THE CLOSET SCENE page 155 Gertrude and Hamlet

It is the scene that takes place in the closet (inside a room). The inner space represents something that has to do with inner, personal feelings hidden to the external world.

Hamlet is showing his mother the portrait of his father and Claudius. He begins speaking by using an imperative tone: he exhorts Gertrude to look at the pictures, he nearly reproaches her. The prince makes a comparison between his father and his uncle: at first he draws attention on the previous king. First of all, he talks about “two brothers”, not merely two men, to indicate the difference between the kings: even if they were brothers, there are no similarities (line 2).  He analyses his father’s picture and wants his mother to be aware of the big difference between the two portrayed men: he uses metaphors as a vehicle to explain valiant virtues of his father, by using a high register.

From the third line he starts describing his father, by emphasizing his qualities. He tells his mother to watch his dead father’s forehead, and he uses it as a device to refer to the king’s “grace”, beauty. Subsequently, he makes a comparison between king Hamlet and some ancient Greek gods: right from the beginning (line 4) his hints refer to classical mythology. He says the king’s curls are like Hyperion’s ones: he chose “curls” and not merely hair in order to identify them as a mark of elegance and beauty, since the story takes place in the Middle Ages. Secondly, the forehead is the same as Jove’s. He was all gods’ god, therefore Hamlet is emphasising his father’s power. He makes reference to a further god, Mars: he was the god of war. The prince claims his father owns Mars’ eyes, and they are perfect “to threaten and command” (line 5). The sentence indicates the king’s authority and relevance and his qualities of a leader. In addition, his posture is compared to “the herald Mercury”, line 6, who was the classical gods’ mouth-speaker: it is like he (Mercury) has just lighted (“new lighted”, line 7), through his presence, a hill kissed by heaven (sky). It indicates king Hamlet’s grace and elegance, besides his smart attitude; his figure is magnified by his son. Maybe the king is “lighted” directly by God, his light is put as a close up. At line 8-9 the main character of the story says that all gods seemed to collaborate to create a perfect, valiant man like his father. At line 8 the word “combination” represents all classical gods’ qualities fixed together, in order to create the king’s personality and physical features. Subsequently, at line 9 Hamlet states that every god seemed to give something special to form his father’s traits: he was really complete. The repetition of the sound “s” confers a sweet tone to the sentence, Hamlet remembers his father with love and sweetness.

At line 10 Hamlet says “to give THE WORLD”: he talks about his father’s qualities and refers to a universal perfection. All his traits are addressed to the whole human being, they are not suitable only for the state of Denmark. After reading the description, the reader has a clear idea of beauty and importance of the murdered king. At line 11 Hamlet tells his mother to look at “WHAT follows”: Hamlet now is focusing on his uncle’s portrait. Why does he use the word “what” instead of “who”, since he is speaking about a person? He shows not to consider Claudius as a relevant man at all. He compares him to a thing, he does not believe Claudius is not worthy of being king. At line 12 Hamlet uses an other similarities to describe one of the two men of the portrait, but now he adopts a negative/critical tone. The current king is “like amildewed ear”, that indicates he is useless and without good values. Moreover, the prince says “your husband” instead of saying, for instance, “my uncle” or “the king”: it underlines the detachment from Claudius and his refusal of accepting him. Hamlet believes and wants his mother to understand that Claudius will never be like his father. Hamlet just spends four lines to speak about him, from line 12 to 15. He only wants to draw attention on his totally different nature, whereas his father was so “wholesome”, line 13.

From line 14 Claudius is compared to “moor”, that is a strong contrast to the “fair mountain” (perfect, honourable) representing his father. Hamlet asks his mother how she could prefer that moor instead of the fair mountain, she chose the worst choice and he blames her. At the close of line 13 Hamlet exhorts Gertrude to look better at the portraits: he asks “have you eyes?” because he wants her to understand what she did. He adopts a critical tone to underline Gertrude’s mistake. According to Hamlet, his mother behaviour is totally wrong and he can’t explain himself why she acted in that way. He does not want to accept the immoral situation.