Spies and Players

GEORGE:
So right away: the scene begins with the king and queen acting like concerned parents. But it feels… staged.
 
SHAKESPEARE:
Because it is staged.
Mark their language: they crave a cause, a label, a tidy diagnosis — “What ails him?”
Yet their hands are already in the plot. They have hired watchers.
Concern and control wear the same cloak here.

GEORGE:
And the watchers are Rosencrantz and Guildenstern — Hamlet’s old friends.
Let me ask bluntly: are they villains?

SHAKESPEARE:
They are instruments.
Not grand villains with black banners — rather men who wish to please authority and keep their place.
In a court like this, friendship becomes employment.
And employment demands a report.

GEORGE:
So Claudius says, “Spend time with Hamlet, figure out what’s wrong,” but the real job is: Find what he knows. Find what he intends.

SHAKESPEARE:
Aye.
And I make it plain: they are sent for.
They are not there by chance. They are summoned, instructed, rewarded.

Transcript

After looking at and thinking about the structure of the podcast series - conversations with Shakespeare I decided to make this podcast episode and hopefully others what t a series titled conversations with Shakespeare promises: George Bartley in direct conversation with Master Shakespeare, with Shakespeare doing the heavy lifting (intent, craft, stage logic), and me steering with sharp “journalist” questions and occasional modern paraphrases to keep listeners oriented.

So with that philosophy in mind, I'd like to do an analysis of Hamlet — Act 2, Scene 2 - for this episode of Conversations with Shakespeare —“Spies, Players, and the Spark That Starts the Trap”

GEORGE BARTLEY (Host):
Hello friends, George Bartley here — and welcome back to Conversations with Shakespeare.
Master Shakespeare is with us again today, and we are staying strictly inside Hamlet, Act 2, Scene 2.
Master Shakespeare, if I say this scene is a switchboard — everybody plugging into everybody — am I exaggerating?

WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE:
Nay, sir. Thou hast named it well.
This one chamber holds a kingdom’s wiring: power, surveillance, performance, and truth-hunting.
A court that listens at doors. A son that speaks in riddles.
And players that will make a lie confess itself.

GEORGE:
So right away: the scene begins with the king and queen acting like concerned parents. But it feels… staged.
 
SHAKESPEARE:
Because it is staged.
Mark their language: they crave a cause, a label, a tidy diagnosis — “What ails him?”
Yet their hands are already in the plot. They have hired watchers.
Concern and control wear the same cloak here.

GEORGE:
And the watchers are Rosencrantz and Guildenstern — Hamlet’s old friends.
Let me ask bluntly: are they villains?

SHAKESPEARE:
They are instruments.
Not grand villains with black banners — rather men who wish to please authority and keep their place.
In a court like this, friendship becomes employment.
And employment demands a report.

GEORGE:
So Claudius says, “Spend time with Hamlet, figure out what’s wrong,” but the real job is: Find what he knows. Find what he intends.

SHAKESPEARE:
Aye.
And I make it plain: they are sent for.
They are not there by chance. They are summoned, instructed, rewarded.

GEORGE:
Before we get to Hamlet, I want to touch the political side.
We get news from Voltemand and Cornelius — the ambassadors — about Norway. Why is that jammed into this scene?

SHAKESPEARE:
Because Denmark’s sickness is not only in one man’s mind.
I place external threat beside internal rot — to show a kingdom strained on all sides.

GEORGE:
And the Norway report is basically: “Young Fortinbras was aiming at Denmark, but the old king of Norway has redirected him toward Poland.”

SHAKESPEARE:
Yes — a neat diplomatic net.
It calms Claudius for a moment: “Good, the border will not burn today.”
But calm is temporary here. Denmark is a house where one room is always on fire.

GEORGE:
Then Polonius swoops in — and he’s thrilled because he thinks he’s solved Hamlet.

SHAKESPEARE:
He is the kind of man who loves to be needed.
He is hungry to be the clever servant with the answer.

GEORGE:
His answer: “Hamlet is mad for love — because Ophelia rejected him.”
Is Polonius sincere, or is he selling what the king wants to buy?

SHAKESPEARE:
Both.
He believes his own story because it flatters his control:
“If Hamlet’s wildness comes from my daughter, then I still matter. I still steer the ship.”
And he sells it because it makes the king feel he can manage Hamlet like a problem with a handle.

GEORGE:
And he reads Hamlet’s letter to Ophelia — the one that starts “To the celestial…”
When you wrote that letter, were you showing true love, or showing Hamlet’s pose?

SHAKESPEARE:
I show a young man reaching for the language of devotion —
and also a young man who is educated, rhetorical, overfull.
But I set it in Polonius’s mouth — not in Hamlet’s.
So the audience hears love through a filter of meddling, surveillance, and exhibition.

GEORGE:
That’s key: even a love letter becomes evidence in a case file.

SHAKESPEARE:
Exactly so.
Denmark has turned intimacy into intelligence.

GEORGE:
Then comes that “test” — Polonius tells Claudius and Gertrude: “Hide yourselves; I’ll talk to Hamlet and we’ll see if love is the cause.”
So we have more hiding, more spying.

SHAKESPEARE:
A court of curtains.
I keep repeating the pattern so the audience learns the rule:
If someone speaks honestly, someone is likely listening dishonestly.

Hamlet Enters: The Comedy That’s Not a Comedy
GEORGE:
Now Hamlet finally enters — and the scene gets funny on the surface.
Polonius asks, “Do you know me?” and Hamlet answers with that brutal joke: “You’re a fishmonger.”
Master Shakespeare, why the clowning?

SHAKESPEARE:
Because Hamlet needs armor, and his armor is wit.
He cannot draw a sword in this moment.
So he draws blood with language.

GEORGE:
So “fishmonger” isn’t just random — it’s an insult.

SHAKESPEARE:
A coarse thrust.
A word that can smell of trade, corruption, selling, and — if one wishes — the trafficking of women.
Hamlet mocks Polonius as a man who “sells” his daughter’s obedience in the marketplace of power.

GEORGE:
And Polonius responds like someone trying to prove his theory: “This is madness, but there’s method in it.”


SHAKESPEARE:
There it is — the line that tells the truth.
Polonius finally glimpses that Hamlet’s speech is not mere fog.
Hamlet chooses his fog.
He uses confusion as a weapon.

GEORGE:
Hamlet also calls Polonius “old,” “tedious,” “a foolish prating knave” — in polite disguise.
Is Hamlet improvising? Or is he strategically pushing buttons?

SHAKESPEARE:
Strategic.
He aims to make Polonius underestimate him —
to make Polonius think: “He’s broken. He’s obsessed with love. He’s harmless.”
Meanwhile Hamlet is reading the room like a soldier reads terrain.

GEORGE:
Then Rosencrantz and Guildenstern arrive. Hamlet greets them warmly — and within minutes he’s probing them like a detective.

SHAKESPEARE:
Because he feels the net tighten.
Friends do not arrive together from court without a reason.

GEORGE:
Hamlet presses them: “Were you sent for?”
They try to dodge. He keeps pressing. They finally admit it.

SHAKESPEARE:
A betrayal, but a common one.
They do not say, “We are here to spy.”
But Hamlet hears the shape of it: their presence is commissioned.

GEORGE:
And Hamlet gives that famous speech about Denmark being a prison, and about how he’s lost all joy — “Man delights not me… nor woman neither…”

Mr. Shakespeare, is it OK with you if I go ahead and use those lines to describe Hamlet's feelings?

Certainly Mr. Bartley. By all means.

I will tell you why; so shall my anticipation
prevent your discovery, and your secrecy to the
King and Queen molt no feather. I have of late, but
wherefore I know not, lost all my mirth, forgone all
custom of exercises, and, indeed, it goes so heavily
with my disposition that this goodly frame, the
Earth, seems to me a sterile promontory; this most
excellent canopy, the air, look you, this brave o’erhanging
firmament, this majestical roof, fretted
with golden fire—why, it appeareth nothing to me
but a foul and pestilent congregation of vapors.
What a piece of work is a man, how noble in
reason, how infinite in faculties, in form and moving
how express and admirable; in action how like
an angel, in apprehension how like a god: the
beauty of the world, the paragon of animals—and
yet, to me, what is this quintessence of dust? Man
delights not me, no, nor women neither, though by
your smiling you seem to say so.

SHAKESPEARE:
A confession, yes — and also a performance.
Hamlet tells the truth about his bleakness, but he also uses language to control what they carry back.
He will give them sadness — not his plan.
He will give them philosophy — not his target.

GEORGE:
So he’s feeding them something safe.

SHAKESPEARE:
Safe for him.
It makes him look wounded, not dangerous.

GEORGE:
Then we get the arrival of the players.
This is where my heart starts beating, because suddenly the play becomes about… plays.

SHAKESPEARE:
Now thou art in my workshop.
The players are not decoration; they are a lever.

GEORGE:
Hamlet is thrilled to see them — like he’s seeing oxygen.

SHAKESPEARE:
Because they bring a tool he can wield openly.
A prince cannot interrogate a king with chains.
But he can host entertainment.

GEORGE:
He asks for a speech. And the player delivers that intense story about Pyrrhus and Priam and Hecuba.

SHAKESPEARE:
A speech of revenge, slaughter, and grief — staged grief that becomes real in the speaking.
I set it before Hamlet like a mirror:
“Here is a man avenging a father. Here is a queen in sorrow. Here is the world on fire.”
And Hamlet listens and measures himself against it.

GEORGE:
Because the actor weeps — or at least becomes emotionally overwhelmed — over a fictional queen, a fictional story.

SHAKESPEARE:
And Hamlet, with a real father murdered, has not yet struck.
So he is stunned:
“How can this man summon tears for nothing — while I, with everything, do nothing?”

The Mousetrap Is Born
GEORGE:
Then Hamlet has the idea: he tells the players they’ll perform something, and he’ll add lines.
This is the seed of the “play within the play,” right?

SHAKESPEARE:
It is the spark.
Hamlet sees a method that fits his danger:
He cannot accuse without proof.
He cannot strike without certainty.
So he will test the king’s face.

He exits.

GEORGE:
Let me let me let me He says he’ll catch the conscience of the king.

SHAKESPEARE:
Aye.
Not with torture, not with steel — but with representation.
A staged murder that echoes a real one.
And if Claudius flinches, rises, breaks, reveals — Hamlet will read it as guilt.

GEORGE:
So theatre becomes a truth machine.

SHAKESPEARE:
In this world — yes.
And I, being a playwright, confess my bias:
I show that performance can reveal what power tries to hide.

Hamlet Alone: The Big Soliloquy at the End
GEORGE:
Now we reach the end of the scene — Hamlet alone.
This is one of those speeches where he tears into himself.

SHAKESPEARE:
He does.
He calls himself coward, scolds his delay, lashes his own mind.
But listen carefully: the speech is not only self-hatred.
It is strategy forming under pressure.

GEORGE:
Because he ends with a plan.

SHAKESPEARE:
Just so.
The speech begins in disgust — “Why am I still talking?”
But it ends with action — “Here is what I will do next.”
That is the movement: from paralysis toward a chosen experiment.

GEORGE:
Let me paraphrase for listeners in plain modern speech — tell me if this is fair:
Hamlet basically says:
“I’m ashamed I haven’t acted. An actor can cry over fiction. I have real cause. But I’m not going to rush blindly — I will use a play to test Claudius. If he reacts, I’ll know. If he doesn’t, then maybe the ghost misled me.”

SHAKESPEARE:
That is fair — and accurate to my design.
Hamlet fears deception.
He knows the ghost may be true — or may be hell’s bait.
So he crafts a test that is public enough to be safe, subtle enough to be deadly.

GEORGE:
So in Act 2, Scene 2, Hamlet isn’t just spiraling. He’s building.

SHAKESPEARE:
Exactly.
This is the scene where the prince becomes an artist of investigation.
He turns his anguish into a device.

O, what a rogue and peasant slave am I!
Is it not monstrous that this player here,
But in a fiction, in a dream of passion,
Could force his soul so to his own conceit
That from her working all his visage wanned,
Tears in his eyes, distraction in his aspect,
A broken voice, and his whole function suiting
With forms to his conceit—and all for nothing!
For Hecuba!
What’s Hecuba to him, or he to Hecuba,
That he should weep for her? What would he do
Had he the motive and the cue for passion
That I have? He would drown the stage with tears
And cleave the general ear with horrid speech,
Make mad the guilty and appall the free,
Confound the ignorant and amaze indeed
The very faculties of eyes and ears. Yet I,
A dull and muddy-mettled rascal, peak
Like John-a-dreams, unpregnant of my cause,
And can say nothing—no, not for a king
Upon whose property and most dear life
A damned defeat was made. Am I a coward?
Who calls me “villain”? breaks my pate across?
Plucks off my beard and blows it in my face?
Tweaks me by the nose? gives me the lie i’ th’ throat
As deep as to the lungs? Who does me this?
Ha! ’Swounds, I should take it! For it cannot be
But I am pigeon-livered and lack gall
To make oppression bitter, or ere this
I should have fatted all the region kites
With this slave’s offal. Bloody, bawdy villain!
Remorseless, treacherous, lecherous, kindless
villain!
O vengeance!
Why, what an ass am I! This is most brave,
That I, the son of a dear father murdered,
Prompted to my revenge by heaven and hell,
Must, like a whore, unpack my heart with words
And fall a-cursing like a very drab,
A stallion! Fie upon ’t! Foh!
About, my brains!—Hum, I have heard
That guilty creatures sitting at a play
Have, by the very cunning of the scene,
Been struck so to the soul that presently
They have proclaimed their malefactions;
For murder, though it have no tongue, will speak
With most miraculous organ. I’ll have these players
Play something like the murder of my father
Before mine uncle. I’ll observe his looks;
I’ll tent him to the quick. If he do blench,
I know my course. The spirit that I have seen
May be a devil, and the devil hath power
T’ assume a pleasing shape; yea, and perhaps,
Out of my weakness and my melancholy,
As he is very potent with such spirits,
Abuses me to damn me. I’ll have grounds
More relative than this. The play’s the thing
Wherein I’ll ca

GEORGE:
Master Shakespeare, if I had to sum up Act 2, Scene 2 in one sentence fwould this work:
“This is the scene where Denmark’s spies multiply — and Hamlet answers spying with theatre”?

SHAKESPEARE:
A strong sentence.
I would add:
“And where a man who feels trapped learns how to set a trap of his own.”

GEORGE:
Perfect.
Friends, that is Act 2, Scene 2 only — the arrival of the watchers, the political report, Polonius’s theory, Hamlet’s razor wit, the ‘friendship’ betrayal, the players, and the plan that will soon become the Mousetrap.
Next time, we’ll continue — but we won’t step outside this scene today.

SHAKESPEARE:
And remember: in Denmark, words are watched —
but words also watch back.

Join celebrate creativity and conversations with Shakespeare for the following episode when we delve into act three, scene one where are Rose crabs and Guildenstern continue to argue about what Hamlet's problem is.

Sources Include:  The Norton Complete Works of William Shakespeare, The Essential Shakespeare Handbook, Asimov’s Guide to Shakespeare: A Guide to Understanding and Enjoying the Works of Shakespeare by Isaac Asimov, Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human by Harold Bloom, Shakesfear and How to Cure It, by Dr. Ralph Cohen, Shakespeare’s Characters for Students, edited by Catherine C Dominic, Will in the World: How Shakespeare Became Shakespeare by Stephen Greenblatt, The Essential Shakespeare Handbook by Leslie Dunton-Downer and Alan Riding, The world of Shakespeare by Anna Claburne and Rebecca trays, and ChatGPT four.