Hamlet asks his mother whether she knows if he is to be sent to England with Rosencrantz and Guildenstern who he mistrusts. He suspects that Claudius means him trouble and harm. Gertrude confesses that she is aware of the exile and then Hamlet exits, pulling Polonius’s body behind him.
There is some indication now of Gertrude’s involvement in the murder of King Hamlet. The audience has to assume that she is partly innocent; this is because Hamlet says “a blood deed! Almost as bad, good mother. As kill a king and marry his brother.” She responds in surprise “as kill a king?” and then asks Hamlet why he is being cruel to her. This gives the audience an impression that Gertrude is unintelligent and that she just needs the security of love and stability.
Shakespeare makes the closet scene (act 3, scene 4) more dramatic by including the appearance of the ghost and the fact that Gertrude cannot see it. The appearance of the ghost results in different reactions between Hamlet and Gertrude. The part that is interesting is that Gertrude cannot see the ghost although that she is sinful and she feels convinced that Hamlet is mad. Hamlet gets confused at why Gertrude cannot see or hear the ghost. Shakespeare makes the audience interested by making the ghost appear at that point. The death of Polonius is also an attempt by Shakespeare to enhance the plot.
Act three opens with a remark by the king, Claudius, who instructs Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, old school-friends of his nephew, to discover why the latter ‘puts on this confusion, …grating so harshly all his days of quiet… with turbulent and dangerous lunacy?’
For over three centuries hundreds of experts have turned their attention to the problem of Hamlet’s madness. Hundreds of articles have been written, and dozens of controversial theories have been put forward and countered. The characters of Shakespeare’s play are themselves desperate to discover the origins of the affliction, which mars the prince of Denmark. Whilst Polonius sees Hamlet’s conduct as the result of disappointed love, Ophelia can only see the symptoms of pure madness. For Rosencrantz and Guildenstern it is ambition and frustration, which are gnawing away at the young heir to the throne. Finally, for Gertrude, Hamlet’s mother, who in this joins most critics, at the root of it is a warped reaction, including rejection, to the death of his father and her own hasty remarriage. This interpretation does indeed play an essential role in the play. Hamlet himself never ceases speculating not only about the overt or covert motivations of other characters but also about the uses and abuses of power, the faults of passion, action and inaction, the significance of ancestral customs as well as the question of suicide. Most of the characters observing Hamlet’s behaviour can’t agree whether it is fake and calculating or whether the prince really is suffering from a mental illness threatening the ‘noble, sovereign reason’ which separates men from beasts (Claudius).
Claudius himself is conscious of the fact that the conduct and words of his nephew are at one and the same time completely irrational and absolutely coherent. Basing his judgement on the theories of ancient medicine, he attributes the ambiguities of the deranged speeches to the workings of a harmful temperament provoking a state of deep melancholia. ‘What he (Hamlet) spake’ he concludes, ‘though it lack’d form a little…Was not like madness. There’s something in his soul… o’er which his melancholy sits on brood, … and I do doubt the hatch and the disclose… Will be some danger’ (Act 3, Scene 1).
There is famous theory of the Oedipus complex, which is linked to the tragedy of Hamlet. It was Freud himself who, in an essay published in 1905, was the first to try and resolve in psychoanalytical terms the enigma offered by this type of behaviour (Hamlet is mentioned as an aside), although Ernest Jones developed it most in the 1930s. According to Jones, the personal crisis undergone by Hamlet awakens his repressed incestuous and parricidal desires. The disgust which the remarriage of his mother arouses in him, as well as the violent behaviour during their confrontation in the queen’s bedroom, are signs of the jealousy which he constantly experiences, even if unconsciously.
Hamlet is absolutely horrified by the thought that his mother could feel desire for Claudius, whom he describes as a ‘murderer and villain, …A slave that is not twentieth part the tithe… of your precedent lord’.
Such an act
That blurs the grace and blush of modesty,
Calls virtue hypocrite, takes off the rose
From the fair forehead of an innocent love
And sets a blister there, makes marriage vows
As false as dicers’ oaths—O, such a deed
As from the body of contraction plucks
The very soul, and sweet religion makes
A rhapsody of words. Heaven’s face does glow
o’er this solidity and compound mass
with tristful visage, as against the doom
is thought-sick at the act. (Act Three, Scene Four)
A little after, the ghost of Hamlet’s father suddenly appears in order to assuage the anger of his son and implore him to take pity on his mother’s great distress: ‘This visitation… Is but to whet thy almost blunted purpose. … But look, amazement on thy mother sits. … O step between her and her fighting soul…. Conceit in weakest bodies strongest works…. Speak to her, Hamlet’.
The bedroom scene is one example amongst many of Hamlet’s aversion to sexuality, which he more often than not associates with vulgarity and sickness. Despite his violent reactions, he is nonetheless fundamentally incapable of acting, Freud tells us, because he cannot bring himself to avenge himself on the man who has killed his father and taken his place at the side of his mother. Given that Claudius does no more than reproduce the repressed fantasies of childhood, the hatred Hamlet feels for him is progressively replaced by a feeling of guilt which constantly reminds him that he is no better than the man he is supposed to punish.
Shakespeare uses language and structure very well in “Hamlet.” By looking at the language of Shakespeare the audience can get a feel of how life was like then through all of the murders and relationships and how they effected other people. Shakespeare focused on the main themes of guilt, blame and madness and to link this with how Hamlet and the other characters relate to them. Hamlet’s madness is one of the main themes that causes some confusion between the characters e.g. Gertrude. This is also a question that can be asked to the audience, “Is Hamlet mad?” Shakespeare wants the audience to ask these questions when reading Hamlet to get a feel of how the character must have felt and the other characters around him.
The audience feel sorry for Gertrude because she has to cope through Hamlet’s madness and also the loss of Polonius so she has gone through a lot because of Hamlet.
There is less sympathy for Hamlet as he killed Polonius and he has done a number of murders and also his madness does not help the audience to feel sorry for him.
Ernest Jones idea of taking revenge is okay in the sense that Hamlet has done it before through the murders but the audience might disagree with him because there might be alternative reasons to take revenge not just because of sex and the death of King Hamlet his father. Using revenge is not always the answer the audience might think so they will disagree with Jones’s viewpoint.
