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"a rash and bloody deed"
Context and Language Videos
Act 3,
Scene 4
Lines 26b-30

A discussion of Hamlet's "a rash and bloody deed" in Act 3, Scene 4 of myShakespeare's Hamlet. 

myShakespeare | Hamlet 3.4 "a rash and bloody deed"

Gertrude    

                          Oh, me, what have thou done?

Hamlet   

Nay, I know not. Is it the king?
[Hamlet lifts the curtain.]

Gertrude

Oh, 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.
Video Transcript: 

RALPH:  Gertrude, understandably, is horrified by what's happened.  She asks Hamlet a rhetorical question: what have you done?

SARAH:  But for Hamlet, it's not a rhetorical question at all — he doesn't know what he's done, he doesn't know who he's killed, and therefore he can't grasp the significance of his action. 

RALPH:  Gertrude scolds Hamlet for being so thoughtless and so hasty — but, even as stunned as he has to be from killing a man, he comes up with a snappy response that brings them — and us — back to Gertrude's own shocking actions: did she have something to do with the killing of the King?

Sarah: Gertrude's reply — simply repeating the part of Hamlet's line about killing the King — seems to suggest that she's truly surprised by his accusation, and that she's therefore innocent of any role in King Hamlet's murder.

RALPH:  It's not clear whether Hamlet is testing Gertrude here, to see whether or not she was complicit in his father's murder — the Ghost certainly didn't say anything about her being involved when he revealed the murder to Hamlet.

SARAH:  It's almost as if, in Hamlet's mind, these two things — murdering his father and remarrying Claudius — are somehow both part of one single hideous crime, and Hamlet can't separate them in his thinking.