HAMLET         Now might I do it. But now ’a is a-praying.

And now I’ll do it [Draws sword.] – and so ’a goes to heaven,

And so am I revenged! That would be scanned:

A villain kills my father, and for that

I, his sole son, do this same villain send

To heaven.

Why, this is base and silly, not revenge.      (3.3.73-79)

Quite by chance, it seems, here’s Hamlet. Speculations about the configuration of the castle are pointless; what difference does it make for Hamlet to pass by? through? the chapel or an oratory en route to his mother’s closet? what matters (unless he too has come to pray, perhaps?) is that, unexpectedly, here he is, and his enemy, confirmed as the murderer of his father, is here too, vulnerable, unaware. Hamlet can sound amazed, initially: now might I do it. I could, right now. I could just do it. (He never quite says what it is.) A reconsideration, another now, as the moments tick past, the endless now of theatre: but now ’a is a-praying. There is that. He’s at his prayers. Room, even, to continue with the incredulity: the hypocrite, he’s actually praying! That might explain the renewed intention. And now I’ll do it; this time, I will, now, no, now. And so ’a goes to heaven, and so am I revenged! Ah. Not now, then. A pause. That would be scanned; I need to think this through a bit more. Now, before doing anything rash. A villain kills my father—yes, this villain, right here, on his knees—and for that I, his sole son, the son and heir of the victim, charged with vengeance, by my father himself—do this same villain send to heaven. That’s the logic. If I were to do it, now. To heaven. He’d die, wouldn’t he, in a state of grace, because, look, there he is, praying, right now.

A pause, to consider. (And the fiction is—unless a production is extraordinarily daring, don’t think I’ve ever seen it—that Claudius can’t hear any of this. It’s a soliloquy, yet again, with a potential on-stage audience.)

Hamlet’s considered: why, this is base and silly, not revenge. I’d be a fool, dishonourable, weak, if I were to kill him now. It wouldn’t be revenge at all! I wouldn’t be showing myself my father’s son, if I were to do it now. (Variants all through here, and many editorial emendations; base and silly is Q2.)