Hamlet endures due to its complex characters, psychological depth, and exploration of universal themes such as death, revenge, and the human condition. Its enduring popularity is also attributed to its poetic language, memorable quotes, and its influence on literature, film, and popular culture. Hamlet’s themes and characters continue to be studied and adapted in various forms, making it one of Shakespeare’s most famous and frequently performed plays. Its timeless appeal lies in its ability to speak to audiences across generations, cultures, and languages, and its place as a cornerstone of Western literature.
Horatio at Hamlet’s death. Image via Wikipedia commons
He doesn’t. He’s what you sometimes hear referred to as the “exception that proves the rule.” Like how at the end of Hamlet, everybody dies. Except Horatio.
The official body count in the final scene (Act 5 Scene 2) of Hamlet is four: Gertrude, Laertes, Claudius, Hamlet. Enter Fortinbras, who says “What happened here?” and Horatio is left to tell the tale.
Kenneth Branagh’s 1996 film version may have also killed off Osric (the referee, for lack of a more description term), it’s difficult to tell. In Branagh’s version, Fortinbras is actively invading the castle while the final duel takes place between Hamlet and Laertes. Osric is seen being taken by surprise and stabbed. However, he then returns to the scene to deliver his line about Fortinbras’ “warlike volley.”
In some interpretations, such as Ingmar Bergman’s 1986 production, Horatio is killed at the end of the play. When Fortinbras orders, “Bid the soldiers shoot,” some directors have taken that as license to execute Horatio, presumably as the last remaining witness to all that had taken place. It’s important to note that there is nothing in the text to indicate this (just like Osric’s death above). However, there’s two ways to die in a play. Either the script says you die, or else you eventually just run out of lines. Once you’re no longer part of the action (such as Osric), you might fall victim to artistic license and find yourself dead at the end of Act 5 whether Shakespeare wanted it that way or not.
There’s a short and easy answer to the question of why Hamlet killed Polonius. It was an accident. A case of mistaken identify, if you will. What he did next, however, certainly was no accident.
The story so far: Hamlet has sprung his mouse trap, playing out Claudius’ crime in front of him with the help of the actors. Claudius reaction has, as Hamlet anticipated, “caught the conscience of the king.” Gertrude, upset with her son for angering her husband, has requested Hamlet come to her bedchamber so she might speak with him. Polonius offers to spy on Hamlet by reaching the queen first and hiding in the arras (curtains).
Hamlet, in exultation at having proven Claudius’ guilt, comes to his mother’s bedchamber and intends to tell her off:
Hamlet. Now, mother, what’s the matter?
Gertrude. Hamlet, thou hast thy father much offended.
Hamlet. Mother, you have my father much offended.
Gertrude. Come, come, you answer with an idle tongue.
Hamlet. Go, go, you question with a wicked tongue.
Gertrude. Why, how now, Hamlet?
Hamlet. What’s the matter now?
Gertrude. Have you forgot me?
Hamlet. No, by the rood, not so!
You are the Queen, your husband’s brother’s wife,
And (would it were not so!) you are my mother.
Hamlet’s mood at this point is pretty obvious. He’s been unhappy with his mother and is letting it all out. You have my father much offended. You question with a wicked tongue. You are your husband’s brother’s wife.
If Hamlet had stormed off at this moment, having made his point, the play would have gone differently. Instead, Gertrude stands up and says, “I don’t have to take this!” and Hamlet shoves his mother back down, because he’s not done with her yet:
Gertrude. Nay, then I’ll set those to you that can speak.
Hamlet. Come, come, and sit you down. You shall not budge;
You go not till I set you up a glass
Where you may see the inmost part of you.
Gertrude is not prepared for Hamlet to put his hands on her. Remember that the whole castle believes Hamlet to have lost his mind. So it’s hardly unexpected when she yells to Polonius for help:
Gertrude. What wilt thou do? Thou wilt not murther me?
Help, help, ho!
Polonius. [behind] What, ho! help, help, help!
Hamlet didn’t know someone else was in the room. He stabs blindly through the arras:
Hamlet. [draws] How now? a rat? Dead for a ducat, dead!
[Makes a pass through the arras and] kills Polonius.
Polonius. [behind] O, I am slain!
Gertrude. O me, what hast thou done?
Right now the audience is thinking the same thing that Gertrude is. What just happened? Hamlet’s a thinker and a talker, not a doer. Up to this point in the play he hasn’t really done anything. Until now. Heard a noise? Kill it!
Hamlet. Nay, I know not. Is it the King?
Gertrude. O, what a rash and bloody deed is this!
Hamlet. A bloody deed- almost as bad, good mother,
As kill a king, and marry with his brother.
Gertrude. As kill a king?
Hamlet thought Claudius was hiding behind the arras! During this exchange, in fact, he still believes he has killed Claudius, which perhaps explains why he so blatantly accuses his mother of the crime, thinking that he has now avenged his father.
Hamlet discovers Polonius. Image via Wikipedia commons
The timing here is subject to some debate. In the previous scene, on his way to his mother’s bedchamber, Hamlet had already passed Claudius at prayer. He has an opportunity there to kill him, but chooses not to take it. So, then, does Hamlet think that Claudius somehow beat him to the same destination? It’s possible that Hamlet took his time getting to his mother’s room eventually. Or that castles do tend to have secret passages and if there was a shortcut to Gertrude’s room, Claudius knew it. It’s also likely that in the heat of the moment Hamlet simply never thought of this.
So, Polonius’ death was an accident. What happens next is not. Hamlet hides Polonius body, refusing to let him have a proper burial. Act 4 scenes 2 and 3 are actually devoted entirely to the search for Polonius’ body:
Rosencrantz. What have you done, my lord, with the dead body?
Hamlet. Compounded it with dust, whereto ’tis kin.
Rosencrantz. Tell us where ’tis, that we may take it thence
And bear it to the chapel.
And then, when Rosencrantz and Guildenstern can get no answers out on him, Hamlet is taken before Claudius:
Claudius. Where is Polonius?
Hamlet. In heaven. Send thither to see. If your messenger find him not
there, seek him i’ th’ other place yourself. But indeed, if you
find him not within this month, you shall nose him as you go up
the stair, into the lobby.
So Hamlet uses the dead body of his girlfriend’s father as a prop so he can tell Claudius to go to hell. Is this part of his crazy act? Or at this point does he truly care so little about such things that he doesn’t think twice about defiling a corpse?
A stained glass image of Polonius. Image via Wikimedia Commons.
Jephthah is not a word you hear every day. How often does phth show up in the middle of a word? Sounds onomatopoetic, like blowing someone a raspberry every time you say it. With words like that scattered around the play, of course it’s got a reputation for being difficult to read and understand.
Before we look at who Jephthah was, let’s first look at the scene where Hamlet uses the term (in Act 2 Scene 2). Hamlet has already visited with the ghost of his father, learned of his father’s murder, and has enacted his plan to “put an antic disposition on,” in the hopes of gathering evidence against his uncle Claudius. So basically he can say whatever he wants to whoever (whomever?) he wants. Part of the fun for Hamlet is in saying seemingly random things that actually have a deeper meaning.
Polonius, meanwhile, is convinced that Hamlet’s madness is love sickness, because he can no longer see Ophelia. Polonius even offers to prove his theory by putting out Ophelia as bait while they hide and watch how Hamlet reacts to seeing her, but Hamlet figures out their plan.
Hamlet. O Jephthah, judge of Israel, what a treasure hadst thou!
Polonius. What treasure had he, my lord?
Hamlet. Why,
‘One fair daughter, and no more,
The which he loved passing well.’
Polonius. [aside] Still on my daughter.
The story of Jephthah is recounted in Judges 11:31, where Jepthah is about to go into battle with the Ammonites and makes a vow to God, offering as a sacrifice, “whatever comes out of the door of my house to meet me when I return in triumph from the Ammonites will be the LORD’s, and I will sacrifice it as a burnt offering.”
Well, his daughter is the first to come out and meet him. So he inadvertently sacrifices his own daughter.
Polonius is so caught up in his own “love sick” theory that as soon as he sees a daughter reference he sees it as proof of his own theory (“He’s still obsessed with my daughter!”) He doesn’t appear to get the “sacrificed his own daughter” connection.
Irony : The expression “There’s a method to his madness” comes earlier in this scene, spoken by Polonius. So he does recognize that there’s a deeper, relevant meaning in the seeming gibberish that Hamlet is spouting. He just doesn’t realize it’s anything more than coincidence.
This post brought to you by three or four glasses of cabernet sauvignon, so put it in its appropriate context.
We had company this evening, one of the dads came over to watch the baseball game while his daughter (and mine) were off at their first middle school dance, and the moms were off at some other mom’s house. So eventually the guests depart, the game is over, and we’re left to clean up.
I realize that the television has stopped showing baseball and is now showing some old dude with a bushy beard talking to some other guys in poofy clothes. I run to the kitchen and grab my wife by the face while she is mopping. “Henry IV Part 2!” I squeal at her. “Do you have any idea how happy Shakespeare makes me?!”
“Who is that?” asks my 7yr old son.
“That is Prince Hal who at the end of the movie is King Henry,” I tell him. “It is a very sad scene, one of the saddest scenes in all of Shakespeare, and it is awesome. It is one of my favorites.”
“Why is it sad?” he asks.
“Well,” I tell him, “Pretend that I am the king. That would make you the prince, right? That means that one day you’re going to be the king. Well, until then, you are just out hanging around with your friends, partying, doing crazy stuff, you know, like friends do. And then one day you find out that the king, that’s me, has died, and that means that you’re the king now. And your best friend is all, ‘Oh, cool, you’re the king, we are going to do awesome stuff together!’ and you turn to him and you say, “We’re not friends anymore.”
“Why can’t I be friends with my friend anymore?” he asks.
“Because you’re the king now, and the king has very important responsibilities, and he’s not allowed to hang out with regular people and do crazy wild things like he’s been doing. It’s very sad, and his friend knows it’s sad, and the king knows it’s sad, but they both know that it has to be that way.”
With that I race to the remote control and start bringing up my copy of Chimes at Midnight.
At this point my son begins to cry. “I don’t want to see it if it’s sad!” he wails. Despite my overwhelming desire to jump right to that scene, I resist and go help my wife clean the kitchen. “I’ve shown you that scene, right?” I ask her. I then begin reciting the scene. “My jove, my king! Speak to me, my heart! I know thee not, old man…..so, so sad. And so amazing. Have I shown you that scene yet? You know I’m going to.”
My son is apparently now on a Shakespeare kick. “I want to see where somebody says To be or not to be,” he tells me. Being a Shakespeare Geek I happen to have Richard Burton’s Hamlet ripped and ready to go, and move to start it. But then I realize that he’s already vetoed the sad stuff, and it’s not like Hamlet is a laugh riot. So I ask him whether he wants to see To be or not to be, or if he wants to see one of the funny ones. He tells me he wants to see one of the funny ones.
Can do! I fire up Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton in Taming of the Shrew. Here’s how I explain it to my boy. “There’s this girl, Katherine, and she hates boys. She’s sworn that she’s never going to marry a boy because all boys stink. Well along comes this boy Petruchio, and he says I’m going to marry Katherine! And then they get into a whole big fight and she chucks things at his head, and it’s really funny.”
So there we sit, my son and I, watching Taming of the Shrew. I fast forward to the famous “wooing” scene, and I do play by play as it approaches. “Ok, see in there? That’s Katherine, and she hates to be called Kate. She’s pitching a tantrum and breaking all of her stuff. Petruchio is outside, and he knows he has to go in there and woo her, and he’s building up his courage, telling himself that no matter how much she yells, he’s just going to tell her that her voice sounds like an angel singing…”
And we go through the entire scene, my son asking questions and me doing my best to keep him interested. “What is that pile of stuff she fell in?” That’s feathers, in the old days you had to make your own pillows. She thinks she got away from him, but he’s not done chasing her yet. See? Here he comes again…
“She’s holding an apple, is she going to throw an apple at him?” Probably, yes. Sure enough Richard Burton pops his head up through the trap door and she hurls a macintosh at him.
At one point I realize that my wife has gone up to get into her pajamas and is now just hanging around waiting for our eldest to get home from the dance. “I’m watching Taming of the Shrew with my son!” I tell her. “And he is paying attention! I am so very, very happy! And hey this isn’t even like it’s just Shakespare, this is Liz Taylor and Richard Burton, this is a classic love story we’re talking about here!”
Meanwhile I get random questions, like “So if I was king, would I still be able to be best friends with David?” “Absolutely,” I tell him, “The rules were different back then. Hal’s friend Falstaff was kind of a bad guy.”
“Kind of?”
“Well…how can I explain it? Not like a bad bad guy, he was…..hmmm…”
“Medium.”
“Yeah, medium. He was hanging out with guys that were medium. And when you’re a king you can’t hang out with those kind of people anymore.”
Eventually Petruchio catches Katherine, and I end that particular movie. I ask if my son still wants to see to be or not to be, he tells me yes. “Ok,” I tell him, “This is going to be cool. Because the man that was just playing Katherine’s boyfriend, who was chasing her all over the place? Well, now he’s Hamlet.”
Just picture this, for a moment. My 7yr old son is curled up under a blanket on the couch waiting for the To be or not to be scene. I am standing in front of the television with a remote control in one hand and my phone in the other, where I have brought up the text of Hamlet and am now working back and forth to determine whether I’ve fast forwarded too far. At last I hit the right moment, and pause it. “Ok here we go!” I tell him. “See that guy? That’s Claudius, the bad guy king.”
“Why is he a bad guy king?”
“Because he stole the throne from Hamlet. And that guy there? That’s Polonius. He works for the king, so he’s a bad guy too. That girl? That’s Hamlet’s girlfriend. Polonius has told her that she has to go to Hamlet and say that she doesn’t love him.”
“Why can’t she just say no?”
“Because that guy is her father. And when you were a girl back in Shakespeare’s time, when your father told you to do something, you had to do it, even if he was a bad guy and you didn’t want to.”
And with that, I was watching Richard Burton perform Hamlet while sitting on the couch with my son. It was….bliss.
I explain to my son, “Now see you have to wait for the end, because this is a very important scene. Ophelia, Hamlet’s girlfriend, is going to come up to Hamlet and give him back his presents and tell him that she doesn’t love him.”
“Why?”
“Well because her father told her she has to. Also, because she thinks he’s a little crazy, like everyone else does. Hamlet doesn’t know that, though. Hamlet thinks that she’s the only person left who understands that he’s only pretending.”
“Why is he pretending to be crazy?”
“So he can spy on the bad king. He thinks that the bad guy king cheated to win the throne, and Hamlet wants to win it back, so to do that he has to get close to the bad king to learn more about whether he is guilty, and he thinks that the way to do that is to pretend to be crazy so nobody will pay attention to him. Now,shhhh, here comes Ophelia…”
Funny thing? I don’t like the way they do this scene. I race to my iPad and begin googling.
At this point, by the way, my daughter has arrived home and she is now off to bed, along with my wife. They are both calling down that my son needs to go to bed. I call back that he’ll be up in a minute.
I then bring up Kenneth Branagh’s rendition of this scene. “Watch this,” I tell my son, “It is the same scene, only different people doing it. When Ophelia gives the presents back I want you to watch Hamlet’s face.” *play* “Wait…..wait……..see? SEE? Right here, SEE? He’s so happy to see her, he knows that she’s the only one that believes him…and then he realizes that she thinks he’s crazy too, and at first he is so sad, you can see how he’s almost going to cry…and now look how mad he gets….”
I then go on to show him the Derek Jacobi and Kevin Kline versions of the same scene, before deciding that he only wanted to hear To be or not to be, and having now heard it, all he wants to do is go to bed.
I finally shut it all down, and tell him how very happy it makes me to be able to watch Shakespeare with him. He tells me that he only wanted to hear somebody say to be or not to be and, having heard that, he’s fine with going to bed.
And that’s precisely what he did. Me? I ran to my laptop to blog this whole evening, because it’s been one to remember.
When I first saw Lion King, I never recognized it as a Hamlet story. In fact, I’ve never really bought it as a deliberate Hamlet story – I always thought that the similarities were coincidental at best. Not every “Uncle kills the father, son avenges” story is Hamlet.
Well now, with the new 3D release of the movie, we can confirm the answer (courtesy of The Hamlet Weblog):
When we first pitched the revised outline of the movie to Michael
Eisner, Jeffrey Katzenberg, Peter Schneider and Tom Schumacher, someone
in the room announced that Hamlet was similar in its themes and
relationships. Everyone responded favorably to the idea that we were
doing something Shakespearean and so we continued to look for ways to
model our film on that all time classic.
This may or may not be the answer you were looking for. It was not written to be Hamlet. How many “ways to model” their film they found, we don’t know.
