HAMLET ACT 3, SCENE 4
RIYA NAIDOO
Word Count: 1213 (excluding references)
, Hamlet by William Shakespeare is based on a series of acts of betrayal that take place in the
Royal Kingdom of Denmark. Act 3, Scene 4, of Hamlet, takes place in the Queen’s closet.
The scene opens wherein Polonius instructs Gertrude to talk to the protagonist, Hamlet, about
her concern and the consequences with regards to his recent behaviour. Just when Hamlet
arrives, Polonius conceals himself behind the arras. However, when Hamlet confronts
Gertrude in a fit of rage, Polonius cries out for help. Hamlet assumes that Claudius is the
voice crying for help, thus Hamlet stabs through the arras, killing Polonius. With regards to
the text Hamlet, the scenes enacted in the two movies differ variously to what the text
illustrates. The following essay will focus on the pivotal moments in Act 3, Scene 4, by
critically analysing and studying two versions of the film Hamlet, by Kenneth Branagh
(1996) and Gregory Doran (2015), and comparing it to the original text of Hamlet written by
William Shakespeare. This will be done by comparing factors such as differences in stage
character interpretation, costume and dialogue.
In Act 3, Scene 4, Hamlet confronts his mother Gertrude, due to state affairs involving her
and his deceptive uncle at large. Within the text, we are informed by Polonius in Act 3, Scene
3, Line 27, that this scene takes place in Hamlet’s, “mother’s closet”. The purpose of the
Queen’s closet, “is a room for privacy or retirement”, “and for Renaissance readers and
audiences, there would have been no possibility of confusing a queen’s closet with her
bedroom” (Andrews, pp. 164–166, 1982). The film by Kenneth Branagh correlates closely
with the text, as it is clearly indicated that this confrontation takes place in the Queen's closet
and not in Gertrude’s bedroom (Branagh, 00:00:00-00:01:02). However, Doran’s film distorts
the meaning of Gertrude and Hamlet’s relationship depicted in the text because this scene is
located in Gertrude’s bedroom, falsely implicating that there is a sense of sexual intimacy
between mother and son (Doran, 00:00:00-00:04:29).
From the point in the scene of the text, when Hamlet states, “How now! A rat?” (Act 3, Sc 4,
L 24), Polonius is said to have a sword thrust through him once. In Kenneth’s film, Hamlet
draws a knife and stabs Polonius several times. However, in the more modern approach of
Hamlet, in the film by Doran, Polonius hides behind a glass mirrored cupboard in order to
conceal himself (Doran, 0:01:07). Hamlet thereafter utilises a revolver as his weapon,
however, during the Elizabethan Era, the antique percussion pistols were mostly and a
