Why Hamlet lacks remorse after killing Polonius

The scene after Hamlet kills Polonius (Act III Scene 4) is theatrically distressing and a source of dismay to the audience because Hamlet displays a callous lack of remorse after accidentally stabbing Polonius, the elderly Councilor of State. Hamlet even proceeds to ridicule the slain man:

Hamlet: I’ll lug the guts into the neighbour room.

Mother, good night indeed. This counsellor

Is now most still, most secret, and most grave,

Who was in life a foolish prating knave.

Someone who can react in this way hardly fits the image of an ideal hero. Surely Polonius deserves some measure of compassion. Why then does Shakespeare not spare Hamlet even a single word of kindness for Polonius? This would have greatly helped to redeem his hero and would have been simple for Shakespeare to implement. Shakespeare, instead, does the opposite. The next three scenes continue with Hamlet’s bizarre and disgusting antics over the body of Polonius, as though Shakespeare wants to assure us Hamlet’s lack of remorse is no oversight. It is deliberate. Why?

Let us return to Act III, Scene 4, and picture the drama. The scene opens with Polonius indulging in his petty court intrigues by concealing himself behind the curtains to spy on the coming encounter between Hamlet and his mother. Hamlet arrives, having already worked himself into a fearsome state of mind. We know his state of mind from the two preceding scenes. At the end of Act III, Scene 2, after confirming for himself that his uncle—the current king—had indeed murdered his father, as the ghost informs, Hamlet says:

Hamlet: ’Tis now the very witching time of night,

When churchyards yawn and hell itself breathes out

Contagion to this world. Now could I drink hot blood,

And do such bitter business as the day

Would quake to look on.

Hamlet thus prepares himself for revenge. So wild has he become that even the thought of killing his mother enters his mind, but he suppresses it:

Hamlet: Oh heart, lose not thy nature. Let not ever

The soul of Nero enter this firm bosom;

Let me be cruel, not unnatural.

I will speak daggers to her, but use none.

His state worsens in the next scene (Act III, Scene 3) when he stumbles on the King praying. He rejects this opportunity to kill the King because the act of praying may help redeem him. Hamlet’s motive for revenge has gonebeyond merely the establishment of justice in this world. It is a darker motive of pure malice; he decides to postpone hisrevenge to a more “opportune” moment, so that he can unleash an eternity of suffering upon his victim:

Hamlet: Up sword, and know thou a more horrid hent:

When he is drunk asleep, or in his rage,

Or in th’incestuous pleasure of his bed,

At game a-swearing, or about some act

That has no relish of salvation in’t,

Then trip him that his heels may kick at heaven

And that his soul may be as damned and black

As hell, whereto it goes.

Thus, in this fearsome and malevolent state of mind, Hamlet now appears before his mother in Act III, Scene 4. His mother quickly perceives his mood after a short exchange of words and tries to end the meeting by leaving. Hamlet prevents her, causing her to cry for help. Polonius, behind the curtains, echoes her cry, and Hamlet summarily kills himby thrusting his sword through the arras, thinking he is the King. Now the real dramatic point begins.

Picture the scene. Polonius lies dead on the stage, newly slain by Hamlet. The Queen cries:

Queen: Oh what a rash and bloody deed is this!

What is Hamlet’s response?

Hamlet: A bloody deed. Almost as bad, good mother,

As kill a king and marry with his brother.

This response is a study of Hamlet’s mind in a nutshell. His initial reaction spares no compassionate thought over the death of Polonius. He is fixated on condemning his mother and his uncle.

Hamlet then appeals passionately to his mother to realize the error of her hasty remarriage. The anguished Queen eventually cries out for Hamlet to stop. She does this repeatedly, but Hamlet nonetheless persists in chastising her.

All this is almost commendable, a measure of Hamlet’s intense mourning for his lost father, except for one glaring fact: The body of Polonius is lying on the stage in full view of the audience.

Now the ghost of Hamlet’s father enters, and Hamlet expresses his guilt at having delayed the revenge he promised.

Hamlet: Do you not come your tardy son to chide

That, lapsed in time and passion, lets go by

Th’important acting of your dread command?

Oh say.

Again, Hamlet’s expression of a deep filial bond with his late father is almost commendable—but the body of Polonius still lies in full view. This almost unbelievable scene reveals Shakespeare at his most sublime. What is Shakespeare trying to say?

We witness an impassioned, almost moral, appeal by Hamlet to his mother to realize the error of her hasty remarriage while he blatantly contravenes all sense of compassion to a fellow being, newly slain by his own hand. We also witness his filial guilt for the delay in avenging his father while he totally neglects and even mocks the death of another. When the ghost of Hamlet’s father arrives to remind him of his “almost blunted purpose,” we may wonder why the ghost of Polonius does not get up and reprimand the other ghost.

The whole episode is surreal, its dramatic impact nearly unbelievable. There is no doubt that Shakespeare deliberately set it up as an alarming portrayal of what the path of vengeance has done to Hamlet. It has transformed him into a brutal and callous angel of death with little room left for compassion. 

Not only does Shakespeare frame the whole episode between two passages of Hamlet taunting the man he has slain, but he also has Hamlet then commit the gruesome act of hiding the body and making macabre jokes about it. It demonstrates how the course of vengeance directly contradicts the spiritual path of love and compassion. That is the problem with seeking revenge.