Critical analysis of Hamlet
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THE appearance of Polonius immediately (in Shakespeare's conception of the performance) upon the exit of the prince recalls to us his strict "charge" to Ophelia at the close of Act I, scene iii regarding "the Lord Hamlet." Hence the ludicrous effect of the old man's opening line, "Give him this money and these notes, Reynaldo." The "him" could refer to Hamlet: "so poor a man," as he termed himself a moment ago, could surely do with "this money" -- an allowance, mayhap, from the public treasury to the crown prince? Certainly it is "his behavior" on which we are now intent and concerning which we shall do "marvellous wisely" to "make inquiry" before we again "visit him".
critical analysis of hamlet
The anti-hero, Laertes, a very social person, a young gentleman who certainly desires to "go together" with society, is also a "son" (his proper name is effectively omitted throughout this scene) haunted and admonished, like Hamlet, by the spirit of his father. But the haunting, so bizarrely tragic in the case of Hamlet in the preceding scene, is here wonderfully humorous. The prince's incremental oath of secrecy is parodied by Polonius's dilative insistence upon "indirections". But still more allusive is the underlying theme of the old man's "lecture", the same theme really as that of his earlier "precepts", i.e., gentlemanly or, rather, gen teel temperance. Here, carrying the subject into moral detail, he fully displays his remarkable ordinariness.
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But, as suggested in the first half of this scene by the obvious lapse of time, and by the emphasis upon "indirections," Hamlet delays unduly his visit to her, brooding morbidly upon her indirectness to him. In so doing he is devious himself; but, humanly enough, he is severe upon his own fault in another person, a loved person. He knows as well as we do that her present withdrawal from him, like her former delay in agreeing to a betrothal, is entirely altruistic and that she cannot break the silence imposed on her by her father without violating, not only current convention, but that very flower-like modesty and reticence which he loves in her.
critical analysis on hamlet
Polonius comes blindly close to the mark in exclaiming that Hamlet's "ecstasy of love" has in it a "violent property" that "leads the will to desperate undertakings." The old man's conscience, so easy in the first half of the scene, is sharply smitten now. Lovably he repents of not having shown better "heed and judgment" along with his "discretion". These terms are nicely applied by him. Hamlet has an intellect that better understands the function of those three qualities -- heed, judgment, discretion -- for true temperance; but -- such is the suggestion here -- he has also a "will" that can be led by passion into undertakings far more "desperate" than Polonius can foresee. Our forebodings are deeper than those of Polonius.
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The queen, wrapped up in her own sad thoughts while her eyes follow the retreating forms of Hamlet's two schoolfellows, pays no heed to the oncoming of Polonius. His declaration that he has found the "very cause of Hamlet's lunacy" makes the king start visibly, 4 exclaiming, "Oh speak of that, that do I long to hear". For the first time Claudius is patently off his guard, which, however, he recovers at once, aided by the unruffled mien of Polonius; who is both his understudy and his mentor in the art of covertly hunting "the trail of policy".
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Thus this scene tells us that the absent Hamlet has, beyond his will, affected Claudius and Gertrude deeply. In Act I he appealed repeatedly to "the Everlasting" under various forms and, so it seemed, ineffectually. But now Shakespeare makes us feel that by means of Hamlet's "madness" which, as Polonius remarks with unconscious irony, "all we wail for", the divine Justice is shaping the ends of the prince and all the others in this Denmark. At the beginning Hamlet appealed deliberately to the moral sense of the realm without avail. Now, involuntarily, he has begun to catch the conscience of the realm's king and queen.
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They are not at present in the foreground of Hamlet's mind. It is occupied with Ophella, "the celestial and my soul's idol". This phrase from his letter, recalling to us, unlike Polonius, the "holy vows of heaven" that the prince made to her, is intended here to signalize the permanent part, the pure "soul," of his love for her. It is no longer "hot love on the wing"; but it is as abiding as Hamlet asseverated in the rest of the letter and as his demeanor showed us in the close of the dumb-show episode with Ophelia above: the "light" of his love stays with her.
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Ophelia's father is the very last person with whom Hamlet wishes to talk at the present juncture. It is obvious that the old politician is ready now to welcome a marriage between his daughter and the crown prince if such an extraordinary event could come to pass without the least appearance of Polonius's instigation. Hence the careful elaborateness with which, above, he informed his sovereigns of his discovery and stern interdiction of the love affair; deliberately playing down Ophelia's part in it, omitting the fact that she had taken Hamlet's vows for "sterling" ; and finally proposing, casually and grossly, to "loose my daughter to him" -- privately he phrases it "contrive the means of meeting" -- as though Hamlet's sexual passion merely, not his marriage, were in question.
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All this, divined by Hamlet, appears in the obsequious concern of his would-be father-in-law for the mental health of the princely suitor so recently turned away. Hamlet responds with the assurance that he is sane enough to recognize "excellent well" Polonius as a "fishmonger," i.e., a go-between, a bawd. Polonius replies, "Not I, my lord," with vigorous head-shakings. Thereupon Hamlet expresses the wish that this politician who is trying to conceal his interest in his daughter's coming promotion were "so honest a man" as an actual fishpeddler or even, maybe, as an out-and-out bawd.
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Polonius's facile "very true" impels Hamlet to translate his maxim into a brutally concrete image: the sun -- "the god of day", giver of light and truth -- mates with the earth to produce swarms of dishonest men, like the maggots in a "carrion" which that very sun can deem "good" stuff for "kiss ing." Such is the intent of the speech. But Hamlet suddenly breaks off the simile, wasted upon so flat a listener, and makes a direct thrust at his conscience with the word "daughter." She must not be permitted to walk "i' the sun" of princely favor lest Hamlet, following the bad example of the sun-god, may prove to be an illicit breeder, as Polonius had earlier believed he would. "Friend, look to 't."