Scene 2.2
Scene 2.2 – In a Lobby on the
Upper Floor of the Castle
Claudius welcomes
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, former classmates of Hamlet, to the Danish court.
They have been summoned, the King continues, to help discover what is
ailing the much-changed Hamlet. The
King’s instructions to Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are akin to those Polonius
has given to Reynaldo: they are to
spend time hanging out with Hamlet, gaining his trust, and then hopefully Hamlet
will unburden his heart to them. Rosencrantz
and Guildenstern readily agree to the plan and are brought to Hamlet.
Polonius enters to
announce the return of the ambassadors to Norway, but also (and, in his mind,
more importantly) to announce his discovery of the cause for Hamlet’s lunacy.
Claudus, intrigued, wants to hear news of the latter first but Polonius
makes him wait, the better to hype the import of his recent findings.
Gertrude, in Polonius’ absence, doubts aloud that the root of
Hamlet’s distemper is anything other than the obvious:
his father’s death and her overhasty marriage.
The ambassadors meanwhile arrive to report that the young Fortinbras was
indeed planning an attack against Denmark, though the elder Fortinbras had
mistakenly supposed it was aimed at Poland.
The elder thus rebuked the younger, forbade him ever to war with Denmark,
and commissioned instead an invasion of Poland.
As Denmark lies between Norway and Poland, the elder Fortinbras has asked
Claudius’ permission for the troops to pass through Danish territory.
Extremely pleased,
Claudius says he will answer the petition later, for he is at the end of his
patience in waiting to hear Polonius’ report on Hamlet.
Polonius is tickled to be center stage and promises to be brief in his
account – “since brevity is the soul of wit” – but he just isn’t quite
the master rhetorician that he fancies himself.
He babbles at length, even after Gertrude interrupts him with an
impatient “More matter with less art” (i.e. “Give me substance, not
flowery phrases!”). Quoting a
letter from Hamlet to Ophelia, Polonius declares that Hamlet’s affectionate
words to his daughter betray an obsessive and unrequited love. The words he reads aloud seem quite natural to a young lover,
so Polonius finds it necessary to explain further: Ophelia, having followed her father’s commands, has
exasperated Hamlet by ignoring his advances, to the point where the love-sick
Hamlet has now lost his mind. The
King and Queen are neither convinced nor unconvinced by Polonius’ diagnosis.
They therefore agree to observe in secret an interaction between Hamlet
and Ophelia.
Hamlet suddenly
turns up on stage, reading a book, and Polonius asks to be left alone with him.
Polonius immediately perceives a lack of coherence in Hamlet’s speech
that reminds him of his own love-madness when he was young.
But as the conversation progresses, Polonius slowly realizes that
Hamlet’s words are no more random than nonsensical:
Hamlet knows full well what he is saying, and he has a particular purpose
in mind. Polonius – who famously
remarks, “Though this be madness, yet there is method in’t.” – just
doesn’t know what or why. Taking
his leave to plan the meeting between Hamlet and his daughter, Polonius exits as
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern enter.
After greeting his
friends, Hamlet seeks to find out the cause for their unexpected return to the
jail-like Denmark. They deny that
Denmark is a prison, but Hamlet insists that for him at least it is so.
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern fail to persuade Hamlet that they have just
dropped in for a visit, but they are not quick to come clean:
Hamlet must ask them repeatedly if the King and Queen sent for them
before they finally admit it. Then
he goes on to explain why they were summoned – because of his most strange
transformation – while also reassuring them that he will not betray to the
King and Queen his knowledge of their mission.
Hamlet attempts to explain his metamorphosis:
though man be noble and angelic, even god-like, and though the world be
beautiful, Hamlet confesses that he finds everything no more than the
“quintessence of dust.” It is
all meaningless to him. Man
doesn’t delight Hamlet, and he hastens to add – noticing Rosencrantz’s wry
smile – that neither does woman, lest his comment be misunderstood as a
statement of sexual preferences. Rosencrantz
clarifies that with his smile he meant nothing of the sort, but rather that he
was envisioning the difficulty the players who have come to entertain the court
will encounter given Hamlet’s melancholy.
Introduced by
Polonius, the players enter and are officially welcomed to Elsinore by Hamlet.
He asks them to perform a speech on the spot, to give a foretaste of
their acting abilities. When asked what they should perform, Hamlet suggests
Aeneas’ tale to Dido about the slaughter of Priam.
The choice is, of course, anything but coincidental.
The son of Achilles, Pyrrhus, is summoned to the Trojan War to avenge his
father’s death at the hands of Priam – a situation strikingly similar to
Hamlet’s own. The first player
brilliantly performs a long soliloquy, even conjuring up tears and turning pale
during it. As the players leave,
Hamlet pulls one of them aside and requests that they perform The Murder of
Gonzago the following day; the player consents, further agreeing to memorize
and insert a short speech that Hamlet will supply.
Mightily moved by the player’s poignant performance, Hamlet is equally
horrified: how is it that a mere
player, who has no “motive or cue for passion” as Hamlet does, can so
convincingly act on his feelings? Hamlet is tortured by the fact that he cannot seem to act on
his: “O what a rogue and peasant
slave am I! / Is it not monstrous that this player here, / But in a fiction, in
a dream of passion, / Could force his soul so to his own conceit / …Yet I, / A
dull and muddy-meddled rascal, peak / Like a John-a-dreams, unpregnant of my
cause, / And can say nothing …/ Am I a coward?” Hamlet is suffering from paralysis of analysis, unsure
whether to trust the ghost or not, thinking too much and acting too little.
He therefore resolves to use the play as a test of Claudius’ guilt or
innocence, having once heard the guilty will react inadvertently to what they
see on stage – in essence, they will make a physical (but unspoken)
confession. Announcing “The
play’s the thing / Wherein I’ll catch the conscience of the King,” Hamlet
settles on having a scene resembling the murder of his father staged before his
uncle.
