HAMLET                                 Let it work.

For ’tis the sport to have the enginer

Hoist with his own petard, and’t shall go hard

But I will delve one yard below their mines

And blow them at the moon. O, ’tis most sweet

When in one line two crafts directly meet.

This man shall set me packing;

I’ll lug the guts into the neighbour room.

Mother, goodnight indeed. This councillor

Is now most still, most secret and most grave,

Who was in life a most foolish prating knave.

Come, sir, to draw toward an end with you.

Goodnight, mother.   (Exit [HAMLET tugging in POLONIUS].)     (3.4.203-215)

 

Let it work; bring it on, Hamlet might say. Let’s just stand by and let this happen, for a bit, watch and wait. For ’tis the sport to have the enginer hoist with his own petard—it’s GREAT when the explosives guy has it all blow up in his face!—and’t shall go hard but I will delve one yard below their mines and blow them at the moon. With any luck I’ll be one step ahead of them; I’ll undermine every trap they lay, dig deeper, move faster. I’ll blow them all sky high. They can’t catch me! They can’t touch me! O, ’tis most sweet when in one line two crafts directly meet. I’m almost looking forward to this, a direct confrontation, plot and counter-plot. (Craft here probably means cunning, but it perhaps also suggests two ships taking the same course, smashing into each other.) Let’s see who blinks first. This man—Claudius? or Polonius’s killing?—shall set me packing; this has set things inexorably, pulled out the pin and sent me on my way. I’ve been overtaken by events; no more delay.

I’ll lug the guts into the neighbour room—false jollity? brutal crassness? whatever, Hamlet’s not going to leave his mother to deal with the body (which is a theatrical problem more than a dramatic one, getting a ‘body’ offstage), he’s most likely going to drag Polonius in an undignified heap. Mother, goodnight indeed. Really going now! And mother, he calls her, one hopes with less sarcasm than he did at the beginning of the scene. A final sarcastic, despairing couplet, though: this councillor is now most still, most secret and most grave, who was in life a most foolish prating knave. He’s about as quiet, discreet, and solemn as he could be now, given that—when he was alive—he was an idiot who could never shut up, a platitude for every occasion. Mock serious: come, sir, to draw toward an end with you—and Hamlet perhaps picks up Polonius’s feet, and starts to drag him. Time to go! I’ve had enough of this. Goodnight, mother!

And that’s the end of the scene, and of the act. Exit Hamlet, with Polonius’s body; Gertrude remains, stunned, aghast, exhausted.