CLAUDIUS                  How may we try it further?

POLONIUS      You know sometimes he walks four hours together

Here in the lobby?

GERTRUDE                So he does, indeed.

POLONIUS      At such a time I’ll loose my daughter to him.

Be you and I behind an arras then,

Mark the encounter: if he love her not

And be not from his reason fallen thereon

Let me be no assistant for a state

But keep a farm and carters.

CLAUDIUS                              We will try it. (2.2.156-164)

OK then, says Claudius, how may we try it further? how do we test your hypothesis, establish whether Hamlet is indeed maddened by love melancholy? Polonius can be smug; he’s thought this through already and has a plan. You know sometimes he walks four hours together here in the lobby? he paces and paces—it’s an arresting, fleeting image, the sad young man, alone, just—walking. (Is this something Hamlet used to do before his father’s death? Is it a relatively new thing? No way of telling.) So he does, indeed: Gertrude’s on to it, seizing on anything, but also seeing this vision of Hamlet’s isolation in her mind’s eye. (How have we not done anything about this before?) At such a time I’ll loose my daughter to him—as if Ophelia were an animal being released to a hunt, or a bird; there’s an unfortunate sexual sense, Ophelia as bait, as prey: if she’s present, she’s entitled to look outraged, to resist, or to look resigned, defeated as well as horrified. (Gertrude might shoot a sympathetic, apologetic glance, even as she’s in favour of anything that might help.) Be you and I behind an arras then; we’ll be watching, concealed behind a wall-hanging (often a two-way mirror in modern dress productions) (and Polonius doesn’t include Gertrude in this: this is men’s business, surveillance, voyeurism). Mark the encounter. Just you wait and see what we observe. If he love her not and be not from his reason fallen thereon—if it turns out to be the case that Hamlet’s not been driven mad specifically by his love for Ophelia—let me be no assistant for a state but keep a farm and carters. If I’m wrong about this, then I’m simply unfit for purpose, no longer able to be your right-hand man. We will try it, says Claudius. Worth a go; he might check in with Gertrude for silent affirmation, or he might simply go ahead, cutting her out as Polonius. No one asks Ophelia…