TEXT:
LAERTES
O thou vile king,
Give me my father!
GERTRUDE
Calmly, good Laertes.
LAERTES
That drop of blood that's calm proclaims me bastard,
Cries cuckold to my father, brands the harlot
Even here, between the chaste unsmirched brow
Of my true mother.
CLAUDIUS
What is the cause, Laertes,
That thy rebellion looks so giant-like?
Let him go, Gertrude; do not fear our person:
There's such divinity doth hedge a king,
That treason can but peep to what it would,
Acts little of his will. Tell me, Laertes,
Why thou art thus incensed. Let him go, Gertrude.
Speak, man.
LAERTES
Where is my father?
CLAUDIUS
Dead.
GERTRUDE
But not by him.
CLAUDIUS
Let him demand his fill.
NOTES:
Thou and You
In Old English, thou was singular and you was plural; but sometime in the 13th century, English started copying the French manner of speaking that used the plural as a polite form. So, just like vous in French, you became a means of addressing someone formally. There's a lot of status in play with who uses which form, and to whom. You was more formal, so servants would use it to their employers, children would use it when addressing their parents, and so on. It could also be a social or societal divider. You was said to those above you on the social ladder, and then thou in return was used for those below. Likewise lower social classes use thou when addressing each other. Curiously though, thou was also used to indicate a particular kind of intimacy, as when a character might speak to God. With all of this going on, it's clear that changing from thou to you or you to thou in a conversation always conveys a contrast in meaning - a change of attitude or an altered relationship. Sometimes it is as an insult - if someone uses thou to address someone to whom they owe greater respect - it's a sign of dropping formality to express closeness or intimacy.
Mrs. Polonius
As promised, here is the link to Anne Harris' (hopefully deliberately) hilarious exploration of the evidence for the character of Mrs. Polonius, published in The Spectator in March 1933. I'm not sure if it's out of copyright, so I haven't included the entire text on the website.
Gigantomachy
The Gigantomachy (lit. “giant battle”) was maybe the most significant battle waged in all of Greek mythology. It was fought between the Giants (children of Ouranos and Gaia) and the Olympian gods (Zeus and his brothers, sisters, children and so on). An example of its importance is that it is one of the major inspirations for the art work on the Parthenon in Athens - one of the most significant temples ever built in Greece. There are further references to battles between the gods and others coming up later in the play, so it’s not unreasonable to think that Claudius is doing so here.