Act II, Scene 2:

King Claudius and Queen Gertrude greet Hamlet’s old school friends Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. Increasingly distressed by Hamlet’s odd behavior, the king and queen have invited his friends to the castle in the hopes that they will be able to uncover the cause of Hamlet’s madness. As Rosencrantz and Guildenstern go off to find Hamlet, Polonius enters and announces that Voltemand and Cornelius have returned from Norway. He also informs the king and queen that he has discovered the reason for Hamlet’s erratic behavior. Though Claudius is eager to hear more, Polonius convinces him to meet with the ambassadors first.

Cornelius and Voltemand report that the old king of Norway had no knowledge of young Fortinbras’s plans to attack Denmark and, once informed, immediately put a stop to them. After vowing never to raise arms against Denmark again, young Fortinbras was given permission to use his forces to attack Poland instead of Denmark. For that purpose, the old king asks Claudius to allow Fortinbras’s army to pass through Denmark’s lands. Pleased with this outcome, Claudius dismisses Voltemand and Cornelius.

Polonius turns the conversation to Hamlet, and—despite saying “I will be brief”—he gives a long-winded, wordy introduction before finally revealing that he believes Hamlet’s feelings for Ophelia to be the source of his madness. As proof, he produces a love letter that Hamlet sent to Ophelia. To test his theory, Polonius suggests that they send Ophelia to Hamlet and then spy on their conversation. The king agrees just as Hamlet enters, reading a book. (Some of Hamlet’s later speeches suggest that he may have heard Polonius’s plan, and this scene is often staged in a way that suggests Hamlet overhears their conversation.) The king and queen exit, and Polonius goes to confront Hamlet. On the surface, Hamlet appears confused during his conversation with Polonius, apparently mistaking him for a “fishmonger”; however, his seemingly absurd statements mask a biting assessment of Polonius’s character. Eventually, Polonius exits to make the arrangements for the meeting between Hamlet and Ophelia.

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern enter and greet their friend. Hamlet is happy to see them but quickly realizes that they must have been summoned on Claudius’s orders. When he presses them, they admit that the king and queen did indeed send for them. Hamlet says that his depressed behavior is the reason they have been summoned, admitting that nothing delights him anymore. Rosencrantz informs Hamlet that an acting troupe is en route to the castle. As the trumpets sound the approach of the actors, Hamlet tells his friends that they are welcome at Elsinore. He warns them that his mother and his uncle are mistaken about his madness, claiming enigmatically that he is only mad sometimes.

Polonius reenters to announce the arrival of the acting troupe. Hamlet asks them to show their talents by giving a speech. The first player recites a dramatic speech about the murder of Priam that pleases Hamlet and bores Polonius. As the actors follow Polonius out of the room, Hamlet takes one aside and, after requesting that they perform The Murder of Gonzago, asks whether they could add in several lines of his own devising. The actor agrees, and Hamlet is left alone.

In his second soliloquy of the play, Hamlet berates himself for his inaction. Comparing himself to the talented actor from earlier, he says that it is monstrous that an actor can summon such passion over an imaginary character, while he cannot seem to summon the same passion over an actual act of treachery. It is revealed that Hamlet intends to have the actors perform a scene mimicking his father’s murder for the court. By closely watching Claudius’s reaction during the play, Hamlet feels sure he will obtain proof of his uncle’s guilt.

Analysis

The lengthy second scene slows the lively pace which was characteristic of Act I, which had five fairly brief scenes, followed by the brisk first scene of Act II. This slowdown allows Shakespeare to establish beyond doubt that Claudius is guilty of the King’s murder, and to begin to explore Hamlet’s tortured mental state, caught between love, grief, and vengeance. The loyalty of Hamlet’s friends, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, is turned against him by his parents; yet, when Hamlet presses them, they give up the charade and admit their mission. They have even arranged the theatrical interlude because they know Hamlet was “wont to take … delight in” their performances (II. ii. 331). Their obvious affection for Hamlet creates a problem for the reader when, in Act V, Scene 2, Hamlet reveals that he has forged the letters which will result in their deaths. He will justify his actions, saying essentially that his friends got caught in the middle, between him and Claudius; that their “own insinuation” (meddling) has brought about their defeat.

The conversation about the established adult acting companies versus the increasingly popular child actors was not only topical for Shakespeare’s audiences, but is also dramatically integral to the intergenerational motif of the play: the youth rising up to supplant their elders. Furthermore, the motif of illusion vs. reality which pervades the play is reinforced here with the several mentions of young boys playing the parts of women, also a timely reference. In addition, the suggestion that women are weaker or otherwise inferior is a recurrent motif: “frailty, thy name is woman—” (I. ii. 146); “O most pernicious woman!” (I. v. 105); “ … it is such a kind of gain-giving as would perhaps trouble a woman” (V. ii. 216-217).

Voltemand and Cornelius bring news of Norway’s curbing of Fortinbras’ revenge aimed at Denmark, reinforcing another of the recurring motifs in this play: parents vs. children, and its flipside, children (sons, in this case) seeking to avenge their fathers’ deaths. Fortinbras’ father had lost his lands to Hamlet’s father in the recent war, and young Fortinbras plans to regain them by attack. His uncle, now King of Norway, intercedes and sets him against Poland. Hamlet and Fortinbras are both dispossessed heirs to the throne; in Act V, Scene 2, Hamlet will give his “dying voice” to Fortinbras’ accession to the throne of Denmark, and Fortinbras will eulogize Hamlet as “a soldier” and “most royal.” Thus, out of the chaos, we are assured order will be restored, and power passed into capable and worthy hands.

Hamlet’s inane conversations with both Polonius and with Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are riddled with vulgar innuendoes, which foreshadows his scenes with Ophelia and Gertrude. The discrepancy between outer appearances and inner qualities is thus manifested once again; Hamlet even states this theme directly in his conversation with Gertrude in Act III, Scene 4, when he tells her that her trespass “will but skin and film the ulcerous place / Whiles rank corruption, mining all within, / Infects unseen” (lines 147-149). That Hamlet’s madness is merely pretense in Act II, Scent 2, is suggested by his remark as Polonius departs (“These tedious old fools!”) and by his disclosure that his parents are “deceived” about his madness (lines 221, 379).

When Polonius announces the arrival of the players, Hamlet remarks to Guildenstern and Rosencrantz “That great baby you see there is not yet out of his swaddling clouts”; to which Rosencrantz counters, “ … they say an old man is twice a child” (II. ii. 385-386, 388). Clearly Hamlet does not respect Polonius, despite his politically important position. Throughout the play, Polonius appears as arrogant, foolish, self-important, and unaware that others find him amusing, if not tedious. In proclaiming his own skills as an advisor and father, he has apparently forgotten that he was earlier forced to admit his change of mind, abandoning his assumption that Hamlet meant to trifle with Ophelia: “I am sorry that with better heed and judgment / I had not quoted him … / By heaven, it is as proper to our age / To cast beyond ourselves in our opinions / As it is common for the younger sort / To lack discretion” (II. i. 111-117).

Hamlet continues to bait the king’s advisor with allusions to Jeptha, a Biblical king who sacrificed his daughter, implying a parallel to Polonius’ “loosing” Ophelia to Hamlet to verify his madness. That Hamlet understands the motives of those around him to be duplicitous is becoming increasingly clear, and that Hamlet’s madness is merely pretense, increasingly certain. If he is not mad, we may perhaps assume that his actions—and his inaction—are conscious and calculated.

Many critics have argued the issue of Hamlet’s inaction—that is, his delay in avenging his father’s death. The prince frequently laments his procrastination, contrasting himself to Fortinbras (who must be restrained from his planned vengeance for his father’s death) and to Pyrrhus (who takes sporting delight in “mincing” Priam—merely the father of Paris, the actual murderer of Pyrrhus’ father, Achilles). What is it that holds Hamlet back? Probably no one theory will encompass the body of evidence to be found in the entire work, but several major interpretations have been supported over the centuries by critics.

It is possible that Hamlet really had no opportunity to kill Claudius, with the exception of the time he found him at prayer in Act III, Scene 3. Not wishing to kill Claudius when the king’s soul and conscience were clear, Hamlet delays. Ironically, Claudius reveals that although he has prayed, “Words without thoughts never to heaven go” (III. iii. 99). Hamlet could have damned Claudius, had the prince only carried out his impulse.

In Act III, Scene 1, Hamlet himself suggests another of the popular theories: his “native hue of resolution / Is sicklied o’er with the pale cast of thought” (lines 84-85). In other words, he is not able to carry out the deeds which he has resolved to do, mired in his own “analysis paralysis.” In Act II, Scene 2, Hamlet suggests that Denmark is a prison, and compares it to his mind: “ … there is nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so” (lines 252-254). This passage also supports the theory of action arrested by intellect.

The question of Hamlet’s inaction is further complicated by the attitudes evidenced by several characters. In Act 3, Scene 2, The Player King tells the Player Queen that when her passions (i.e., her grief and loyalty) have cooled, her actions will be governed by other concerns and she will remarry. In Act 3, Scene 4, Hamlet chides Gertrude about her hasty remarriage, saying because of her age, she cannot have been ruled by her passions (i.e., lust), and must have been ruled by “judgment” (i.e., reason). The Ghost restrains Hamlet’s rebuke of Gertrude, urging him to channel his anger at Claudius; in other words, to control his passions as he seeks vengeance. And when Hamlet pays tribute to his loyal friend Horatio in Act III, Scene 2, he remarks that Horatio is not “passion’s slave” and whose “blood [passion] and judgment” is so well blended that he is not vulnerable to Fortune’s “buffets and rewards” (lines 68-73). For Hamlet, the dilemma is the proper yoking of passion, which would spur him to immediate vengeance, with reason, which is God-given, and which would temper Hamlet’s actions with prudent judgment. Hamlet seems unable to strike the balance, and is forever trying to weigh the emotional against the rational. The result is his inaction.

Hamlet has been dubbed the Melancholy Dane because of the many expressions of his sense of loss and grief at his father’s death. Elizabethans were familiar with the concept of melancholia, believed to be caused by an excess of the humour (bodily fluid), black bile. The sufferer’s moods would swing from deep depression and self-deprecation, to highly emotional outbursts. Certainly Hamlet’s puzzling behavior, which appears insane to others, could be a manifestation of this supposed disorder.

More modern critics note the Oedipal pattern in Hamlet’s relationship with his mother. To the extent that Claudius has done that which Hamlet himself desired to do (kill his father and marry his mother), the personae of Claudius and Hamlet merge. To avenge the murder-marriage is to commit suicide; indeed, Hamlet contemplates that very thing in his famous “To be or not to be” speech. Perhaps Hamlet hesitates to kill Claudius because of religious strictures against suicide, rather than against murder.

Other critics believe that Hamlet fears the apparition of his father is not an “honest Ghost,” and that his uncertainty restrains his vengeance. If the Ghost is “a devil … [in] a pleasing shape” who “abuses [Hamlet] to damn [him],” then to take matters into his own hands would go against Hamlet’s religious beliefs (II. ii. 604-605, 608). Beliefs of the time held that royalty ruled by divine right, so the murder of Hamlet’s father would therefore call for divine justice. If Hamlet is merely God’s tool, the murder is divinely ordained and sanctioned. However, if the Ghost is not heaven sent, if Hamlet seeks revenge for his own purposes, the murder is not holy and Hamlet’s revenge against Claudius would be a sin. As he says, “I’ll have grounds / More relative than this” (II. ii. 608-609); he will let Claudius’ reaction to the “mousetrap” guide him, rather than depending solely on the Ghost’s injunction.

A very generous critical reading credits Hamlet with an awareness of his own selfish motives; murdering Claudius would clear the path to his own kingship. In Act 5, Scen 2, Hamlet suggests this thinking as he explains his cause to Horatio, noting that Claudius “Popped in between th’ election and my hopes … ” (line 65). He delays throughout the play, these critics say, because he wants to make sure that he is truly avenging his father, not merely seeking his own advancement.

Each of these major theories can be supported with textual evidence, some more strongly than others. Hamlet’s obvious intellect and education might persuade the reader that he is less a victim of circumstances and more a creature tormented by his ability to see the situation from many angles, fraught with consequences political and spiritual, public and personal.

Hamlet’s plan to have the players enact The Murder of Gonzago with the addition of “some dozen or sixteen lines which [he] would set down” is another example of the use of indirection to learn the truth. Of course, the players themselves embody this principle of “acting” or pretending, engaging in “seeming” rather than in “being.” Hamlet alludes to this ironic duplicity when he notes the actor’s ability to “drown the stage with [real] tears / And cleave the general ear with horrid speech” (II. ii. 565-566) over an imagined murder, while he himself, “the son of a dear father murdered” (II. ii. 588), can only manage to curse his own inaction “like John-a-dreams” (II. ii. 572).

If we think of the players as actors—those who do, who perform, who carry out resolve—Hamlet’s invidious comparison of the player’s performance to his own, further reinforces his disgust at his own delay and inaction in carrying out the Ghost’s charge to avenge his father’s death. For instance, at Ophelia’s graveside, Hamlet insists that he loved her more than “forty thousand brothers” (V. i. 279) but later tells Horatio that “the bravery of [Laertes’] grief” (V. ii. 79) made him forget himself, “For by the image of my cause I see / The portraiture of his” (V. ii. 77-78).