THE CLOSET SCENE

I am now going to analyze an extract from Shakespeare’s play “Hamlet”, Act III, Scene IV.

In this scene the reader has Hamlet speaking to his mother. He is showing her two pictures: one is his father’s picture and the other is his uncle Claudius. Hamlet’s exchange of dialogue is very long. There is a very frequent use of the verb tense imperative: Hamlet is not speaking giving invitations but he gives orders. Hamlet is very angry with his mother and he uses an extremely aggressive tone in his speech. The accusation he addresses to the woman is designed to the two men on his mother life. In addiction Hamlet exploits the structure of a list to collect and compare the differences between the two characters: indeed he presents the two as opposites.
The list is arranged into components which make his father seem perfect: he considers his father a great man. The word “grace” is usually referred to a lady, but also to God. He starts to the consideration of his father’s grace: the grace his father possesses his uncle does not. He goes on using metaphors and similes such as “Hyperion’s curls”, “an eye like Mars”, “a station like the herald Mercury” and also words like “heaven”: all of them are related to Gods. The comparison makes Hamlet the king close to a divine creature. Shakespeare uses a climatic effect that ends with “this was your husband”: Hamlet’s words are the apotheosis of his father.

In presenting the different figures of his mother’s new husband, Shakespeare does not use the climatic effect of the previous presentation. To tell the truth, he starts with the expression “here is your husband”. All the features Hamlet makes is mother notice are negative: for example, he compares his mother’s present husband to a mildewed ear of corn infecting the healthy one next to it.
The use of rhetorical questions “Have you eyes?” brings to surface Hamlet’s idea that his mother is unable to distinguish the real qualities of the two men. Hamlet is incredulous and angry: he cannot believe his mother married his uncle for love. Besides, being an adolescent, he thinks that at his mother’s age passion should have disappeared. That is what Freud called the Oedipus Complex: a group of emotions, usually unconscious, involving the desire of a child, especially a male child, to possess sexually the parent of the opposite sex. In addiction Shakespeare choice to set the scene into Gertrude’s bedroom reinforces the idea.
Moreover Hamlet asks what devil was it that blindfolded his mother: he thinks no human being could do his mother’s choice. So he connects again to divine theme: evil should have played havoc her mind, she became crazy, she has done something against Nature and consequently now she is a servant to desire. In fact Hamlet says “where is thy blush?”: his mother cannot feel any modesty. He wants her to try fighting desire.