[Act Three Answers]

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 Notes Online!)
 May I stress that these are sample answers. I have stuck to what seemed
 to me to be common sense explanations. If you're looking for a philosophy
 of life, you won't find one here.
 Ê                                        Ê
 What? Why? How?                          Stagecraft
 Question 1 (What do they all do?)        Question 1 (Dramatic surprises)
 Question 2 (Importance of the play
 scene)                                   Question 2 (Creation of tension)
 Question 3 (Hamlet in the Prayer Scene)  Language and Imagery

 Question 4 (Claudius' soliloquy)         Question 1 (Disease and
                                          rottenness)
 Question 5 (Hamlet's soliloquies)        Ê
 Question 6 (Is Hamlet mad?)              Ê
 Question 7 (Hamlet at his worst)         Ê
 Question 8 (Rosencrantz and
 Guildenstern)                            Ê
 Question 9 (Is the Ghost an
 hallucination)                           Ê
 Question 10 (Ophelia's potential for
 madness)                                 Ê

 Act Three Answers                                         Ê
 What? Why? How?

      1. What do Claudius and Polonius do in scene
      one, that Hamlet and Horatio do in scene two,
      that Hamlet does in scene three and Polonius
      does in scene four?

      Spy. Claudius and Polonius watch Hamlet meet
      Ophelia; Hamlet and Horatio keep the King
      under surveillance during the play; Hamlet
      observes Claudius supposedly praying, and
      Polonius spies upon Hamlet's meeting with his
      mother.

      This continual spying in the play (earlier
      examples are Rosencrantz and Guildenstern's
      attempts to draw out the Prince and Reynaldo's
      mission in France) are a key component of the
      atmosphere of 'Hamlet'. The critic Frank
      Kermode said that the walls of Elsinore are
      made of ears. 'Hamlet' is an extremely
      claustrophobic play. No actions are private.
      Take Polonius. He knows about his daughter's
      relationship with Hamlet. He also knows of the
      prince's habit of walking 'alone' in the
      lobby. Everything that happens is seen by
      another character or their agents. The play
      contains an enormous number of minor
      characters, guards and lords, etc. Extra
      actors cost money, so why would Shakespeare,
      who part-owned the theatre he was writing for,
      create all these extras who say and do
      nothing? Because, I would suggest, their
      presence increases the sense of being watched
      all the time.

      [Back to the top.]

      2. In what respects is the 'Play Scene'
      (III.ii) a turning point in the play? How is
      this turn compounded by Hamlet's actions in
      the 'Closet Scene' (III.iv)?

      The Play Scene is, of course, Hamlet's attempt
      to obtain the proof he needs to act on the
      Ghost's instructions. If he is able to make
      the King react guiltily to the play, he will
      know that the Ghost is not a devil and that he
      is justified in killing him.

      As it turns out, the Play Scene has other,
      unintended consequences. In presenting a
      depiction of the murder of his father, Hamlet
      tells Claudius that he knows about his crime.
      From now on, Claudius is the hunter, Hamlet
      the prey. The next time we see Claudius, in
      the following scene, he is planning the
      prince's death by sending Rosencrantz and
      Guildenstern with Hamlet to ensure that he
      goes to the English King. We must presume that
      he has already devised his scheme to prevent
      Hamlet from coming back.

      Claudius' realisation that Hamlet is a real
      threat rather than a minor irritation is
      compounded in III.iv., the closet scene.
      Hamlet kills Polonius by accident, hoping it
      is the king. The significance of this is not
      lost on the King, who tells Gertrude, "It had
      been so with us had we been there" in IV.i.

      Some critics, notably Terence Hawkes, have
      pointed out that the Play Scene doesn't
      actually prove as much as Hamlet imagines it
      does. 'The Murder of Gonzago' presents the
      murder of a King in his garden while he is
      sleeping. But the murderer, Lucianus, is the
      King's nephew, not his brother. The scene
      might have been read by the King as a threat
      of murder from Hamlet, rather than the
      depiction of his own crime. This additional
      uncertainty helps keep alive doubts about the
      Ghost's origins and integrity.

      [Back to the top.]

      3. What does the fact that Hamlet's soliloquy
      in the 'Prayer Scene' (III.iii) was cut from
      performances of the play for nearly 200 years
      tell us about Shakespeare's likely intentions
      in writing this speech for the prince?

      Samuel Johnson said this scene was "too
      terrible to be read or uttered". Elizabethan
      audiences and their descendants for the next
      two centuries would have found Hamlet
      unspeakably cruel and blasphemous in this
      scene.

      The Prince's intention to send the King to
      hell rather than 'merely' kill him would have
      more impact in age when hell was such a real
      and terrifying proposition. To plan to commit
      a man to eternal damnation would have been
      viewed as a despicable thought. In any case,
      for Hamlet to attempt to second-guess God, to
      view himself as the judge of Claudius' fate,
      was wholly blasphemous, not to mention
      arrogant.

      It seems clear that Shakespeare intended us to
      see Hamlet becoming evil at this point in the
      play, capable of 'drinking hot blood' as he
      tells us at the end of the play scene. This is
      central to what the play has to say about
      revenge. When a person is put above the law,
      above the normal moral codes that we use to
      keep society running smoothly, anything can
      happen. Hamlet is freed from any sense of
      sinfulness in the murder of Claudius and
      becomes capable of cold-blooded murder on the
      slightest pretext. The fates of Polonius,
      Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are examples of
      this.

      Some Nineteenth and early-Twentieth century
      critics have attempted to rehabilitate Hamlet,
      and this is still a view you may hear today.
      According to these Romantic critics, Hamlet is
      not capable of murder and says what he does in
      the prayer scene in order to put off the fatal
      moment for as long as possible. Frankly, this
      view is laughable. It depends upon a
      preconceived notion that Hamlet is a pale,
      romantic, melancholy poet who wouldn't hurt a
      fly. This is directly contradicted by the
      facts of the play. There is no reason not to
      take Hamlet at his word here and elsewhere
      when he speaks in soliloquy.

      [Back to the top.]

      4. Does Claudius' soliloquy revise or compound
      your opinion of this character?

      It probably does a little of both. In terms of
      revising one's opinion, there has been little
      evidence thus far in the play that Claudius
      feels very much about anything. In this scene
      we find him on his knees and begging for
      forgiveness. Certainly, we must conclude that
      he is a man with strong feelings and a heavy
      conscience.

      However, looking carefully at the speech
      allows us to see the King's more villainous
      side. He knows he has sinned. He knows that
      his sins are so terrible that he is very
      likely to be damned for them. But what is his
      response? "May one be pardoned and retain
      th'offence". When Claudius says "th'offence",
      he means the things he has gained through
      killing his brother: the crown and Gertrude.
      The King wants God to pardon him for his
      crimes without giving up anything. He is not
      at all penitent: he simply wants to get out of
      being punished.

      That said, Claudius knows that this desirable
      state of affairs will not come to pass. This
      is why he finishes the soliloquy attempting to
      pray for the strength to repent properly. The
      final lines of the scene where Claudius tells
      us that he has been unable to pray are not
      simply an ironic joke about Hamlet's
      haplessness. Rather, they show us that the
      King's love for his ill-gotten gains outweighs
      his fear of damnation

      [Back to the top.]

      5. Hamlet is often thought to have a lot of
      soliloquies, though in actual fact, he has
      fewer than Macbeth and around the same number
      as Othello, who are thought to be men of
      action rather than meditation. How does the
      placing and subject of Hamlet's soliloquies in
      this act encourage the idea of a meditative
      prince?

      With regard to the placing of Hamlet's
      soliloquies, their positions within the third
      act, help to create the idea of Hamlet as a
      thinker. His soliloquy at the end of Act Two
      ("O what a rogue and peasant slave am I") is
      immediately followed the next time we see him
      by his soliloquy in Act Three, scene one ("To
      be or not to be, that is the question"). Thus
      we are given the idea that Hamlet has been
      thinking continuously in the interim. The same
      thing happens at the end of Act Three, scene
      two. Hamlet delivers his "Now is the very
      witching time of night" soliloquy and then the
      next time we see the Prince, he delivers his
      "Now might I do it pat" soliloquy in Act
      Three, scene three. Shakespeare creates the
      impression that Hamlet is always thinking by
      having him soliloquise in adjacent scenes.

      Regarding their subject matter, Hamlet's
      soliloquies are different to those given by
      other Shakespearian heroes in that they
      present thought rather than state positions or
      decisions. The "O what a rogue and peasant
      slave" soliloquy at the close of Act Two,
      scene two, shows us Hamlet wanting to feel
      more strongly, wishing he had killed the King
      already and then deciding not to. The 'To be
      or not to be" soliloquy in Act Three, scene
      one, debates the advantages of committing
      suicide and the reasons that we don't. The
      "Now is the very witching time of night"
      soliloquy in Act Three, scene two, presents
      Hamlet reminding himself not to kill his
      mother and the "Now might I do it pat"
      soliloquy shows us Hamlet deciding not to kill
      Claudius for the time being. Each of the
      soliloquies is negative: it retards the
      fulfillment of Hamlet's mission rather than
      advancing it. The only soliloquy which results
      in any action is the one at the end of Act
      Two, scene two, which results in Hamlet
      putting on 'The Murder of Gonzago'. But this
      is in preference to acting directly and has,
      in fact, been arranged already, immediately
      before the soliloquy.

      The 'To be or not to be' soliloquy is often
      felt to be central to Hamlet's personality. It
      provides an excellent example of Hamlet not
      doing anything. He says that it would be far
      better for us all to commit suicide, but that
      we don't because we are scared of what might
      happen to us in the afterlife. Furthermore, we
      very often put things off because of our
      understanding that we might be being sinful.
      We look too closely at our plans and find
      reasons for not carrying them out.

      In this context, one of the first things to
      note is that the soliloquy leads to nothing,
      except perhaps his barbarity to Ophelia. The
      second thing to note is that it has very
      little to do with what Hamlet is supposed to
      be doing. He has just planned to put on a play
      in order to discover whether the King is
      guilty as charged. The very next time we see
      him, he doesn't even mention it. Of course,
      the speech is relevant to Hamlet's own wish to
      be dead and to his failure to kill Claudius.
      But it has nothing to do with his immediate
      plans. Lastly, it is worth noting that Hamlet
      is not talking about himself, he is talking
      about humanity in general and and how
      unbearable all our lives are. The speech is
      more like an essay than a confession.

      This treatment of Hamlet's soliloquies is
      obviously very one-sided. There is much, much
      more to be said about them. But not here.

      [Back to the top.]

      6. 'I essentially am not in madness' says
      Hamlet (III.iv.188). Name four lines spoken by
      Hamlet in this act which might make you doubt
      this.

      "Get thee to a nunnery" (III.i.119) and "It
      hath made me mad" (III.i.140-1).

      What is Hamlet talking about? He has just
      insinuated that Ophelia has lost her virtue
      and now he is telling her to go to a convent.
      Why? To avoid becoming a "breeder of sinners".
      Hamlet says that all humanity is sinful and
      suffering: any addition to the race would be
      an increase of this wickedness. This relates,
      of course, to the "To be or not to be"
      soliloquy. He says there that life is
      unlivable, but that the alternatives are too
      terrifying to contemplate. The solution he
      comes up with seems to be "no more marriages",
      and consequently, no more children. Call me
      judgmental, but this seems like insanity.

      In the second line, Hamlet tells Ophelia that
      the wicked, deceitful ways of women have
      driven him insane. One might well respond that
      Hamlet is pretending to be mad because he
      knows that Polonius and Claudius can hear this
      conversation. Indeed, it has become a
      theatrical commonplace for the actor playing
      Polonius to cough or otherwise reveal his
      presence. However, there is no information
      whatsoever in the text to suggest that
      anything of the sort happens. When characters
      hide in Elizabethan plays they stay hidden
      unless they directly reveal their whereabouts,
      as Polonius does in III.iv. Similarly, if
      someone puts on a disguise, they are never
      detected. So we must assume that Hamlet does
      not know that Claudius and Polonius are
      present.

      He might detect that Ophelia is behaving
      suspiciously and consequently start talking
      gibberish and attack her morals. But he
      doesn't say that she is. When he suspected
      that Rosencrantz and Guildenstern were
      deceiving him in II.ii., he immediately told
      them of his doubts. If he is suspicious of
      Ophelia, one would therefore expect him to
      mention it. I believe that Hamlet is speaking
      directly and passionately to Ophelia in this
      scene and is saying what he thinks. Indeed,
      the extent of his passion, the forcefulness of
      his attacks on Ophelia are a good argument for
      seeing these speeches as genuine rather than
      feigned madness

      "Nay but to live in the rank sweat of an
      enseamed bed" (III.iv.94)

      The Queen has just told Hamlet that she has
      seen how sinful she is. Hamlet does not
      encourage her penitence, rather he continues
      ranting about her sin. Three lines later, the
      Queen pleads for him to stop because she feels
      so guilt-stricken. Hamlet cannot stop himself
      and continues with a list of Claudius' vices.
      It seems very likely that he is out of control
      at this point.

      "What would your gracious figure?"
      (III.iv.104)

      Hamlet sees the Ghost; the Queen can't. In Act
      One, the Ghost could be seen by everyone. The
      Ghost in Act One wore armour; the Ghost in
      this scene wears his normal clothes. The Ghost
      in Act One disappears into thin air; this
      Ghost uses the door. The Ghost in Act III,
      scene iv is more than a little fishy and might
      well be an hallucination.

      "heaven hath please it so ... That I must be
      their scourge and minister" (III.iv.174-6)

      Hamlet says he's working for God. We know he's
      working for his father. Where has he got this
      idea of his importance?

      [Back to the top.]

      7. Is Hamlet at his worst in scene three or
      scene four of this act?

      It doesn't really matter which you decided.
      Take your pick.

      In scene three, Hamlet is blasphemously
      arrogant and cruel, as discussed above in the
      answer to question 3.

      In scene four, he murders Polonius in cold
      blood and then says that he deserved to die
      for being so nosey. He then berates his
      mother, arrogantly claiming to be God's
      messenger.

      [Back to the top.]

      8. How do Rosencrantz and Guildenstern seem to
      have become more immoral since their first
      appearance in II.ii.?

      In Act Two, scene two, Rosencrantz and
      Guildenstern fail abjectly in their mission.
      They look too guilty to fool Hamlet for a
      minute and when he questions them, they admit
      that they are working for the King.

      By Act Three they have become considerably
      more corrupt. They begin the act by lying to
      the King about their encounter with Hamlet.
      The next time we see them, after the play in
      Act Three, scene two, they are the King's
      messengers, telling Hamlet off for annoying
      Claudius and ordering him to go to his mother.
      At the beginning of Act Three, scene three,
      they are again the King's willing agents,
      happy to ensure that Hamlet gets to England as
      planned. Despite not living in Elsinore, they
      then see fit to deliver an obsequious speech
      proclaiming their loyalty to the King as the
      foundation of the nation's well-being.

      Everyone becomes worse as the play progresses.
      The disease of Claudius' crime, the play seems
      to suggest, spreads from character to
      character.

      [Back to the top.]

      9. For what reasons might you think that the
      Ghost in III.iv is an hallucination, and for
      what reasons might you think it is real?

      The reasons one might think it is an
      hallucination are covered in question six,
      above.

      On the other hand, how much do we know about
      what ghosts can and cannot do? There is no
      rule that says that ghosts have to be
      consistent in their appearance and behaviour.
      Furthermore, the Ghost in III.iv. is reminding
      Hamlet of its message which the prince seems
      to have forgotten. He tells Hamlet (again) to
      expend his anger on Claudius and not on his
      mother, the opposite of what the Prince seems
      to want to do.

      There is again, no true reading of the Ghost.
      Shakespeare does not give us enough
      information to be absolutely sure whether it
      is Hamlet's father, a devil, or (in part) an
      hallucination. I believe this element of doubt
      is useful. It makes us wonder about the
      morality of the Ghost's message, about the
      morality of revenge, which I would contend is
      the play's main theme.

      [Back to the top.]

      10. After III.ii., the next time we see
      Ophelia she is mad. How are the seeds for this
      planted in this act?

      We see Ophelia in the first two scenes of Act
      Three. She doesn't say a great deal in either
      scene. Readings of her frame of mind are
      therefore very conjectural.

      In her encounter with Hamlet in the Nunnery
      Scene, Ophelia seems a little unwilling to
      play her part and reject the Prince
      wholeheartedly in order to display his
      reactions to the onlookers. Instead, she
      muddles up her lines and implies that Hamlet
      is rejecting her (III.i.101). Then she shows
      her disappointment when Hamlet says he never
      loved her. When he begins to rant about
      nunneries and the wickedness of women, she
      drops all pretence, exclaiming "Oh help him
      you sweet heavens!" When Hamlet leaves, she
      seems to seems to break down in her speech
      ending "Oh woe is me / T'have seen what I have
      seen, see what I see" (III.i.154-5). Ophelia's
      world is beginning to collapse. So far in her
      life, she has been under the continual
      direction of three men: her father, her
      brother and her lover. Her brother has gone.
      Her lover is insane. When her father dies at
      the hands of the man she loves, there is
      no-one to direct her. Back in I.iii., Polonius
      says to Ophelia "think yourself a baby", and
      tells her to stop believing what Hamlet has
      said and believe what he says instead. Ophelia
      has never had to make her own mind up and has
      been dissuaded from doing so. It might be fair
      to say that she does not have a mind of her
      own. What happens when that infant mind is
      left to fend with the loss of everyone who is
      important to her?

      This impression of Ophelia is strengthened, I
      think, in the Play Scene. Hamlet embarasses
      and confuses her publicly. She is almost
      completely incapable of responding. She has
      never been spoken to like this before and does
      not have the resources to cope.

      [Back to the top.]

 Stagecraft

      1. Name three dramatic surprises in this act.

      The Nunnery Scene

      There is no reason to imagine that Hamlet
      would act in such a deranged way with Ophelia.
      Indeed, we would have every expectation that
      he would behave tenderly towards her.

      The Dumb Show

      The Dumb Show represents the King's murder of
      his brother in an entirely unambiguous manner.
      We expect Claudius to react, otherwise there
      wouldn't be a play scene. But he doesn't. This
      mystery has been solved by some directors and
      critics by having Claudius looking away or
      chatting with Gertrude while the mime takes
      place. A more plausible explanation is that
      Claudius is looking, but manages to contain
      himself.

      Polonius' Murder

      Polonius is frequently played as a bumbling
      old fool. Certainly, he is a failure as a
      secret agent, consistently misinterpreting the
      Prince, much to the latter's amusement. When
      Hamlet kills him, I think the audience might
      be genuinely shocked. Funny, harmless
      characters rarely get killed off.

      The Ghost

      The Ghost's reappearance is very surprising.
      We don't really expect to see it again after
      Act One, unless to deliver some sort of moral
      summary at the end. The Ghost's return is the
      more surprising as it interrrupts the climax
      of Hamlet's rage against Claudius and
      Gertrude.

      [Back to the top.]

      2. Name two sections which successfully create
      tension.

      The Play

      As discussed above, we fully expect the King
      to react suitably to the play, otherwise it
      wouldn't be shown to us. The audience's eyes,
      like Hamlet's, are trained on him from the
      beginning of the Dumb Show until the point at
      which he finally breaks.

      The Prayer Scene

      Claudius is kneeling and vulnerable. Hamlet
      has a sword. The few seconds between the
      Prince's entrance and the point at which he
      talks himself out of killing the King are
      filled with tension.

      [Back to the top.]

 Language and Imagery

      1. Find three references to disease or
      rottenness.

      There are quite a few in this act. They are
      always used as metaphors for sin and
      corruption.

      "The native hue of resolution / Is sicklied
      o'er with the pale cast of thought"
      (III.i.84-5)

      "Thou mixture rank ... thrice infected"
      (III.ii.233-4)

      "my wit's diseased" (III.ii.291)

      "hell itself breathes out / Contagion to this
      world" (III.ii.350-1)

      "Oh my offence is rank" (III.iii.36)

      "This physic but prolongs thy sickly days"
      (III.iii.96)

      "a blister" (III.iv.44)

      "like a mildewed ear / Blasting his wholesome
      brother" (III.iv.64-5)

      "the rank sweat of an enseamed bed"
      (III.iv.92)

      "It will but skin and film the ulcerous place,
      / Whiles rank corruption mining all within, /
      Infects unseen" (III.iv.147-9)

                                                           


                                                           

Ê
Ian Delaney.
Copyright © 1997
Shakespearean Education
Last Updated: Monday, 23-Feb-98 11:34:03 EST
email: ian@hamlet.hypermart.net
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