Spying In Hamlet Essay

Polonius seemly hear all these vulgar and misogynistic rants and becomes ever more convinced that Hamlet is mad. He never rests easily until he ends up behind yet another arras, scheming, yet this time in Gertrude’s room and gets himself killed. The act of betrayal, by both Polonius and Gertrude has far-reaching consequences; Polonius is killed by Hamlet, Ophelia becomes mad and Laertes demands vengeance. Polonius’s betrayal disgusts Hamlet and he can only but refer to him as ‘a foolish prating knave’ and his mistreatment of his body when he says he will ‘lug his guts in the neighbour room’ can equally be taken as his disgust towards him.

He waits forever to actually take any action. In the words of John Lennard, he is “a man of words rather than action.” After the ghost tells him what really happened, he keeps quiet and waits. He has to make sure that the ghost was telling the truth. He devised a plan: he presented a play that strongly resembled the story of his father’s murder. After watching his uncle abruptly arise and say, “Give me some light: away!” and rush off, he is convinced without a doubt that Claudius really did kill his father (Meyer 1654). When he finally does do something about it, he accidently kills the wrong person. As he prepares to kill “Claudius”, who is hiding in Gertrude’s room, it does not occur to him that he should check who is there before he acts. He ends up killing Polonius, lord chamberlain to the king. Now Laertes and Opehlia, Polonius’ son and daughter, are now fatherless. Sound familiar? Hamlet ends up putting Laertes and Ophelia in the same position that he himself is in. Laertes is now intent on getting revenge on Hamlet and says, “Let this be so; no trophy, sword, nor hatchment o’er his bones, no noble rite nor formal ostentation – cry to be heard, as ‘twere from heaven to earth, that I must call ‘t in question” (Meyer 1677). All Hamlet wanted was revenge for his father’s murder, but he ends up being the cause of his own death and the death of four others, including the one he loves.

Polonius had an evil plot. Polonius always spies on others to gain secret and private information. Polonius and Claudius together, work against Hamlet, and try to verify his sanity. Polonius performs as if he would do anything that Claudius asks of him, or anything that satisfies Claudius. Polonius willingly uses his daughter to assist Claudius in their plot against Hamlet. He even plans to ruin his son Laertes’ reputation and drive him from Denmark. Despite Polonius’ death, his unethical ways are still evident through Claudius’s actions. Claudius requests that Laertes fight with Hamlet, and he tries to poison him.

Gertrude and Claudius have been concerned about Hamlet’s condition. This leads Claudice to send in Rosencrantz and Guildenstern to spy on their son to find out what is troubling Hamlet.”The king does not ask them to spy on their friend; rather he requests them to “glean” whether anything “unknown afflicts him thus,/ That, open’d, lie within our remedy”(II,ii, 17-18). Claudice, in greeting Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, tells them of Hamlet’s melancholic state. After Claudice is done with Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, Polonius comes and tell Claudius and Gertrude that he has the answer for their son’s melancholic state. At this point in the play, Claudius, Gertrude and Polonius all believe that Hamlet has gone mad. Polonius says, “Your noble son is mad” (II,ii,92). They all believe that Ophelia is the cause of his sadness and finally into “the madness wherein now he raves” (II,ii,149). When Polonius sees Hamlet, he realizes that he is neither mad nor melancholic. After, talking with Polonius Hamlet seems to realize that Polonius has prevented Ophelia from seeing him. He tells Polonius, “if the sun breed maggots in a dead dog” (II,ii,180), he should keep his daughter out of the sun. Polonius thinks Hamlet is “far gone, but considers “How pregnant sometimes his replies are! A happiness that often madness hits on, which reason and sanity could not so prosperously be delivered of” (II, ii, 206-209). This shows that Hamlet is in fact mad. When Polonius

Deception is defined as a misleading falsehood. One is usually deceitful when there is a need to conceal the truth, or create a scheme to reveal the truth. This statement can be applied to the play Hamlet, where Shakespeare creates a society that is built upon deceit. Each character in the play experiences or enacts on some form of deceit in order to expose the truth or obscure the truth. There are no characters in the play that feel the need to be straightforward and seek the truth. As a result, the characters feel the need to continually be deceitful to cover up their past errors. Shakespeare displays various examples of deceit in the play such as dishonesty, antic disposition and betrayal. Through these forms of deceit, Shakespeare

King Claudius expresses, “Welcome, dear Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. Moreover that we much did long to see you, the need we have to use you did provoke our hasty sending.” (2.2.1-4) He addresses them in what is seemingly a sincere manner, proclaiming the supposed yearning he has had. However, these so-called sincere actions towards Hamlet’s childhood friends are just to convince them to take on the role of spying on Hamlet’s actions and reporting them back to Gertrude and Claudius. He continues to mask his true motives by saying, “To draw him on to pleasures and to gather...you may glean..to us unknown, afflicts him thus that, opened, lies within our remedy.” (2.2.15-19) King Claudius’ choice of words convey an inkling to the audience that he cares for Hamlet because of how he expresses his need to find out Hamlet’s condition, and fix it. This also presents Gertrude with the idea that Claudius has Hamlet’s best interests at heart. This, in King Claudius’ favor, solidifies his honorable, yet selfless stature with his contriving

Hamlet realizes that he is dying and that he now has the excuse to kill Claudius

Claudius is paranoid by the death of Polonius and tries to find the body but cannot. Claudius asks Hamlet where he has taken Polonius and After some sarcastic and funny replies, Hamlet says that he took Polonius “up the stairs into the lobby.” The king guards to find the him and Claudius tells Hamlet that he is leaving to go to England, Hamlet says he dosent want to leave anymore and leaves Claudius to think about how he will get rid of hamlet. He wrote letters asking the English king, to kill Hamlet.

Hamlet’s childhood friends, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern both try to deceive Hamlet. However, their unskilled uses of dishonesty and disloyalty have resulted in their ironic death. They are introduced in the beginning of Act 2, Scene 2 as Hamlet’s childhood friends who are sent for by King Claudius for their services. When they first meet Hamlet and are asked the reason for their arrival, they answer: “To visit you, my lord, no other occasion” (2.2.78). However, Hamlet has already seen through their attempted act of trying to fool him and then replies: “You were sent/for, and there is a kind of confession in your looks, which/ you modesties have not craft enough

This, in turn, exploits Hamlet’s similar flaw of ego and furthers the conflict, but what’s more, it illustrates Claudius’ sheer audacity and lack of repentance. He continues to try to cover up the sin and appease Hamlet into complacency rather than confess and ask for forgiveness. In a mark of pure arrogance, Claudius tells Hamlet to “throw to earth / This unprevailing woe and think of us / As of a father”, conceitedly requesting that Hamlet merely forget the murder and replace his father with the murderer himself (I, ii, 110-112). Similarly, instead of directly confronting Hamlet about his mental condition, the king more or less hires Rosencrantz and Guildenstern to spy on the prince, again cementing his smug mindset. The king does not believe he can be caught or, rather, that Hamlet is competent enough to figure out his plan and foil him. Claudius, too, thinks only of himself after Hamlet’s inadvertent killing of Polonius, pondering “how shall this bloody deed be answered? / It will be laid to us” instead of considering the ramifications of the murder with respect to Hamlet (4.1.17-18). The other two paper-thin traps the king hatches only reinforce his failure to see beyond the apparent; his attempt to deport Hamlet to England and have him killed reeks of treachery and, luckily, Hamlet realizes the king’s subterfuge, crushing the plot and flipping it back on him. Claudius remains steadfast in his efforts to remove Hamlet, going so far as to set up a

Hamlet, the eponymous hero of Shakespeare’s greatest work, descends swiftly into madness and paranoia after the murder of his father and the realization of his mother’s true, morally reprehensible, nature. As a result of these new responsibilities and extreme circumstances, Hamlet diverges from his usual, logical thinking into paranoia and over analysis, a condition that prevents him from trusting anyone. Hamlet, having been born a prince, is, for the first time, forced to make his own decisions after he learns of the true means of his father’s death. Another contributing factor to his madness is the constant probing of others into Hamlet’s sanity. These factors all contribute to Hamlets delay, and that delay contributes to the tragic

Claudius sends Rosencrantz and Guildenstern to spy on Hamlet. Polonius sends Reynaldo to to spy on Laertes in France. This causes both characters to be sneaky because they know they are being spied on. Claudius expresses his feelings by saying “Some little time, so by your companies to draw him on to pleasures, and to gather so much as from occasion you may glean”(Act II. Scene ii.14-16). Claudius states this to Rosencrantz and Guildenstern because he wants them to spy on Hamlet and gain any information that they can. However, Hamlet sees through the trap and gives them false information to report back to the

     Claudius’ lies are effective enough to persistently deceive to play’s antagonist, Hamlet. Despite Hamlet’s disgust with Claudius for marrying Gertrude, and his view of Claudius as “a king of shreds and patches” (III.iv.104), Hamlet suspicion of Claudius as a murderer is preliminarily nonexistent. The appearance of a spirit claiming to be Hamlet’s dead father first alerts Hamlet to the actions of “that incestuous, that adulterate beast, /With witchcraft of his with, with traitorous gifts” (I.v.42-3). And yet still, Hamlet remains hesitant to believe that Claudius was the murderer, searching for complementary evidence. The play that Hamlet enacts -- designed to “catch the conscience of the king” (II.ii.562) --succeeds in revealing Claudius’ guilt, but does not provoke instant action on Hamlet’s part. So effective is Claudius’ manipulation of the royal circle that he manages to almost permanently stay the revelation of his guilt, and if it weren’t for supernatural intervention against an injustice, he may never have been exposed.

The topic of betrayal is a big idea in the play. The way that Rosencrantz and Guildenstern blindly follow Claudius’ orders to keep an eye on Hamlet, can teach you that even those you think you can trust are capable of hurting you. Hamlet is also betrayed by both his uncle, which can teach us that family can also be untrustworthy at times. It also teaches us that we should act on what we promise ourselves before it’s too late. It is presented in a very dramatic way, with Hamlet having his revenge of finally killing Claudius, but we should have learned that it’s always best to act quick on our

One of the more subtle elements of corruption in the play is the manner in which the court of Denmark functions. It is a game of favors, a constant play, with the director as the King, his subjects the players, and none more prominent than Polonius, the royal advisor. Polonius' two main faults lie in his ingratiating manner and his incessant spying. While he tells his daughter Ophelia that Hamlet is not true in his affections, he explains to the King that he warned Ophelia against Hamlet because the Prince it far above her station in life. Polonius perceives himself to be witty and tries to weasel his way around with actions and words to best fit the situation and above all benefit himself. His inclination to spy on people is obvious for he sends a man to France to find out how his son is behaving, he spies on his daughter while she is with Prince Hamlet, and he hides behind the arras to listen to the confrontation between the Queen and Hamlet. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern also try to win favor with the King, foregoing any friendship they once had with Hamlet, to 'play upon [him] . . . pluck out the heart of [his] mystery,' acting as little more than spies for the King, feigning friendship to obtain Hamlet's secrets (3.2.372-374).