(We’re mashing up current events with Hamlet, the whole play, and you can start here in the middle or with this post.)

Act III opens with Claudius interrogating Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, just as Hamlet knew would happen.(o’eraught means overtake or catch up with):

Claudius: “And can you by no drift of conference
Get from him why he puts on this confusion…”

Rosencrantz: “He does confess he feels himself distracted,
But from what cause ‘a will by no means speak.”…

Queen: “Did you assay him to any pastime?”

Rosencrantz: “Madam, it so fell out that certain players
We o’erraught on the way. Of these we told him.
And there did seem in him a kind of joy
To hear of it….”

Like parents learning that their trenchcoat-wearing, shutdown-isolated adolescent son has taken an interest in insects instead of guns, the King and Queen are pleased to see Hamlet responding to the theater. They think this kind of bread and circuses will throw Hamlet off the scent of the vengeance the Ghost set him to. But Claudius can’t stop spying, and he asks Ophelia to stay and everyone else to leave so that he can peek in on Hamlet and his former girlfriend. The idea of permitting Ophelia to say she didn’t mean it and take him back doesn’t seem to occur to anyone. (Wonted here means usual):

Queen: “And for your part, Ophelia, I do wish
That your good beauties be the happy cause
Of Hamlet’s wildness. So shall I hope your virtues
Will bring him to his wonted ways again.”

Ophelia: “Madam, I wish it may.”

Before leaving, Polonius instructs his daughter how to receive Hamlet while her elders are surveilling her.

(Color here means explain or excuse; visage means face, or a falsely held expression):

Polonius: “…Read on this book
That show of such an exercise may color
Your loneliness. We are oft to blame in this –
‘Tis too much proved – that with devotion’s visage
And pious action we do sugar o’er
The devil himself.”

Polonius says, “Pretend you’re reading this book when Hamlet comes by,” and then he says, “We often pretend to pious action and doing so sugars over the devil himself.” And yet that’s exactly what Polonius is directing his daughter to do. It’s like he’s denying there’s such a thing as biological sex, while doping his daughter with testosterone and preparing her for surgery that will cause her body to simulate the opposite biological sex.

Claudius has been listening:

Claudius: (aside) “O, ’tis true!
How smart a lash that speech doth give my conscience!
The harlot’s cheek, beautied with plastering art,
Is not more ugly to the thing that helps it
Than is my deed to my most painted word.
O heavy burden!”

Aha! With this key passage Shakespeare informs the reader that the King really did do it. He killed his own brother by pouring poison into his ear when he was resting in his garden. We’re in the inner sanctum, with Valerie Jarrett, Susan Rice, the Obamas, Kamala, Schumer, Pelosi, and, in the corner nursing his oatmeal, President Biden. And we hear the admission that they stole the election. The only difference is, Claudius feels guilty.

Claudius likens his deed to a prostitute’s ugly cheek and he likens his painted words to the makeup slathered over that cheek. The ugly cheek reference likely derives from the Elizabethan-era belief (often well-founded) that damage to the face was caused by venereal disease.

As for Claudius’ guilt, Speaker Pelosi, seeking to ram through a voting rights bill that would open the floodgates to electoral fraud, in the wake of an election tainted by electoral fraud, could learn from him. Or perhaps he could learn from her.

The King and Polonius withdraw behind yet another screen, leaving Ophelia alone on stage. Hamlet wanders in. At first he seems not to see her, and he says some words that are familiar to us.

Hamlet: “To be, or not to be, that is the question…”

 

Hope you enjoyed, and more tomorrow!