PLAYER QUEEN         The instances that second marriage move

Are base respects of thrift, but none of love.

A second time I kill my husband dead

When second husband kisses me in bed.

PLAYER KING I do believe you think what now you speak.

But what we do determine oft we break.

Purpose is but the slave to memory,

Of violent birth but poor validity,

Which now like fruit unripe sticks on the tree

But fall unshaken when they mellow be.      (3.2.176-185)

It’s only when one looks at this part of the scene on the page that one realises how long it is; these speeches are a very easy cut in performance, but at the same time they’re a neat snapshot not just of a particular idiom, in their rhyming couplets, but of conventional morality and moralising commonplaces, with a bit of social realism too. The Queen is adamant that she will never remarry: the instances that second marriage move are base respects of thrift, but none of love. Yes, widows do remarry! (This was a recurrent controversy in Christian doctrine, and the widow considering remarriage is often prominent in drama, from many angles, comic and tragic; Webster’s Duchess of Malfi is just one example.) Some people have to remarry, they can’t afford not to! Or, yes, they remarry for financial advantage. But marrying again for love? No. Impossible! A second time I kill my husband dead when second husband kisses me in bed. I couldn’t! (It’s already a pretty on-the-nose thing to be playing before a newly (re)married couple. There’s no way of ‘knowing’ which is the speech that Hamlet has specially written, but the sentiments here are very conventional.)

I do believe you think what now you speak, yes, that’s what you think now, of course it is, dear, replies the King—patiently? lovingly? with a touch of tired pragmatism? But what we do determine oft we break. We’re fickle creatures, love, we change our minds for all sorts of reasons! And then a string of commonplaces: purpose is but the slave to memory; sometimes we just forget why we made a particular decision, or took a particular stand on something; it’s of violent birth but poor validity. We can be adamant, swear to something all we like, passionately, vehemently—but that vehemence doesn’t make it any more likely to last. That which now like fruit unripe sticks on the tree but fall unshaken when they mellow be. Things change over time: that’s just the way life is. A ripe apple will fall to the ground without the slightest encouragement. (There’s a cluster of ideas in this scene—and in the play as a whole—about the Fall, and fallenness, temptation, and sin. The garden setting is part of it, here and for Old Hamlet’s murder.)

One of the ironies here is that the character who is meant in some respects to be a surrogate for Hamlet’s father, and is often very obviously thus in performance, is arguing that his widow should expect to remarry and that he would be ok with it. Easily overlooked, especially if this is heavily cut.