Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are two guys Hamlet knew in school. The King sends for them so they can spy on Hamlet and find out what is bothering him, but Hamlet susses them out.
Page Index:
- Enter King, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.
- Exeunt Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. Enter Polonius.
- Exit Polonius.
- Enter Hamlet.
The King enters with Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, who have apparently just told him that Hamlet wouldn't give them a straight answer about anything. The King's first words, "I like him not" (3.3.1), goes far beyond a statement of personal distaste. The King is using the word "like" as we do when we say "I don't like where this is going."
He gives Rosencrantz and Guildenstern the job of taking Hamlet to England, saying "The terms of our estate may not endure / Hazard so dangerous as doth hourly grow / Out of his lunacies" (3.3.5-7). We know why Hamlet is dangerous to the King, but he isn't about to tell Rosencrantz and Guildenstern that he killed his brother. Instead, he explains it as a matter of "The terms of our estate," which means something like "the nature of my position as king." A king, like a mafia don, must maintain respect, and Hamlet has been showing total disrespect.
Naturally, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern tell the King what he wants to hear, which is that he must indeed be protected, because it's necessary "To keep those many many bodies safe / That live and feed upon your majesty" (3.3.9-10). Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are sucking up to the King, but what they say about kingship was generally true. In Shakespeare's day, a King was much more powerful than any president or prime minister is today, and only a strong king could keep his country safe. So, most people in Shakespeare's audience would agree with Rosencrantz's last words in the scene: "Never alone / Did the king sigh, but with a general groan" (3.3.22-23).
Exeunt Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. Enter Polonius:
Just after Rosencrantz and Guildenstern hurry out, Polonius comes hurrying in. He's on his way to hide behind the "arras" (a heavy curtain), so that he can overhear the conversation between Hamlet and his mother. Polonius' original idea was that by doing this, he could prove that "The origin and commencement of [Hamlet's] grief / Sprung from neglected love" (3.1.177-178), but now he seems more interested in seeing to it that the Queen "tax him home" (3.3.29), that is, scold Hamlet into being a good boy. The King's only response is "Thanks, my dear lord," because he doesn't really care. He's already made arrangements to send Hamlet to England.
Exit Polonius:
Now the King is alone with his conscience. This soliloquy, though not as famous as any of Hamlet's, is just as psychologically persuasive. At the performance of The Murder of Gonzago the King got spooked, but he didn't admit anything to anybody. Hamlet may have figured out what happened, but the King doesn't know that for sure, and he's about to get rid of Hamlet. Still, he feels exposed. He feels that he stinks to heaven. Perhaps no one else knows his secret, but God knows. As he says, "O, my offence is rank, it smells to heaven" (3.3.36). He tries to pray, but cannot. He knows that any sin can be forgiven, but he also knows that for a sin to be forgiven, it must be repented, and he cannot truly repent, because "I am still possess'd / Of those effects for which I did the murder, / My crown, mine own ambition and my queen." (3.3.53-55). God doesn't allow a thief to say "I'm sorry" and keep the money. In this world, if you steal enough money, you can hire an all-star team of defense lawyers, so that "Offence's gilded hand may shove by justice" (3.3.58), but "'tis not so above." So, at the end, he urges himself on, asks the angels to help him, and tells his knees they must bend. He kneels, saying "All may be well."
Enter Hamlet:
As the King kneels, Hamlet happens by and sees him. Hamlet says "Now might I do it pat, now he is praying / And now I'll do't" (3.3.73). As he says this, it's usual to see Hamlet take out his sword and step towards the King, as though he's about to stab him the back. But then Hamlet says to himself "and so 'a goes to heaven, / And so am I reveng'd," and hears what he is saying. If the King does actually go to heaven, that wouldn't be revenge, but "hire and salary." So Hamlet decides that he'll wait until he can catch the King when he is certainly in a state of sin, "When he is drunk asleep, or in his rage, / Or in the incestuous pleasure of his bed" (3.3.89-90). Hamlet puts up his sword and leaves to speak with his mother. After he has gone, the King rises and says, "My words fly up, my thoughts remain below: / Words without thoughts never to heaven go" (3.3.97-98). Thus we see that his attempt to pray failed, and that if Hamlet had killed him, he would not have gone to heaven. So Hamlet's habit of thinking about his own thinking saved his enemy's life.
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.
Read a translation of 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.
Read a translation of 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.
Read more about Claudius as the antagonist.
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.”
Read more about the complexity of action as a theme.