Hamlet

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Hamlet

• Act III Notes

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Act III Notes

• Hamlet is not being friendly he wants to entrap
  Claudius.
• Hamlet is irresolute about what to do when faced
  with heavy problems to solve, and he wonders if
  death would not be preferable to living.

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Act III Notes

• 3. There is some possibility that Hamlet
  overheard the plan of Claudius and Polonius to
  use Ophelia and he has decided to turn the plot
  to his own advantage. The only textual reference
  supporting this explanation is that Hamlet asks
  her Wheres your father? When she answers with
  a lie, his treatment of her becomes increasingly
  rough.

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Act III Notes

• 3. His tirade against Ophelia may also be spurred
  by his general disgust with the world and with
  women in particular. In many ways his horror at
  his mothers behavior is reflected in his
  attitude toward Ophelia. Whatever his feelings
  toward her as an individual, she remains
  Polonius daughter and a member of Gertrudes
  treacherous sex.

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Act III Notes

• 3. It is also likely that he wants to sever the
  links between the girl and the contaminating
  world she inhabits. By putting her firmly out of
  his own cursed life, he may somehow protect her
  if brutal treatment is required, he will be cruel
  now in order to be kind in the end.

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Act III Notes

• After Claudius sees how strangely Hamlet acts
  toward Ophelia, he decides that Hamlet could well
  be a threat to him, should Hamlet remain in
  Denmark.
• The dumb-show depicts the murder in pantomime a
  murderer pours poison in the sleeping kings ear
  and later woos the queen. The play-within-a-play
  shows the murder, but the queen vows never to
  remarry. Maybe Claudius wasnt paying attention,
  or he was able to keep a grip on himself until
  the lines were spoken.

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• He wants Gertrude to acknowledge her disloyalty
  to her first husband. Although he told Horatio
  that he planned the play to establish evidence
  against Claudius, the play he selected has a
  double thrust. The protestations of undying love
  the Player Queen makes to her husband are
  intended to would Gertrude, to remind her of her
  vows to her first husband, and to impress upon
  her the disloyalty of her remarriage. The
  Elizabethans religious and political backgrounds
  let them affirm the evil of such remarriage far
  more readily than a modern audience would.

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• Gertrude, who did remarry after the death of her
  husband, is made uncomfortable by the
  queen-characters assertion that she would never
  remarry.

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• 8. It is the first clear proof that the ghost
  was speaking truth. Claudius previous fears and
  suspicions of Hamlet might have been based on the
  princes odd behavior, and the Kings
  acknowledged guilt might have stemmed from his
  incestuous union with Gertrude. Now, however,
  Claudius admits the murder of his brother. Note
  the manner in which this confession is shaped
  Claudius emerges a fully developed character with
  passions and drives, understandable motives, and
  justifiable griefs. He is not a one-dimensional
  villain but a complete character who evokes a
  certain sympathy. He regrets his crime but
  cannot bring himself to relinquish the rewards of
  evil and so cannot achieve true repentance.

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• Bitter, struggling to restrain himself, he
  decides to wait for a time when unrepentant
  Claudius soul will be sure to go to Hades
  rather than now, when Claudius soul has
  apparently been purified by confession and
  repentance.
• He is harsh with her, criticizing her for being
  disloyal to her dead husband, and frightens her
  to the point where she worries he will stab her.

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• Gertrudes frightened cry elicits a cry from
  Polonius behind the curtain Hamlet may have
  thought Claudius was hiding there. He doesnt
  seem very sorry, referring to Polonius as an old
  fool and unceremoniously lugging the body from
  the room.
• He has come to spur on Hamlet, who seems to be
  spinning his wheels, not getting down to
  murdering Claudius.