Hamlet, Part 2: Acts 2 and 3: Madness, Soliloquies and the Play Within the Play

Hook: how do you catch a liar?

Hamlet has a ghost's word that his uncle is a murderer, and nothing else. No witnesses, no evidence, and a ghost who might be lying. So he does what a detective in a TV show might do: he sets a trap and watches the suspect's face. His trap is a play. In Acts 2 and 3, Hamlet becomes a play about watching, performing and pretending, and almost everyone is spying on someone.

Act 2 in brief

• 2.1: Ophelia, frightened, tells Polonius that Hamlet came to her room looking wild, stared at her, sighed and left without a word. Polonius decides Hamlet is mad with love for her.
• 2.2: Claudius and Gertrude have summoned Hamlet's old school friends, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, to spy on him. Polonius tells the King and Queen his theory at great length (brevity is the soul of wit, he says, without any). Hamlet mocks Polonius with nonsense that makes sense (Though this be madness, yet there is method in't, Polonius admits). Hamlet sees through his friends and tells them, I am but mad north-north-west: when the wind is southerly I know a hawk from a handsaw (I'm only mad in one direction). A company of travelling actors arrives. Alone, Hamlet attacks himself in a soliloquy, O, what a rogue and peasant slave am I!, ashamed that an actor can weep for a story while he does nothing for his murdered father. He plans to have the actors perform a play like his father's murder: The play's the thing / Wherein I'll catch the conscience of the king.

Act 3 in brief

• 3.1: Polonius and Claudius hide to watch Hamlet meet Ophelia. Hamlet's soliloquy To be, or not to be weighs whether it is nobler to endure life's suffering or to end it, and concludes that fear of the undiscovered country after death, and too much thinking, stop people from acting: Thus conscience does make cowards of us all. He then turns on Ophelia cruelly (Get thee to a nunnery). Claudius decides Hamlet is dangerous, not lovesick, and plans to send him to England.
• 3.2: Hamlet coaches the actors (Suit the action to the word, the word to the action; the purpose of acting is to hold, as 'twere, the mirror up to nature). During The Murder of Gonzago, which Hamlet calls The Mousetrap, Claudius watches a murderer pour poison in a sleeping king's ear, rises and calls for light. Hamlet is sure the Ghost told the truth.
• 3.3: Alone, Claudius tries to pray: O, my offence is rank, it smells to heaven. Hamlet finds him kneeling and could kill him, but decides not to: killing a man at prayer might send his soul to heaven. After Hamlet leaves, Claudius admits: My words fly up, my thoughts remain below. / Words without thoughts never to heaven go.
• 3.4: In his mother's private room (the "closet" scene), Hamlet hears someone behind a curtain, stabs through it and kills Polonius, thinking it may be the King. He confronts Gertrude about her marriage. The Ghost appears to Hamlet, but Gertrude cannot see it, and she believes her son is mad.

(Content note: 3.1 contains a famous reflection on life and death, including suicide; 3.4 includes Polonius's death. Neither is described graphically.)

Form 1: the soliloquy as thinking out loud

In Macbeth, soliloquies showed a man talking himself into murder. Hamlet's soliloquies often show a man talking himself out of action, or at least into delay. To be, or not to be is not addressed to anyone; it is a philosophical argument:

To be, or not to be, that is the question: Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, Or to take arms against a sea of troubles, And by opposing end them.

Notice the imagery of battle (slings and arrows, take arms) and the impossible image of fighting a sea. Notice that he uses we and us throughout, never I: the soliloquy is about all people, which is part of why it is quoted everywhere. And notice where it lands: the native hue of resolution / Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought: thinking makes the healthy colour of determination turn pale and sick.

Form 2: the play within the play

The play within the play is a revenge-tragedy convention, but Shakespeare uses it to raise bigger questions. Hamlet's advice to the actors, to hold, as 'twere, the mirror up to nature, describes what drama does: it shows people themselves. That is exactly what happens to Claudius: he sees his own crime reflected. This is metatheatre: the play makes us think about plays, acting and the masks people wear, in a play where nearly everyone is acting a part.

Style: thou and you

In the closet scene, Gertrude scolds her son: Hamlet, thou hast thy father much offended. (She means Claudius, his stepfather, and uses the familiar thou.) Hamlet throws her words back, but changes them: Mother, you have my father much offended. He means his real father, and he switches to the cooler, formal you. One pronoun and one word (thy to my) change the whole accusation. Shakespeare's audience would have heard the shift at once.