TEXT:
CLAUDIUS
O, this is the poison of deep grief; it springs
All from her father's death. O Gertrude, Gertrude,
When sorrows come, they come not single spies
But in battalions. First, her father slain:
Next, your son gone; and he most violent author
Of his own just remove: the people muddied,
Thick and unwholesome in their thoughts and whispers,
For good Polonius' death; and we have done but greenly,
In hugger-mugger to inter him: poor Ophelia
Divided from herself and her fair judgment,
Without the which we are pictures, or mere beasts:
Last, and as much containing as all these,
Her brother is in secret come from France;
Feeds on his wonder, keeps himself in clouds,
And wants not buzzers to infect his ear
With pestilent speeches of his father's death;
Wherein necessity, of matter beggared,
Will nothing stick our person to arraign
In ear and ear. O my dear Gertrude, this,
Like to a murdering-piece, in many places
Gives me superfluous death.
NOTES:
Julius Caesar
Shakespeare's play about the conspirators who assassinate Julius Caesar can be reasonably assumed to have been first performed in 1599. The likelihood is that it appeared just before Hamlet, and so the references to ancient Rome discussed in this episode are hardly surprising since Rome was still on Shakespeare's mind. In Julius Caesar, Antony insists that Caesar’s body be shown to the public after the assassination, and he gives a highly strategic and effective eulogy. Shakespeare used Thomas North’s translation of Plutarch as a starting point:
When this was done, they came to talke of Caesars will and testament, and of his funeralls and tombe. Then Antonius (Marc Antony) thinking good his testament should be red openly, and also that his body should be honorably buried, and not in hugger mugger, least the people might thereby take occasion to be worse offended if they did otherwise.
Plutarch
Plutarch (46- c.119) was a Greek historian. Many of his works were translated into English by Thomas North, and Shakespeare used them as source material for many of his plays set in the ancient world.
The Taming of the Shrew
At the end of this play, Katherina, the titular heroine, gives an extraordinary speech about women and their men. It continues to baffle interpreters, because it is such a volte face for the character. You can listen to the book club podcast about the play here. Kate’s speech includes the following image, which Claudius echoes.
A woman moved is like a fountain troubled,
Muddy, ill-seeming, thick, bereft of beauty;
And while it is so, none so dry or thirsty
Will deign to sip or touch one drop of it.
Murdering piece
The weapon that Claudius is describing gets its name from a meutrière, a thin window in the wall of a castle or tower that was strategically narrow. Archers, and later cannons, could shoot out of them, but they were thin enough that it was difficult for attacking outsiders to shoot through them. A meutrière piece (murdering piece, in Claudius’ version of the idea) was therefore a weapon that could shoot through such a window. As Claudius describes it, the weapon has been developed in such a way that it can shoot out several rounds (or even just several kinds of ballistic) at once.
