HAMLET         Now is he total gules, horridly tricked

With blood of fathers, mothers, daughters, sons,

Baked and impasted with the parching streets

That lend a tyrannous and a damned light

To their lord’s murder; roasted in wrath and fire,

And thus o’ersized with coagulate gore,

With eyes like carbuncles, the hellish Pyrrhus

Old grandsire Priam seeks.

So proceed you.

POLONIUS      ’Fore God, my lord, well spoken – with good accent and good discretion.          (2.2.395-405)

Hamlet continues to speak the speech, the speech about Pyrrhus, at the fall of Troy. Now is he—Pyrrhus, hitherto the man in black, total gules. He’s red, completely red, like an over-painted shield (gules is red in heraldry), as if he’s wearing red armour even. He is horridly tricked, decked out, with blood of fathers, mothers, daughters, sons—and not only is he covered from head to foot in the blood of others, indiscriminately slaughtered, with no concessions for age or sex, he has been baked and impasted with the parching streets that lend a tyrannous and a damned light to their lord’s murder. Troy is on fire, the flames of the city the only source of light, and giving off such heat that it’s as if all that blood has been baked on to the warrior’s skin. He has been roasted in wrath and fire, burning hot without and within, and thus o’ersized with coagulate gore, so covered with clotted blood that it’s as if he’s a wall, freshly plastered, and with eyes like carbuncles, glowing red too—a fire within, and reflecting the fires of burning Troy, the hellish Pyrrhus, a creature of blood and fire, old grandsire Priam seeks. He’s looking for one person and one person only, the old king; all the other deaths are incidental. It’s an extraordinary, monstrous image, that reverberates with heat, smoke, light, like a volcano on the page. (The more one looks at it, Pyrrhus also sounds a bit like an enormous pie—but the risk of the speech becoming comic in its overblown grotesqueness can perhaps be incorporated into its sense of danger, its surging adrenaline.)

Having got to the almost bathetic mention of old grandsire Priam, Hamlet abruptly hands over to the professionals: so proceed you. But of course Polonius—ironically, perhaps Hamlet glances at him, thinking that he’s Priam-like, with a touch of malice—interjects: he’s impressed by Hamlet’s performance, really rather good: ’fore God, my lord, well spoken—with good accent and good discretion. You handled the verse like a pro, unphased by the metre; all very tasteful and judicious. Bravo!

Shakespeare is showing off wildly here, because it’s Marlowe, but it’s not, and it’s doing strange things with time and memory and anticipation, jumping forward and back, unevenly paced, jump-cuts, slow-motion: Pyrrhus is always already covered with blood, even when he’s still in the horse, the killings—enough to cover him with all that blood—have always already taken place, unremarked except in their horrific effects. And Priam is always already dead. The speech judders on its feet, it stalks like a warrior, prowls like something not quite human. And it’s Hamlet who speaks it.