The truth of the matter is that a clumsy, foolish opportunism, totally foreign to the character of Hamlet, motivates all of his schemes and initiatives. Hamlet has not that crass mediocrity of character which enables a Polonius to trade his daughter'sreputation for his hopes of advancement, nor depravity of mind to stare like any peeping Tom at the private exchanges of adolescent lovers, or the dishonorable life ( so, probably unknown to himself, he secretly hopes!) of his son in Paris, or the intimate conversations of mother and son.
A single trait captures the major share of Polonius'psychology: lurid fascination with sex, an old man's indecent imagination. In his lectures to his daughter, he imagines her a whore, and warns her against the consequences of her 'natural inclinations'. His instructions to Reynaldo are to defame his son'sreputation for decency for the purpose of dredging up the salacious 'carp of truth'. The readiness, above all the obstinacy, with which he seizes upon love-sick juvenile infatuation as the sole cause of Hamlet's 'madness', is a further indication that his obsessive preoccupation with the sexual proclivities of adolescents completely overshadows his judgment. And the stammering, confusion, digression and repetitiveness which make Gertrude cry out in exasperation, "More matter with less art", might be interpreted as a reflection of his embarrassed fascination with the dark secrets of their incestuous sexual activity. Like the rest of the court, Polonius senses the presence of a truth more horrible than he dare imagine , but has set up elaborate psychological blinders to avoid having to confront it.
We begin taking the measure of Shakespeare's scabrous monument to self-infatuation, Lord Chamberlain Polonius, through a second look at his famous list of moral precepts which he, an Alexander Pope in embryo, delivers to Laertes as he leaves for France. There is much admirable wisdom in these lines. All the more curious, therefore, that he manages to betray both the spirit and the letter of every one of them in the short time left to him on earth ! :
Act I, Scene iii , Line 59 : "Look thou character". Because he suspects neither the criminality of the King, the weakness of the queen, nor Hamlet'sseething anger, Polonius is destined for a speedy death .
Give thy thoughts no tongue : When do we see him picking up any kind of information without running off to babble it out to someone, usually Claudius?
Nor any unproportioned thought his act Once the idea is implanted in his mind that he might become grandfather to a line of Danish kings, he throws caution to the winds and runs headlong to his ruin.
Be thou familiar, but by no means vulgar Good advice from a Peeping Tom who spends much of his time accusing his daughter of being an incipient whore, and instructs Reynaldo to spread rumors in Paris to ruin his son's reputation .
Beware of entrance to a quarrel. This must be the most outrageous bit of nonsense uttered by Polonius in the entire play. He is on the verge of jumping into a raging war between 3 angry kings over possession of the soul of a naughty queen. (A nice way to summarize the whole 'Hamlet Problem': even Ernest Jones might agree! )
It would only have been a matter of time before Claudius , who is much better at such things, terminated him: Hamlet saves him the trouble. A blundering busybody at large is as likely to dig up a corpse in the cellarage, as is a rebellious young man who'sout looking for one.
Give every man thy ear but few thy voice Commentary unnecessary in reference to a man who is so obviously deaf to the music of time . Nor does he fare much better on the next one:
Take each man's censure, but reserve thy judgment Despite the pointed ridicule directed at him by Hamlet over the next two acts, he connects every bit of sarcasm, not to his own failings, but to Hamlet'smadness.
*** The apparel oft proclaims the man: Polonius thinks Claudius is the real king because he'sdressed as a king, and that Hamlet must be mad because his socks are down-gyved. However, he can readily be convinced that a cloud looks like a camel, or like a whale, or like'any show that you care to show him.'
Neither a borrower nor a lender be . Good advice from a man who pimps his daughter ( "You are a fishmonger") to gratify Claudius'mania for spying.
To thine own self be true : It might help to know something about oneself , before making the attempt to be true to it.
Several candidates have been proposed as a model for Polonius, most notably Lord Burghley, principal adviser to Queen Elizabeth until his death in 1598. Here I merely wish to suggest that some of the essential Francis Bacon may also be incorporated in the role. It was in the same year as the early productions of Hamlet that Bacon stood up in the Star Chamber to accuse Essex, Bacon'sonly patron at court, of treason. He used the same occasion to urge that the Earl of Southampton, Shakespeare'sstrongest patron, be sent to the Tower.17 [38,40,44]
Shakespeare'sskepticism of scientific method, so -called , is also present in his essentially positive portrayal of Horatio. Good college student that he is, Horatio ridicules the very possibility of Ghosts until one is upon him. Thereupon he loses his head and foolishly tries to beat it with a stick. It is Hamlet who must remind him that:
"There are more things in Heaven and Earth, Horatio
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy."( I,v, 175)
It should be noted that, although he is ever stabbing in the dark with his fishing-rod of indirections, Polonius is actually closer, physically, than anyone else, to the evil that haunts Elsinore. Evidences of Claudius'guilt assails him from every direction. In the opening scenes he sees Claudius stammer and grow pale at the sight of Hamlet in mourning . He must remark the way that the king starts up , "like a guilty thing"when he makes the shrewd observation :
"With devotion'svisage, and pious action,
we do sugar o'er the devil himself." (III, i, 46)
How can he, at such close quarters, avoid overhearing Claudius when he mutters:
"How smart a lash that speech doth give my conscience. "(III, i, 50)
He eavesdrops on Hamlet'swild diatribe against Ophelia , and hears him cry : "All , but one, shall live!" He must wonder why Claudius nervously jerks out a notebook to write down instructions to send Hamlet to England. These signs of guilt for, and fear of the consequences of, some hidden misdeed, would appear obvious to a schoolboy. Yet though Polonius is perpetually out and about, gathering'data'and gawking at strange sights , his eyes never seem to turn in the direction of the immensity of horror standing right next to him.
And at the performance of The Mousetrap,as he witnesses the king lose his composure at the re-enactment of his crimes, not only does Polonius cry "Light, light, light!" - he supplies the torch ! Once again, Polonius transforms an unmistakable indication that something is wrong with the king into an evidence of Hamlet'smadness. Only an idiot could fail to draw certain conclusions from such an accumulation of suspicious reactions. Polonius is intelligent enough, he is not noticeably retarded. If he is not exactly wise, he must be accounted shrewd. It is not his "wit"as employed in the Elizabethan sense, that is defective; it is his conscience which is depraved. All the same, had he be allowed another 8 lines of life, even Polonius would have understood the meaning of the words :
Hamlet: Mother, you have my father much offended! (III, iv,11)
In the play on words that follows, Polonius learns that Hamlet and Gertrude mean different things by the word, "fatherÓ. His sharp if jaded ears are now aroused, though destined never to hear Hamlet'sexplicit statement:
Hamlet: A bloody deed - almost as good, good mother
as kill a king, and marry with his brother. ( III,iv,29)
Neither Hamlet, nor Claudius, nor even the Ghost, would have allowed Polonius to live to hear such revelations . They represent forbidden knowledge, the closely guarded secret of the royal house of Denmark, transmitted in the domain of forbidden knowledge, the royal bedchamber.
Hamlet'sprincipal obligation - and it is clear that his father does not agree with him - is to protect his family from public humiliation . Hamlet may well be, as brilliantly developed by Fredson Bowers, [8,9] "both scourge and minister", but as a prince of the blood and, in some sense, the true king ,he will tolerate no degradation of the royal name by exposure of its darkest secrets to the prying eyes of the mob. Polonius should never have been allowed into the bedchamber. The sins of the royal blood are not for other than royal ears.
We are now better able to clarify the grounds for the bitterness between Polonius and Hamlet. Polonius'indecent imaginings clash with Hamlet'sdesire to protect his mother from public censure. His opportunism clashes with Hamlet'sduty to gain access to the King. A combination of irresponsible rumor-monger with bogus wise man places Polonius directly in the path that Hamlet must follow to bring about the resurrection of the dignity of the house of Denmark: the shielding and shriving of his mother, (his primary duty) and, only then , judgment upon and execution of Claudius ( his secondary). Polonius'compulsion to follow what he interprets as the path of immediate advantage blinds him to the obvious truth. Were he free of self-seeking , he would immediately recognize that Claudius'behavior behind the arras is stranger than Hamlet's in front of it. Yet, while the "answer"to Hamlet's"madness"is standing by his very elbow , wracked with bitter contrition, Polonius'eyes stay glued to the lurid spectacle of his daughter'sflirtations with her confused and angry boyfriend . A more dramatic metaphor for a mind distracted by folly is hard to imagine.
Act III, i is steeped in terror. Manifold terrors arise from everywhere: from the invisible presences lurking behind the curtain in the lobby; from the omnipresent Ghost ; from the fear generated in all others by Hamlet's madness; from Claudius'crime and guilt.
Ophelia as feminine principle, matrix and vessel of transformation, reflects this terror back onto Hamlet. By his reactions, he gives it manifest expression, throwing it back at her, who in her turn transmits it towards the shadowy beings rustling the heavy curtains hidden in the gloom. The eloquence of silence which is his in Act I, Scene ii now belongs to her. It matters not that Ophelia says little and, until falling into madness, is virtually inactive. It remains true that, far more than Gertrude, it is she who embodies essential womanhood. The painting of John Everett Millais', The Death of Ophelia , stands testament to her universal appeal: how many paintings are there of Gertrude?
Gertrude embodies specific diseased aspects of the feminine: the adulterous wife, barrenness brought on by incest, the poisoned mother whose child is stricken with paralysis. Yet it is Ophelia who exemplifies all aspects of womanhood , as daughter, prospective bride, chaste virgin and hymeneal victim. Her insanity itself is a grotesque metaphor for pregnancy; one thinks of the antique superstition that hysteria is caused by the movement of the ovaries to the brains. Her function in the inner spiritual life of the play is that of a matrix, a medium, the vessel for psychic forces.
Alone in the center of the lobby she trembles with fear: fear of her father, and of his employer; fear of Hamlet, his madness, what he may do if he discovers she is deceiving him, fear, because she loves him, of his rejection. Her self-reproach is profound; it will attain its full flowering in the mad scenes. She accounts herself more than a little responsible for Hamlet's mental condition. Both father and brother have led her to understand that she's nothing more than a seducing little flirt begging to be deflowered. Her father, from his great wisdom, has even concocted a theory basing Hamlet'sdistraction exclusively on her sex appeal. And shortly, Hamlet himself will scream:
"Go to, I'll no more on't; it hath made me mad." (Act III, i, 146)
She didn't need her father to convince her of this: she'd already seen the effect she'shad on him when , as she reports (Act II, i ,74 -97 ) he looked at her
"with a look so piteous in purport
As if he had been loosed out of hell
To speak of horrors..."
We in the audience already know of other possibilities: if one eliminates the division into Acts, ( an 18th century editorial addition) [18], it becomes that much more apparent that Hamlet is confronting Ophelia very soon after his descent from the battlements of the castle. Could he not have just come from his horrible encounter with his father'sghost, where he cried out:
"Angels and ministers of grace defend us! "
and , following their conversation, raved:
"O all you host of heaven!
What else? And shall I couple hell?"
The sequence of events that she relates to her father during the dramatic re-enactment of Hamlet's inexplicable conduct, suggests that the terror that she felt from his surprise visit was a direct transmission of that Hell wherein his father howls in agony, grieves and, despite the promise of yet more punishment, thirsts insatiably for vengeance. This infectious terror is, in its turn, transferred to Polonius, who passes it along to its intended target, the royal couple. Together they devise a scheme to spy on their children, and on Hamlet in particular, carrier of the grim foreknowledge of inexorable doom.
It is in fact the Ghost himself who bears the responsibility for bringing all of them together in the castle lobby. It is his presence in Elsinore which has whipped up this whirlwind of hysterical fear that now, the lobby with her forbidding lover, resonates through Ophelia's heart as vehicle of transmission. Now and later, her psyche in bondage operates at the intersection of the visible and supernatural realms.
Ophelia is as much afraid for her father, as she is afraid of him. His off-the-cuff suggestion that he ought to be beheaded if his conjectures should prove wrong (II ,ii, 156, a moment of high comedy ) , is likely to be taken quite literally by someone like the new king. Her fear of Claudius may perhaps be nothing more than that natural to a teen-age girl in the presence of the lord of the realm. Or it may be that, with the clear unspotted vision of childhood, she senses his true character ( as does Hamlet: "Oh, my prophetic soul"),and trembles before it.
In brief she is in the presence not of one, nor even of three, but of four ruthless men, each of whom by himself is enough to utterly petrify her: Hamlet, her father, Claudius and the Ghost. The whole scene has something of the character of a gang rape. It would hardly come as a surprise were she to fall completely to pieces. Yet incredibly, it is Hamlet, not she, who comes apart,, who loses control , raining down insane and incoherent curses upon her, only to run away leaving her more filled with pity for him than fear for herself . Why is this so? There can be only one reason: she is in charge, she has the power.
His "antic disposition", what there is of it, deserts him at this critical juncture. We can be certain that no two commentators will be found who agree on the same catalogue of situations in which Hamlet'santic disposition is operative. It is true however, that when it is present, he is far more caught up in the great fun of the play-acting of it, than he is in advancing any political objective. In this respect, his'folly'is rather different from that of the Amleth of the Saxo Grammaticus saga, for whom "madness"is patently a disguise to protect himself while gaining access to the usurper, Fengi.
Yet in the presence of Ophelia, madness ceases to be a joke: it is real. Studying the play one realizes that Hamlet's 'antic disposition'spills over into something closer to true madness, (something that the audience of Hamlet might deem deranged ) , it is always in connection with his relations to the two principal women in the play, Gertrude and Ophelia. What Polonius, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern and Claudius call madness, we recognize as mordant satire.(One detects a faint tone of ridicule even in the sad comment to his father:'Alas, poor ghost!Ó)
Hamlet doesn't ridicule women: he either abuses them or scolds them. Towards his mother he assumes a tone of holier-than-thou prudery. Towards Ophelia he reacts in a variety of ways, all confused, often abusive. Observe that in his four direct encounters with Ophelia, ( the first off-stage, the last at her grave site ), he always manifests powerful and uncontrolled emotional states: infatuation, rage, lewdness, jealousy .
Hers is not an earthly power. Clearly here, in this dread lobby, she has none. Her power is metaphysical, diabolical, sexual : the moral strength of virginal chastity , yet, at the same time , the unhinging power of sexual attraction, the binding force exercised by all mothers upon the unconscious minds of children, the destructive power of witches. She is, indeed, the high priestess of mysteries. Though menaced from all sides it is ultimately she who imparts the greatest terror, who holds the reins of destiny, the nexus of change, the arbiter of fate.
A casual read-through of this scene might suggest that Hamlet remains in command throughout. Is it not he that taunts her, belittles her and her father, disparages the very institution of marriage, leaving her in a state of shock and humiliation through his inexplicable scorn? Yet one gets a better idea of what Shakespeare may have had in mind in creating this scene if one makes the assumption that it is really Hamlet who has lost control, that Polonius'tactic of using his daughter as bait , has in fact succeeded in frightening Hamlet into revealing things that he'd intended to keep hidden. Note how the injunction, "Get thee to a nunnery!"waxes ever more frantic with each repetition, like an imprecation hurled at an advancing demon that wavers not, even for a moment. He is not being sarcastic when he cries, "It hath made me mad. " One can just see him clutching his head and shrieking, "It hath made me mad!"
And even when he cries, "All but one shall live! ", is it not possible , in the context of a tirade devoted almost exclusively to the castigation of womanhood, that the implied threat may be equally directed to his mother as to his step-father? [19b; page 105] . At the same time, Claudius learns from Hamlet'sfailure of discipline and loss of control at this critical juncture all he needs to know, and immediately begins plotting appropriate action.
Crushed beneath the callous, almost obscene oppression of a social order based on male hypocrisy and domination, Ophelia'spsyche shifts the focus of terror between Hamlet and the two "lawful espials"behind the arras . One can imagine her frantically shifting her head this way and that in anticipation of the next threat or implicit danger. It is this unbearable state of agitation that drives Hamlet to the brink of madness :
"Who's there?"
Is it her father?
"Where's your father?"
Is it his mother?
"You make your wantonness your ignorance."
His uncle?
"I say, we shall have no more marriages !"
The Ghost?
"All but one shall live."
Polonius jumps when he learns that Hamlet would have the doors shut upon him. Perhaps we see the curtains shake. Claudius, turning away, once again in denial of the obligations to his torturing conscience, hastily scribbles orders to send Hamlet to his death in England.
The transformation of Hamlet through this encounter with Ophelia is the first of the sacral initiations which define the whole of Act III. Hamlet will be further tested and shaped by the dream world of theater, then the holy chapel, then the unwholesome bedchamber. Polonius advances to a death pre-ordained by folly. Ophelia, her innocent soul shattered by omnipresent male brutishness, as all truly beautiful things must experience destruction when pitted against a world innate with evil, progresses further along its destined path of madness. In this ultimate state, her mind totally given over to the reign of the Unconscious, she claims her full title of high priestess of mysteries, mediatrix of Gods and men, oracle of the supernatural.