Act Three
Act
Three Scene Two
Sub
Scene Ten
Much
ado among friends; love and jilt are the norms.
“I
still do, by these pickers and stealers” Hamlet wiggled his last finger in
front of Rozencrantz’s face
“My
dear lord,’ said Rosencrantz. ‘Why are you so unhappy? You’re only closing the
door to help if you don’t tell your friend.”
“Sir,
is it because I lack desire? No, the promotion was indecisive.” Hamlet replied.
“How
can that be when you have the support of the King himself for your succession
in Denmark?’
‘Yes,
but no longer, sir, He sits not on it.” Hamlet was distracted by the arrival of
some actors holding musical instruments. One of them held a recorder, a
woodwind musical instrument like the flute. It is a flute with
a whistle mouthpiece, also known as a fipple flute. A
recorder can be distinguished from other duct flutes by the presence of a thumb
hole for the upper hand and seven finger holes: three for the upper hand and
four for the lower. It is the most prominent duct flute in the western
classical tradition.
“May
I borrow one?” Hamlet asked the player. He took one from a musician.
“Do
you remember these, Guildenstern? Perhaps not.” Hamlet showed it to the others.
“Do come with me.’
Guildenstern
followed him out of the room, along the corridor to the terrace overlooking the
huge garden with the setting sun, lending it a shadowed outlook.
“I
used to stand here when my mind was younger and the age small.” Hamlet loved
the dark blue skies above the gloomy landscape. “I could only reach the top of
there, but my sight was on the horizon. I pictured fairies and imps all coming
out to play then, and how I wished it was with me then. But it was not, for I
am forbidden to go out near dusk. Friends were rare even then.”
Hamlet
looked to Guildenstern.
“Why
did you turn on me? Was it the money the Emperor was to pay? Or paid? Or the
pleasure of doing me in the rear?” Hamlet confronted the other.
“O,
my lord, if my duty is too bold, my love is too unmannerly,” Guildenstern
replied defensively. “I am the …”
“The
manly one with us.” Hamlet voiced out his view. “I do not well understand that.
Will you play upon this pipe?”
“My
lord, I cannot. Did I do what offended you?” Guildenstern shook his head.
“Musical
you were not but eloquent in the speech, you excel,” Hamlet spoke of
Guildenstern’s skill.
“Believe
me, I cannot. I know no touch of it, my lord.” Guildenstern still trying to ask
Hamlet about his outburst.
“It
is as easy as lying. Govern these ventages with your fingers and thumb, give it
breath with your mouth and it will discourse most eloquent music.” Hamlet
continues to push the musical instrument toward Guildenstern.
“But
these cannot I command to any utterance of harmony. I do have not the skill.”
Guildenstern looked at Hamlet. “Why the hostility, my lord?”
“My
lord? Why, look you now, how unworthy a thing you make of me! You would play
upon me, you would seem to know my stops, you would pluck out the heart of
my mystery, you would sound me from my lowest note to the top of my compass,
and there is much music, and excellent voice, in this little organ, yet cannot
you make it speak.”
“I
don’t understand.” Guildenstern kept on a baffled expression.
“Do
you think I am easier to be played on than a pipe? Call me what instrument you
will, though you can
fret me, you cannot play upon me.” Hamlet turned to look at the horizon. “Just
as they won’t play with me. We were never one of the same.”
Hamlet
then saw Polonius approaching them.
“Yes,
the boats must be in the port for the Fishmonger has come calling.” Hamlet
walked toward Polonius.
“My
lord, the Queen would speak with you, and presently,” Polonius announced as if
he was addressing the guests in the hall. He was confused to see Hamlet walk
past him looking at the skies.
“Oh,
how do you fare?” Hamlet greeted the other. “Do you see yonder cloud that’s
almost in
the shape of a camel? You do know of the camel?”
“Yes,
I do. I read it to Ophelia when she was young.” Polonius moved his sight to the
skies. “By th’ Mass, and ’tis like a camel indeed.”
“Methinks
it is like a weasel. Nasty creatures, ever sneaking around.”
“It
is backed like a weasel.” Polonius tried to be amused by Hamlet, yet he could
make out nothing in the skies, except clouds, or perhaps, like steaks piled on
the plate… appetizing.
“Or
like a whale” Hamlet ranted on.
“Very
like a whale.” What whale? It was more like a herd of gazelle.
“Then
I will come to my mother by and by.” Hamlet looked at Polonius as if he was
back in his sanity. “Aside.”
“They
fool me to the top of my bent.” Loony was the other idea. “I will come by and
by.”
“I
will say so.” Polonius nodded to Hamlet. He was then feeling hungry, and a
steak will suffice.
“By
and by” is easily said. Leave me, friends.” Hamlet dismissed all of them. He looked
to the last one leaving the door, body with the shadow.
“Alas,
I am alone…once more.” Hamlet looked to the skies and it was all dark. “Soon the
very witching time of night, When churchyards yawn and hell itself
breathes out. It will be a contagion to this world.”
Hamlet
had on him the image of the three witches from Macbeth. They were to him
placing the contagion to this world.
“
Now could I drink hot blood as blood is the life?” ( Quote from Bram Stoker
‘Dracula’.) Hamlet laughed to himself. “Witches and the vampire; truly the
unpair but of pairing will be a bane to all. My mother and Claudius are of
that.”
“Could
I of such bitter business as the day would
quake to look on.” Hamlet held back his anger. He did promise the ghost the
mother will come to no harm. “Soft, now to my mother. O heart, lose not
thy nature; let not ever be like Nero who took his mother to bosom yet bloodied
by him on the bosom.”
According
to their accounts, his mother Agrippina was a ruthless and ambitious woman who
schemed and murdered to get her son on the throne. When it finally paid off,
she had no intention of fading into the background. However, five years into
his reign, Nero and Agrippina became locked in a brutal power struggle. In
Baiae, he plotted the murder of his mother by inviting her as a guest of honor
to a sumptuous banquet at his villa. Nero had planned for his mother’s ship to
sink, and depending on the writer’s account, Agrippina either died at sea or
survived the incident only for Nero to send soldiers to her villa to finish the
job.
“Let
me be cruel, not unnatural.” Hamlet looked around him and his eyes rested on
the dagger on the wall. He retrieved it and unsheathed it.
“I
will speak daggers to her, but use none of my tongue and soul in this be
hypocrites: How in my words soever she be shent, to give them seals never,
my soul, consent.” Hamlet felt his oath to the ghost pained him but he will
abide as his soul will never consent to him harming his mother.
“She was yours, Father. As I stand to read
the lines, King Lear, on my birth.” Hamlet sheathed the dagger.
“An I, my mother? Or am I not?” Hamlet slipped
into his indecisiveness. He then lowered his head.
Mother, you will be spared,” Hamlet
muttered. “I will abide by my father’s ghost words.”
Was
it obedience or defeat in the mind?
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