Summary: Act IV, scene iii
The king speaks to a group of attendants, telling them
of Polonius’s death and his intention to send Hamlet to England.
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern appear with Hamlet, who is under guard.
Pressed by Claudius to reveal the location of Polonius’s body, Hamlet
is by turns inane, coy, and clever, saying that Polonius is being
eaten by worms, and that the king could send a messenger to find
Polonius in heaven or seek him in hell himself. Finally, Hamlet
reveals that Polonius’s body is under the stairs near the castle
lobby, and the king dispatches his attendants to look there. The
king tells Hamlet that he must leave at once for England, and Hamlet
enthusiastically agrees. He exits, and Claudius sends Rosencrantz
and Guildenstern to ensure that he boards the ship at once. Alone
with his thoughts, Claudius states his hope that England will obey
the sealed orders he has sent with Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.
The orders call for Prince Hamlet to be put to death.
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Act IV, scene iii →
Summary: Act IV, scene iv
On a nearby plain in Denmark, young Prince Fortinbras
marches at the head of his army, traveling through Denmark on the
way to attack Poland. Fortinbras orders his captain to go and ask
the King of Denmark for permission to travel through his lands.
On his way, the captain encounters Hamlet, Rosencrantz, and Guildenstern
on their way to the ship bound for England. The captain informs
them that the Norwegian army rides to fight the Poles. Hamlet asks
about the basis of the conflict, and the man tells him that the
armies will fight over “a little patch of land / That hath in it
no profit but the name” (IV.iv.98–99).
Astonished by the thought that a bloody war could be fought over
something so insignificant, Hamlet marvels that human beings are
able to act so violently and purposefully for so little gain. By
comparison, Hamlet has a great deal to gain from seeking his own
bloody revenge on Claudius, and yet he still delays and fails to
act toward his purpose. Disgusted with himself for having failed
to gain his revenge on Claudius, Hamlet declares that from this
moment on, his thoughts will be bloody.
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Act IV, scene iv →
Analysis: Act IV, scenes iii–iv
As we saw in Act IV, scene ii, the murder of Polonius
and the subsequent traumatic encounter with his mother seem to leave
Hamlet in a frantic, unstable frame of mind, the mode in which his
excitable nature seems very similar to actual madness. He taunts
Claudius, toward whom his hostility is now barely disguised, and
makes light of Polonius’s murder with word games. He also pretends
to be thrilled at the idea of sailing for England with Rosencrantz
and Guildenstern.
On some level he is prepared for what is to come. His
farewell to his mother proved as much, when he told her that he
would trust his old schoolfellows as if they were “adders fang’d,”
that is, poisonous snakes (III.iv.185.2).
But although Hamlet suspects his friends’ treachery, he may not
fully realize the malevolence of Claudius’s designs for him. Claudius’s
subterfuge in asking the English to execute Hamlet reveals the extent
to which he now fears Hamlet: whether Hamlet is sane or mad, he
is a danger to Claudius, and Claudius wishes him to die. It is also
revealing that one of Claudius’s considerations in seeking to have
Hamlet murdered in far-off England, rather than merely
executing him in Denmark, is that he is beloved by the common people
of Denmark—“loved of the distracted multitude,” as Claudius says
(IV.iii.4). Again, where King Hamlet was a
brave warrior, King Claudius is a crafty politician, constantly
working to strengthen his own power, circumvent threats to his throne,
and manipulate those around him to his own advantage.
Act IV, scene iv restores the focus of the play to the
theme of human action. Hamlet’s encounter with the Norwegian captain serves
to remind the reader of Fortinbras’s presence in the world of the
play and gives Hamlet another example of the will to action that he
lacks. Earlier, he was amazed by the player’s evocation of powerful
feeling for Hecuba, a legendary character who meant nothing to him
(II.ii). Now, he is awestruck by the willingness of Fortinbras to devote
the energy of an entire army, probably wasting hundreds of lives
and risking his own, to reclaim a worthless scrap of land in Poland.
Hamlet considers the moral ambiguity of Fortinbras’s action, but
more than anything else he is impressed by the forcefulness of it,
and that forcefulness becomes a kind of ideal toward which Hamlet
decides at last to strive. “My thoughts be bloody, or be nothing
worth!” he declares (IV.iv.9.56).
Of course, he fails to put this exclamation into action, as he has
failed at every previous turn to achieve his revenge on Claudius.
“My thoughts be bloody,” Hamlet says. Tellingly, he does not say
“My deeds be bloody.”
