TEXT:
POLONIUS
[Behind] What, ho! help, help, help!
HAMLET
[Drawing] How now! a rat? Dead, for a ducat, dead!
Makes a pass through the arras
POLONIUS
[Behind] O, I am slain!
Falls and dies
GERTRUDE
O me, what hast thou done?
HAMLET
Nay, I know not:
Is it the king?
GERTRUDE
O, what a rash and bloody deed is this!
HAMLET
A bloody deed! almost as bad, good mother,
As kill a king, and marry with his brother.
GERTRUDE
As kill a king!
HAMLET
Ay, lady, 'twas my word.
Lifts up the array and discovers POLONIUS
Thou wretched, rash, intruding fool, farewell!
I took thee for thy better: take thy fortune;
Thou find'st to be too busy is some danger.
Leave wringing of your hands. Peace! Sit you down,
And let me wring your heart; for so I shall,
If it be made of penetrable stuff,
If damned custom have not brassed it so
That it is proof and bulwark against sense.
GERTRUDE
What have I done, that thou darest wag thy tongue
In noise so rude against me?
NOTES:
Rats
The Arden Shakespeare that suggests two separate proverbs combine in Hamlet’s cry of “How now, a rat” - the first is the fairly obvious and common phrase “I smell a rat”. This phrase dates back at least as far as the Black Death, when dogs could be relied on to sense the presence of a plague-bearing rat long before humans might. So, to smell a rat is to detect something suspicious. The second is more unusual, mentioned in that incredible compendium Shakespeare’s Proverbial Language; it suggests that “the rat betrayed herself with her own noise”. If you didn’t have a dog with a sharp nose, you could listen out because often rats squeak and identify themselves. Rats were a common feature of urban life in London, and Shakespeare’s audience would probably have been familiar enough with the nuisance of hearing rats squeaking behind their curtains and having to deal with them. Hamlet is quick to act, and kills this ‘rat’ immediately.