This is a “Hamlet” Key Passage Commentary Essay. The Key Passage is on Act 4.7 lines 190-210 about Ophelia drowning. Please read the advice for How to Do the Key Passage Commentary on Hamlet for AP English 12. Those are the expectations and instructions of what the essay should include. I will also attach a sample essay for this assignment for your reference to the writing.
Hamlet Key Passage Commentary: Claudius’ “Quit Your Grieving” Speech to Hamlet (1.2.85-117)
Daniel Thrash
AP English 12: 2nd Blue
February 7, 2003
The key passage I am analyzing is from Act 1, scene 2, lines 85 – 117 of William Shakespeare’s tragedy, Hamlet. This passage is primarily made up of a speech that Claudius, the new king of Denmark, makes to Hamlet encouraging him to give up his “obstinate” grief for his dead father and remain in Denmark instead of returning to college in Wittenburg. When this scene opens, Claudius has made a grand speech to the entire Danish court legitimizing his reign by marrying the previous king’s widow and stabilizing his country by dealing with the Fortinbras’ threat from Norway. Immediately before this passage, Claudius has just allowed Laertes to return to Paris for school, an interesting contrast to Claudius’ denial of Hamlet’s desire to return to Germany for his school. Hamlet, dressed in black and mourning during what Claudius sees as a day for rejoicing, is disrupting the transition of power in Denmark. In this passage Claudius takes time to deal with his difficult new step-son. This passage primarily significant because of its characterization of Claudius as a deceptive, charming, condescending, clever politician and because of the great disparity between appearance and reality in his words.
This passage opens with the last two lines of one of Hamlet’s first speeches. In this speech, Hamlet is resisting his mother’s attempts to comfort him for his father’s death. Hamlet tells his mother (and step-father) that he has “that within which passes show, / These but the trappings and the suits of woe” (85-86). Hamlet is notably wearing black on what appears to be his mother and step-father’s wedding celebration, and he feels that his grief is greater than even his appearance can suggest. He notably introduces the tension between appearance and reality so prevalent in Denmark—his clothes (appearance) do not match the great sorrow he feels in his heart. Hamlet’s rhyming couplet reveals his certainty and the finality of his grief.
The rest of the passage is made up of Claudius’ speech to Hamlet in which he tries to comfort his new step-son while at the same time reprimanding him and denying him the freedom to return to his college town. Claudius begins by flattering Hamlet and telling him that it is “sweet and commendable in your nature, Hamlet, / To give these mourning duties to your father” (87-88). Then Shakespeare uses repetition of the words father and lost in Claudius’ speech to reinforce the irrevocable grief that is afflicting Hamlet: “But you must know your father lost a father, / That father lost, lost his” (89-90). Claudius emphasizes what Hamlet’s mother had stressed earlier, that his father’s death is common, universal; it happens to everyone. Claudius implies that Hamlet only needed to grieve a certain amount of time, “some term / To do obsequious sorrow” (91-92). Yet Hamlet’s grief has far exceeded the “normal” span of mourning.
At the second “but” in line 92, Claudius changes from his kindly tone to begin criticizing Hamlet’s grief. He tells Hamlet that his “obstinate condolement is a course / Of impious stubbornness” (93-94). By using the word “obstinate” and “stubbornness,” Claudius suggests that Hamlet is a spoiled, sullen child. By calling his behavior “impious,” Claudius says that Hamlet’s grief is somehow unholy. Claudius gets even more condescending and insulting when he tells Hamlet that “’tis unmanly grief” (94). After injuring Hamlet as “unmanly,” Claudius adds insult to injury by telling him three ways that his grief is in the wrong. Hamlet’s will is “most incorrect to heaven, / A heart unfortified, or mind impatient, / An understanding simple and unschooled” (95-97). Hamlet, Claudius says, is being sinful, revealing a weak heart, and immature mind, and the inexperience of youth.
Claudius then repeats his themes of Hamlet’s grief being sinful and his father’s death common in the next section of his speech. He asks Hamlet rhetorically why, given how all men die, Hamlet has “peevish opposition” to what must be (100). Claudius reveals his scorn for Hamlet’s position when he tells him, “Fie, ‘tis a fault to heaven, / A fault against the dead, a fault to nature; / To reason most absurd” (101-103). Claudius presents all the rational reasons for disparaging Hamlet’s grief in a damning list of faults.
The entire speech by Claudius reveals both his hypocritical and deceptive nature and the thematic tension between appearance and reality. For while Claudius’s speech seems to be a rather loving speech of a concerned step-father and king. However, the context of the speech reveals far more insidious motives. Claudius had just allowed Laertes to return to Paris, and now he wants to prevent Hamlet from leaving for the same reasons. Claudius, a new ruler, needs to appear generous while at the same time, keeping the threat to his throne within close range. So he deceptively appears to give sound, logical advice to Hamlet to stop grieving and accept the new reign.
It is after Claudius’ logical reasoning speech of reasons Hamlet should stop grieving that he actually moves from giving advice to couching his commands in terms of beseechment. He asks Hamlet to “throw to earth / This unprevailing woe, and think of us / As of a father” (106-108). He uses the word “unprevailing” to show the futility of Hamlet’s grief while also employing use of the royal “we” to imply command in his request. He wants Hamlet to see him as a “father,” and then tries to appease Hamlet with a veiled bribe: “For let the world take note / You are the most immediate to our throne” (108-109). “Be happy!” Claudius says, “You’re the next in line—never mind that you were before your father died!” Then Claudius once again tries to assert a paternal role in Hamlet’s life: “And with no less nobility of love / Than that which dearest father bears his son / Do I impart toward you” (110-112).
Claudius ends his speech with a command to Hamlet: “For your intent / In going back to school in Wittenberg, / It is most retrograde to our desire” (113-114). Claudius falsely implies that he wants Hamlet to stay to keep him company as “Our chiefest courtier, cousin, and our son” (117). The word son ends the speech because ultimately it’s Claudius trump-card. His only real hope is that Hamlet will somehow take the grief he feels for his lost father and transfer it to a new “father-figure.”
The entire speech is futile in many ways. First of all, Hamlet has already asserted that his grief is far beyond ordinary grief, no matter how common the deaths of father is. Second of all, Hamlet recognizes even this early in the play that Claudius’ grief is not false. Hamlet seems to nurture some deep wrong in his soul since he was denied the throne after his father’s death. Claudius’ false pretense toward love and concern only rings hollow in Hamlet’s ears. While Claudius’ speech is clever, shrewd, and certainly appears to the whole Danish court to be noble and generous, Hamlet recognizes it for what it is, political manipulation. Indeed it is noteworthy that after Claudius’ request not to return to Germany, Hamlet does not reply until his mother makes the same request. Hamlet’s ignoring of his step-father’s words reveal how pointless Claudius’ rhetoric was to this grieving young man. All Hamlet heard were “words, words, words.”
