Chapter Synopsis and Commentary of Hamlet - Study Guide by William Shakespeare

Act III

Immediately after we see Claudius in a state of anxiety over the "heavy burden" of his unnamed "deed", Hamlet ponders over the damnable act of suicide. The soliloquy, of the most famous speeches in drama, is loaded with ambiguity as the speech lurches from the attractiveness of dying to the rejection of suicide because of fear of damnation and the terrors of life after death:

"To die – to sleep –

No more; and by a sleep to say we end

The heart-ache, and the thousand natural shocks

That flesh is heir to; ‘tis a consummation

Devoutly to be wished. To die – to sleep –

To sleep! Perchance to dream. Ay, there’s the rub;

For in that sleep of death what dreams may come,

When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,

Must give us pause."

To live, in the end, wins, as "conscience does make cowards of us all".

Ophelia enters and, using her as a scapegoat for the flaws of women in general and exhibiting an obsession with life’s evils, he commands her: "Get thee to a nunnery. Why wouldst thou be a breeder of sinners?" (III.i123). This attack on Ophelia effectively convinces the King and Polonius that Hamlet’s madness is not the result of unrequited love but, as the King observes: "There’s something in his soul / O’er which his melancholy sits on brood" (III.i.164). The King is uneasy and resolves to send Hamlet away to England.

Hamlet talks (under his veil of madness) to the royal party as they enter and take their seats for the play at court. The play begins and the player-queen, Baptista, and the player-king, Gonzago, talk of love and death; she is devoted to him and vows that nothing could persuade her to marry again if he were to die. Meanwhile in the audience at court, the king and queen are becoming disturbed. The player-king lies down to sleep and his nephew pours poison into his ear; he wants to claim kingship and the Queen. At this point, the King jumps up and calls a halt to the play. Hamlet at last has proof of Claudius’s guilt.

Hamlet swears to deal with the issue of his mother’s involvement in the evil that has been committed but he promises himself that he will "be cruel, not unnatural; / I will speak daggers to her, but use none" (III.ii.369). Hamlet has been summoned to his mother’s room for the offence he committed at court and Polonius resolves to spy on him there. Seeing Claudius at prayer, Hamlet is on the verge of murdering him but at the last minute decides against it as killing him in the act of absolving his sins would ensure that the King would go to Heaven instead of Hell. Even here, however, appearance is deceptive, as Claudius confesses that he had been unable to pray:

"[Rising] My words fly up, my thoughts remain below;

Words without thought never to heaven go."

(III.iii.97-98)

Hamlet enters his mother’s chamber and just as he previously asked the actors to "hold… the mirror up to nature" so now he swears that "You not go till I set up a glass / Where you may see the inmost part of