The king was still baffled until Hamlet pressed on. “The worms are having a great supper, and Polonius is their special treat this night.”
The king shook his great head and groaned. “Have you completely taken leave of your reason?” But all attention was on the prince, and it was not clear whether anyone heard the cry from Claudius’s heart.
Hamlet continued without pause. “This is the thing about worms — we fatten all other creatures so that we might fatten ourselves, but worms, and worms alone, grow fat on us. The worm is the most democratic of creatures. The fat king and the lean beggar are one and the same to him.”
“I will not hear this,” Claudius said to Gertrude in a roaring whisper.
“Hush, let him finish. We need to find the old man.”
“A beggar who goes fishing may use a worm that has feasted on a king as his bait,” said Hamlet blithely. He was now moving around the room like a philosopher developing an argument, at times gazing out through the heavy stained-glass windows as if seeking an answer in the filtered light. “And the fisherman may eat the fish caught with that bait. What does this tell us? Well, it tells us that a king may progress through the guts of a pauper.”
The queen laid an urgent hand upon her husband’s arm; nothing else would have stopped him from running across the room and throwing himself on his stepson.
“Thus,” said Hamlet, “we understand the democratic nature of the worm. In him all people are united; in him all people are made equal; the wise become foolish and the foolish wise.”
“Where is Polonius?” roared the king.
“Polonius? You wish to be better acquainted with Polonius? Well, then, you had better send a messenger to heaven, and if your messenger does not find him there, go and look for him in hell yourself.”
“By heavens I’ll send you to hell, and soon enough,” growled Claudius, then glanced around guiltily. Gertrude clutched his arm more tightly.
Hamlet smiled at his mother. “If a month or so passes, however, and you still have not found the old man, I suggest you try the mezzanine that is reached by the southern staircase. You may smell him as you pass the red door.”
Claudius sagged back in his throne. It seemed almost too light to support him. He waved to Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. “Go and look in the mezzanine.”
As the two young men departed, Hamlet remarked equably to them, “He will stay there till you come.”
Through hooded eyes the king gazed at him. “Hamlet, you have put yourself in a dangerous position by this — shall we say — unfortunate accident. You know how much your mother and I care for your safety. We put it above our own, even. We need to get you out of the country. Prepare for a long journey! I will arrange a boat, I will arrange letters, I will arrange a couple of associates for you, I would arrange a favorable wind if I could! You must be ready to leave today — for England.”
“For England?” Hamlet echoed, as though he had never heard of the place.
“Yes.”
“Fine. Good.”
“So it is good, for my purposes,” said Claudius.
“I know an angel who knows your purposes. And the angel is not Rosencrantz and he is not Guildenstern. But come, for England. I will be off.” He went to the king and performed the elaborate bow that etiquette required. “Farewell, dear Mother,” he said to him.
“I am your loving father, Hamlet,” Claudius said, startled and embarrassed.
“My mother,” replied the prince. “Father and mother is man and wife, man and wife are a unity, so you are my mother.”
Hamlet bowed again, and without even looking at his mother, much less saying good-bye to her, he swiftly left the room. The king watched him go. His eyes were mere slits now, and he muttered into his beard. Only he heard the words, but they did not bode well for his young nephew.
And so Hamlet, aware that he had created a situation too unstable for his own good, appreciating the need for some clear air, sailed for England with his two loving friends Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.
And Ophelia went mad.
No one could name the day or even the hour when it happened, but it became apparent that her beautiful mind was gone.
One afternoon the queen found herself caught in a distressing conversation with Osric, the young farmer who had attached himself to Claudius. He entered the room with much dramatic staring, apparently checking for spies and eavesdroppers. Satisfied that his great announcement could be made in confidence, he began the kind of fawning approaching-members-of-the-royal-family dance that he imagined was not just appropriate but elegant as well. Gertrude gazed at him through impatient eyes, wondering how long this praying-mantis maneuver might take. Really, she thought, the only people who truly know how to behave at court are the ones who have been here all their lives. It can’t be taught. Especially to fools.
She longed for an honest conversation. Osric was too excited to complete his performance in any case. He began speaking before he had finished his second bow. “Your Majesty, Ophelia craves an audience with you and is so distracted that I thought it best to come here at once.”
“An audience with me? Does she need help? She can visit me anytime she wants, within reason. Although, come to think of it, it’s been some days since I saw her around the castle.”
“Ah, Majesty, that is the thing. Until today she has been seeing no one and for that matter eating nothing. But she has a sudden fixed idea that she must see you.” Now Osric had done his bowing and came close, uncomfortably close, to the queen. He launched into his news. “Majesty, it is my belief that she has lost her reason.”
“Lost her reason?” Fear stole into Gertrude’s heart, an icy trickle of fear. “I hope you are wrong!”
“Your Majesty, she has emerged from her apartments and, after talking to no one, is now talking to everyone. She speaks all the time of her father, is angry and confused and full of strange hints and troubled comments. At one moment she says there are tricks and plots in the world; the next she is winking and nodding and poking at people as though they all share in some guilty secret. Then people try to guess what she is about, and at times, ma’am, you would hardly credit their guesses. It makes them think the wildest thoughts.”
The queen had wild thoughts herself at this news. “You had better bring her in,” she said slowly.
The last thing the king and she needed was a castle full of rumors and out-of-control whispers. Gertrude’s life was now so full of dark places that she shied at everything. Her conscience had made her oversensitive. She should have spent more time with Ophelia after the death of Polonius. She had seen Ophelia’s distress shortly after the stabbing. The girl was wild-eyed, on the edge of hysteria. At the funeral Gertrude had stood with her, held her, whispered to her, encouraged her to stay strong. But only now did she realize that she had never been alone with her since the dreadful night of the stabbing. Gertrude had no daughter, just a son. The motherless Ophelia was the closest she had to a daughter. There was every reason to suppose that one day Ophelia would become her daughter-in-law. But Gertrude’s behavior had not been that of a good mother. There had been no time in the emotional storms that blew constantly around Elsinore these days. Everything was Hamlet; he had turned every life in the castle upside down with his disregard for everyone but himself.
Gertrude gazed nervously out the window, trying to decipher the night outside. When she turned at a sound from the doorway, it seemed to her that the room had become much darker. Ophelia, wandering toward her, was like a white swan glimpsed in twilight, with feathers disordered and head averted.
The queen felt instant pity. Ophelia looked so distressed and unwell.
“Where is the beauteous majesty of Denmark?” Ophelia asked, wringing her hands and lifting a woebegone face to Gertrude. She began to sing.
“He is dead and gone, lady,
He is dead and gone.
At his head a grass-green turf,
At his heels a stone.”
As Opheli
a sang, the queen, however, hardened her heart. The girl just needed a good talking-to. She had to pull herself together before she made trouble for all of them. Everyone had problems; that was the way of it, and it was no good to let them weigh you down until they drowned you. That didn’t help anyone. If Hamlet were to be king one day, and Ophelia by his side as queen, she would need to be made of sterner stuff. “Ophelia, what silly words are these?” the queen began, thinking at the same time: Is she really speaking of her father? Since when did Polonius become the beauteous majesty of Denmark?
But Ophelia held up a hand so imperious that Gertrude could not go on. As though taking the queen into her confidence, she whispered:
“Who has sent him to the grave?
Who has dug him deep?
Why, the ones who know him best
And ought his soul to keep.”
We can’t have this, thought the queen. For once Osric is right in his report.
“My dear child,” she began, but was interrupted again, this time by Claudius entering the room.
He had been in a better frame of mind since driving Hamlet off. If England dealt with the prince as he had asked, he might never have to see that pretty head again. He might be out of the woods. So he came in whistling, his round red face shining with eagerness to tell his wife of the nine-point stag he had brought down that very morning.
“Ah, who have we here? Ophelia! Where have you been hiding yourself? Mourning for your dear father? Well, most proper, but you are equally proper to emerge from your seclusion now, especially among us, your dear friends. Fathers die, you know; that is the way of it. Grief can be ungodly, remember.”
Only now, after he had sat down and arranged his robes, did he see Gertrude’s warning frown and warning finger. He halted, puzzled. What did they have to fear from Ophelia?
The young woman appeared not to notice the king at first.
She sang on:
“White his shroud as the mountain snow,
White as his heart so pure,
Red the blood that they cruelly spilled,
For them there will be no cure.”
“What is all this, Ophelia?” The king was trying to maintain his jovial mood, though he felt it ebbing fast. He did not understand what was going on here, and he did not like what he did not understand.
“Well, God reward you,” Ophelia said, but without looking at him or seeming to see anyone in the room. “I’ll tell you a story I heard once, a story of Saint Valentine’s Day, about a faithful young woman, knowing the tradition that whoever a man sees first when the day dawns will be his true love ever after, placed herself by his window the night before and waited till dawn. What do you think happened? Why, he never looked out the window, but opened his door and let in the maid. And she was no maid by the time she left his room again. Ah, perhaps I should have let him raise his tent.”
“What on earth is she talking about?” the king muttered angrily to his wife.
“I have no idea. Don’t look at me as though it’s my fault. That stupid Osric brought her in, said she was talking wildly and starting rumors. I thought I had better check up on what crazy stories she might be spreading.”
“This is all we need. How long has she been like this?”
“How should I know? Ask Osric. Apparently he’s become the expert on life at Elsinore. Ask her ladies-in-waiting.”
Ophelia had wandered away to the window and now was talking to no one. Not anyone who could be seen, at any rate. “Oh, pity the fate of a maiden! If she lets him take her, she is deserted. If she doesn’t, she is deserted. I hope all will be well. We must be patient, but I cannot choose but weep to think they should lay him in the cold ground. My good brother shall know of it, and so I thank you for your wise advice. Come, my coach! Good night, ladies, good night, good night. Good night, sweet ladies.”
She drifted out of the room by the western door. Claudius nodded to a couple of his wife’s attendants.
“Follow her closely. Keep a sharp eye on her.”
With a wave and a nod of dismissal, Claudius cleared the room of the other courtiers. He and Gertrude were left alone. The king turned to his wife. His good mood had been confettied and blown to Norway. “This is the poison of deep grief. It springs from her father’s death. Honestly, Gertrude, when troubles come, they come not as single soldiers but as battalions, as armies. First her father slain, then your son gone — the author of his own downfall, but of course the people don’t know that. It’s started trouble and rumors and unrest from one end of the kingdom to the other.”
Claudius tapped his finger against his teeth. “We did the wrong thing with Polonius, burying him so quickly. We should have given him a state funeral, put his old carcass on a slab for a couple of days, invited the masses to come and see him. Only the sticky-beaks would have bothered, but the people would have gotten the message, that we have nothing to hide. Instead, we’ve got a mood like mud, thick and unwholesome mud. And now, as if that’s not enough, you give me Ophelia! I thought you were meant to be looking after her! I come in here after a good day out on the hills, and what do I find? A girl divided from herself . . . lost her judgment . . . and without judgment, Gertrude, we are no better than the beasts. We are mere pictures. We are two-dimensional.
“And to top it all off, Laertes is sneaking back into the country from England and won’t listen to any accurate accounts of how his father died. He’s already crossed the border and is ignoring all my messages. Needless to say, without any facts to go on, he won’t hesitate to blame everything on us, on me. Gertrude, this castle, this kingdom, is more like a crime scene than a sovereign state.”
A thumping and yelling from the courtyard interrupted him. The noise rolled through the room like echoing thunder. Boots running, more boots stomping up the stairs, more shouts. An angry voice: “You try to stop them, then!” Someone else shouted: “Well, he lives here!”
“What’s going on?” Gertrude gripped the arms of her chair and sat up.
“Good God, it sounds like a riot.” Both king and queen sprang to their feet. “Guards! Guards!” The king strode toward the door. “Guards!”
A captain hurried into the room, hat askew, eyes staring. “Your Majesty, Laertes is here at the head of a crowd of supporters. They’ve stormed past the outer defenses, it seems. There’s a whole crowd of them calling for Laertes to be made king.”
“King? Laertes?”
“Majesty, I fear so. It’s as though tradition and law are suddenly of no account. As though the world is just opening its eyes to its first day, and suddenly history has no meaning. “Laertes shall be king!” They sound like a pack of dogs howling to the clouds.”
“A false pack of dogs indeed,” snarled Gertrude. She put her hand to her throat as the king advanced on the captain. “They’re following the wrong trail.”
“Of course, Your Majesty.”
Another guard rushed in. “They’ve broken down the doors!” he cried. Three more guards followed, then, suddenly, a whole vomit of them. In among their red and gray uniforms came other colors, the purples and greens of the courtiers, pinks and whites and violets of ladies-in-waiting, scarlets and blues of palace servants, black-suited clerks.
Claudius, always formidable in a fight, retreated to his throne and stood in front of it, hands on hips. The queen sank back onto her chair, aware that she could pull no strings here, play no role, have no influence. All she could do was watch and wait for the scene to play itself out.
Noise hubbled and bubbled into the room. As the crowd got bigger and pushed in farther, the noble colors of those who resided at court gave way to grubbier clothes, grays and browns and blacks. The first wave, members of the royal household, forgetting protocol, no longer in control of their lives, had their backs to the royal couple, watching anxiously to see what their future might look like. The second wave all looked forward, with sharp and hungry eyes.
In the middle of them, like a young conqueror, through the huge oak doors
, bright and excited, strode Laertes.
“Where is the king?” he shouted, and then, self-consciously, added, “Oh, there you are.” He turned to the crowd. “Give me space, I beg you. I need to talk to the king.”
“No, no!” they shouted at him.
“Yes, please, I entreat you, I am here to speak of my father. If you honored him, then let me have this time to speak to the only man who can answer my questions.”
Scowling, reluctant, but having to acknowledge his rights, the crowd began to withdraw. The guards, sensing the change in mood, began to move against them, applying pressure around the edges. The Elsinore residents and staff, too, started to shuffle away. In a short time, only three people were left in the room.
Laertes, trembling with excitement, faced the older man. Both were red-faced, chests puffed forward, staring at each other. “Oh, vile king,” he exclaimed, “give me my father.”
“Be calm, Laertes,” Claudius urged.
“Calm! Calm! If there is a single drop of blood in me that is calm, then that drop of blood says that I am not my father’s son. That drop of blood says my mother is a slut, who slept with someone else to get me. I will not be calm.”
In a frenzy of rage he grabbed the king by the front of his robe. The queen leaped to her feet and opened her mouth to call for the guards. But Claudius, who liked the physical as much as he hated battles of words and wit, disentangled himself and gestured to her to sit again. “Have no fear, Gertrude,” he said. “A king is surrounded by the protection of God himself. When faced by true royalty, treason can only blink. Now, Laertes, tell me, what troubles you? What is the cause of such massive rage?”
“Where is my father?”
“Dead.”
“But not killed by the king,” Gertrude interrupted.
Again Claudius waved her away.
“How did he die?” Laertes demanded. “I won’t be juggled with. If God protects you, then I say to hell with God, to hell with my vows of loyalty, I say that my allegiance to the throne of Denmark can go to the blackest devil. My father was loyal to me, and I return that loyalty now. I don’t care if I stand in the deepest pit of the fieriest furnace — as long as I get revenge.”