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The Shakespeare Story-Book
“The Mouse-trap”
Next day, in accordance with their scheme, the King and Polonius hid themselves behind the arras, to listen to the interview between Hamlet and Ophelia. Hamlet, as usual, was meditating deeply on the problems of life, when Ophelia approached, and offered to restore to him some gifts which he had given her in happier days.
In the sudden tragedy which had overwhelmed Hamlet’s whole being, his love for Ophelia seemed something very far away, but the old tenderness was always struggling to assert itself. He tried, however, to force it down, and even assumed an air of harsh indifference which almost broke Ophelia’s heart. In apparently wild and rambling words, but really deeply penetrated with pity, he gave her to understand that all thoughts of marriage between them must now be over, and bade the young girl get to a nunnery, and that quickly, too. The hollowness and hypocrisy that he saw all around him goaded his spirit almost beyond endurance, and now another blow to his belief in human nature was to be struck.
When Polonius hid himself behind the arras it is doubtful whether Ophelia knew he was there, or, in the excitement of the moment, she may possibly have forgotten the fact. Anyhow, when Hamlet suddenly asked her, “Where’s your father?” she answered, “At home, my lord.” But her reply filled Hamlet with fresh scorn for the apparent insincerity of this innocent young girl. He had seen the arras stir, and Polonius’s old gray head peep out; he naturally thought that Ophelia was in league with the rest of the world to spy upon him and deceive him.
“Let the doors be shut upon him, that he may play the fool nowhere but in his own house,” he said, in clear, cutting accents, when he heard Ophelia’s response. “Farewell!”
“Oh, help him, you sweet heavens!” murmured Ophelia.
It seemed quite evident to her that the unfortunate young Prince had lost his reason.
“If thou dost marry, I’ll give thee this plague for thy dowry,” cried Hamlet wildly: “be thou as chaste as ice, as pure as snow, thou shalt not escape calumny. Get thee to a nunnery. Go; farewell!”
“O heavenly powers, restore him!” prayed Ophelia again.
“I have heard of your paintings, too, well enough,” continued Hamlet, with increasing violence. “God hath given you one face, and you make yourselves another; you jig, you amble, and you lisp, and nickname God’s creatures. Go to, I’ll no more on it; it hath made me mad. I say, we will have no more marriages; those that are married already – all but one” – here he looked darkly towards the arras, where he knew the King was concealed with Polonius – “shall live; the rest shall keep as they are. To a nunnery, go!”
And with a furious gesture of dismissal Hamlet hurried from the room.
“Oh, what a noble mind is here o’erthrown!” sighed Ophelia piteously. ”The courtier’s, soldier’s, scholar’s eye, tongue, sword; the expectancy and rose of the fair state, the glass of fashion, and the mould of form, the observed of all observers quite, quite down! And I, of ladies most deject and wretched, that sucked the honey of his music vows, now see that noble and most sovereign reason, like sweet bells jangled, out of tune and harsh! Oh, woe is me, to have seen what I have seen, see what I see!”
While Ophelia was musing thus sadly, the King and Polonius stepped from their hiding-place. The King was not at all satisfied that Polonius was right in his surmise that Hamlet had lost his reason because of Ophelia’s rejected love.
“Love! His affections do not tend that way,” he said decidedly. “Nor was what he spoke, though it lacked form a little, like madness. There is something in his soul over which his melancholy sits brooding, and I fear the result will be some danger. To prevent this, I have determined that he shall depart with speed for England, to demand there our neglected tribute. Haply the sea and the sight of foreign countries will expel this settled matter in his heart, about which his brains, always beating, makes him thus unlike himself.”
Polonius agreed that it would be a good plan to send Hamlet to England, though he would not give up his idea that the origin and commencement of Hamlet’s grief sprang from neglected love. He further suggested that after the play the Queen should have an interview alone with Hamlet, and try to get from him the cause of his grief, and that Polonius himself should be placed where he could hear their conference.
“If the Queen cannot discover the cause, send him to England, or confine him where your wisdom shall think best,” he concluded.
“It shall be so,” declared the King. “Madness in great ones must not go unwatched.”
The play on which so much depended was now to be performed. Hamlet had inserted some speeches of his own, and before the performance began he gave some excellent advice to the players on the art of acting. While they were making ready, Hamlet had a few private words with Horatio. In the midst of the trouble and turmoil of his own soul, his fretted spirit turned with deep affection to the quiet strength of this faithful friend.
“Give me that man that is not passion’s slave, and I will wear him in my heart’s core – ay, in my heart of heart, as I do thee,” he said tenderly to Horatio.
He had already confided to him what the Ghost had related, and now he told him that he had laid a trap to discover if what it said were true; one scene in the play was to represent closely the circumstances of his father’s death, and he begged Horatio, when that act came, to observe the King with all the power of his soul. If his guilt did not reveal itself at one speech, then the Ghost must have spoken falsely, and Hamlet’s own imagination was black and wicked.
“Give him heedful note,” he said, “for I will rivet my eyes to his face, and afterwards we will compare our impressions in judging his appearance.”
“Well, my lord, if he steal anything whilst this play is playing, and escape detection, I will pay the theft,” said Horatio, meaning by this that his watch would never waver.
“They are coming to the play; I must be idle. Get you a place,” said Hamlet.
The music of the Danish royal march was heard, there was a flourish of trumpets, and, attended by the full Court, the King and Queen entered the great hall of the castle. Old Polonius marshalled them, bowing backwards before them; Ophelia followed in the train of the Queen; Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, with other attendant lords, were there, and guards carried torches to light up the scene. The King and Queen took their seats on thrones provided for them at one side of the stage; Ophelia sat in a chair opposite; Horatio took up his stand at the back of Ophelia’s chair, where, unnoticed himself, he could watch the King’s face; and Hamlet, who on their entrance had immediately assumed his air of madness, flung himself on the ground at Ophelia’s feet.
The play began. First the scene was given in dumb show. It represented a King and Queen who were apparently very affectionate together. Presently the King lay down on a bank of flowers, and the Queen, seeing him asleep, left him. Soon another man came in, who took off the King’s crown, kissed it, poured poison into the sleeper’s ear, and went off. The Queen returned, found the King dead, and showed passionate signs of grief. The poisoner came back, seemed to lament with her; the body of the dead King was carried away. Then the poisoner wooed the Queen with gifts. She seemed for a while loath and unwilling, but in the end accepted his love.
Claudius at the sight of this scene betrayed many signs of secret uneasiness, but he made no open remark, and the other spectators were too intent on the play to notice him. Only Horatio, from his place opposite, kept careful watch, and Hamlet, lying on the ground, quivering with excitement, never took his eyes from the guilty man’s face. The Queen and Ophelia looked on with rather languid interest.
“What means this, my lord?” asked Ophelia, when the dumb show had come to an end.
“Marry, this is miching mallecho; it means mischief,” said Hamlet.
“Belike this show imports the argument of the play,” said Ophelia, which indeed proved to be the case.
Now the real players came on, who had to speak, and the action followed the same lines as the dumb show, the player Queen pouring forth boundless expressions of devotion to her husband.
“Madam, how like you this play?” asked Hamlet presently, when a pause occurred.
“The lady doth protest too much, methinks,” said the Queen.
“Oh, but she’ll keep her word,” said Hamlet, with biting sarcasm.
“Have you heard the argument? Is there no offence in it?” asked the King uneasily.
“No, no; they do but jest —poison in jest; no offence in the world,” returned Hamlet, looking at him with strange malice in his eyes.
The King winced, but tried to appear unconcerned.
“What do you call the play?”
“‘The Mouse-trap.’ Marry, how? Tropically,” continued Hamlet, still in the same wild manner. “This play is the image of a murder done in Vienna; Gonzago is the Duke’s name, his wife Baptista. You shall see anon. ’Tis a knavish piece of work; but what of that? Your Majesty and we that have free souls, it touches us not; let the galled jade wince, our withers are unwrung.”
The King grew more and more disturbed; he cast uneasy glances at the play, made a half-movement to rise, and checked himself. As the play went on, Hamlet could scarcely control his excitement. The players were now reciting the speeches he had written; the young Prince muttered the words with them in a rapid undertone. When one of the characters poured the poison into the player King’s ear, Hamlet burst out again into fierce speech, his voice rising shriller and higher.
“He poisons him in the garden for his estate. His name’s Gonzago. The story is extant, and written in very choice Italian. You shall see anon how the murderer gets the love of Gonzago’s wife.”
Hamlet, in his excitement, had dragged himself across the floor till he was at the foot of the throne. The King, seeing the mimic representation of his own crime, started up in guilty terror.
“The King rises!” exclaimed Ophelia.
“What! Frighted with false fire!” shouted Hamlet in bitter derision, and with a harsh cry of triumph he sprang to his feet, and flung himself into the throne which the King had left vacant.
All was now confusion; the King and Queen hurriedly retired; their courtiers thronged after them, and Hamlet and Horatio were left alone in the deserted hall. Hamlet broke into a wild snatch of song:
“Why, let the stricken deer go weep,
The hart ungallèd play;
For some must watch, while some must sleep,
So runs the world away.”
“O good Horatio, I’ll take the Ghost’s word for a thousand pounds. Didst perceive?”
“Very well, my lord.”
“Upon the talk of the poisoning?”
“I did very well note him.”
It was not likely that Hamlet’s behaviour would be let pass without remark, and presently the two obsequious courtiers, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, came to summon him to the presence of the Queen. They brought word that the King was in his own room, marvellously upset with rage, and that the Queen, in great affliction of spirit, had sent them to say to Hamlet that his behaviour had struck her into amazement and astonishment, and that she desired to speak with him in her room before he went to bed.
Hamlet replied he would obey, but on Rosencrantz and Guildenstern’s further attempting to discover from him the cause of his strange behaviour, he retorted by asking the two young men what they meant by treating him in the way they did, which was as if they were trying to drive him into some snare.
“O my lord, if my duty be too bold, my love is too unmannerly,” answered Guildenstern.
“I do not well understand that,” said Hamlet; and it may be doubted if the speaker himself knew what he meant by his silly words.
But the young Prince determined to give the couple a lesson, and show them he was not quite the witless creature they seemed to imagine. A few minutes before he had called for music, and ordered some recorders to be brought. The recorder was a small musical instrument something like a flute. On the attendant’s bringing them, Hamlet took one and held it out to Guildenstern.
“Will you play upon this pipe?” he asked him courteously.
“My lord, I cannot.”
“I pray you,” he begged.
“Believe me, I cannot.”
“I do beseech you.”
“I know no touch of it, my lord.”
“’Tis as easy as lying,” said Hamlet. “Govern these holes with your finger and thumb, give it breath with your mouth, and it will discourse most eloquent music. Look you, these are the stops.”
“But these cannot I command to any utterance of harmony; I have not the skill,” declared Guildenstern.
“Why, look you, how unworthy a thing you would make of me!” said Hamlet, his persuasive voice changing to sudden sternness. “You would play upon me; you would seem to know my stops; you would pluck out the heart of my mystery; you would sound me from my lowest note to the top of my compass; and there is much music, excellent voice in this little organ, yet you cannot make it speak. Do you think I am easier to be played on than a pipe? – Call me what instrument you will, though you can fret me, yet you cannot play upon me.”
The pipe snapped in his slender fingers, as he tossed it contemptuously away, and the two young men stood crestfallen and abashed before his noble scorn.
It was no repentant and shamefaced son that entered the Queen’s room that night. Hamlet had steeled his heart to do what he considered his duty, and tell his mother the truth. He would speak daggers, though he used none; he would reveal to her the true character of the man she had taken for her second husband. When, therefore, the Queen, in accordance with Polonius’s advice, began to take him roundly to task for his strange behaviour, he retorted in such a strange, and even menacing, manner that she was quite alarmed, and shouted for help. Polonius, hidden behind the arras, echoed her cry. Hamlet, thinking it was the King, and that the hour for vengeance had come, drew his sword.
“How now! A rat? Dead, for a ducat, dead!” he exclaimed, and made a pass through the arras.
There was a cry from behind, “O, I am slain!” and the fall of a heavy body.
“O me, what hast thou done?” exclaimed the Queen.
“Nay, I know not. Is it – the King?” said Hamlet, in a harsh whisper.
“Oh, what a rash and bloody deed is this!” moaned the Queen, wringing her hands in dismay.
“A bloody deed! Almost as bad, good mother, as kill a King and marry with his brother,” said Hamlet solemnly.
“As kill a King?” echoed the Queen, astounded.
“Ay, lady, it was my word.”
Hamlet lifted the arras, and found that, after all, it was not the guilty murderer whom he had hoped to punish, but the meddlesome old Chamberlain, who had fallen a victim to his sudden impulse. His task of vengeance had still to be accomplished.
“Thou wretched, rash, intruding fool, farewell,” said the young Prince, gazing at him sorrowfully. “I took thee for thy better; take thy fortune! Thou find’st to be too busy is some danger.”
Thus the officious old man’s prying ways met their punishment. And Hamlet’s lack of resolution, too, brought its penalty; for if he had had strength of will to carry out what he believed to be his duty, he would not have thus trusted to the blind impulse of the moment, and a comparatively innocent life would not have been sacrificed.
But he had matters too important waiting to spare much time for regret. Letting the arras fall on the henceforth silent prattler, Hamlet turned to his mother. In the most forcible manner he pointed out to the Queen how blameworthy had been her conduct. In vivid language he sketched a portrait of her two husbands, showing how noble had been the one brother, and how contemptible was the other. What strange delusion could have cheated the Queen, after knowing her first husband, to have married such a wretched being as Claudius?
“O Hamlet, speak no more!” implored the Queen. “These words, like daggers, enter in mine ears; no more, sweet Hamlet.”
“A murderer and a villain!” continued Hamlet, with increasing scorn and vehemence; “a slave that is not the twentieth part the tithe of your former lord; a buffoon king; a cutpurse of the empire and the sceptre, who from the shelf the precious diadem stole, and put it in his pocket!”
“No more!” besought the Queen.
“A king of shreds and patches – ”
Hamlet’s torrent of wrath died on his lips. Before him stood once more the spirit of his father, gazing at him with calm, rebuking eyes.
“Save me, and hover o’er me with your wings, you heavenly guards!” murmured the young Prince, in an awestruck whisper. “What would your gracious figure?”
The vision, apparent to Hamlet, was not visible to the Queen. She only saw the sudden change that had come to her son, and the rapt look on his face.
“Alas, he’s mad!” she sighed.
“Do you not come your tardy son to chide?” continued Hamlet, still in the same hushed voice, “who, lost in time and passion, lets go by the important acting of thy dread command? Oh, say!”
The Ghost replied that his visit was indeed to whet his son’s almost blunted purpose. But now he bade Hamlet note how startled and amazed the Queen was, and told him to speak to her and soothe her.
“How is it with you, lady?” said Hamlet absently.
“Alas! how is it with you?” retorted the Queen, for to her it seemed that Hamlet was looking at vacancy, and holding converse with the empty air. “Whereon do you look?”
“On him – on him! Look you, how pale he glares!.. Do you see nothing there?”
“Nothing at all; yet all that is, I see.”
“Nor did you nothing hear?”
“No, nothing but ourselves.”
“Why, look you there! Look how it steals away! My father, in his habit as he lived! Look where he goes, even now, out at the portal.”
The Queen saw nothing of the figure gliding away, and told Hamlet that it must be the coinage of his brain, the sort of delusion which madness was very cunning in.
“Madness!” echoed Hamlet; and he bade his mother note that his pulse beat as calmly as her own, and that it was not madness which he uttered. Bring him to the test, he said, and he would re-word the matter, which madness could not do. In short, his words were so convincing that the Queen could no longer refuse to believe them. Before they parted, she promised to adopt a very different mode of behaviour from her usual pleasure-loving frivolity, and not to allow herself to be persuaded by the crafty Claudius that anything her son might say or do arose from madness.
“I must to England; you know that?” asked Hamlet.
“Alack, I had forgotten; it is so arranged,” said the Queen.
“There are letters sealed,” said Hamlet, “and my two schoolfellows, whom I will trust as I will adders fanged – they bear the mandate. Let the knavery work; for ’tis sport to have the engineer hoist with his own petard, and it shall go hard but I will delve one yard below their mines, and blow them at the moon.”
“Rosemary for Remembrance”
Hamlet’s suspicions with regard to fresh villainy on the part of the King were justified. Claudius dared not do any harm to the young Prince in his own country, for he was greatly beloved by the people. On the plea, therefore, that it was for the benefit of his health, he was despatched to England, but letters were given to Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, who accompanied him, commanding that on his arrival the Prince should be instantly beheaded.
Suspecting treachery, Hamlet managed to get possession of these letters, and in their place he put others, written by himself, in which the English Government was begged, as a favour to Denmark, to put the bearers to death. Thus Rosencrantz and Guildenstern fell victims to their own treachery, and met the fate to which they were shamelessly conducting their old schoolfellow.
The day after the changing of the letters their ship was chased by pirates. Finding they were too slow of sail to escape, they made a valiant resistance. In the grapple Hamlet boarded the pirates’ vessel. At that very instant the ships got clear, so he alone became their prisoner. They treated him well, knowing who he was, and expecting to get a good reward, and not long after he had left Denmark Hamlet again set foot in his own country. He did not at first announce his return to the King and Queen, but sent a message privately to Horatio, who at once hastened to him.
During his absence from Denmark a sad thing had happened. Poor Ophelia, overwhelmed by all the sorrows that had fallen on her, had lost her reason. Hamlet’s strange behaviour had been the first shock, and on her father’s sudden death, and Hamlet’s departure for England, the slender strength snapped utterly, and the young girl was carried away in the full flood of calamity.
Ever sweet and gentle, as she had been all her life, Ophelia was so still; there was no violence or malice in her malady. She was indeed distracted with grief, and spoke strange words, but when allowed her own way she went harmlessly about, only decking herself with flowers, and singing sweet and touching snatches of quaint old songs.
The King and Queen were deeply grieved at this new misfortune that had fallen on their young favourite, for the Queen, at least, loved her tenderly. They had also grounds for uneasiness concerning themselves; disquieting rumours began to be current. Rather foolishly, they had tried to hush up the cause of Polonius’s death, and had had him hurriedly interred, without proper rites or ceremony. His son Laertes had come secretly from France, and tittle-tattlers were not lacking to pour into his ears malicious reports of his father’s death. Finally, there was an attempt at insurrection. Laertes went to the palace, followed by a riotous mob, shouting, “Laertes shall be King! Laertes King!” They broke down the doors, overcame the guard, and Laertes forced his way into the presence of the King and Queen.
“O thou vile King, give me my father!” he demanded, with menacing gesture.
“Calmly, good Laertes,” implored the Queen, while the King, with all the subtle art in which he was so skilled, tried to soothe the infuriated young man, and asked him why he was so incensed.
“How came he dead? I’ll not be juggled with,” cried Laertes fiercely, flinging off all semblance of allegiance. “Let come what comes, only I’ll be revenged most thoroughly for my father.”
“Who shall stay you?” asked the King mildly.
“My will, not all the world!” retorted Laertes roughly. “And for my means, I’ll husband them so well, they shall go far with little.”
The King was just explaining that he was in no sense guilty of Polonius’s death, when there was a stir at the door, and the next moment Ophelia entered. At the sight of the beautiful young maiden, in her simple white robe, her long yellow locks floating free on her shoulders, her sweet blue eyes opened wide in vacant gaze, a sudden check came to the young man’s violence.
“O rose of May! Dear maid, kind sister, sweet Ophelia!” he murmured, with tenderest pity. “Oh heavens! is it possible a young maid’s wits should be as mortal as an old man’s life?”
Ophelia carried flowers in her hand, and she came in singing and talking to herself.
“They bore him barefaced on the bier;
Hey non nonny, nonny, hey nonny;
And in his grave rain’d many a tear: —
“Fare you well, my dove.”
“Hadst thou thy wits, and didst persuade revenge, it could not move thus,” said Laertes.
Ophelia now began to distribute the flowers she held in her hand. First she gave some to her brother.
“There’s rosemary, that’s for remembrance; pray, love, remember. And there is pansies, that’s for thoughts.”
“A document in madness, thoughts and remembrance fitted,” said Laertes.
“There’s fennel for you, and columbines,” said Ophelia to the King, (fennel is an emblem of flattery, and columbines of thanklessness). “There’s rue for you,” to the Queen, “and here’s some for me; we may call it herb of grace on Sundays. O, you must wear your rue with a difference. There’s a daisy; I would give you some violets, but they withered all when my father died; they say he made a good end, —
For bonny sweet Robin is all my joy.”
“Thought and affliction, passion, hell itself, she turns to favour and to prettiness,” said Laertes, as smiling, and kissing her hand, the poor wit-bereft maiden went singing on her way.
His desire for vengeance was redoubled, and he resolved that his sister’s madness should be dearly paid for. He therefore lent a ready ear when the King declared that the blame of everything that had happened was due to Hamlet, explaining that he had been unable to punish him up to the present, owing to the intense love borne him by his mother, and all the people. Even as they were talking arrived a letter from Hamlet himself; it ran thus:
“High and Mighty,
“You shall know I am set naked on your kingdom. To-morrow shall I beg leave to see your kingly eyes: when I shall, first asking your pardon thereunto, recount the occasion of my sudden and more strange return.
“Hamlet.”
Hamlet’s return happened most aptly, and the King immediately suggested a plan whereby Laertes could gratify his vengeance without fear of being found out. While Laertes had been in France, he had been greatly talked about for his skill in fencing, and a Norman gentleman who had come to the Danish Court brought a marvellous report of his prowess in the use of the rapier. This account filled Hamlet with envy; he was himself a master in the art of fencing, and he longed for Laertes to come back and try a match with him. The King now proposed that Laertes should challenge Hamlet to a trial of skill.
“He, being heedless, most generous and free from all contriving, will not look closely at the foils,” continued the King cunningly, “so that with ease, or with a little shuffling, you may choose a sword unbated, and in a pass of practice requite him for your father.”
Laertes not only consented to this dastardly scheme, – he went a step further, and declared that he would anoint the point of the rapier with some poison so mortal that no remedy in all the world could save from death the thing that was but scratched with it. He would touch the point of this sword with this poison, so that if he wounded Hamlet ever so slightly it would be death. In addition to this, in case Hamlet should escape unhurt from the fencing, the King said he would have a chalice near with poisoned wine, so that if he grew thirsty, and called for drink, he would meet his death in that manner.
Their further plotting was interrupted by the Queen, who came hurrying in with further tidings of woe. Ophelia was drowned.
“Drowned! Oh, where?” cried Laertes.
“There is a willow grows aslant a brook that shows his hoar leaves in the glassy stream,” began the Queen; and she told how Ophelia, having woven many fantastic garlands of wild flowers, had clambered into this tree, to hang her wreaths on the drooping boughs, when a branch broke, and Ophelia and her trophies fell into the brook. There for awhile her clothes bore her up, and she floated down the current, still singing snatches of old tunes; but before she could be rescued, the weight of her garments, heavy with the water, dragged her down to death.
Laertes could not restrain his tears when he heard of the loss of his dear sister, but the King guessed that his rage would soon start up with fresh fury, and he resolved not to lose sight of the young man till his scheme of vengeance was accomplished.