Bertie's Paraphrases of Famous Scenes from Shakespeare: Hamlet: Act 3, Scene 4 (The Murder of Polonius)

[Setting: Queen Gertrude's private room in Elsinore Castle, Denmark.]

[Enter Queen Gertrude and Polonius, counsellor to the throne of Denmark.]

POLONIUS: He will come straight-away.
: See you lay into him; tell him his pranks have been too extreme to bear, and that Your Grace has screened and stood between much heat and him.
: I'll silence myself here.
: Please be emphatic.
[Note: they are expecting Prince Hamlet, who in the previous scene has virtually accused King Claudius, who is both his uncle and his mother Gertrude's new husband, of murdering Hamlet's father (also named Hamlet). Earlier in the play the ghost of the late King Hamlet has appeared to the prince and made him promise to kill Claudius in revenge. Hamlet has been faking a degree of insanity while he awaits his best opportunity to kill Claudius.]

GERTRUDE: I'll guarantee [it for] you, don't worry about me.
: Away, I hear him coming.

[Polonius hides behind an arras (a long drape covering the wall of a room) and Hamlet enters.]

HAMLET: Now, mother, what's the matter?

GERTRUDE: Hamlet, you have much offended your father.

HAMLET: Mother, you have much offended my father.

GERTRUDE: Come, come, you answer with a frivolous tongue.

HAMLET: Go, go, you accuse with a wicked tongue.

GERTRUDE [upset]: Why, how now, Hamlet?

HAMLET: What's the matter now?

GERTRUDE: Have you forgotten who I am?

HAMLET: No, by the holy cross, not so, you are the queen, your husband's brother's wife, and, I wish it were not so, you are my mother.

GERTRUDE: No? - then I'll bring those to you that can speak.

[She tries to leave, but he pulls her back into the room.]

HAMLET: Come, come and sit down.
: You shall not budge!
: You will not go until I set you up a mirror where you may see the inmost part of you.

GERTRUDE: What will you do?
: You will not murder me?
: Help, hey!

POLONIUS: What, hey!
: Help!

HAMLET: What now?
: A rat?
: Dead for a dollar, dead!

[Hamlet draws his sword and stabs with it through the arras.]

POLONIUS: Oh, I am slain!

[Polonius falls to the floor, dead]

GERTRUDE: Oh me, what have you done?

HAMLET: No, I don't know.
: Is it the king?

[Hamlet lifts the edge of the arras and sees that he has killed Polonius]

GERTRUDE: Oh what a rash and bloody deed this is!

HAMLET: A bloody deed - almost as bad, good mother, as [to] kill a king and marry with his brother.

GERTRUDE: As [to] kill a king?

HAMLET: Yes, lady, those were my words.

[To the dead Polonius]: You wretched, rash, intruding fool, farewell!
: I took you for your better.
: Take your fortune.
: You have found out that to be too busy is somewhat dangerous.

[To Gertrude]: Stop wringing your hands!
: Be quiet, sit down, and let me wring your heart, for so I shall if it is made of penetrable stuff, if damned habit has not brazened it so that it is proofed and fortified against feeling.

GERTRUDE: What have I done, that you dare wag your tongue in noise so rude against me?

HAMLET: Such an act that blurs the grace and blush of modesty, calls virtue hypocrite, takes off the rose from the fair forehead of an innocent love and sets a blister there, makes marriage vows as false as dicer's oaths.
: Oh such a deed as plucks the very soul from the body of [the marriage] contract, and makes sweet religion a confusion of words.
: Heaven's face frowns over this solid and compact earth with a heated glare, as if against the [approach of] doomsday, [and] is thought-sick at the act.

GERTRUDE: Ah me, what act, that roars so loud and thunders in the introduction?

HAMLET: Look here upon this picture, and on this [one], the copied images of two brothers.
: See what a grace was seated on this brow: Hyperion's curls, the forehead of Jove himself, an eye like [that of] Mars, to threaten and command, a stance like the herald Mercury, newly
landed on a heaven-kissing hill: a combination and a form indeed on which every god seemed to set his seal, to give the world assurance of a man.
: This was your husband.
: Now look [at] what follows.
: Here is your husband, like a mildewed ear [of corn], poisoning his wholesome brother.
[Note: there are many mentions of ears in the play, because the ghost accused Claudius of murdering him while he slept by pouring poison into his ear.]
: Do you have eyes?
: Could you cease to feed on this fair mountain, and feast on this waste-land?
: Huh? - do you have eyes?
: You cannot call it love, for at your age the heyday in the blood is tame, it's humble, and listens to the judgment, and what judgment would step from this to this?
: You surely have senses, else you could not have motion, but surely that sense is stricken, for madness would not err so; nor were senses ever so enslaved by confusion that they didn't reserve some quantity of choice to serve in such a case of differences.
: What devil was it that has thus fooled you at blindman's-bluff?
: Eyes without feeling, feeling without sight, ears without hands, or eyes, smelling without all, otherwise a sick part of one true sense could not be so unfeeling.
: Oh shame, where is thy blush?
[Waxing rhetorical]: Rebellious hell, if you could mutiny in a matron's bones, to flaming youth let virtue be like wax, and melt in her own fire.
: Speak not of shame when compulsive ardour is on the attack, since frosty age itself burns as actively, and reason panders to the passions.

GERTRUDE: Oh Hamlet, speak no more!
: You turn my very eyes in to my soul, and there I see such black and ingrained faults as will leave their stain.

HAMLET: No, but to live in the rancid sweat of a greasy bed, stewed in corruption, cuddling, and making love on the nasty sty!
[Note: this line has been much commented upon, as indeed has the whole scene, for obvious Freudian reasons.]

GERTRUDE: Oh, speak to me no more!
: These words enter my ears like daggers.
: No more, sweet Hamlet!

HAMLET: [He's] a murderer and a villain!
: A wretch that is not in one twentieth part the relative of your previous lord; a vicious king, a robber of the empire and the rulership, that stole the precious jewel from a shelf and put it in his pocket.

GERTRUDE: No more!

[Enter the ghost.]

HAMLET: A king of shreds and patches...

[Seeing the ghost]: Save me and hover over me with your wings you heavenly guards!

[To the ghost]: What would your gracious figure [want]?

GERTRUDE [Who cannot see the ghost]: Alas, he's mad!

HAMLET: Do you not come to chide your tardy son, that, lapsed in time and purpose, lets go by the urgent performance of your dreadful command?
[Note: he means the ghost's command of revenge.]

: Oh, tell!

GHOST: Do not forget.
: This visit is only to sharpen your almost blunted purpose.
: But look, bewilderment sits on your mother.
: Oh step between her and her struggling soul!
: Imagination works strongest in the weakest bodies.
: Speak to her, Hamlet.

HAMLET: How is it with you lady?

GERTRUDE: Alas, how is it with you, that you turn your eye on vacancy, and hold conversation with the insubstantial air?
: Your spirits peep wildly out of your eyes, and, like the sleeping soldiers in the alarm, your settled hairs, like life in outgrowths, jump up and stand on end.
: Oh gentle son, sprinkle cool patience on the heat and flame of your madness.
: What are you looking at?

HAMLET: At him, at him!
: Look how palely he glares!
: His form and cause together, preaching to stones, would make them capable [of response].

[To the ghost]: Do not look upon me, in case with that piteous action you convert my stern purpose.
: Then what I have to do will lack the proper appearance - tears perhaps instead of blood.

GERTRUDE: To whom do you speak this?

HAMLET: Do you see nothing there?

GERTRUDE: Nothing at all, yet all there is, I see.

HAMLET: Nor did you hear nothing?

GERTRUDE: No, nothing but ourselves.

HAMLET: But, look there!
: Look how it's stealing away!
: My father, in the clothes he wore when he lived!
: Look where he's going, right now, out the door!

[Exit ghost.]

GERTRUDE: This is the very product of your brain.
: Madness is very skillful in the creation of illusions.

HAMLET: My pulse keeps as regular time as yours, and makes as healthful music.
: It is not madness that I have uttered.
: Put me to the test, and I will repeat the words that madness would dance away from.
: Mother, for love of grace, do not put that flattering ointment on your soul, that not your trespass but my madness speaks.
: It will only put a skin and film over the ulcerous place, while rank corruption, mining all within, infects unseen.
: Confess yourself to heaven, repent what's past, avoid what is to come, and do not spread the compost on the weeds to make them ranker.
: Forgive me for my virtue [in pointing this out to you], for in the fatness of these unfit times virtue itself must beg vice's pardon, yes, bow and beg for permission to do him good.

GERTRUDE: Oh Hamlet, you have split my heart in two.

HAMLET: Oh throw away the worser part of it, and live the purer with the other half.
: Good night - but don't go to my uncle's bed.
: Put on a virtue, even if you don't [really] have it.
: That monster, habit, who eats all sense, devil among practices, is yet an angel in this, that to the use of fair and good actions it likewise gives a dress or uniform that is aptly put on.
: Refrain [from sex] tonight, and that shall lend a kind of easiness to the next abstinence; the next more easy; for habit can almost change what has been stamped into [human] nature, and either master the devil or throw him out with wondrous power.
: Once more, good night.
: And when you desire to be blessed I'll beg a blessing for you.
: About this lord here [= Polonius] I do repent, but it has so pleased heaven to punish me with this, and this with me, that I must be their [= heaven's] scourge and agent.
: I will stow him away and will answer well [for] the death I gave him.
: So again, good night.
: I must be cruel only to be kind.
: This has begun badly, and worse remains to come.
: One word more, good lady...

GERTRUDE: What shall I do?
[Note: this question is probably an expression of distress, not a request for information.]

HAMLET: Not this, by no means, that I ask you to do: let the bloated king tempt you again to bed, pinch [and thus brand] harlot on your cheek, call you his 'mouse', and let him, for a pair of
stinking kisses, or [for] patting at your neck with his damned fingers, reveal all this: that I am not mad in essence but mad in craft.
: It would be good that you let him know, for who but [one] that's a queen, fair, sober, wise, would hide such important matters from a toad, a bat, a tomcat?
: Who would do so?
: No, despite sense and secrecy, unpeg the basket on the housetop, let the birds fly [out], and like the ape in the famous story, to see what will happen, creep into the birdcage and then break your neck [by jumping out like the birds].

GERTRUDE: Be assured, if words are made of breath, and breath of life, I have no life to breathe what you have said to me.

HAMLET: I must [go] to England, you know that?

GETRUDE: Alas, I had forgotten [to discuss it with you].
: It has been so concluded.

HAMLET: There's sealed letters, and my two schoolfellows [= Rosencrantz and Guildenstern], whom I will trust as I will fanged adders, they carry the authority: they must sweep my path and steer me towards treachery.
[Note: Hamlet knows that R&G, who are to escort him to his 'exile' in England, will obey Claudius's order that they deliver him to assassination there.]
: Let it proceed, for it is good sport to have the schemer blown up with his own bomb; and it shall be difficult, but I will dig one yard below their tunnel and blow them at the moon.
: Oh it is most sweet when two schemes [= two 'tunnels'] meet in a parallel line.
[Note: Hamlet's metaphor here is taken from siegecraft. The attackers would try to tunnel under the defenders' wall and blow it up. The defenders would try to tunnel under the attackers' tunnel and blow it up.]

: This man [= Claudius? Polonius?] will send me packing.
: I'll haul the guts [= Polonius's body] into the neighbouring room.
: Mother, good night indeed.
: This counsellor is now most still, most secret, and most grave, who was in life a most foolish, chattering knave.
: Come, sir, to draw toward an end with you.
: Good night, mother.

[Exit Hamlet, dragging Polonius's body.]

[End of scene]