Hamlet: The air bites shrewdly: is it very cold?
Horatio: It is a nipping and an eager air.
Hamlet: What hour now?
Horatio: I think it lacks of twelve.
Hamlet: No, it is struck.
Horatio: Indeed? I heard it not…
(Hamlet, Act 1, scene 4)
This has always been such a strange exchange to me. Why is Hamlet asking Horatio if it’s cold? Dude doesn’t have a thermometer on him; he can’t tell any better what the temperature is than you can. Why is Hamlet asking Horatio the time? He doesn’t have a watch; he doesn’t know the time any better than you do.
For a long time I saw this as an extremely clunky way of setting the scene: Telling the audience the time and the temperature by having the characters tell each other things they would already know. But it occurs to me now that what Shakespeare is actually doing is showing us that Hamlet doesn’t trust his own senses: He feels cold, but he isn’t sure if it’s actually cold. He heard the clock strike, but he doesn’t know what time it is. What it is setting up is the idea of Hamlet’s madness: the idea that he can’t tell what’s real.
THIS. I rarely ever reblog anything, but THIS needs to be reblogged. THIS is the excellent literary analysis I log on to tumblr for.
I have nothing to add on to this, or any extra points to point out like I’d normally do when I reblog something, because this is already perfect as is. What percentage of Hamlet’s madness was faked is such an interesting topic, and for this short interaction to be alluding to his madness- that’s just fantastic.
OP, I haven’t yet done Hamlet in school, and unfortunately I don’t see many posts analyzing if the ghost of Hamlet Sr. was really in Act 3 Scene 4. Please OP, what’s your take on that?