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Hamlet
William Shakespeare 1564-1616
In the play, Hamlet, the protagonist, Prince Hamlet’s, anger towards his mother – too suddenly and recently married, he believes, to his uncle, now King Claudius, following the death of his father – spills out in the famous ‘bedroom scene’ where Hamlet confronts and berates his mother. This time we have mother and son, not father and daughter as in King Lear. This extract is taken from Act 3 scene 4.
Hamlet:
Now, mother, what’s the matter?
Gertrude:
Hamlet, thou hast thy father much offended
Hamlet:
Mother, you have my father much offended
Gertrude:
Come come you answer with an idle tongue
Hamlet:
Go go you answer with a wicked tongue.
Gertrude:
Have you forgot me?
Hamlet:
No, by the rood, not so:
You are the queen your husband’s brother’s wife; And – would it were not so – you are my mother.’
Hamlet, without sparing his mother’s feelings, proceeds to condemn her yet further. When she asks what she has done, his reply is vitriolic.
Hamlet:
Such an act
That blurs the grace and blush of modesty
Calls virtue hypocrite, takes off the rose
From the fair forehead of an innocent love
And sets a blister there, makes marriage vows
As false as dicers’ oaths.
Hamlet compares the two brothers.
Hamlet:
Look here, upon this picture, and on this,
The counterfeit presentment of two brothers.
See, what a grace was seated on this brow.
Hyperion’s curls; the front of Jove himself;
An eye like Mars, to threaten and command
A combination and a form indeed
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