Hamlet did not say, they rarely ordain a man during the few hours between murdering a King and being drawn and quartered for the crime. He merely looked away.

  “God doesn’t judge us by whether men think we’re great or not,” said Horatio.

  “No, his standard is even harsher. It’s easier to be great than to be good, and easier to be good than to do right.”

  “There’s a distinction there too fine for me to see.”

  “A good man does what he believes is right. He might be wrong about what’s right, but because he intended to do good, he’s a good man.”

  Horatio nodded gravely. “Whatever you swore to your father, Hamlet, don’t be afraid to do it.”

  Am I afraid? “I’m not.”

  “Don’t hesitate,” said Horatio.

  Trust a man who never trusted me. Strike down an uncle I have always loved, for the sake of a father who never loved me. Why would I hesitate to do that? “I won’t,” said Hamlet.

  “And yet you stay your hand.”

  If I strode into King Claudius’s court with drawn sword, I would be dead before I got near enough to strike. “God has not yet put the opportunity before me,” said Hamlet. Some secrets are too heavy for a man to want to burden his friends.

  Besides, Horatio had already made his point, with that story of Herod: If he knew that Hamlet meant to kill the King, Horatio would have no choice but to kill Hamlet first. You do wrong to prevent a greater wrong; thus wrong becomes right.

  Did Marcellus and Bernardo keep their word, and tell no one of the ghost? Hamlet couldn’t help but wonder; wherever he went in the castle, on the grounds, in the stables, anywhere at all, he could feel all eyes upon him. They may not know the charge that his father had placed upon him by oath, but they seemed to have heard that a ghost had visited him; they looked at him as one with a fey upon him, a mixture of dread and pity.

  And if word had spread of a ghost, then surely they had guessed whose ghost it was; and if they knew who it was, then it took no scholar to guess what the ghost had sworn Hamlet to do.

  If King Claudius was, indeed, a bloody-handed fratricide, then what would stop him from killing the nephew as easily as he had killed the brother? Then what would come of Hamlet’s vengeance, if he himself were dead?

  If they look at me as a fey spirit, then let them see what they look for. Let it not be vengeance they see in my eyes, but madness. Let them see an orphan who grieves too much, not a son who calculates revenge. Let me stay alive until I have a chance to get Uncle Claudius alone.

  He began his masquerade when by chance he heard laughter up a stair. He thought he knew the voice, and when he bounded up the long flight of steps he soon learned that he was right. It was Ophelia, laughing with one of her maids. Ophelia, who was Laertes’s sister and Polonius’s daughter, had been only thirteen when Hamlet left for Heidelberg. Even then, he had felt her eyes upon him and had known that, quite apart from any wish of her father that his daughter be allied with the royal house, she herself had thoughts of, if not feelings for, the crown prince of Denmark.

  Not any more, thought Hamlet. No crown prince now, and so no dynastic alliance and no yearnings.

  But he could make use of her all the same.

  He paused for only a moment in the corridor, to half undress himself, as if he had been in the midst of putting on his clothes, but got distracted. Carrying his shoes and doublet, he strode into her room. At once the maid fell silent in the midst of some tale, and Ophelia leapt to her feet, her sewing dropping from its place on her lap to the floor. “Your Highness,” she said. “What brings you to my room?”

  Hamlet fixed his gaze on her and never let it wander as he walked closer and took her by the hand. She smiled tentatively. He did not smile back; he only stared into her eyes.

  “Will Your Highness take refreshment?” she asked.

  He said nothing.

  “How can I serve you, my Lord?” she asked.

  Hamlet reached his hand to his forehead and bent over her, almost as if to kiss her. He could hear her breathing more heavily, and saw her close her eyes. For a moment he thought that he had frightened her, that she was about to faint. But then he realized that her lips were parted. She was waiting for a kiss.

  That was not what he had intended. She was not supposed to want him now. She had been a sweet girl, when he knew her years ago; she was a pretty woman now, and though he had no particular desire for any of her tribe, he knew it was wrong to trifle with her. She thought he meant something by coming here.

  And yet her misunderstanding would do as well as any other purpose. Let them think he was pining for love of her.

  But he could not kiss her. That would be a kind of promise, and knowing that soon enough he would be a murderer and traitor, doomed to die, how could he encourage her to love him?

  He sighed at his own foolishness. Then sighed again, this time as if in pain. He screwed up his face as if in agony, then fled the room and ran pell-mell along the corridor and down the stairs.

  After that he shunned everyone’s company for the rest of the day, refusing to let the servants open his door. Whenever he heard footsteps approach, he groaned as piteously as he could. When someone called through the door, “Your Highness, are you well? Are you ill? May I bring you something?” he answered with a muttered “Leave me alone” or “Why are you cursing me like this?” or “What harm have I done you?”

  Meanwhile, he lay on his bed and read The Confessions of St. Augustine. Here was a miracle and also madness, that the words of a man who lived in Africa before the heathen Arabs stole the land from Christ could speak so powerfully to him now; a man of the south, teaching a man of the north; a priest full of power comforting a prince full of death.

  He knew enough of court and courtiers that his absence from dinner would be noticed by everyone; that Ophelia would have gone to her father and her father to the King and Queen; that they would be guessing about what was going on in Hamlet’s mind. If they knew about the ghost, they might think the spirit had driven him mad. If they suspected him of harboring ill will because his uncle had the throne and his mother, then they would see him, not as a resolved and dangerous enemy, but as a pouting boy. If they thought he yearned for the love of Ophelia, then perhaps they would be contemplating some kind of wedding. If they thought he was transported by grief for his father’s death, they would be thinking of amusements to distract him.

  Just so they didn’t think to take away his sword, or keep him from the presence of the King. He could seem mad, but not so mad that they would find a need to shut him up behind a locked door, where only the ghost of his father could visit him, to condemn him for having failed so thoroughly.

  If they saw him sane, they would be wary of him; if too mad, they would be afraid for another reason; he must hew to the middle ground, so they would leave him to wander about as he wanted, ignoring him or coddling him.

  And so it was the next day. It began when he found Rosencrantz and Guildenstern outside his door, waiting on two chairs that hadn’t been there earlier. They pretended they had only happened to be there, but were delighted to see him.

  It was a simple matter to call them by the wrong names, and then speak of Father as if he were still alive. “Did you mean to join my father on the hunt today?” he asked. “My father goes a-hunting—don’t you hear the horns?”

  Rosencrantz shied away at this, but Guildenstern only smiled. “The pleasures of the hunt are not done, just because your father is no longer here to enjoy them.”

  “I hunt like a fisherman,” said Hamlet. “I sit in my boat, pull up the net, and see what has come to me.”

  “Then you’ll catch no deer, not in any woods I know of,” said Rosencrantz.

  “I’ll have the eight-pronged buck,” Hamlet retorted. “I’ll have him through and through with a syllogism—old stags aren’t much for logic, it stuns them and they stand there waiting for the dogs.”

  “What are you talking about, Your Highness?” asked Guildenstern.

  “Into your ears, but above your head.”

  “Let us go with you,” said Rosencrantz. “Where are you going?”

  “Only a few steps,” said Hamlet. “All the way to hell. No, stay here, there’s not room for you yet, I have to sweep out the room where Judas used to dwell. Stay. I don’t need you with me right now.”

  They didn’t know what to make of his reference to Judas Iscariote’s room in hell. They would wonder if he was accusing them of disloyalty. Which, of course, he was, since they had obviously been brought to court to try to bring him to his senses.

  It was almost fun, and certainly exhilarating, to feign a bit of madness and watch them all hop. Hamlet hadn’t realized before how much of his life had been devoted to doing what they all expected of him, acting out the role of prince. Now he had no role, and was improvising a new one that made no one comfortable—except himself. Madness kept them all at a greater distance than his rank had ever done.

  Hamlet came into the court with a book in front of his nose; he held it too close to read the letters. Everyone fell silent—Uncle Claudius was hearing someone’s petition. Mother rose to her feet as if to go to Hamlet, but Polonius waved her off with a small gesture and took Hamlet by his arm, leading him back out of the room.

  “What are you reading?” Polonius asked.

  “Words, words, words,” said Hamlet.

  “And what’s the subject?”

  “Lesser than the King, but still not nothing.”

  It took Polonius a moment to realize he had answered another meaning of “subject.” “I mean what do you read about?”

  “All in a line, back and forth,” said Hamlet. “I go from left to right with my mind full, and then must drop it there and head back empty-headed to the left side again, and take up another load to carry forward. It’s a most tedious job, and when I’m done, there are all the letters where I found them, unchanged despite my having carried them all into my head.”

  Polonius laughed, as if he hoped that Hamlet was joking. “As fine a description of reading as I ever heard. But what does the book say?”

  Hamlet looked at him with pity. “It says that old men grow confused, and ask young men for wisdom. You could listen at this book all day and night and hear nothing, but if you threw it at my head, I’d learn much and you’d hear more.”

  Polonius looked at him quizzically. “I think you mean something by this.”

  “More than you think, and less than I know,” said Hamlet. “You have a daughter, sir?”

  “I have.” Polonius’s eyes lit up at that. It made Hamlet sad that even a madman would be regarded as an interesting match for his daughter, even if he could only sire mad children on her.

  “Be sure to keep her out of the sun,” said Hamlet. “Bright sunlight can breed maggots in a dead dog; who knows what it can do to daughters, sir.”

  “I thank you for your counsel,” said Polonius.

  “I’m sure it’s worth as much as the counsel you gave my mother, sir,” said Hamlet. He turned to leave.

  “What do you mean by that?” demanded Polonius, following him.

  “By what?”

  “The counsel I gave your mother. What counsel was that?”

  “How should I know what counsel you gave her? I only hoped that mine was as valuable.”

  “But when?” asked Polonius.

  “When you were counseling with her. Must I tell you all your business?” Then Hamlet took off at a run.

  He felt giddy as he fairly flew down the corridors, watching servants and courtiers shy out of his way. It was a foolish kind of bravery, though, to lie so much that he could then tell the truth and pretend it was also a lie. But dangerous also, for Polonius kept trying to make sense of what he was saying, and there was sense to be made of it, if he only kept at it.

  Thus passed the next few days, with Hamlet making forays out of his room, stirring up trouble while seeming innocent.

  What he could not determine to his own satisfaction was what he was actually trying to do. Was he really trying to protect himself from suspicion? Or to keep Claudius from fearing him as a rival? Was he biding his time, as he told himself, until he could get his uncle alone and kill him without interference? Or was he doing all this mummery to fill the time and make more and more delay because he hadn’t the heart or stomach for murder, after all?

  More likely he was doing this, he realized, to protect himself. I will do foul treason, but men will not call me a traitor if they think me mad. I will still be slain, but not seen with horror. It will be pity that fills men’s hearts when they see my grave or hear my name. Is that what this sham is for, to make my name a sad one instead of an evil one, after I’m dead?

  What does it matter? Why should I care?

  I’m a coward, that’s what my madness is about, to delay the day of action, and then delay some more.

  And yet he could not let go of it. They brought Ophelia to him, and now he saw that she was indeed sincere; she spoke to him of how she had thought of him often when he was in Heidelberg, and waited eagerly for his return, and missed him even more than she missed her brother, who was off in France. It broke his heart, and he regretted his foolish play on the first day of his mad charade. He should not have gone to her.

  He could correct it now, though. He could, in the midst of his madness, make sure she understood that she shouldn’t look for anything from him. Not love—there was no room for love in a heart that he was trying to steel for murder.

  He could have loved her, though, he saw that. If he had come home from Heidelberg without his father dead, without his mother married to his uncle, without a ghost demanding vengeance, then he might have seen this girl and wanted her. He might have courted her with poetry, with pleasantries, with flowers and little gifts, with kisses that were freely given, but pretended to be stolen.

  He might have married her, and lain with her, and fathered sons and daughters, not just one as his mother had, but many, and watched Ophelia grow fat with babies and then sat with her to see the children playing in the garden or the fields. They would have taken them out to sea, plying the coasts of Denmark in the long ships that once struck terror throughout the world, but now were meant for wealthy families on pleasure cruises.

  It made him angry, to think of what had been taken from him. His father had stolen his childhood, and now was stealing his future as well.

  What right do you have, Father? Stay dead. Don’t walk the earth swearing your son to loyalty you never showed him when you were alive.

  I refuse to kill for you. Does that make me an oathbreaker? To slay a King must be at least as great a sin as breaking an oath. But what about killing a King who is also a murderer himself? Then again, what about breaking an oath to a man who never acted the father to me, yet now expects me to be a true son to him? Where is the justice in any of this? Why does my duty demand that I do the worst thing, or be condemned? To save myself from condemnation, will I damn myself? Am I merely choosing between two different rooms in hell?

  He was summoned on an afternoon when court was finished, and brought without his sword before King Claudius. The soldier—there was only one, a man he did not know—made no special point of coming without a sword. He found Hamlet reading, and urged him to come quickly, so there was no time to arm himself or even dress properly for an audience.

  Mother was there, and smiling at him, so it would not be something harsh. Polonius beamed at him also—prospective father-in-law to a madman—but King Claudius looked serious.

  “I knew you all your life as my nephew and my prince,” said Claudius. “Now, married to your mother, I hope I may also view you as my son. Certainly you are my heir.”

  “The barons name the King, Your Majesty,” said Hamlet. “But I am grateful for your trust in me.”

  “Here is how far my trust goes. The Orkney Islands have forgotten their duty, or else some terrible storm has destroyed their crop or sunk their fleet. I must send a man I trust, and one whose presence will prove to them my great concern. That man is you, if you will go in my name.”

  “Like any other Dane, Your Majesty, I will serve you where you ask, honored to be remembered.”

  “And so that you will not have to do this work unsupported, take Rosencrantz and Guildenstern with you.”

  So he was not trusted. “I’ll be grateful for their company,” he said.

  “Then that’s done,” said King Claudius.

  “Will you have me go at once? Or may I stay until my father’s body is laid inside the tomb?”

  Uncle Claudius frowned. “Your father’s body lies in state; we have not dishonored his memory.”

  “And yet his burial is delayed. Who knows what unrest this might cause his spirit?” asked Hamlet.

  Mother reached over and touched her new husband on the arm.

  He did not look at her, but he nodded. “We wait for Polonius’s son, Laertes. You know that your father and he were close.”

  “Closer than he ever was with me,” said Hamlet. But it was I, not Laertes, that he charged to avenge him. “What will you do, then, Your Majesty? Send away the old King’s son before the funeral, and yet await the son of your chancellor?”

  Claudius looked stung. “I meant no such insult to my brother’s honor or to his son. Of course you can wait to leave for the Orkneys until Laertes comes.”

  “He’s looked for every day,” said Mother.

  “So I also will look for him.” Hamlet knelt a second time before King Claudius. “Your Majesty, may I ask to see my father’s body?”

  “No,” said Claudius.

  “May a son not bid good-bye to his father?”

  “We keep the corpse on ice,” said Claudius. “The days grow warm. We’ll keep the icehouse tightly closed until the funeral day.”

  “The nights are still cool enough. I’ll go to him at night.”

  “And take a lantern’s heat into the room? No.”

  “A single candle,” said Hamlet. “Not even that, if you prefer. I can find my father in the dark. I’m not afraid of him.” Though of course he was.

  “Is this another part of your madness?” asked Claudius sharply.