Enter Lucianus.

HAMLET         This is one Lucianus, nephew to the king.

OPHELIA        You are as good as a chorus, my lord.

HAMLET         I could interpret between you and your love if I could see the puppets dallying.

OPHELIA        You are keen, my lord, you are keen.

HAMLET         It would cost you a groaning to take off mine edge.

OPHELIA        Still better and worse.

HAMLET         So you mistake your husbands. Begin, murderer: leave thy damnable faces and begin. Come, ‘the croaking raven doth bellow for revenge.’   (3.2.237-247)

The MURDERER appears; he might be dressed in black (murderers sometimes had bloody hands, although that seems unlikely here, too stylised)—he might look like Claudius, or Hamlet. Because this is one Lucianus, nephew to the king. A close relation; this isn’t just going to be a regicide. And it’s in this little exchange that Ophelia gets to push back, or even (maybe) share a joke with Hamlet, a sense of a return to a familiar dynamic—or it can be bitter, or baffled. You are a good as a chorus, my lord, in the way you’re narrating this. (Which can suggest: shut up, let us watch this in peace, we don’t need the running commentary.) Hamlet jumps on this, any opportunity for sarcasm, or crudity: I could interpret between you and your love if I could see the puppets dallying. Puppet shows in particular had ‘interpreters’, who narrated the action; what Hamlet’s saying is obscure but there’s a suggestion, perhaps, of Ophelia being manipulated by others (as has been the case) or else of voyeurism, puppets performing sexual actions, dallying. You are keen, my lord, you are keen. Get much sharper and you’ll cut yourself. Oh ha ha very funny, don’t you EVER shut up, just give it a rest, OK? It would cost you a groaning to take off my edge. He’s relentless, picking up on the implicit knife as something phallic and erect that will only be dulled by sex, a groaning. (Or, more innocently, you could at least pretend to laugh at my jokes, groan a bit, you know? I’m doing my best here.) Still better and worse. Not playing; you’re just being foul and also silly and boring now.

Hamlet’s like a dog with a bone, and also, so on edge that he can’t stop, watching Ophelia, Gertrude, Claudius, the play, which has presumably paused (there might be music for him to speak over, as it were in between the scenes). So you mistake your husbands, for better and for worse, mixing them up, men, they’re more or less interchangeable to you, to women in general, aren’t they? A glance at Gertrude. Then, Begin, murderer (this is hard on the murderer, who has been waiting to do just that). Leave thy damnable faces—he’s apparently been grimacing, frowning, looking MURDEROUS—and begin. Come, ‘the croaking raven doth bellow for revenge’. It’s a quote from another contemporary play, and there’s been no suggestion that this is revenge—but it’s what Hamlet’s thinking about, and it’s appropriately ominous for the action which will—finally—ensue.