Here’s what happened, chat. 1 Apollo made one off-handed threat to curse Claudius to speak in couplets, and then I casually decided to comb through the play to see how many couplets Claudius gets. And then I went ‘huh, it’s interesting which ones of these are open couplets and which ones of these are closed ones.’ Like a normal person. And now we’re here, writing another impromptu Hamlet essay.

So couplets! Those are neat. A couplet is two rhyming lines that have the same meter. Claudius has some, and the first open one I want to point out is right after the nunnery scene.

It shall be so.
Madness in great ones must not unwatch'd go.

It’s open because it needs the line before it to complete the meter, and the line before it was the tail-end of Polonius proposing another arras plan. Because those two characters’ lines complete one meter, it has the effect of Claudius taking over a train of thought, and bringing it to a close. Depending on the performance, it could be him interrupting Polonius before Polonius says anything else (understandable) or it could be more considered. Either way, this topic is done. You can see it as a way of Claudius reasserting control in a situation that is rapidly spiraling out of control.

The second one I have is after things have spiraled even more out of Claudius’s control, and the second arras has a body count of one (1) Polonius.

O, come away!
My soul is full of discord and dismay.

This is where I found that weirdly poetic line about slander! It’s not in a lot of editions and I don’t know why because I’ve never seen it before. Interestingly, it can be cut right out without interrupting the meter too much.

Come, Gertrude, we'll call up our wisest friends
And let them know both what we mean to do
And what's untimely done. [So haply slander
Whose whisper o'er the world's diameter,
As level as the cannon to his blank,
Transports his poisoned shot- may miss our name
And hit the woundless air.] O, come away!
My soul is full of discord and dismay.

See? IDK what that’s about. Either way, with this one, Claudius is interrupting his own train of thought, and rallying himself to do what needs to be done, asking Gertrude to come with him. Depending on the performance, he may have to tell Gertrude to come with him twice because she’s not moving – so he’s rallying her, stopping himself from rambling on about poisoned shots or whatever. (Poisoned, Claudius? Really?) But since the last line is, well, discorded and dismayed, it doesn’t hit the same way as the concluding couplet with Polonius. If anything, it’s a loss of control, with his true, lost feelings being the final note.

Third and final open couplet:

Till I know 'tis done,
Howe'er my haps, my joys were ne'er begun.

This is the end of the ‘Claudius reveals his evil plan to have Hamlet killed in England’ soliloquy, after ‘Do it, England; / For like the hectic in my blood he rages, / And thou must cure me.’ I don’t know if I have a lot to say about this as a couplet, but like. I love how personal he’s taking this. I love that his entire capacity to feel joy is now on the line. Claudius, were you ever happy? I heard you in the chapel scene.

August Jeske Claudius gives this saucy little dramatic turn after this couplet, so that’s nice.

Okay, so now let’s get into the closed couplets. The first one is a banger.

My words fly up, my thoughts remain below.
Words without thoughts never to heaven go.

This one is great because of how self-contained it is, because it doesn’t follow off who was just speaking – it, in fact, undercuts what was just said in a beautiful way. Because the person we just heard was Hamlet, debating with himself about whether or not to kill his uncle and deciding nah, he shouldn’t, because if he kills him while he’s praying he’ll just go to heaven. And then he leaves and Claudius just looks at the audience and is like ‘well, I’m sure not getting into heaven this way.’

The repetition of words feels almost like a logical proof. You can’t escape the conclusion. And the whole couplet has a pleasing finality to it. By ‘pleasing’ I mean depressing. Claudius has either given up all hope or he’s decided to just embrace being the worst. Either way, the rest of this play isn’t going to go great.

The final one isn’t as much of a banger, but it’s a fun little flicker of Claudius getting everything back under control before it all goes to hell. It’s right after the grave fight, Hamlet’s gone, Claudius is issuing orders left and right, and he just. Needs everything to be chill for a moment so this poison plot can pop off.

An hour of quiet shortly shall we see;
Till then in patience our proceeding be.

Look at that. Look how calm and how regal that is. Just be patient. Everything’s going to be just fine. (It’s not.)

1 'chat' in this case was my literary role-playing group, hence some unusual references ahead