Act III, Scene 2:

Hamlet enters with the players, giving them advice on how best to deliver the extra lines he has added to their performance. Polonius, Rosencrantz, and Guildenstern enter the room and tell Hamlet that the king and queen have agreed to attend tonight’s performance. The players exit. Hamlet calls out to Horatio, and Horatio enters. Hamlet asks his friend to carefully watch Claudius during the performance, saying that he will watch him as well so that they may compare notes afterward. Horatio agrees, saying that he will be sure to notice if Claudius reacts to the play in a suspicious way. As people begin to arrive for the performance, Hamlet warns Horatio that he must start acting crazy. Hamlet then proceeds to respond nonsensically to Claudius’s questions and harass Ophelia with rude sexual puns.

The players enter and perform a brief, silent version of the play to follow (an old-fashioned kind of pantomime called a “dumbshow”). In the dumbshow, the players present a loving king and queen. While the player king sleeps in the garden, a man steals his crown, kisses it, and pours poison in the king’s ear. The player queen silently acts out her sorrow, but eventually, the poisoner succeeds in wooing the player queen. With the dumbshow over, the players then begin to perform the full play. Hamlet comments on the play as it unfolds, and when Claudius asks whether the plot of the play is offensive, Hamlet slyly replies that it will not bother those with clear consciences. When the play gets to the part where the player king is poisoned in the ear, Claudius suddenly stands up and leaves, ending the performance early.

After everyone is gone, Hamlet and Horatio confer and agree that Claudius’s behavior clearly indicates his guilt. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern enter and inform Hamlet that his mother wishes to speak with him. Once more, they try to persuade Hamlet to divulge the reason for his behavior, but Hamlet accuses them of trying to manipulate him. Polonius enters the room and reiterates the queen’s request to see Hamlet. Hamlet agrees to go and is soon left alone. Speaking aloud to himself, Hamlet decides that he must admonish his mother with his words only, resolving not to physically harm her.

Analysis

The second scene also opens with a full stage as Hamlet addresses the Players about dramatic delivery; as the Players depart to make ready, Polonius enters with Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. Hamlet quickly moves that trio offstage to “hasten” the Players. Then Horatio enters, and he and Hamlet speak as dear and close friends. Horatio, who had earlier been enlisted by Claudius and Gertrude to sound out Hamlet, now sides with his long time friend and school mate—more duplicity.

This technique repeated from Scene 1, of many becoming few, stresses the increasing intensity of the machinations of the opposing forces: Claudius’ in the first, and Hamlet’s in the second. They mirror each other, but are inverse images: evil for good. But now the stage again fills to overflowing with the Players, the members of the royal court, the lords and ladies attendant thereon, and Guards with torches. Hamlet refuses his mother’s invitation to sit beside her, going instead to Ophelia and engaging in bawdy innuendoes.

Shakespeare has crowded the stage and placed Ophelia and Hamlet front and center with seemingly inappropriate and confusing dialogue. When Hamlet comments that his mother has remarried not “two hours” after his father’s death, Ophelia remarks that it is “twice two months.” But when he restates the matter, he makes it only “two months.” Likewise, the Players were originally scheduled to perform “tomorrow night;” but moments later, they are hurrying to make ready for the performance “presently” that very night. This seeming confusion over chronology is really Shakespeare’s way of telescoping time, lending urgency to the matter at hand—Hamlet’s revenge on the murderer of his father.

As the dumb show concludes, Ophelia asks Hamlet what it means; he answers “mischief,” referring to his plan to expose Claudius. The Prologue does not satisfy Ophelia’s curiosity, and she notes that “’Tis brief, my lord.” Hamlet answers, “As woman’s love,” returning to his theme of his mother’s infidelity to her dead husband’s memory. Hamlet, pursuing his “mischief,” asks his mother, “how like you this play?” Gertrude answers, “The lady doth protest too much, methinks,” suggesting that from her perspective, remarriage would not be an impossibility for a widow. Hamlet replies, “O, but she’ll keep her word,” implying that the Player Queen, at least, is faithful to her vows—an invidious comparison that surely is not lost on Gertrude.

Guildenstern and Rosencrantz, sent to summon Hamlet to his mother’s room, reveal that Claudius is “in . . . marvelous [distemper],” not from drink, as Hamlet suggests, but from “choler” (anger). Hamlet’s suggestion that they should rather be summoning a doctor to purge the king and make him well is a foreshadowing of the imagery he will use when he finds Claudius at prayer: “This physic but prolongs thy sickly days.” When Rosencrantz and Guildenstern report back to Claudius a few moments later, they speak of the necessity of protecting the king’s health against any harm that may be intended by Hamlet. Their remarks make clear that the life of “majesty,” upon whom so many other lives depend, is of far greater importance than an ordinary man’s life.

This conversation helps to justify Hamlet’s later action of sealing their death warrant; they have tried to “play upon [him]”, taking Claudius’ part against him. Hamlet explains to Horatio that he does not feel guilty for their fates; the pair simply got caught between the thrustings “of mighty opposites.” His pragmatic view ironically echoes their own attitude, that the life of the king is more important than any other’s; since Hamlet had hoped to become king (by election) at his father’s death, he is the “majesty” this time around, not Claudius.