CLAUDIUS                  O heavy deed!

It had been so with us had we been there.

His liberty is full of threats to all,

To you yourself, to us, to everyone.

Alas, how shall this bloody deed be answered?

It will be laid to us whose providence

Should have kept short, restrained and out of haunt

This mad young man.            (4.1.12-19)

O heavy deed! That’s a disaster! But Claudius expresses no further shock or distress that it was Polonius who was killed; rather, he suspects he’s had a narrow escape himself. (Narrower than he imagines: Hamlet decided against killing him earlier on, after all.) It had been so with us had we been there. That could have been me! Us! Me, the royal we! I could be dead right now, if that’d been me behind that arras! Wow. Phew. So enough is enough, then; his liberty is full of threats to all—Hamlet can’t be allowed to remain At Large a moment longer—he’s a threat to you yourself, to us, to everyone. Who knows what he might do next, he might attack you! Or me! Or someone else! No one is safe!

Alas, how shall this bloody deed be answered? What’s an appropriate response—and what will be the consequences? But then the canny politician comes to the fore—ah, no, not good—it will be laid to us whose providence should have kept short, restrained and out of haunt this mad young man. People will think it’s MY fault, for not locking Hamlet up, not keeping him under control; for not being properly in charge. It’s happened on my watch, after all! This mad young man is impersonal but also slightly patronising; he can’t help it, poor soul, but there are limits. Partly Claudius is thinking aloud, in a way that sounds vaguely middle-managerial, as if he forgot to do the risk assessment and now the insurer will refuse to pay out. But he’s also backing Gertrude into a corner, so that she’ll accept whatever ‘solution’ he comes up with, to Hamlet’s apparent, and now apparently paranoid and homicidal, madness.