CLAUDIUS      Last, and as much containing as all these,

Her brother is in secret come from France,

Feeds on this wonder, keeps himself in clouds

And wants not buzzers to infect his ear

With pestilent speeches of his father’s death –

Wherein necessity, of matter beggared,

Will nothing stick our person to arraign

In ear and ear.            (4.5.87-94)

Last, and as much containing as all these—of equal weight and impact as all the terrible things I’ve just listed, continues Claudius, her brother is in secret come from France. Aha, so Claudius hasn’t completely lost control; he still has servants and spies, he still has a sense of what’s going on, and he knows already that Laertes is back in Denmark (which it seems Ophelia herself doesn’t know, yet?). But he knows too that there’s trouble brewing in that respect, because Laertes apparently feeds on this wonder, on all the rumours surrounding Polonius’s death; he keeps himself in clouds, undercover, but the clouds are also the swirling rumours, and he wants not buzzers to infect his ear with pestilent speeches of his father’s death; there are plenty of people who are willing to spread those rumours, pass on gossip and tittle-tattle, speculate, and come up with conspiracy theories—but the terms of Claudius’s conceit are telling, again, as he imagines rumour as poison dripped into an ear, albeit here an all-too-willing one. Laertes is already infected, and the disease is spreading. Wherein necessity, of matter beggared, will nothing stick our person to arraign in ear and ear: because the facts aren’t known, because there’s so little firm evidence to go on, rumour and conspiracy have taken over; a tipping point’s been reached and people are no longer holding back when it comes to accusing me—us—of being somehow to blame. Ear, ear, ear; that detail of his crime, perhaps its oddest, is the one that seems to haunt Claudius, infecting his own language in strange ways.