break them down.]

HAMLET (1.5.99)

..you, my sinews, grow not instant old,
But bear me stiffly up!

Hamlet's sinews have grown instant old because he has just been possessed by the ghost of an old man - his father.

HORATIO (1.1.56)

What art thou that usurp'st this time of night

HORATIO (1.4.75)

What if it...,
deprive your sovereignty of reason

OPHELIA (3.1.170)

...Now see that noble and most sovereign reason,
...Blasted....

HAMLET (1.5.102)

... Remember thee!
Yea, from the table of my memory
I'll wipe away all trivial fond records,
All saws of books, all forms, all pressures past,
That youth and observation copied there;
And thy commandment all alone shall live
Within the book and volume of my brain,
Unmix'd with baser matter

Driven by his love for his father, Hamlet has allowed his father to usurp the sovereignty of his brain. He has erased himself from the book of his brain and written his father there. He continued to write in that same table of [his] memory":

HAMLET (1.5.111)

O villain, villain, smiling, damned villain!
My tables,--meet it is I set it down,
That one may smile, and smile, and be a villain
At least I'm sure it may be so in Denmark:
[Writing.]
So, uncle, there you are

CLAUDIUS (1.2.124)

Be as ourself in Denmark.

If you hate someone, you think about him a lot. An image of him lives in your brain. That image can acquire a kind of autonomy, making you behave as your enemy behaves. In short, by hating your enemy, you allow your enemy to possess you. Hamlet seems to be taking notes not just on how to recognize a smiling villain, but also on how to be one.

If you love someone, you may want to give that person all that you have. But if your dearest friend demands that you give up your very self, then that dearest friend becomes your dearest foe.

HAMLET (1.2.184)

Would I had met my dearest foe in heaven [or Purgatory]
Ere I had ever seen that day, Horatio!
My father, methinks I see my father!

Hamlet loved his father and was therefore possessed by his father. Hamlet hated his uncle and was therefore possessed by his uncle. But father and uncle both had the same values - they valued dirt over people - as in the graveyard.

Also see
The Madness of Hamlet

Mad in Craft

Hamlet's insanity was real, but he was also faking it (" mad in craft"). He faked madness to hide his true madness, which consisted of being possessed by his father's spirit. If Claudius had suspected that, he would have immediately murdered Hamlet (again).

Instances where Hamlet was feigning madness:

HAMLET (1.5.189)

As I perchance hereafter shall think meet
To put an antic disposition on,

GUILDENSTERN (3.1.7)

Nor do we find him forward to be sounded,
But, with a crafty madness, keeps aloof,
When we would bring him on to some confession
Of his true state.

GUILDENSTERN (3.2.308)

. . . . If it shall please you to make me a wholesome answer . . .

HAMLET

Sir, I cannot.

GUILDENSTERN

What, my lord?

HAMLET

Make you a wholesome answer; my wit's diseased.

HAMLET [sarcastically] (3.4.203)

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,

LORD POLONIUS (2.2.221)

[Aside] Though this be madness, yet there is method
in 't. Will you walk out of the air, my lord?

HAMLET

Into my grave.

LORD POLONIUS

Indeed, that is out o' the air. [note: pun on air/heir]
[Aside]
How pregnant sometimes his replies are! a happiness
that often madness hits on, which reason and sanity
could not so prosperously be delivered of.

People often claim that Hamlet was faking madness to ferret out Claudius' secret, but the truth is exactly the opposite. As you can see from the above quotes, Hamlet was faking madness to conceal his own secret - his true madness.

Also see
The Madness of Hamlet

Old Men in the Book of his Brain

Busy-body Polonius will join the other tedious old men occupying Hamlet's brain:

POLONIUS (2.2.184)

I'll board him presently

Polonius sees Hamlet reading a book (the book and volume of his brain) and asks him what he is reading.

HAMLET (2.2.212)

Slanders, sir: for the satirical rogue says here that old men have grey beards, that their faces are wrinkled, their eyes purging thick amber and plum-tree gum, and that they have a plentiful lack of wit, together with most weak hams: all which, sir, though I most powerfully and potently believe, yet I hold it not honesty to have it thus set down; for you yourself, sir, should be old as I am, if, like a crab, you could go backward.

POLONIUS [Aside]

Though this be madness, yet there is method in't...

"old men have grey beards" = Hamlet's father
"His beard was grizzled, no?"

"eyes purging thick amber" = Polonius.
Poland was famous for its amber. For more on the Polonius/Poland motif, see Polonius Well-Ended - http://www.thyorisons.com/#Polonius_Well_Ended
An Envious Sliver - http://www.thyorisons.com/#Envious_Sliver

"a plentiful lack of wit" = Claudius
"With witchcraft of his wit, with traitorous gifts,
O wicked wit and gifts, that have the power
So to seduce!"

"Wit and gifts" refers to Bishop Whitgift, the man who instigated the crack-down on recusants which perhaps caused the decline in fortunes of Shakespeare's father. Also, Whitgift signed Shakespeare's marriage license (when he married an older woman) and later he signed the license for the publication of Shakespeare's "Venus and Adonis," a poem about a boy seduced by a goddess.

"Plentiful lack" mocks Claudius first speech: " defeated joy."

"weak hams" = Hamlet, weakened but still present in his own brain.

This is related to:
HAMLET (1.5.99)

And you, my sinews, grow not instant old,
But bear me stiffly up. Remember thee!

Hamlet's sinews have grown instant old because he has just been possessed by the ghost of an old man - his father.

" I hold it not honesty to have it thus set down." Hamlet knows he was not being true to himself when he set down these tedious old men in the book and volume of his brain.

Polonius also usurped the sovereignty of reasoning of his own daughter. He told her what think:

OPHELIA (1.3.108)

I do not know, my lord, what I should think.

POLONIUS

Marry, I'll teach you: think yourself a baby;

(Perhaps "think yourself a baby" was also part of the rebirth motif. Ophelia represented all of Shakespeare's plays. Perhaps he was envisioning some kind of rebirth for his dramatic talent. His greatest works were all written about the same time as Hamlet.)

Later Polonius handed Ophelia a book to study. It was metaphorically the book full of old men - old men whose corrupt values Polonius wanted to occupy Ophelia's mind. Yet both Polonius and Claudius recognized their own corruption in that book ("We are oft to blame . . . with devotion's visage and pious action we do sugar o'er the devil himself").

POLONIUS (to Ophelia) (3.1.51)

Read on this book;
That show of such an exercise may colour
Your loneliness. We are oft to blame in this,--
'Tis too much proved--that with devotion's visage
And pious action we do sugar o'er
The devil himself.

CLAUDIUS

[Aside] O, 'tis too true!
How smart a lash that speech doth give my conscience!

Also see
The Madness of Hamlet

Remembrances in the Book of Their Brains

The book full of old men is very important.

It is the book Polonius sees Hamlet reading.

It is also the book that Polonius later gives to Ophelia to occupy her mind.

It is also the book of remembrances that Hamlet doesn't remember when Ophelia tries to return it to him.

It is the book of orisons wherein Hamlet wants Ophelia to remember all his sins.

It is the book of Hamlet's brain from which he erased himself and wrote his father's commandment. It is also the book of Ophelia's brain, where she let her father tell her what to think and let her brother keep the key to her memory.

It is a document in madness. It is a book full of old men - it should be dusty.

LORD POLONIUS (to Ophelia) (3.1.51)

Read on this book;
That show of such an exercise may colour
Your loneliness. . . . .

OPHELIA (3.1.102)

My lord, I have remembrances of yours,
That I have longed long to re-deliver;
I pray you, now receive them.

HAMLET

No, not I;
I never gave you aught.

OPHELIA

My honour'd lord, you know right well you did;
And, with them, words of so sweet breath composed
As made the things more rich: their perfume lost,
Take these again; for to the noble mind
Rich gifts wax poor when givers prove unkind.
There, my lord.

Since he IS a student, maybe Hamlet could take a shiny new book out of his backpack when he writes his father's commandment in the book and volume of his brain. Then when he writes his uncle in his tables, he could take out the book again (now dusty) and write his uncle in the back of the book, as an appendix.

At the end of the scene where Hamlet is reading the dusty book, Polonius could leave with the book in hand (Hamlet having willingly parted with the book of his brain) so that Polonius can later hand the book to Ophelia.

LORD POLONIUS (2.2.230)

. . .--My honourable lord, I will most humbly take my leave of you.

HAMLET

You cannot, sir, take from me any thing that I will more willingly part withal: except my life, except my life, except my life.

Note:

From Syntinen Laulu's Yahoo Answer, I learned about actual portable, erasable tablets used in Shakespeares's time:
Writing in a "notebook" in the middle ages?

Here's an interesting link (from Syntinien Laulu's link):
Hamlet’s Tables and the Technologies of Writing in Renaissance England

That article somewhat undermines my own theory. However, in defense of my theory, Hamlet mentions "the book and volume of my brain." So I think he used an actual book and pretended to erase it, then write in it with a quill, using artistic license for erasable ink and an inkless quill. Or maybe he took notes on an actual table for later transcription into the book (of his brain) that Polonius saw him reading.

Also see
The Madness of Hamlet

A Document in Madness

OPHELIA (Act 4, Scene 5, lines 191-195)
There's rosemary, that's for remembrance; pray,
love, remember: and there is pansies. that's for thoughts.
LAERTES
A document in madness, thoughts and remembrance fitted.
OPHELIA
There's fennel for you, and columbines: there's rue
for you; and here's some for me: we may call it
herb-grace o' Sundays: O you must wear your rue with
a difference. There's a daisy: I would give you
some violets, but they withered all when my father
died: they say he made a good end,--

There is method in her madness and madness in her method.

The "document in madness" is the book that Polonius gave her to occupy her mind..

It is the same book that Polonius saw Hamlet reading..

It is also the book of remembrances that Hamlet doesn't remember when Ophelia tries to return it to him..

It is the book of orisons wherein Hamlet wanted Ophelia to remember all his sins..

It is the book of Hamlet's brain from which he erased himself and wrote his father's commandment..

It is also the book of Ophelia's brain, where she let her father tell her what to think and let her brother keep the key to her memory.

It is a document in madness. It is a book full of old men - it should be dusty.

When they were true to themselves, that book of Ophelia's and Hamlet's brains was a document of "noble mind[s]" (3.1,163), "noble in reason" (2,2,317), filled with thoughts of love for each other. But then Hamlet erased himself from that book of his brain and wrote his father's commandment there and promised to "remember" (1,5,100-109). No wonder Hamlet didn't recognize the remembrances when Ophelia tried to return them. they were no longer Hamlet's remembrances - they were his father's. Ophelia's thoughts had been supplanted by her father's when she let her father tell her what to think. Thoughts and remembrance fitted - a document in madness.

The "rue with a difference," which "we may call . . . herb-grace o' Sundays" is Gertrude's key to finding grace if she will but grasp it. She must make a difference between herself and both her husbands else they drag her to hell along with the rest of their earthly possessions with which they cannot part.

The violets are the love between Hamlet and Ophelia ("a violet in the youth of primy nature" 1,3,8) which withered when Hamlet killed her father, only to spring up too late from her grave, her "womb of earth."

LAERTES (Act 5, Scene 1, lines 238-240)
Lay her i' the earth:
And from her fair and unpolluted flesh
May violets spring!

A Camel in My Mind's Eye

HAMLET (3.2.368)

Do you see yonder cloud that's almost in shape of a camel?

POLONIUS

By the mass, and 'tis like a camel, indeed.

A camel? A cloud? Claudius? Where? HAMLET (1.2.184)

Would I had met my dearest foe in heaven
Or ever I had seen that day, Horatio!
My father, methinks I see my father.

If your father is your foe, I can see that he would be your dearest foe, Hamlet, but he's not quite in heaven -- it sounds more like he's on his way to heaven, going through purgatory:

GHOST (1.5.13)

I am thy father's spirit,
Doom'd for a certain term to walk the night,
And for the day, confin'd to fast in fires
Till the foul crimes done in my days of nature
Are burnt and purg'd away.........

Let me get this straight, Hamlet:
Your father is like your Uncle Claudius.
Claudius (cloud-ius) is like a cloud that's like a camel.
The camel-cloud is floating in heaven.
You wish to see your dearest foe in heaven.
Then you see your father.
Is he in heaven? Or in purgatory?
Hamlet, where is your father?

HORATIO (1.2.187)

Oh, where, my lord?

HAMLET

In my mind's eye, Horatio.

In your mind's eye? Or in purgatory? Or both?
Your father or your uncle? Or both?
Your dearest foe or a camel? Or both?
A camel in your mind's eye?

HAMLET (1.4.70)

Why, what should be the fear?
I do not set my life at a pin's fee

So now you're a pin, Hamlet?
And there's a camel in your eye?

MATHEW, 19, 24. HOLY BIBLE in the King James version.

JESUS

And again I say unto you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the Kingdom of Heaven.

Some people misconstrue this biblical passage to mean that wealth is evil. Actually, it means that some rich men can't get into heaven because they value their worldly possessions more than their souls; they value Situation more than Self. Being rich is not a sin; even killing a brother to gain a kingdom is not an unforgiveable sin. But the man who values an earthly kingdom more than his own soul is doomed to fast in fires. Such a man is Claudius:

CLAUDIUS (3.3.46)

What if this cursed hand
Were thicker than itself with brother's blood,
Is there not rain enough in the sweet heavens
To wash it white as snow? Whereto serves mercy
But to confront the visage of offense?
And what's in prayer but this two-fold force,
To be forestalled ere we come to fall,
Or pardon'd, being down? Then, I'll look up;
My fault is past. But, O! what form of prayer
Can serve my turn? 'Forgive me my foul murder'?
That can not be since I am still possess'd
Of those effects for which I did the murder,
My crown, mine own ambition, and my queen.
May one be pardon'd and retain the offense?
....
Try what repentance can: what can it not?
Yet what can it, when one can not repent?

And such a man is Hamlet's father:

HORATIO (to the Ghost) (1.1.148)

Or if thou hast uphoarded in thy life
Extorted treasure in the womb of earth,
For which, they say, you spirits oft walk in death...

Hamlet's father is in purgatory by choice, because he refuses to leave his extorted treasure.

These two foolish old men (and Polonius too) are trying to go camel-like through Hamlet's mind's eye. Forget the camels -- what's happening to the poor needle?

HORATIO (speaking of the Ghost of Hamlet's father) (1.1.125)

A mote it is to trouble the mind's eye.

HAMLET (after killing Polonius, whom he mistook for Claudius) (3.4.189)

I do repent; but heaven hath pleas'd it so,
To punish me with this and this with me;
That I must be their scourge and minister.

Pity the poor camel-crammed needle; that scourge and minister; purgatory personified.

By following a tenuous thread between three innocent words, camel, pin, and eye, my imagination has traced Hamlet's father, his Uncle Claudius, and the false steward Polonius going camel-like through the purgatory in Hamlet's mind's eye. At this point, perhaps the reader agrees with Horatio:

HORATIO (5.1.203)

'Twere to consider too curiously, to consider so.

HAMLET

No, faith, not a jot; but to follow him thither with modesty enough and likelihood to lead it, as thus:

Before the age of Joe Camel, in the Elizabethan age, "camel" had just one vivid connotation -- the biblical metaphor of the camel going through the eye of the needle. The camel appears just four times in all of Shakespeare's works; twice in Troilus and Cressida, once in Richard II, and once in Hamlet.

TROILUS AND CRESSIDA
PANDUROS

Achilles! a drayman, a porter, a very camel.

THERSITES

Mars his idiot! Do, rudeness, do, camel, do, do.

THERSITES

I say this Ajax -
.......
Has not so much wit -
.......
As will stop the eye of Helen's needle... THERSITES

RICHARD II

RICHARD

It is as hard to come as for a camel
To thread the postern of a small needle's eye.

So the mere presence of the word "camel" is enough to send us in search of the needle (or pin) and its eye (Hamlet's mind's eye). But must our search lead us to Purgatory?

HORATIO (1.5.149)

There's no offence, my lord.

HAMLET

Yes, by Saint Patrick, but there is, Horatio,
And much offence, too...

A New Variorum Edition of Shakespeare, edited by Horace Howard Furness, Hamlet, volume 1, New York, American Scholar Publications, INC, 1965, first published in 1877, page 111:
136. Saint Patrick] TSCHISHWITZ: If Sh. had wished to be historically correct, he would have made a Dane swear by St Ansgarius. But since the subject concerned an unexpiated crime, he naturally thought of St Patrick, who kept a Purgatory of his own. See The Honest Whore [pt 2, I, I, p 330, Dodsley ed 1825, where the text reads, 'St Patrick, you know keeps Purgatory,' and not as the learned German quotes, 'keeps his Purgatory.' Ed]

There is a very personal clue that Hamlet/Shakespeare's mind was Purgatory. In Stratford Guild Chapel there was a mural of Judgment Day. Although the mural was daubed over with whitewash about the time Shakespeare was born (in belated obedience to a government edict against religious icons and images), I believe that young Will could see the mural through the whitewash (or perhaps the whitewash was temporarily removed for special occasions, such as secret midnight Catholic Confirmations). The mural showed a group of sinners bound together with hoops of steel (a chain) and being led toward the mouth of hell. The mouth of hell (or purgatory) was set in what looked like a giant porcupine head. When Shakespeare saw the porcupine in the Tower of London menagerie, he would have recognized it as the Guild Chapel's mouth of hell.

Note: For a clearer image of the mural (in black-and-white), please see http://www.ifimages.com/public/image/1564926/view.html

    GHOST (to Hamlet) (1.5.19)

I could a tale unfold whose lightest word
Would harrow up thy soul, freeze thy young blood,
Make thy two eyes, like stars, start from their spheres,
Thy knotted and combined locks to part,
And each particular hair to stand on end,
Like quills upon the fretful porpentine.

GERTRUDE (to Hamlet) (3.4.132)

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 stand an end.

Also see
The Madness of Hamlet

How to Love Hamlet

Bell, Book, and Candle

Was Hamlet possessed by his father's spirit? I think he was possessed metaphorically and psychologically but not super-naturally, because his father's spirit was finally exorcised by thought rather than by bell, book, and candle. However there may have been a metaphorical exorcism. Hamlet's mind was like sweet bells jangled", there was a book of his brain, and Claudius suggested that within a son's love for his father there is a "kind of wick or snuff that will abate it".

From Christopher Marlowe's Dr Faustus:
C. OF LOR.

My lord, it may be some ghost newly crept out of purgatory, come to beg a pardon of your Holiness.

POPE

It may be so. Friars, prepare a dirge to lay the fury of this ghost....
.......

MEPH.

...... We shall be curs'd with bell, book, and candle.

Also see
The Madness of Hamlet

Leave It To Karma

Hamlet must learn that he is not really the "scourge and minister" of God. It is not his job to decide who goes to hell, or even when.

Romans 12:19 (King James Version)
"Dearly beloved, avenge not yourselves, but rather give place unto wrath: for it is written, Vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord."

Hamlet will not kill Claudius while he's praying because he wants to send him to hell, not heaven.

HAMLET (3,3,76-98)
Now might I do it pat, now he is praying;
And now I'll do't. And so he goes to heaven;
And so am I revenged. That would be scann'd:
A villain kills my father; and for that,
I, his sole son, do this same villain send
To heaven.
O, this is hire and salary, not revenge.
He took my father grossly, full of bread;
With all his crimes broad blown, as flush as May;
And how his audit stands who knows save heaven?
But in our circumstance and course of thought,
'Tis heavy with him: and am I then revenged,
To take him in the purging of his soul,
When he is fit and season'd for his passage?
No!
Up, sword; and know thou a more horrid hent:
When he is drunk asleep, or in his rage,
Or in the incestuous pleasure of his bed;
At gaming, swearing, or about some act
That has no relish of salvation in't;
Then trip him, that his heels may kick at heaven,
And that his soul may be as damn'd and black
As hell, whereto it goes. . .

After killing Polonius, whom he mistook for Claudius, Hamlet seems to think he is the "scourge and minister" of God:

HAMLET (3,4,189-191)
I do repent; but heaven hath pleas'd it so,
To punish me with this and this with me;
That I must be their scourge and minister.

But was Hamlet following a commandment from heaven - or hell?
(See An Honest Ghost?)

In the last act, Hamlet finally learns to leave it to Karma:

HAMLET (5,2,213-218)
. . .there's a special
providence in the fall of a sparrow. If it be now,
'tis not to come; if it be not to come, it will be
now; if it be not now, yet it will come: the
readiness is all: since no man has aught of what he
leaves, what is't to leave betimes?

Three Sons

Fortinbras's father was killed by Hamlet's father 30 years earlier. Fortinbras is an evil coward who didn't try to recover the lost lands until after Hamlet Sr died. If Fortinbras had attacked while old King Hamlet was still alive, the old King might have challenged young Fortinbras to a personal duel. But young Fortinbras was a coward who preferred to send thousand of commoners to die for his rotten royal "honour." So after old King Hamlet finally died, young Fortinbras "sharked up" an army of thugs to go to war against Denmark, but was easily diverted (at least temporarily) to easier pickings in Poland. In Poland, Fortinbras sent 10,000 men to their graves for a worthless piece of land.

Laertes, when he thought King Claudius had killed his father, immediately confronted the King - but with a mob to back him up (and possibly to die for his cause). After hearing Claudius side of the story, Laertes immediately began plotting with Claudius to kill Hamlet by treachery. He didn't care about right or wrong, he just wanted revenge, even if it meant cutting Hamlet's throat in a church. He didn't bother to hear Hamlet's side of the story. However, just before the duel Laertes did finally hear Hamlet's apology which he would have accepted but he foolishly deferred to the opinions of "elder masters" - meaning Claudius - and continued the duel against his conscious. Laertes's father had warned him

Neither a borrower nor a lender be;
For loan oft loses both itself and friend,
And borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry.

But Laertes ignored that advice. When planning to revenge his father's death, Laertes said "for my means, I'll husband them so well, They shall go far with little." Then Laertes died fighting for a borrowed cause (borrowed from Claudius, his "elder master"). In a sense, he was killed because of borrowing and lending of swords (the accidental switch between swords, one poisoned) and that loan lost "both itself and friend (both Laertes and Hamlet, who was his friend at the end). However, before he died Laertes and Hamlet exchanged forgiveness and thus saved both their souls.

Hamlet wasn't naturally vengeful, but he was loyal to his father so he swore an oath to his father to seek revenge. But Hamlet didn't want to endanger his friends in the dangerous mission of seeking revenge against a sitting King, so he urged his friends to "shake hands and part." In the last act, he returned to Denmark "naked and alone" to confront the King. Hamlet was very concerned about right and wrong. Not sure that the ghost was really his father rather than a deceitful demon, he staged the Mousetrap to verify Claudius' guilt. In the last act, Hamlet realized that, in pursuing revenge, he had been untrue to himself - had written his father's command to live all alone in his brain. He had from himself been taken away and that was madness. A common theory of madness was that it was caused by demonic possession. At least psychologically and metaphorically, Hamlet had been possessed by his father's spirit. However, Hamlet recovered his true self by the end and saved his soul, but not his life.

Fond and Winnowed Opinions

Excerpt from Shmoop.com Laertes Character Analysis
- "Laertes analysis by Ph.D. and Masters students from Stanford, Harvard, and Berkeley."
http://www.shmoop.com/hamlet/laertes.html
(See Shmoop update as of June 1, 2014)

"Laertes, a young Danish lord, is the son of Polonius and brother of Ophelia. He spends most of his time abroad at college [sic]"

Please allow me now to correct the egregious errors of Shmoop and their "Ph.D. and Masters students from Stanford, Harvard, and Berkeley." I can do this because I was well educated by Mrs Black, my 10th-grade English teacher, back in 1965. (Thank you, Mrs Black, wherever you are.)

Laertes had just returned from France. There is no indication that Laertes was "at college." That would be out of character for him.

CLAUDIUS (1.2.50)

What wouldst thou have, Laertes?

LAERTES

My dread lord,
Your leave and favour to return to France;
From whence though willingly I came to Denmark,
To show my duty in your coronation,
Yet now, I must confess, that duty done,
My thoughts and wishes bend again toward France
And bow them to your gracious leave and pardon.

KING CLAUDIUS (1.2.63)

Take thy fair hour, Laertes; time be thine,
And thy best graces spend it at thy will!

POLONIUS [Advising Laertes before his departure] (1.3.73)

Costly thy habit as thy purse can buy,
But not express'd in fancy; rich, not gaudy;
For the apparel oft proclaims the man,
And they in France of the best rank and station
Are of a most select and generous chief in that.

Later, when Polonius is giving Reynaldo instructions on how to spy on Laertes, we learn that Laertes is in Paris. Polonius expects " gaming . . .drinking, fencing, swearing, quarrelling,drabbing" but there is no mention of studying or college.

LORD POLONIUS (2.1.8)

Inquire me first what Danskers are in Paris;

LORD POLONIUS (2.1.23)

But, sir, such wanton, wild and usual slips
As are companions noted and most known
To youth and liberty .

REYNALDO

As gaming, my lord.

LORD POLONIUS

Ay, or drinking, fencing, swearing, quarrelling,
Drabbing: you may go so far.

LORD POLONIUS (2.1.33)

. . . but breathe his faults so quaintly
That they may seem the taints of liberty,
The flash and outbreak of a fiery mind,
A savageness in unreclaimed blood,
Of general assault.

This is the behavior Polonius is expecting from his son, with a pretense of disapproval but with a thinly veiled vicarious thrill:

LORD POLONIUS (2.1.63)

There was a' gaming; there o'ertook in's rouse;
There falling out at tennis:' or perchance,
'I saw him enter such a house of sale,'
Videlicet, a brothel . . .

Claudius hears a report of Laertes activities in France from Lamond (or in some texts "Lamord"):

KING CLAUDIUS (4.7.89)

. . . Two months since,
Here was a gentleman of Normandy:--
I've seen myself, and served against, the French,

KING CLAUDIUS (4.7.105)

He made confession of you,
And gave you such a masterly report
For art and exercise in your defence
And for your rapier most especially,

Laertes, when he thought King Claudius had killed his father, immediately confronted the King - but with a mob to back him up (and possibly to die for his cause). After hearing Claudius' side of the story, Laertes immediately began plotting with Claudius to kill Hamlet by treachery. He didn't care about right or wrong, he just wanted revenge, even if it meant cutting Hamlet's throat in a church. He didn't bother to hear Hamlet's side of the story. However, just before the duel Laertes did finally hear Hamlet's apology which he would have accepted but he foolishly deferred to the opinions of "elder masters" - meaning Claudius - and continued the duel against his conscience.

Some critics point to Laertes' dueling as an example of irony. Polonius had instructed Reynaldo to spy on Laertes to see if he was fencing, among other " taints." Lamond verified that Laertes was indeed fencing while in France. And then fencing led to Laertes' death. But the dramatic irony goes deeper:

Laertes's father had warned him

POLONIUS (1.3.78)

Neither a borrower nor a lender be;
For loan oft loses both itself and friend,
And BORROWING DULLS THE EDGE OF HUSBANDRY.

But Laertes ignored that advice. When planning to revenge his father's death, Laertes said,

LAERTES (4.5.148)

And for my means, I'll HUSBAND them so well,
They shall go far with little.

Then Laertes died fighting for a borrowed cause (borrowed from Claudius, his "ELDER MASTER").

Laertes (5.2.239)

I am satisfied in nature,
...but...
I..will no reconcilement,
Till by some ELDER MASTERS, of known honour,
I have a voice and precedent of peace,

Laertes [aside] (5.2.304)

And yet 'tis almost 'gainst my conscience.

In a sense, he was killed because of borrowing and lending of swords (the accidental switch between swords, one poisoned) and that loan lost "both itself and friend" (both Laertes and Hamlet, who was his friend at the end).

However, before he died Laertes and Hamlet exchanged forgiveness and thus saved both their souls.

Shmoop shoveled it even higher around their hero Fortinbras:
http://www.shmoop.com/hamlet/fortinbras.html
"Fortinbras analysis by Ph.D. and Masters students from Stanford, Harvard, and Berkeley."

Schmoop:
"Fortinbras is a Norwegian prince who seeks revenge for his father's death [SIC]."
(See Shmoop update as of June 1, 2014)
Fortinbras' father was killed 30 years earlier by Hamlet's father who is now dead. The cowardly Fortinbras waited until now, (1.2.18)

Holding a weak supposal of our worth,
Or thinking by our late dear brother's death
Our state to be disjoint and out of frame,
Colleagued with the dream of his advantage,

to try to take back the land his father lost, by sharking up a gang of "lawless resolutes." The cowardly young Fortinbras believes (probably correctly) that he has a better chance of reclaiming the land from Claudius. For one thing, neither Claudius nor young Fortinbras will risk their own lives in a personal duel (as did old King Hamlet and Fortinbras's father). The two "brave" princes (Prince Fortinbras and King Claudius) can fight it out with no royal bloodshed - just a few thousand underlings.]

Shmoop:
"Fortinbras takes clear and immediate action [SIC]"

["immediate action"??? Thirty years later???]

So much for Shmoop and Stanford and Harvard and Berkeley (assuming that affiliation is not another Shmoop lie):

HAMLET (5.2.184)

Thus has he--and many more of the same bevy that I
know the dressy age dotes on--only got the tune of
the time and outward habit of encounter; a kind of
yesty collection, which carries them through and
through the most fond and winnowed opinions; and do
but blow them to their trial, the bubbles are out.

Shmoop update as of June 1, 2014

Shmoop has shuffled its alleged "authorities." They've dropped Harvard and added Yale:
"A majority of our writers are PhDs and PhD candidates from top universities like Stanford, UC Berkeley, and Yale."

They are now longer claiming that Fortinbras was motivated by revenge, but they still assert that he took "immediate action":
"But while Hamlet sits around contemplating life and death, Fortinbras takes immediate action by raising an army to reclaim Norway's lost territories."

Also please see

God-like Reason Unused

In the Whirlwind of Passion, Show his Form and Pressure

Terms Compulsatory

To Thine Ownself Be True

Hamlet in a Nutshell - Hamlet Is an Anti-War Play

How to Love Hamlet

The Womb of Earth

Since kings cause thousands of deaths by fighting wars over land, Hamlet equated his own birth and that of any future son with death and equated wombs with graves and land with graveyards.

Horatio
Or if thou hast uphoarded in thy life
Extorted treasure in the womb of earth,
For which, they say, you spirits oft walk in death,

Hamlet
For if the sun breed maggots in a dead dog, being a god kissing carrion,--Have you a daughter?
Lord Polonius
I have, my lord.
Hamlet
Let her not walk i' the sun: conception is a blessing: but not as your daughter may conceive. Friend, look to 't.

Lord Polonius
Will you walk out of the air, my lord?
Hamlet
Into my grave.
Lord Polonius
Indeed, that is out o' the air.
(Aside)
How pregnant sometimes his replies are!

Hamlet
...virtue cannot so inoculate our old stock but we shall relish of it ...
Hamlet Get thee to a nunnery: why wouldst thou be a breeder of sinners? ...it were better my mother had not borne me

Hamlet
Lady, shall I lie in your lap?
Lying down at OPHELIA's feet
Ophelia
No, my lord.
Hamlet
I mean, my head upon your lap?
Ophelia
Ay, my lord.
Hamlet
Do you think I meant country matters?
[country matters - Ophelia's lap was the womb of earth.]
Ophelia
Well, God 'ild you! They say the owl was a baker's daughter. Lord, we know what we are, but know not what we may be. God be at your table!
[In Shakespeare's time, the owl was a portent of death.]

Then up he rose, and donn'd his clothes,
And dupp'd the chamber-door;
Let in the maid, that out a maid
Never departed more.

[Dupped means "opened upward," as with a coffin lid.]

From Answers.com:
Dup
v. t. (d適p) [Contr. fr. do up, that is, to lift up the latch. Cf. Don, Doff.]
To open; as, to dup the door. [Obs.] Shak.v

King Claudius
Pretty Ophelia!
Ophelia
Indeed, la, without an oath, I'll make an end on't:
By Gis and by Saint Charity,
Alack, and fie for shame!
Young men will do't, if they come to't;
By cock, they are to blame.
Quoth she, before you tumbled me,
You promised me to wed.
So would I ha' done, by yonder sun,
An thou hadst not come to my bed.

Queen Gertrude
Sweets to the sweet: farewell!
Scattering flowers
I hoped thou shouldst have been my Hamlet's wife;
I thought thy bride-bed to have deck'd, sweet maid,
And not have strew'd thy grave.

Hamlet [speaking of a grave]
'Thou dost lie in't, to be in't and say it is thine: 'tis for the dead, not for the quick; therefore thou liest.
First Clown
'Tis a quick lie, sir; 'twill away gain, from me to you.

Hamlet
(Leaps into the grave)

Hamlet
The imminent death of twenty thousand men,
That, for a fantasy and trick of fame,
Go to their graves like beds, fight for a plot
Whereon the numbers cannot try the cause,
Which is not tomb enough and continent
To hide the slain?

Hamlet [speaking of a skull in a grave]
This fellow might be in's time a great buyer of land... The very conveyances of his lands will hardly lie in this box; and must the inheritor himself have no more, ha?

Horatio
Our last king...Was...by Fortinbras...Dared to the combat; in which...Hamlet [Sr]...Did slay this Fortinbras; who ... Did forfeit...his lands..[which] fell to Hamlet [Jr].

Hamlet
How long hast thou been a grave-maker?
First Clown
Of all the days i' the year, I came to't that day that our last king Hamlet overcame Fortinbras.
Hamlet
How long is that since?
First Clown
Cannot you tell that? every fool can tell that: it was the very day that young Hamlet was born; he that is mad, and sent into England.

Hamlet
How came he [Hamlet] mad?

First Clown
Faith, e'en with losing his wits.
Hamlet
Upon what ground?
First Clown
Why, here in Denmark

King Claudius
Be as ourself in Denmark.

Laertes
And therefore must his choice be circumscribed
Unto the voice and yielding of that body
Whereof he is the head. Then if he says he loves you,
It fits your wisdom so far to believe it
As he in his particular act and place
May give his saying deed; which is no further
Than the main voice of Denmark goes withal.

Hamlet
The rest is silence.

Kings caused thousands of deaths by fighting wars over land, thus, in the dirt, death, purgatory motif in Hamlet associates land with death. Hamlet's father was in purgatory because he could not part with his land.

At the time of Hamlet's birth, his father (Hamlet Sr) won a duel with Fortinbras Sr to acquire a piece of land which was to become Hamlet's inheritance. At that same time, the gravedigger began his employment in Denmark. This suggests that Hamlet's inheritance of land was, figuratively, a graveyard. This idea is reinforced when Hamlet, standing by an open grave, remarks that the occupant of the grave might have been a landowner and now his grave is hardly large enough to contain the deeds for his land. Later Fortinbras Jr sent 10,000 men to their deaths to obtain a plot of land that was "not continent and tomb enough to bury the dead". That was the same Fortinbras who, according to Hamlet, had "rights of memory" in this land.

Later, Hamlet describes Osric as being "having much land" and being "spacious in the possession of dirt" and admits to the "vice" of knowing him, shortly before remarking that "to know a man well were to know himself." This indicates that Hamlet believes his unwillingly inherited land and his unwillingly inherited greed for land ("virtue cannot so innoculate our old stock but we shall relish of it") is a vice ("Cursed spite that I was born to set it right!"). "To be or not to be" . . . . "so like the king that was and is the question of these wars."

Hamlet inherited greed for land from his father's ghost by promising that "thy commandment all alone shall live within the book and volume of my brain." Hamlet and the audience and even the ghost himself all believed that the ghost wanted revenge. But the ghost had said he was "doomed to walk the night...til the sins done in my days of nature are burnt and purg'd away." But what sins? The ghost himself did not understand his sin. Traditionally, a dying man wanted his kin to shorten his time in purgatory by praying for the forgiveness of his sins. But Hamlet's father told him "pity me not." He only wanted his son and namesake to recover the kingdom that Claudius had deprived him of. Horatio had accused the ghost of returning for "uphoarded treasure in the womb of earth" - then the ghost fled. Hamlet's father was doomed to walk the earth and burn in purgatory because his could not give up his deadly dirt.

The dirt motif was also important in English history (recent history in Shakespeare's time) and perhaps in Shakespeare's own life.

For centuries, rich men had bequeathed land to the Catholic Church in exchange for shortened stays in Purgatory. Martin Luther believed that the selling of passes out of Purgatory was the primary corrupter of the Church. Furthermore, the land which the Church had thus acquired was a tempting prize for any king who decided to break away from the Catholic Church. When Henry VIII separated the Church of England from the Roman Catholic Church, he seized the lands of English monasteries, then sold those lands. Thereafter the English Reformation was irreversible. England could never again be Catholic because too many Englishmen had a vested interest in Protestantism -- all those owners of former monastery lands.

In 1565 (the year after Shakespeare's birth) William Allen wrote "A Defense and Declaration of the Catholike Churches Doctrine touching Purgatory, and Prayers of the Soules Departed." Before the Reformation, the primary social, economic, and religious institution in many English hamlets was the local guild. These town guilds (not to be confused with the craft guilds in large cities) had been formed for the primary purpose of praying for the souls of deceased members, in order to shorten their time in Purgatory. With the Reformation, the Anglican Church declared the idea of Purgatory heretical, prolonged praying for the dead was outlawed, and the town guilds were ostensibly secularized. However, the guilds continued to be the main social and economic institutions in many towns. Furthermore, many guild members continued, openly or secretly, to be Catholics. Shakespeare was educated by the Stratford Guild. The brother of one of his teachers was executed for being a Catholic missionary, as was one of Shakespeare's former schoolmates. One of Shakespeare's teachers at the Guild went on to become head of the Catholic English College in Rome.

When Your Clowns Speak

HAMLET (3.2.39)

... And let those that play your clowns speak no more than is set down for them; for there be of them that will themselves laugh, to set on some quantity of barren spectators to laugh too; though, in the mean time, some necessary question of the play be then to be considered...

What is the necessary question of Hamlet? When the clowns speak, it is then to be considered.

FIRST CLOWN (5.1.15)

Give me leave. Here lies the water; good: here stands the man; good;if the man go to this water, and drown himself, it is, will he, nill he, he goes,--mark you that; but if the water come to him and drown him, he drowns not himself: argal, he that is not guilty of his own death shortens not his own life.

SECOND CLOWN

But is this law?

FIRST CLOWN

Ay, marry, is't; crowner's quest law.</i

"Crowner's quest" means "coronor's inquest" but it is also a pun on the question of whether to seize the crown -"to be or not to be" "so like the king"

HAMLET (3.1.64)

To be, or not to be: that is the question:
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them?

If Hamlet took arms against the king (a sea of troubles), he would very likely lose his own life in the attempt. Such an action might be considered suicide, which would cost Hamlet his soul. However if he waits for the king to initiate the attack (if the water come to him), then he is not guilty of his own death. In the end, Hamlet killed the king only after the King had indirectly killed Hamlet (via Laertes' poisoned sword).

Before we leave the clowns, let's dig a little deeper.

Thirty years earlier, Hamlet's father (also named Hamlet) had killed King Fortinbras and gained some land that Hamlet subsequently inherited.

HAMLET (5.1.140)

How long hast thou been a grave-maker?

FIRST CLOWN

Of all the days i' the year, I came to't that day that our last king Hamlet overcame Fortinbras.

HAMLET

How long is that since?

FIRST CLOWN

Cannot you tell that? every fool can tell that: it was the very day that young Hamlet was born

Was this then Hamlet's "inheritance" - a graveyard?

HAMLET (standing over a grave) (5.1.111)

The very conveyances of his lands will hardly lie in this box; and must the inheritor himself have no more, ha?

To be or not to be -- what? That is the question. After Horatio had explained that the impending war was caused by a duel over land fought by Hamlet's father, whose ghost they had just seen, Bernardo replied:

(1.1.121)

I think it be no other but e'en so: (1.1.121)
Well may it sort that this portentous figure
Comes armed through our watch; so like the king
That was and is the question of these wars.

To be or not to be... so like the king that was and is the question of these wars - that is Hamlet's dilemma.

Also see How to Love Hamlet

How If I Answer No?

OSRIC (5.2.166)

....it would come to immediate trial, if your lordship would vouchsafe the answer.

HAMLET

How if I answer 'no'?

Osric has been sent by Claudius to ask Hamlet whether he will consent to fight a duel with Laertes. But instead of asking that question directly, Osric refers to a subtly different question - the question that the actual duel would answer: "who is the better swordsman." So "it would come to immediate trial" means that the question of "who is the better swordsman" would be answered if Hamlet answers it by dueling - "if your lordship would vouchsafe the answer."

Hamlet understands Osric's meaining but chooses to interpret "vouchsafe the answer" as answering whether or not he will consent to duel. If Hamlet answers that question "no" (he will not duel), then how could it "come to immediate trial" (with a duel)?

The entire dialog with Osric symbolizes themes of the whole play. Hamlet has been challenged by two warlike kings, his father and his uncle, to be like them ( "remember me" and "be as ourself in Denmark"). Both those kings would like Hamlet to answer the challene from Fortibras by leading Denmark into war, to defend the land that his father seized and that his uncle wanted to keep. But in the end, Hamlet will "answer no." Instead of leading his countrymen to slaughter in another war over useless dirt, with his dying voice he will give that bloodsoaked dirt to Fortibras, without a war.

See
The Voice of Denmark

Hamlet Is An Anti-War Play

Was Hamlet Guilty of Murder?

In this essay I will prove, based on evidence from the play, that Prince Hamlet was the legitimate ruler of Denmark and that he killed Polonius, Rosencrantz, Guildenstern and Claudius in defense of the legitmate government of Denmark and, more importantly, the people of Denmark. First I will demonstrate that Prince Hamlet's father was the legitmate and popular King of Denmark. Then I will prove that Claudius was not the legitmate successor to the throne. Then I will prove that Prince Hamlet was the legitimate successor as King of Denmark. Then I will show that the killings were legitmate acts of war, in circumstances that prevented normal due process, although Hamlet nevertheless conducted a de facto trial (the Mousetrap) to prove Claudius' guilt. Finally, I will show that, even though a government court of law would have absolved Hamlet, the Prince appealed to a higher authority (God) and Shakespeare submitted the case to higher judges (the audience). In those higher courts, Hamlet confessed his sins (and the sins of his dynasty) in the hope that his confession would prevent further evil.

Hamlet's father had not only been acknowledged as king, but he was widely regarded as a good king:

KING CLAUDIUS (1.2.23)

. . . those lands
Lost by his father, with all bonds of law,
To our most valiant brother.

HORATIO (1.1.93)

Our last king,
Whose image even but now appear'd to us,
... our valiant Hamlet--
For so this side of our known world esteem'd him--

HORATIO (1.2.189)

I saw him once; he was a goodly king.

HAMLET

He was a man, take him for all in all,

In Shakespeare's day, the approval of the people played no part in the formal legitimacy of the monarch, but it was all important to the de facto legitmacy. Ultimately, royal legitimacy was a product of "might makes right." However, when two leaders were contending for the throne, the one with the support of the people would usually have an easier time raising an army.

GENTLEMAN (4.5.102)

Save yourself, my lord:
The ocean, overpeering of his list,
Eats not the flats with more impetuous haste
Than young Laertes, in a riotous head,
O'erbears your officers. The rabble call him lord;
And, as the world were now but to begin,
Antiquity forgot, custom not known,
The ratifiers and props of every word,
They cry 'Choose we: Laertes shall be king:'
Caps, hands, and tongues, applaud it to the clouds:
'Laertes shall be king, Laertes king!'

The gentleman is disparaging of "the rabble." However, that gentleman is a minion of Claudius, who the audience knows is an evil king. This is as close as Shakespeare could come to advocating democracy without losing his head. However Shakespeare probably was not in favor of democracy. He wanted stability, to avoid war -

HORATIO (5.2.400)

Of carnal, bloody, and unnatural acts,
Of accidental judgments, casual slaughters,
Of deaths put on by cunning and forced cause,

But this "riotous head" illustrates that no monarch's reign could be stable without the approval of the people. The whole apparatus of "legitimacy" was really just a tool to help gain that approval.

Even Queen Elizabeth of England and James VI of Scotland (soon to be James I of England) believed that the "divine rights" of monarchs were inseparable from their duty to promote the welfare of the people.

Old King Hamlet had saved the lives of thousands of his subjects by fighting a personal duel instead of a war over disputed land. However a generation later old King Hamlet's victory in that duel became "the question of these wars." When young Fortinbras raised an army of thugs to reclaim that land "by strong hand and terms compulsatory," Claudius would not risk his own life in a personal duel in order to postpone war for another generation. Instead he temporarily diverted Fortinbras to Poland, delaying the war for only a few weeks. Thus although old King Hamlet was not as good a king as his son would be, he was less evil than Claudius.

The Danish throne was not strictly hereditary - kings were chosen by election. But Claudius seized the throne, bypassing the election:

HAMLET (5.2.69)

He that hath kill'd my king and whored my mother,
Popp'd in between the election and my hopes,

Sometimes kings were chosen by their predecessors. Claudius himself named Hamlet as his successor:

KING CLAUDIUS (1.2.109)

... think of us
As of a father: for let the world take note,
You are the most immediate to our throne;
And with no less nobility of love
Than that which dearest father bears his son,
Do I impart toward you.

ROSENCRANTZ (3.2.333)

... you have the voice of the king
himself for your succession in Denmark?

It's a reasonable assumption that Hamlet's true father had also named Hamlet as his successor. Thus, Claudius had usurped the crown from the legitimate successor.

GHOST (1.5.44)

The serpent that did sting thy father's life
Now wears his crown.

GHOST (1.5.79)

Thus was I, sleeping, by a brother's hand
Of life, of crown, of queen, at once dispatch'd:

HAMLET (3.4.111)

A cutpurse of the empire and the rule,
That from a shelf the precious diadem stole,
And put it in his pocket!

We've seen the "riotous head" with which Laertes could have overthrown Claudius. Prince Hamlet, because of "the great love the general gender bear him," could have easily raised an army to defeat his uncle - but not without the deaths of many of his countrymen. Hamlet was better than that. Immediately after swearing to his father's ghost that he would attack Claudius, Hamlet urged his friends to "shake hands and part." Hamlet did not want to drag his subjects along to his doom, as was commonly done by kings:

ROSENCRANTZ (3.3.16)

.... The cease of majesty
Dies not alone; but, like a gulf, doth draw
What's near it with it: it is a massy wheel,
Fix'd on the summit of the highest mount,
To whose huge spokes ten thousand lesser things
Are mortised and adjoin'd; which, when it falls,
Each small annexment, petty consequence,
Attends the boisterous ruin. Never alone
Did the king sigh, but with a general groan.

FIRST PLAYER (2.2.502)

Out, out, thou strumpet, Fortune! All you gods,
In general synod 'take away her power;
Break all the spokes and fellies from her wheel,
And bowl the round nave down the hill of heaven,
As low as to the fiends!'

Hamlet was unwilling to spark a bloody civil war, but he a responsibilty to personally prevent Claudius from committing further evil:

HAMLET (5.2.72)

-is't not perfect conscience,
To quit him with this arm? and is't not to be damn'd,
To let this canker of our nature come
In further evil?

Under the circumstances, Hamlet was not able to submit Claudius to formal due process. However, he did his best to establish guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. Hamlet heard the testimony of the victim himself:

GHOST (1.5.44)

The serpent that did sting thy father's life
Now wears his crown.

Even so, Hamlet sought more evidence to eliminate the last shred of reasonable doubt (that the Ghost might not really be his father:

HAMLET (2.2.609)

The spirit that I have seen
May be the devil: and the devil hath power
To assume a pleasing shape; yea, and perhaps
Out of my weakness and my melancholy,
As he is very potent with such spirits,
Abuses me to damn me: I'll have grounds
More relative than this:

So he devised the Mousetrap play as a kind of trial:

HAMLET (2.2.599)

I have heard
That guilty creatures sitting at a play
Have by the very cunning of the scene
Been struck so to the soul that presently
They have proclaim'd their malefactions;
For murder, though it have no tongue, will speak
With most miraculous organ. I'll have these players
Play something like the murder of my father
Before mine uncle: I'll observe his looks;
I'll tent him to the quick: if he but blench,
I know my course.

HAMLET (2.2.615)

. . . the play 's the thing
Wherein I'll catch the conscience of the king.

[Hamlet itself may have been a play that caught the conscience of a king. See
Princess of Denmark, James VI, and the Ur-Hamlet
and
It Began With a Lass (The False Steward)]t

The Mousetrap succeeded in exposing the guilt of Claudius to Hamlet, but it also exposed Hamlet's suspicions to Claudius. Immediately after the Mousetrap (and before Hamlet had killed Polonius) Claudius began plotting to murder Hamlet:

KING CLAUDIUS (3.3.1)

I like him not, nor stands it safe with us
To let his madness range. Therefore prepare you;
I your commission will forthwith dispatch,
And he to England shall along with you:
The terms of our estate may not endure
Hazard so dangerous as doth hourly grow
Out of his lunacies.

HAMLET (3.4.220)

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.

HAMLET (5.2.18)

. . . . to unseal
Their grand commission; where I found, Horatio,--
O royal knavery!--an exact command,
. . . .
That, on the supervise, no leisure bated,
No, not to stay the grinding of the axe,
My head should be struck off.

Therefore, in order to defend himself and his country, Hamlet had to kill Claudius. When he saw somebody (Polonius) behind the arras in his mother's room, he naturally assumed that it was Claudius ("I took thee for thy better") so he stabbed through the arras, unintentionally killing Polonius. But Polonius was not a complete innocent:

CLAUDIUS (1.2.14)

.... nor have we herein barr'd
Your better wisdoms, which have freely gone
With this affair along.

POLONIUS (3.1.199)

To England send him, or confine him where
Your wisdom best shall think.

There is no indication that Polonius knew or suspected that Claudius had murdered the former king nor that he was planning to murder Hamlet, but Polonius was well aware of Claudius' very public usurpation of Hamlet's succession to the throne. Polonius volunteered to be a spy (normally a capital offense) for Claudius, even after Hamlet had warned him against it:

HAMLET (3.1.141)

Where's your father?

OPHELIA

At home, my lord.

HAMLET

Let the doors be shut upon him, that he may play the
fool no where but in's own house. Farewell.

When he killed Polonius, Hamlet believed that he was the"scourge and minister" of God:

HAMLET (3.4.189)

I do repent; but heaven hath pleas'd it so,
To punish me with this and this with me;
That I must be their scourge and minister.

But was Hamlet following a commandment from heaven - or hell?
(See An Honest Ghost?)

HAMLET (3.2.43)

. . . some necessary
question of the play be then to be considered:
that's villanous, and shows a most pitiful ambition

TO BE OR NOT TO BE . . . . so like the king THAT was and IS THE QUESTION OF THESE WARS"."

HAMLET (5.2.169)

How if I answer 'no'?

In the end Hamlet finally killed Claudius, then lived just long enough to give Fortinbras the disputed land, thereby permanently averting the war and saving the lives of thousands of commoners.
(See Hamlet Is An Anti-War Play.)

HAMLET (5.2.346)

You that look pale and tremble at this chance,
That are but mutes or audience to this act,
Had I but time--as this fell sergeant, death,
Is strict in his arrest--O, I could tell you--
But let it be. Horatio, I am dead;
Thou livest; report me and my cause aright
To the unsatisfied.

HAMLET (5.2.358)

O good Horatio, what a wounded name,
Things standing thus unknown, shall live behind me!
If thou didst ever hold me in thy heart
Absent thee from felicity awhile,
And in this harsh world draw thy breath in pain,
To tell my story.

HORATIO (5.2.396)

. . . . give order that these bodies
High on a stage be placed to the view;
And let me speak to the yet unknowing world
How these things came about: so shall you hear
Of carnal, bloody, and unnatural acts,
Of accidental judgments, casual slaughters,
Of deaths put on by cunning and forced cause,
And, in this upshot, purposes mistook
Fall'n on the inventors' reads: all this can I
Truly deliver.

HORATIO (5.2.413)

But let this same be presently perform'd,
Even while men's minds are wild; lest more mischance
On plots and errors, happen.

KING CLAUDIUS (5.2.278)

And you, the judges, bear a wary eye.

Also please see
The Madness of Hamlet
and
How to Love Hamlet

Look Where My Abridgement Comes

When Hamlet said, "look, where my abridgement comes," he was talking about "old Jephtha". What's that got to do with the abridgement in "to be or not to be"..."so like the king that was and is the question of these wars"?

Hamlet
Why, 'As by lot, God wot,' and then, you know, 'It came to pass, as most like it was,' - the first row of the pious chanson will show you more; for look, where my abridgement comes.

(1) "As most like it was" sounds like "so like the king that was"

(2) The story of Jephtha, in Judges 11, sounds most like the story of the king that was and is the question of these wars. The Ammonites were preparing for war against Israel to recover land Israel had taken from them, just as young Fortinbras was preparing for war "to recover of us, by strong hand and terms compulsatory, those foresaid lands so by his father lost" in the fatal duel with old King Hamlet.

Judges 11.12
... What hast thou to do with me, that thou art come against me to fight in my land?

Judges 11.13
...Because Israel took away my land... now therefore restore those lands again

St Gertrude in the Garden

St Gertrude of Nivelles is the patron saint of gardeners . . . . mentally ill people (especially those with a rat phobia), travellers, pilgrims . . . , recently dead people, and graves. . . She's associated with mice, which represent souls in purgatory. - extracted from the following link:

Begin-Quote from Praying to Saints and Folk Magic: Santa Gertrude di Nivelles (2010 Myth Woodling)
"She was venerated as a saint shortly after her death in 659. At her shrine in Cologne, Germany, gold and silver mice were given as offerings as late as 1822. . . . In artwork, St. Gertrude of Nivelles is depicted as one of the following: a woman holding a large mouse, an abbess with mice at her feet, an abbess with mice running up her cloak, an abbess with mice running up her crosier or pastoral staff,. . . . Gertrude of Nivelles' iconic symbol is the mouse, and she is the patron saint of . . . mentally ill people (especially suriphobics),. . . gardeners, . . . travellers, pilgrims (particularly pilgrims in search of lodging), recently dead people, graves, . . . As a protective saint, she is invoked against rodents, vermin, rats, mice, pestilence, fever, fear of mice or rats (suriphobia), against mental illness and disorders (especilally suriphobia), and insanity. . . . In modern Belgium, supposedly a drink-for-the-road is called a "St. Gertrude's Cup." There is also a legend relating to the "St. Gertrude's Cup." One day she sent some of her people to a distant country, promising that no misfortune would befall them on the journey. When they were on the waters, a large sea monster threatened to capsize their ship, but disappeared upon the invocation of St. Gertrude. Because of this legend, medieval travelers drank a toast known in German as the "Gertrudenminte" or "Sinte Geerts Minne" in the saint's honour before setting out on their journey. . . .Sometime Gertrude of Nivelles' symbol, the mouse, is said related to the souls in purgatory or symbolic as her protection of the recently dead people--citing the Teutonic tradition of mice being the emblem of souls. . . . St. Gertrude is patron saint of gardeners and herbalists, because there is a tradition that fine weather on her feast day (March 17) boads that it is time for spring planting."
end-quote from "Praying to Saints and Folk Magic: Santa Gertrude di Nivelles"

St Gertrude of Nivelles is the patron saint of gardeners:

HAMLET (1.2.137)

...'tis an unweeded garden
That grows to seed; things rank and gross in nature
Possess it merely.

HAMLET [speaking to Gertrude] (3.4.167-168)

. . . do not spread the compost on the weeds,
To make them ranker.

"Medieval travelers drank a toast known in German as the 'Gertrudenminte' or 'Sinte Geerts Minne' in the saint's honour before setting out on their journey."

Perhaps Hamlet was making a sarcastic allusion to the "Sinte Geerts Minne" toast when he forced Claudius to drink from the cup that had poisoned Gertrude, before Claudius set out on his journey to hell:

HAMLET (5.2.337-338)

Drink off this potion. Is thy union here?
Follow my mother.

St Gertrude of Nivelles is also the patron saint of mentally ill people, especially those with a rat phobia:

HAMLET (3.4.27)

How now! a rat? Dead, for a ducat, dead!

CLAUDIUS (3.2.232-233)

What do you call the play?

HAMLET

The Mouse-trap.

"Gertrude of Nivelles' symbol, the mouse, is said related to the souls in purgatory."

FRANCISCO (1.1.11)

Not a mouse stirring.

GHOST (1.5.13-17)

I am thy father's spirit,
Doom'd for a certain term to walk the night,
And for the day confined to fast in fires,
Till the foul crimes done in my days of nature
Are burnt and purged away.

St Gertrude's Feast Day is March 17, the same as St Patrick's, who is also a keeper of purgatory.

HORATIO (1.5.148-149)

There's no offence, my lord.

HAMLET

Yes, by Saint Patrick, but there is, Horatio, And much offence too.

St Gertrude of Nivelles is also the patron saint of "travellers, pilgrims . . . , recently dead people, graves."

After Hamlet had been driven mad by listening to the the Ghost's forbidden tale of the secret's of his prison-house, Hamlet appears before Ophelia with "no hat upon his head" (2,1,87). Later Hamlet speaks of "The undiscover'd country from whose bourn no traveller returns"(3,1,87).Still later Ophelia sings of Hamlet with a cockle hat (4.5.28) Pilgrims wore cockleshells on their hats. Ophelia's song foreshadows Hamlet's "pilgrimage" to the "undiscover'd country" of her "chaste treasure" in the "womb of earth" (her grave). With Gertrude standing by, Hamlet returns from that undiscovered country with his sanity restored. See The Rebirth of Hamlet
.
Now aren't all you Freudian perverts ashamed of your spurious accusations against this saintly woman?

Jointress to this Warlike State

The tragic flaw of both Gertrude's husbands is that they are unable to part from their earthly kingdoms, not even to save their souls. Gertrude's fatal flaw is that she is unable to part from her husbands, not even to save her soul. "Why, she would hang on him, as if increase of appetite had grown by what it fed on" (1,2,145-147) Thus, "the imperial jointress to this warlike state" (1,2,9) is doomed to join her husbands in the blood-soaked graveyard, their "extorted treasure in the womb of earth" (1,1,149.)

Polonius Well-Ended

Shakespeare weaves a web of puns connecting Polonius with Poland and hence Hamlet with Fortinbras. Fortinbras set out to attack Claudius, but Claudius arranged to shift the attack to a part of Poland. Hamlet tried to attack Claudius, but stabbed Polonius instead.

POLONIUS (3.3.30)

Behind the arras I'll convey myself,

Fortinbras (4.4.1)

Go, captain, from me greet the Danish king;
Tell him that, by his licence, Fortinbras
Craves the conveyance of a promised march
Over his kingdom.

Hamlet (looking in a grave) (5.1.110)

The very conveyances of his lands will hardly lie in this box

Hamlet(3.4.27)

How now! a rat? Dead, for a ducat, dead!

Captain (4.4.18)

Truly to speak, and with no addition,
We go to gain a little patch of ground
That hath in it no profit but the name.
To pay five ducats, five, I would not farm it;
Nor will it yield to Norway or the Pole
A ranker rate, should it be sold in fee.

Polonius(2.2.176)

Be you and I behind an arras then;
Mark the encounter: if he love her not
And be not from his reason fall'n thereon,
Let me be no assistant for a state,
But keep a farm and carters.

Polonius announced the ambassadors from Norway who would tell Claudius that Fortinbras attack had been shifted to Poland:
Polonius (2.2.54)

Give first admittance to the ambassadors;
My news shall be the fruit to that great feast. [the end or dessert]

After the ambassadors delivered their news:
Polonius (2.2.91)

This business is well ended.

After Hamlet's attempt to attack Claudius caused Polonius's untimely end:
Ophelia (4.5.198)

...when my father died: they say he made a good end,

There was another foreshadowing of Polonius as dessert:

Hamlet (2.2.535)

....after your death you were better have a bad epitaph than their ill report while you live.

Polonius

My lord, I will use them according to their desert.

Hamlet

God's bodykins, man, much better: use every man after his desert, and who should 'scape whipping?

Claudius (4.3.19)

Now, Hamlet, where's Polonius?

Hamlet

At supper.

Claudius

At supper! where?

Hamlet

Not where he eats, but where he is eaten: a certain convocation of politic worms are e'en at him. Your worm is your only emperor for diet: we fat all creatures else to fat us, and we fat ourselves for maggots: your fat king and your lean beggar is but variable service, two dishes, but to one table: that's the end.

"Your worm is your only emperor for diet" is probably an allusion to the Diet of Worms, where the Holy Roman Emperor outlawed Martin Luther.

Hamlet (4.3.30)

A man may fish with the worm that hath eat of a king, and eat of the fish that hath fed of that worm.

Claudius

What dost you mean by this?

Hamlet

Nothing but to show you how a king may go a progress through the guts of a beggar.

Polonius (2.1.68)

Your bait of falsehood takes this carp of truth:

Polonius (2.2.188)

Do you know me, my lord?

Hamlet

Excellent well; you are a fishmonger.

Polonius

Not I, my lord.

Hamlet

Then I would you were so honest a man.

An Envious Sliver

Polonius was aware that his meddling had ruined the lives of Hamlet and Ophelia. In the speech where he admitted this, he foreshadowed Ophelia's death:

POLONIUS (2.1.117)

What, have you given him any hard words of late?

OPHELIA

No, my good lord, but, as you did command,
I did repel his fetters and denied
His access to me.

POLONIUS

That hath made him mad.
I am sorry that with better heed and judgment
I had not quoted him: I fear'd he did but trifle,
And meant to wreck thee; but, beshrew my jealousy
By heaven, it is as proper to our age
To cast beyond ourselves in our opinions
As it is common for the younger sort
To lack discretion.

GERTRUDE (4.7.181)

There is a willow grows aslant a brook,
That shows his hoar leaves in the glassy stream;
....
There, on the pendent boughs her coronet weeds
Clambering to hang, an envious sliver broke;
When down her weedy trophies and herself
Fell in the weeping brook.

Polonius, jealous and envious of Hamlet, cast beyond himself in his opinion (like a branch over a stream). When Polonius died (broke), Ophelia, who had once reached for the coronet of a princess, lacking discretion, climbed out on the envious sliver of Polonius' commands and lost her self even before she drowned.. Polonius was metaphorically like the willow that was reflected in the brook. So Ophelia metaphorically died by falling into a mirror image of her father.

Polonius was also likened to a tree when Hamlet described one of the tedious old men in his book (metaphorically the book and volume of his brain) as having eyes purging thick amber and plum-tree gum. Amber (fossilized tree sap) was an allusion to Poland, which was famous for its amber. This uses the Polonius/Poland pun, which is further developed later (Polonius Well-Ended).

Just as Polonius ruined Ophelia by "casting beyond" himself with his opinions, so Hamlet's father almost ruined Hamlet with the "secrets of [his] prison house", an "eternal blazon" that "must not be to ears of flesh and blood", "thoughts beyond the reaches" of Hamlet's soul.

Ophelia was untrue to herself; she gave her brother the key to her memory and let her father tell her what to think:

LAERTES (1.3.87)

Farewell, Ophelia; and remember well
What I have said to you.

OPHELIA

'Tis in my memory lock'd,
And you yourself shall keep the key of it.

OPHELIA (1.3.108)

I do not know, my lord, what I should think.

POLONIUS

Marry, I'll teach you...

After her father died, Ophelia was like a puppet with the strings cut:

HAMLET (3.2.242)

I could interpret between you and your love
if I could see the puppets dallying.

Also see
Old Men in the Book of his Brain
Remembrances in the Book of Their Brains
How to Love Hamlet

The Diet of Worms and the Aborted Rebirth of Polonius

Claudius (4.3.19)

Now, Hamlet, where's Polonius?

Hamlet

At supper.

Claudius

At supper! where?

Hamlet

Not where he eats, but where he is eaten: a certain convocation of politic worms are e'en at him. Your worm is your only emperor for diet: we fat all creatures else to fat us, and we fat ourselves for maggots: your fat king and your lean beggar is but variable service, two dishes, but to one table: that's the end.

As many writers have noted, this is an obvious allusion to the Diet of Worms in which the Holy Roman Empire outlawed Martin Luther. But why? What was Shakespeare's point for this allusion?

It's easy to draw a parallel between the Ghost of Hamlet's father and the ghost of the English Catholic Church, exhorting its sons to recapture the Church's lost land. (See The Memory Be Green - Hamlet in Historical Context and Terms Compulsatory.) It's almost as easy to associate Claudius with the Church of England. (Claudius "wicked wit and gifts" might be an allusion to Bishop Whitgift. See Old Men in the Book of his Brain.) But the parallel between Polonius and Martin Luther is much more subtle.

Perhaps the parallel is between aborted rebirths. Martin Luther's initial intent was to reform the Catholic Church rather than to destroy it. But that rebirth of the Catholic Church was aborted at the Diet of Worms. Like Hamlet, Polonius metaphorically reverted to infancy. But, unlike Hamlet, Polonius was not reborn - instead he was killed because Hamlet mistook him for the king. Similarly Luther's attempt to inspire a rebirth of the Catholic Church was aborted because kings and emperors and warlike popes used religious disputes as a pretext to fight over the lands of the Church.

See
The Rebirth of Hamlet.
The Memory Be Green - Hamlet in Historical Context
Polonius

Shakespeare and Foxe's Book of Martyrs

John Foxe became a tutor working for Thomas Lucy about 1545-7 Not where he eats, but where he is eaten: a certain convocation of politic worms are e'en at him. Your worm is your only emperor for diet.

Martin Luther "was led by secret stairs to the place where he was appointed to have audience" - from Foxe's Book of Martyrs,147, THE DIET OF WORMS
(http://www.exclassics.com/foxe/foxe148.htm).

HAMLET
...
...you shall nose him as you go up the stairs into the lobby.

Old Stock

HAMLET
. . . I did love you once.
OPHELIA
Indeed, my lord, you made me believe so.
HAMLET
You should not have believed me; for virtue cannot so inoculate our old stock but we shall relish of it:

Laertes had previously warned Ophelia that because Hamlet was a Prince he was not free to marry for love. However much he loves Ophelia now, eventually his royal duties will force him to dump her:

Laertes
. . . Perhaps he loves you now,
And now no soil nor cautel doth besmirch
The virtue of his will: but you must fear,
His greatness weigh'd, his will is not his own;
For he himself is subject to his birth:
He may not, as unvalued persons do,
Carve for himself; for on his choice depends
The safety and health of this whole state;
And therefore must his choice be circumscribed
Unto the voice and yielding of that body
Whereof he is the head. Then if he says he loves you,
It fits your wisdom so far to believe it
As he in his particular act and place
May give his saying deed; which is no further
Than the main voice of Denmark goes withal.

Laertes was right. Hamlet erased himself (the "pressures of youth," including Ophelia) from his own brain and wrote his father there. He was "from himself taken away," all his virtues (including his love for Ophelia) replaced by his father's values (his "old stock"). "Old stock" might be a gardening metaphor. Hamlet's humanist education was like a branch of a peach tree grafted onto the "old stock" of a lemon tree (the warlike traditions of his father). The graft did not take - Hamlet's humanism and his love for Ophelia was dying. Notice the plural form - "OUR old stock, but WE." Maybe that's because Hamlet's brain was occupied by both himself and his father.

Questions of the Play

Bernardo opens the play with a question: "who's there?". That question reverberates throughout the play.

Who's there?... What, is Horatio there?... Looks it not like the king? Is it not like the king? . so like the king that was and is the question of these wars .How is it that the clouds still hang on you?. Methinks I see my father. Where, my lord? In my mind's eye Must I remember?... What does this mean, my lord? What may this mean... why is this? wherefore? what should we do?... Why, what should be the fear?... What if it... deprive your sovereignty of reason and draw you into madness? Whither wilt thou lead me? Thou comest in such a questionable shape... canst work i' the earth so fast? What is't but to be nothing else but mad? Will you walk out of the air, my lord? Into my grave... And can you, by no drift of circumstance, get from him why he puts on this confusion, grating so harshly all his days of quiet with turbulent and dangerous lunacy?... some necessary question of the play be then to be considered. To be or not to be. That is the question. so like the king that was and is the question of these wars Who, I?... what is your cause of distemper? Sir, I lack advancement. How can that be, when you have the voice of the king himself for your succession in Denmark? Sir, I cannot make you a wholesome answer; my wit's diseased..Try what repentance can: what can it not? Yet what can it when one can not repent? Two thousand souls and twenty thousand ducats will not debate the question of this straw.....must the inheritor himself have no more, ha?...How came he mad?...Whose grave's this, sirrah?... is't not perfect conscience, to quit him with this arm? and is't not to be damn'd, to let this canker of our nature come in further evil?.. crowner's quest...answer to the purpose the king's purpose confess thyself..when you are asked this question next, say 'a grave-maker'. ... if your lordship would vouchsafe the answer...How if I answer 'no'?.. Who does it, then? His madness... Is thy union here?.. What warlike noise is this?.
See:

Some necessary question of the play be than to be considered . . . When Your Clowns Speak

To Be Or Not To Be . . .

Who's there?
The Voice of Denmark
Hamlet's Divided Soul

Also please see
How to Love Hamlet

A Piece of Work

Hamlet
What a piece of work is a man! how noble in reason!
how infinite in faculty! in form and moving how
express and admirable! in action how like an angel!
in apprehension how like a god! the beauty of the
world! the paragon of animals! And yet, to me,
what is this quintessence of dust? man delights not
me: no, nor woman neither


Hamlet (to Polonius)
How now, my lord! Will the king hear this piece of work?

Hamlet (to Claudius)
...'tis a knavish piece of work

A knavish piece of work is a man (piece of work) who is a king (nave with his subjects attached like spokes). This man does not delight Hamlet.

God-like Reason Unused

Hamlet's soliloquy about Fortinbras is ironic. It goes from

Sure, he that made us with such large discourse,
Looking before and after, gave us not
That capability and god-like reason
To fust in us unused.

to

My thoughts be bloody, or be nothing worth!

Is that using his god-like reason? Only to think bloody thoughts?

Also in the same soliloquy:

Rightly to be great
Is not to stir without great argument,
But greatly to find quarrel in a straw
When honour's at the stake.

That "honour" leads to:

The imminent death of twenty thousand men,
That, for a fantasy and trick of fame,
Go to their graves like beds, fight for a plot
Whereon the numbers cannot try the cause,
Which is not tomb enough and continent
To hide the slain. . .

Is that "honour"? To send thousands to their graves for "a straw"?

The irony is a little complicated in this soliloquy because, although the audience is intended to see the irony in Hamlet's words, Hamlet himself doesn't see it. He hasn't yet realized that he has from himself been taken away by his father's warlike spirit which he had written to live all alone in the book and volume of his brain. Thus, in this soliloquy he starts by expressing his own values, the values of a student from Wittenberg who uses his god-like reason. But then his father's spirit takes over and scoffs at reason as some craven scruple of thinking too precisely on the event, concluding that thoughts are worthless unless they are bloody.

Please see Reason Motif

In the Whirlwind of Passion, Show his Form and Pressure

When Hamlet swore to let his father's commandment live all alone in his brain, he (almost) erased his true self - all that forms and pressures past had copied there.

Yea, from the table of my memory
I'll wipe away all trivial fond records,
All saws of books, all forms, all pressures past,
That youth and observation copied there;
And thy commandment all alone shall live
Within the book and volume of my brain,
Unmix'd with baser matter

For the actor playing Hamlet, the challenge is to show the remnants of those almost-erased forms and pressures beneath the whirlwind of passion that is his father's warlike spirit (the nave of a great wheel with his hapless subjects as spokes).

for in the very torrent, tempest, and, as I may say,
the whirlwind of passion, you must acquire and beget
a temperance that may give it smoothness.

. . . to hold, as 'twere, the
mirror up to nature; to show virtue her own feature,
scorn her own image, and the very age and body of
the time his form and pressure.

"Form and pressure" in Hamlet's instructions to the Players echoes Hamlet's promise to his father to " wipe away all trivial fond records, / All saws of books, all FORMS, all PRESSURES past, / That youth and observation copied there." Thus, in telling the players to accurately reflect the true nature of the world, a part of Hamlet is also trying to tell himself to restore his own true self that he had wiped away when he wrote his father's commandment to live all alone in the book and volume of his brain.

Hamlet was possessed by his father's ghost - at least metaphorically and psychologically, if not supernaturally. This means that for much of the play Hamlet is expressing his father's opinions rather than his own. Some of his soliloquies are actually debates between Hamlet himself (before he was "from himself taken away") and his father's spirit which now lives (almost) all alone in his brain.

This would be very challenging for an actor to convey. A specific example: the "my thoughts be bloody" soliloquy. Hamlet starts the speech as himself, the scholar from Wittenberg:

...he that made us with such large discourse,
Looking before and after, gave us not
That capability and god-like reason
To fust in us unused.

But then he abruptly comes under the sway of his father's anti-intellectual, warlike spirit:

some craven scruple
Of thinking too precisely on the event,

Culminating in "my thoughts be bloody or be nothing worth!"

A super-talented actor might be able to make that speech with the father's spirit roaring out his warlike noise while at the same time the son recoils from the words coming out of his own mouth.

Hamlet is too often portrayed as an indecisive, suicidal wimp, but I see him rather as a valiant soldier of the spirit, fighting a desperate internal battle to defend the sovereignty of his soul. Making that internal battle visible to the audience would be difficult, but not impossible.

Confess Thyself

Hamlet is the glass of fashion; he is possessed by demons; and he is purgatory personified. By reflecting his father's values, Hamlet becomes possessed by his father's spirit, and thereby joins his father in the purgatory of his own mind. From purgatory, a soul is in danger of rolling down the hill of heaven even as low as to the fiends. But there is also hope that his sins will be burnt and purged away. If you're trapped in purgatory and searching for the steep and thorny way to heaven, the answer is simple: confess thyself.

Gravedigger
I'll put another question to thee: if thou answerest me not to the purpose, confess thyself--

Rosencrantz (speaking of Hamlet)
He does confess he feels himself distracted;

Hamlet (after killing Polonius, whom he mistook for Claudius)
I do repent; but heaven hath pleas'd it so,
To punish me with this and this with me;
That I must be their scourge and minister.

Hamlet
The fair Ophelia! Nymph, in thy orisons
Be all my sins remember'd.

Hamlet
...I am myself indifferent honest; but yet I could accuse me of such things that it were better my mother had not borne me: I am very proud, revengeful, ambitious, with more offences at my beck than I have thoughts to put them in, imagination to give them shape, or time to act them in. What should such fellows as I do crawling between earth and heaven? We are arrant knaves, all.

"But yet I could accuse me" - here Hamlet is really confessing on behalf of his father.

The need to confess and purge oneself of one's sins is common to many of the characters - all of them reflected by Hamlet, the the glass of fashion.

Hamlet (to Gertrude)
You go not till I set you up a glass
Where you may see the inmost part of you.
....
...Confess yourself to heaven;
Repent what's past; avoid what is to come;
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.

Claudius
And what's in prayer but this two-fold force,
To be forestalled ere we come to fall,
Or pardon'd being down? Then I'll look up;
My fault is past. But, O, what form of prayer
Can serve my turn?....
Try what repentance can: what can it not?
Yet what can it when one can not repent?

Hamlet
for me to put him [Claudius] to his purgation would perhaps plunge him into far more choler.

Ghost
I am thy father's spirit,
Doom'd for a certain term to walk the night,
And for the day confined to fast in fires,
Till the foul crimes done in my days of nature
Are burnt and purged away.
.................................................

Cut off even in the blossoms of my sin,
Unhousel'd, disappointed, unanel'd,
No reckoning made, but sent to my account
With all my imperfections on my head:

Laertes (to Claudius)
... I must confess, that...
My thoughts and wishes....
...bow them to your gracious leave and pardon.

Laertes's sin was that he bowed his wishes to Claudius:

Laertes
I am satisfied in nature,
...but...
I..will no reconcilement,
Till by some elder masters, of known honour,
I have a voice and precedent of peace,

Laertes [aside]
And yet 'tis almost 'gainst my conscience.

Laertes "confessed" out of context shortly before his actual confession:

Laertes
A touch, a touch, I do confess.

Laertes
...I am justly kill'd with mine own treachery.

Laertes
...Exchange forgiveness with me, noble Hamlet:
Mine and my father's death come not upon thee,
Nor thine on me.

Hamlet
Heaven make thee free of it! I follow thee.

That exchange of forgiveness for the deaths of father and son also included a general confession and pardon for the father and son Hamlets. Hamlet's "I will follow thee" to heaven echoes his First Act "I'll follow thee" when he followed his father into Purgatory. Now the "I will follow thee" is perhaps his father's spirit following him out of Purgatory and into Heaven.