CLAUDIUS The other motive
Why to a public count I might not go
Is the great love the general gender bear him,
Who, dipping all his faults in their affection,
Work like the spring that turneth wood to stone,
Convert his gyves to graces, so that my arrows,
Too slightly timbered for so loud a wind,
Would have reverted to my bow again
But not where I have aimed them. (4.7.17-25)
This is (mostly) such an easy cut, after the last 3 lines, but it’s an extraordinary passage, as Claudius continues to justify to a sceptical Laertes why he can’t go after Hamlet publicly, why he has to prosecute him indirectly, secretly—and therefore why Laertes should work with him. The other motive why to a public count I might not go—the other reason why I can’t hold him to account openly, put him on trial, for instance, over Polonius’s death—is the great love the general gender bear him. Hamlet’s really popular! (Claudius, of course, isn’t naming him. He tries not to; of course it’s his brother’s name too.) The people love him! (There’s no way of testing this, of course; ‘the people’ never appear in the play, and partly this is carefully pushing back at Laertes, who has arrived at the head of some kind of popular uprising, at least potentially. The people love Hamlet!—not you, not really, is the subtext.) But they’ll forgive him anything, dipping all his faults in their affection, works like the spring that turneth wood to stone; they indulge him, anything he does wrong, they’ll put a positive spin on, and convert his gyves to graces. That which should fetter him—literally shackle him, like a convict—they reimagine as charisma. (It’s a devastating portrait of privilege—the prince who gets away with murder, literally—but also a needling indictment of the stupidity of the people, oh, they’re stupid, they don’t understand—easily led—and fickle. Watch out, Laertes.) And because of this, my arrows, too slightly timbered for so loud a wind, would have reverted to my bow again but not where I have aimed them. Anything I did openly to confront Hamlet, to Bring Him To Justice, would misfire, too flimsy against the prevailing wind—the shouting—of public opinion. It’d blow up in my face; too dangerous. No, this way is better. The conceits are compelling in their cognitive density: the wood turned to stone in the magical spring, the shackles reimagined, alliteratively, as some kind of special talent, the arrows blown off-course by the sheer noise of public acclamation. Keep up, Laertes! You need to be with me. You need to do as I say.
