Hamlet confronts his mother in Sir Laurence Olivier's rendition (1948).
Themes:
Woman
Suicide
Setting up a Mirror/Confronting the Truth
Play-within-a-play
Treachery
Drama
Performance
Theater
Consequences
Love
Betrayal
Revenge
Scene I
We find the king, the queen, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, Ophelia, and Polonius conversing about what the two schoolmates might have gotten out of Hamlet. The prince is stubborn and won't relent, but he is planning a play, so that's a cheery development. Then ushers in perhaps the most famous soliloquy ever, in which Hamlet, dejected and morose from all that has happened, ponders suicide. Note the moment in which he vacillates:
"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 wished. To die, to sleep;
To sleep: perchance to dream: aye, 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; there's the respect
That makes calamity of so long life;
For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,
The oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely,
The pangs of despised love, the law's delay,
The insolence of office, and the spurns
That patient merit of the unworthy takes,
When he himself might his quietus make
With a bare bodkin? who would fardels bear,
To grunt and sweat under a weary life,
But that the dread of something after death,
The undiscovered country from whose bourn
No traveler returns puzzles the will,
And makes us rather bear those ills we have
Than fly to others that we know not of?
Thus conscience does make cowards of us all,
And thus the native hue of resolution
Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought
And enterprises of great pitch and moment
With this regard their currents turn awry
And lose the name of action" (56-88).
Immediately after his deep contemplation, Ophelia arrives, her presence seems to agitate him further. She attempts to return some baubles he once gave her, he said he never gave them, and she delivers one pity line, "Rich gifts wax poor when givers prove unkind" (698). Then Hamlet launches into this awful verbal assault on poor Ophelia, in which he renounces his love for her, and remands her to a 'nunnery,' or whorehouse, claiming she would be a "breeder of sinners." In fact, he himself is no good. Then, there's that bit about "If thou dost marry, I'll give the this plague for thy dowry: be thou as chaste as ice, as pure as snow, thou shalt not escape calumny...if thou wilt needs marry, marry a fool; for wise men know well enough what monsters you make of them" (699). And this episode is but another push over the edge for Ophelia as well as for Hamlet. Here we have our first 'mirror' metaphor: as Ophelia bemoans the loss of Hamlet's sanity, she laments by saying that he was once "the glass of fashion (a mirror) and the mould of form," meaning that he was the very image of the proper prince.
Scene ii
As the second scene the play commences, and Hamlet throws himself into his scheme. The players will perform The Murder of Gonzago, and play out a plot much like the murder of Hamlet's dad. He begins with a few notes to the players about 'overplaying' the scene--and warns also about playing it to soft: he is concerned that they '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'--to reveal the truth and force mom and uncle to face it.
He has a bit of bawdy fun with his ex girlfriend, Ophelia, before making some remarks about how soon they've all forgotten that his father died just two months prior. Onward.
The scene plays out from the poison dribbled into the king's ear onward, and Claudius is outraged. He takes off for some me time, in which he admits to killing his own brother, and struggles to bring himself to prayer. Meanwhile, Hamlet overhears Claudius and, while he's been ready to strike him dead with his sword, hesitates: He cannot kill his uncle while he's in the act of prayer and send him onto heaven now that he's repented! Hamlet's father didn't get a chance to repent, so that wouldn't be fair. So, Hamlet hesitates.
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern report that the queen is mad (angry) and wants a talk with Hamlet. Polonius, ever the snoop, accompanies her so he can overhear and report. Hamlet shows up full of venom as his retort suggests in this exchange:
Gertrude: Hamlet, thou has thy father much offended.
Hamlet: Mother, you have my father much offended.
It's on: he aims to hold a mirror up to his mother now, to show her the reality of her nature (213). Incidentally, he kills Polonius who stands behind the arras. The two have words, and Hamlet ends up telling his mother that she has done a terrible thing--which she finally admits--that his father was a prince among kings, and Claudius is an 'ear of grain' that has turned all moldy and infects everything around him. Hamlet begs her not to continue having intercourse with Claudius, which would bring back (at least some) of her virtue. The scene ends with an uneasy understanding: that if she blabs about his crazy act, her neck is in danger; however Hamlet appears satisfied his anger for now.
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