Line 1784-5 - Commentary Note (CN)

Commentary notes (CN):

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Notes for lines 1018-2022 ed. Eric Rasmussen

For explanation of sigla, such as jen, see the editions bib.

1784-5 goe thy | waies to a {Nunry} <Nunnery>. Where’s your father?

1818-19 mclr2

mclr2

1784-1805 goe. . . . go] Coleridge (ms. notes 1819 in Ayscough, ed. 1807; rpt. Coleridge, 1998, 12.4:851): <p. 851>“The dallying with the inward purpose that of one who had not brought his mind to the steady acting point—would fain sting the Uncle’s Mind, but—to stab the body!—”</p. 851>

1885 macd

macd

1784-5 MacDonald (ed. 1885): “Here, perhaps, he grows suspicious—asks why he is allowed this prolonged téte â téte.”

1899 ard1

1785 Where’s your father] Dowden (ed. 1899): “Perhaps an arrow shot at venture; or perhaps he has caught sight of the King and Polonius as they retire. It is to be considered as a possibility that Ophelia may not have been aware of her father’s espionage.”

1934a cam3

1784-5 Wilson (ed. 1934): “The question gives her one last chance; she answers with a lie, as it would seem to him, though she is of course only humouring one whom she takes to be mad.”

1982 ard2

1785 Where’s your father] Jenkins (ed. 1982): "The assumption that Hamlet knows that he is being spied on rest, I am confident, on a complete misinterpretation of the ’nunnery’ scene (cf. III. i. 96 n.) based on a misunderstanding both of Hamlet’s attitude to Ophelia (on which see HO, pp. 14-5; Sh. Jahr. (West), 1975, pp. 117-20) and of Elizabethan dramatic convention. Dover Wilson supposed that Hamlet knew from the beginning of Polonius’s spying (see II. ii. 167 S.D. LN), others that he must have become aware of it at least by l. 103 (cf. Adams, p. 255), many more that he must detect it now. A stage tradition beginning early in the 19th century (see Sprague, Shakespeare and the Actors, pp. 152-4) made Polonius pop his head out at this point. Coghill, who found this crude, nevertheless thought the ’sudden irrelevance’ of Hamlet’s question made it ’certain’ that this was his ’moment of enlightenment’ (pp. 16-19). Among more fanciful theories is one (in the Penguin edition) that Hamlet thinks the Queen must be acting as chaperon and that his attack on the vices of women is intended for her ears. All such inferences are belied by the dramatic convention that a character’s awareness of being overheard is normally made explicit in the dialogue (see H. Gardner, ’Lawful Espials’, MLR, XXXIII, 345 ff.; HO, pp. 145-6). And the sudden disconcerting question may find less superficial explanation It is very much in Hamlet’s ’antic’ vein. Cf. esp. ’Have you a daughter?’ (II. ii. 182) and l. 103 in this scene. It is true these other questions can be related, if obliquely, to what has just preceded them. Yet Hamlet’s love for Ophelia has all along been entangled with her father. It is her father on whom he has projected his inarticulate feelings about her sexual nature - her ’honesty’, her potentiality for mating and breeding (II. ii. 174-89, 399-409); and now when these come to a climax in his encounter with Ophelia herself, he suddenly thinks of her father. (To Polonius, ’Have you a daughter?’ ; to Ophelia, ’Where’s your father?’) Perhaps the most surprising thing about the question is that it should surprise us. But dramatic art combines the unexpected and the plausible. On a different dramatic level the question is important not to suggest that Hamlet has discovered Polonius’s presence but to remind the audience of it. The eavesdropper must now hear something to his disadvantage; but the effect of this depends not on Hamlet’s knowing that he is being overheard, but on our knowing it. For some perceptive comments on this scene see Kitto, Form and Meaning in Drama, pp. 274-81.”

1785 Where’s your father?] Tannenbaum (n.d., pp.374-376): <p.374> “One of the difficult problems in Hamlet concerns the Prince’s sudden and astounding question, addressed to Ophelia, ‘Where’s your father?’ and his subsequent rantings about marriage and the married. To account for these phenomena it has been assumed that the fidgety Polonious had betrayed his presence by popping his head out from behind the arras, or that he had dropped his chamberlain’s staff, or that he had rustled the curtains, or, -- as in Mr. Basil Sydney’s recent version of the play – that one of his feet peeped out from below the edge of the arras.

“That Hamlet was aware of the presence of Polonious behind the arras is certain, not only from his general behavior, his malevolence, his cruelty to Ophelia, his threats with regard to the King, but even more so from his outburst: ‘Let the doors be shut upon him, that he may play the fool nowhere but in’s own house!’ But when did he become aware of the old man’s presence? Clearly not when he greeted the fair Nymph with the request to be included in her orisons. When then? To answer this question, we must review this part of the scene in detail and try to reconstruct Hamlet’s mental processes. </p.375><p.375>

“In reply to her lover’s pious greeting, Ophelia, conscious that she is playing a role, that both she and the mad Prince are under surveillance, does not act like herself. Had she really been affronted by Hamlet by accident she would have shown great surprise, would have been overwhelmed. As it is, she is not even startled. Hamlet notices this, and he notices, moreover, a prayer-book in one hand and a jewel-case, or perhaps some of his gifts, in the other. Her cold and formal greeting (‘Good my lord, How does your honour for this many a day?’) satisfies him that she is acting a part. But he will not accept that conclusion without grounds more relative than this. Slowly, thinking, he answers: ‘I humbly thank you, well – [I wonder what all this means;] – well – [how does it happen that she is here at this time? What was it brought me here? Let me see what will follow this!] – well.’ Then she offers to re-deliver the remembrances which she had longed long to return to the giver, for ‘rich gifts wax poor when givers prove unkind.’ To gain time and to draw her out he denies having ever given her anything. This brings from the poor girl such an unequivocal confession of love that Hamlet is puzzled. Is this ‘noble mind’ sincere? And so, looking penetratingly into her eyes, he asks, ‘Are you honest?’ Editors and critics have all too readily taken it for granted that Hamlet here means to insult the girl and is using the word ‘honest’ in the sense of ‘chaste.’ Hamlet, I think, meant to ask whether she was ‘sincere.’ She does not know in what sense to take it. All a-flutter she says, ‘My Lord?’, possibly indignantly, possibly fearful that he suspects her, possibly only surprised. Looking her in the eyes, he flings the equivocal question at her, ‘Are you fair?’ – not ‘are you beautiful?’ (as the sentence is usually interpreted) but ‘are you treating me fairly?’ The embarrassed girl’s eyes drop, and all she can do is to answer with ‘What means my lord?’ Hamlet is satisfied that she is playing a part. Thereupon he proceeds to ‘rag’ her till, thoroughly off her guard, he throws the pointed question at her: ‘Where’s your father?’ Wholly unprepared for this question, the poor girl suddenly, almost reflexly, turns her head in the direction where the King and Polonious are hiding. The gesture is enough for Hamlet. Polonious need not drop his staff or cough, or cry hem, or </p.375> <p.376> stick his head out. Shakespere had outgrown such melodramatic trickery long before he came to write hamlet.

“Readers of this play have strangely overlooked the important role played in this scene by Ophelia. Her father and the King, we may be sure, would never have been so foolish as to suggest that she should choose this inopportune time to return Hamlet’s ‘remembrances’. They would have known that the Prince’s suspicions would be aroused by such an action at that time and in that place. This bit of meddling – she came from a family of meddlers – was her little contribution to the good Queen’s and King’s plans, dearly did they pay for it. Shakespere, we may be sure, did not introduce the spurned lover’s gifts into the scene for nothing.”

1784 1785

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