Hamlet - Act 4 Scene 4
A plain in Denmark.
This entrance is another opportunity for stage spectacle: if the performers and costumes are available, Fortinbras may lead an impressive military march, complete with drums and trumpets.
Fortinbras is introduced in stark opposition to Hamlet: confident, martial, and leading a group of soldiers. Fortinbras' costume and bearing may also present him as a contrast to Hamlet.
Enter FORTINBRAS, a Captain, and Soldiers, marching
PRINCE FORTINBRAS
Go, captain, from me greet the Danish king;
Tell him that, by his licence, Fortinbras
Craves the conveyance of a promised march
Over his kingdom. You know the rendezvous.
If that his majesty would aught with us,
We shall express our duty in his eye;
And let him know so.
Captain
I will do't, my lord.
PRINCE FORTINBRAS
Go softly on.
Exeunt FORTINBRAS and Soldiers
Enter HAMLET, ROSENCRANTZ, GUILDENSTERN, and others
The timing of these entrances and exits may allow Fortinbras and Hamlet a glimpse of each other, or they may not share the stage at all. The contrast continues: Fortinbras leaves at the head of an army, Hamlet enters as a prisoner, possibly bound or chained.
HAMLET
Good sir, whose powers are these?
Captain
They are of Norway, sir.
HAMLET
How purposed, sir, I pray you?
Captain
Against some part of Poland.
HAMLET
Who commands them, sir?
The Captain offers a reminder of the similarities between Hamlet and Fortinbras, both of whom are sons of a slain king, both nephews to a current king.
Captain
The nephew to old Norway, Fortinbras.
HAMLET
Goes it against the main of Poland, sir,
Or for some frontier?
The Captain's comment provides a counterpoint to the spectacle of Fortinbras' entrance and exit: the impressive army is on its way to fight for a useless bit of territory, of no value to anyone.
Captain
Truly to speak, and with no addition,
We go to gain a little patch of ground
That hath in it no profit but the name.
To pay five ducats, five, I would not farm it;
Nor will it yield to Norway or the Pole
A ranker rate, should it be sold in fee.
HAMLET
Why, then the Polack never will defend it.
Captain
Yes, it is already garrisoned.
An "imposthume" is a canker or abcess; Hamlet imagines, once more, an inner infection which can kill while leaving the outer body intact. Here, the cause of the disease is wealth and peace, which breed needless wars.
HAMLET
Two thousand souls and twenty thousand ducats
Will not debate the question of this straw:
This is the imposthume of much wealth and peace,
That inward breaks, and shows no cause without
Why the man dies. I humbly thank you, sir.
Captain
God be wi' you, sir.
Exit
ROSENCRANTZ
Wilt please you go, my lord?
HAMLET
I'll be with you straight; go a little before.
Exeunt all except HAMLET
"He that made us" is God, who creates human beings with the capacity for thought and reason. Hamlet accepts now that thinking has its purpose and its value, though it can still inhibit action.
As in 2.2, Hamlet compares himself to other role models. Previously, he compared his own silence to the Player's ability to summon up speech and tears; now he compares his own inaction to Fortinbras and Fortinbras' men, who are ready to die for a worthless yet honourable cause, while Hamlet, full of noble motives, could not bring himself to act.
Hamlet's final oath here is stirring and triumphant, but counterpointed by his current circumstances: having sworn himself to vengeance and violence, he is now led off to his exile, powerless to put his newfound resolution into action.
How all occasions do inform against me,
And spur my dull revenge! What is a man,
If his chief good and market of his time
Be but to sleep and feed? A beast, no more.
Sure, he that made us with such large discourse,
Looking before and after, gave us not
That capability and god-like reason
To fust in us unused. Now, whether it be
Bestial oblivion, or some craven scruple
Of thinking too precisely on the event,
A thought which, quartered, hath but one part wisdom
And ever three parts coward, I do not know
Why yet I live to say 'This thing's to do;'
Sith I have cause and will and strength and means
To do't. Examples gross as earth exhort me:
Witness this army of such mass and charge
Led by a delicate and tender prince,
Whose spirit with divine ambition puffed
Makes mouths at the invisible event,
Exposing what is mortal and unsure
To all that fortune, death and danger dare,
Even for an egg-shell. Rightly to be great
Is not to stir without great argument,
But greatly to find quarrel in a straw
When honour's at the stake. How stand I then,
That have a father killed, a mother stained,
Excitements of my reason and my blood,
And let all sleep, while, to my shame, I see
The imminent death of twenty thousand men,
That, for a fantasy and trick of fame,
Go to their graves like beds, fight for a plot
Whereon the numbers cannot try the cause,
Which is not tomb enough and continent
To hide the slain? O, from this time forth,
My thoughts be bloody, or be nothing worth!
Exit