Confronting His Mother

It has become evident to me that the Queen is “seeming”, for many obvious reasons.  I began to pick her deceptive signs up in Act 3 Scene 4. Hamlet begins to throw around obvious hints about how the new King has killed his father, and right away she says “As kill a king?” She plays her role as an “innocent mother” very well,  but in fact she is disguising Hamlet in every single way. But is the Uncle worth more to her than her own son? She says “To whom do you speak this?” As if she does not see the ghost, but I think she is only saying that to make Hamlet seem crazy. But in fact he is not crazy because he says “bring me to the test and I the matter re-word, which madness would gambol from”. And a mad and crazy person would never be able to re-word him/herself in such a way. This shows that Hamlet still has a stable state of mind and in fact does know what is going on. Moreover, when Hamlet threatens her to not say anything, she does manage to breathe out “I have no life to breathe what thou last said to me”. This seems a bit suspicious as she tells hamlet that she will not say a word to the King of what has happened tonight or what Hamlet has said.

Now once we get to act 4, the Queen right away tells the King of what has happened. Is that not deception, lying and betrayal towards her son? She insists to the king that Hamlet is “mad as the seas, and wind, when both content which is the mightier: in his lawless fit behind the arras, hearing something stir, he whips out his rapier, and cries a rat, a rat and in this brainish apprehension kills the unseen good old man”. What a betraying woman! She has been “seeming” all this time. Who else knows something or doesn’t and pretends to know other things? Has she gone mad, because her husband has died and now she does not know what to do? Why would she betray Hamlet, her own son? I do not understand. Is the new King really that much to her? This leads me to wonder on what is to happen in the rest of the play. Will Hamlet kill his mother because she has done what he threatened her not to do? He did say, “to try conclusions in the basket, creep and break your own neck down”. Will Hamlet be the one do “break” his mother’s neck? And what will happen after that?