ANALYSIS FROM LINE 15 TO 36 - page 155 The closet scene -

At line 15 Hamlet highlights his anger towards his mother with the repetition “have you eyes?”: he wants his mother to look better at the portrait, in order to understand the huge differences.

According to the young prince, his mother’s feeling for Claudius is not love, because she cannot love someone so different from his dead, graceful father. He blames her once again, since at her age she cannot feel excited by his current husband: their passion should be tamed and less strong (“humble”, line 17). Excitement, “heyday” at line 17, should join judgment and follows it; but husband and wife had no judgment, they seem to act only to satisfy their desire. Hamlet claims he thinks that Gertrude had senses, he is “sure”, referring to line 19, but he is also sure, at the following line, that her senses are motionless. The queen is depicted as confused and not conscious enough to understand that the marriage was a big mistake. Her senses are so paralysed that she has been moved by excitement, without listening to her consciousness; excitement has become madness, “ecstasy” line 22. It is exaggerated and it made Gertrude loose her mind, in order to have her to prefer this immoral situation instead of the previous one. “Ecstasy” caused the woman’s wrong choice, she was not able to understand what the “difference” (line 24) between the “moor” and the “fair mountain” was. Therefore, Hamlet supposes she has been “cozened” (that means cheated, line 25) by devious madness, he refers to “devil” at line 24 as a force that caused his mother’s unconsciousness. How could she choose Claudius’ love? Hamlet can’t explain himself, he believes that something provoked his mother ‘insanity’.

Line 26-27: Hamlet appeals to four senses (sight, hearing, touch and smelling) to states that his mother’s senses are distorted: they confuse her. If one part of them is diseased, other ones cannot work properly. Therefore, the queen has been subdue because one sense’s disease. Hamlet often refers to SIGHT throughout the extract: at line 13 and 15 the repetition “have you eyes?” addressed to Gertrude aims at making her aware of the mistake. Subsequently, at line 26-27 there are three references to sight (the words “sight” and “eyes” repeated twice). Hamlet wants to underline the physical-external difference of the two men, that cannot be noticed. The appearance represents also the kings’ psychological and personal traits.

At line 29 the prince turns to “shame” and asks where its “blush” is, with disdain; he sees that his mother is not ashamed of doing what she did. Shame is personified to the purpose of criticizing Gertrude more effectively: Hamlet is always more angry and uses apostrophe (apostrofe) to show his anger. Moreover, at line 30 he turns to “rebellious hell”, by using apostrophe again and keeping on having a critical and effective tone. At line 31-32 the reader feels the strong opposition between the term “matron”, that indicates Gertrude is older, and “youth”. The queen is not young anymore, thus she should not be so much passionate and behave as if she were a maid--> She cannot rebel, “mutine”, against her age. Gertrude should leave her “virtue”, line 32, and allow it to melt, like wax is melt by fire: “let virtue be as wax and melt in her own fire”, line 32-33. Virtue may represent the queen’s beauty and youth, and it is compared to wax on a fire: the comparison allude to human things that do not last, they come to an end early. Hamlet criticizes the queen’s lack of shame, he recognises she is moved by “compulsive ardour” at line 34 that conquers reason.

At the close of Hamlet’s speech the character uses words referring to FIRE: it reminds strong desire, passion, excitement. At line 35 the reader finds the further opposition of the talk: ardour “frost itself”, that means it does freeze, and then it does “burn”. He considers his mother too old to have sexual desires, thus he says she is frozen (old), but she continues to follow excitement (reference to burning fire). Line 36: Hamlet believes that reason should act as a guide to desire. “Will” is created by the mind.