CLAUDIUS     … first, her father slain;

Next, your son gone, and he most violent author

Of his own just remove; the people muddied,

Thick and unwholesome in thoughts and whispers

For good Polonius’ death, and we have done but greenly

In hugger-mugger to inter him; poor Ophelia

Divided from herself and her fair judgement,

Without the which we are pictures or mere beasts… (4.5.79-86)

Claudius starts by cataloguing everything that’s gone wrong for Ophelia, but it quickly becomes a catalogue of everything (or almost everything) that’s gone wrong for him. First, her father slain—obviously—next, your son gone, yes, that has to have been a factor, and he most violent author of his own just remove, it was totally his own fault, I had no CHOICE (Claudius focuses more on justifying Hamlet’s banishing, perhaps yet again, to Gertrude, rather than noting that Hamlet murdered Polonius). And the people muddied, thick and unwholesome in thoughts and whispers for good Polonius’ death, there are rumours and gossip, conspiracy theories about it all; people are TALKING and I don’t like it (the sense of Claudius as the spy-master who’s lost his spy-master; he knows that the people are restless, discontented, bit of a tinder-box building?)—maybe they didn’t know or like Polonius (depends on his characterisation; the sense of a beloved figurehead of the old regime, perhaps?) but still that’s what they’re fixated on, mutter mutter, in the pubs and on the street corners, and the corridors of the palace too. And—a further exasperation, an admission of failure—we have done but greenly in hugger-mugger to inter him. We botched the funeral, didn’t we, a great rush, a miscalculation, didn’t observe the proprieties, and the people have seized on that, they think it’s a cover-up, which of course it is. And then there’s poor Ophelia, just now, right here, divided from herself and her fair judgement, out of her mind, completely irrational, without the which we are pictures or mere beasts. Claudius is echoing Hamlet in his account of that which makes humans more than animals—judgement, reason—but he’s also rebuking himself, I’m better than this, I’m supposed to be able to control things. And it’s all slipping away. Ophelia’s madness has become almost incidental to this feeling of building pressure. What he can’t articulate, of course, is the pre-history: his own murder of his brother, the first death.