PLEASE talk some more about hampolo changing their status to stalemate/uneasy truce/mutually assured destruction because you're absolutely correct about this
I would LOVE to give a thorough answer to this ask, but Hampolo's non-relationship (as I like to call it) is something sufficiently complex that it's a viable dissertation topic and I definitely cannot dissect it as much as I want to in a Tumblr post
that being said. I'll list some observations (~1k) anyway:
-Polonius cares about Hamlet in the absence of true external demand. His fatherhood demands him monitor his children. His position as advisor demands him to present a good image to claudgert. But he has absolutely no true need to monitor Hamlet as closely as he does, especially since Claudius has already dismissed his claims regarding Hamlet's madness by early Act III: "love? his affections do not that way tend". So why did he follow Hamlet into Gertrude's chambers? Why does he make the little quip to Hamlet about having played Caesar in college? It's because he's worried for Hamlet and wants to cheer the boy up and support him however he can, even in his failing age and failing wits.
-Hamlet is always receptive to Polonius in a way that he is not receptive to anyone else. Obviously the bulk of Acts II and III, and by extension Hamlet's early characterization, are just hampolo bantering, but there's even more to it than that. They always entertain and are responsive to each other's little quips and insults and banters! You can't get this from two people who aren't theatre kids bonding and trying their best to relate to each other. And Hamlet always allows Polonius to cheer him up a little whenever Polonius plays into his old wordy fool persona (e.g. pastoral, scene individable...)
-It's very clear to me that (a) Hamlet is in agony, (b) Hamlet is afraid of confronting his mission and would much rather seek some distraction from his troubles, (c) Polonius understands that Hamlet is suffering and would be stabilized by a distraction, (d) Polonius plays into his role to amuse Hamlet and provide Hamlet with the distraction Hamlet needs, (e) Hamlet is aware that Polonius is trying to appease him but allows Polonius to make him feel better anyway, (f) Polonius keeps doing this because he knows Hamlet cares about what he has to say. They have what I call a baseline level of understanding and entertaining each other that is NEVER broken no matter how much the narrative tries to place them in antagonistic roles
-See, claudgert (and even HamSr!) capitalize upon their parental relationships to Hamlet to demand Hamlet behave in a certain way. Rosguil, similarly, capitalize upon their "friend" status to Hamlet for other ends. But Polonius never does that. Polonius doesn't order Hamlet to be less mad or grieving or annoying or prickly or what-have-you. He meets Hamlet at where Hamlet's at and allows Hamlet to leave uncomfortable situations. He doesn't refer to himself as Hamlet's friend or superior; he doesn't assert authority over Hamlet; he most certainly doesn't frame himself to Hamlet as his ex's father demanding explanations. And Hamlet acknowledges the leeway that Polonius is giving him and expresses his gratitude by (1) not offing himself and (2) allowing Polonius to touch his heart cheer him up a little. [Digression: If only Polonius treated his children with the same amount of agency he grants Hamlet...]
-Also note that no matter how much I (or you, Will) may ship poloclaud, it does happen in canon that Claud is dissatisfied with Polonius, perhaps even irritated or annoyed. The most significant moment being "love? his affections do not that way tend". Gertrude is more regularly disapproving of Polonius, of course. The thing is...who's the other character that claudgert consistently are dissatisfied with? Hamlet. Exactly. Poloham find in each other what they cannot find in the same other people who like to proclaim their care about them but actually aren't all that attentive as to how they are feeling!
-After all of those broad narrative/thematic strokes above this is where I'd start delving into some of their details as foils if this were my thesis: Hamlet & Polonius are more similar than different in a lot of ways. They're both theatre kids; they have similar methods and tendencies of espionage/duplicitous speech/hiding pain/wanting someone's approval/ speech patterns. And of course they do remark upon all of their similarities from time to time though it is always in an easy-to-miss manner. They both make asides about each other's vulnerabilities to the audience in their extended banter sessions, blah blah blah.
OKAY. To finally answer the question a little:
-Poloham start out as a stalemate because Hamlet has not exactly decided how much he shall allow Polo to comfort him and Polo has not exactly decided how much he should be worrying for Hamlet's well-being. They're both probing at this point and neither goes very far
-The turning point I'd say is when Hamlet actively threatens suicide in front of Polonius - i.e. "walk out of the air", "nothing I'd rather you take from me except my life". This is also when Polonius remarks on the "method in his madness". From now on, they are in an uneasy truce: While they are still in narratively antagonistic roles, Polonius is actively worrying about Hamlet and trying to comfort him, even if he doesn't truly understand why Hamlet is suffering; and Hamlet allows Polonius to be the distraction he needs from the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, and accepts that Polonius cares about him in a way independent of ulterior motives, even as he is guarded around Polonius.
-Mutually assured destruction, I would say, develops hand-in-hand with their uneasy truce. If Hamlet harmed himself or harmed someone else and spiralled as a result, Polonius would never forgive himself for not being the anchor Hamlet needed, which is why he enters Gertrude's chambers to monitor Hamlet and why he cries 'Help!' when Hamlet has a moment of crisis (he's not as worried about Hamlet harming Gertrude; rather, he's worried about Hamlet spiralling due to having hurt his own mother, or about Hamlet just outright self-harming). Of course, conversely, it is canonical that Polonius's death is what causes Hamlet to completely unravel - acting more 'mad' than ever and even developing enough cruelty to kill off RosGuil because he cannot accept that someone who cared for him, understood him, and entertained him that much died at his own hands. It was at that moment Hamlet knew he could never redeem himself, and he crashes out. So, they both feel responsible for the other and destroy themselves if the other is destroyed.
please tell me about polonius's relationship with each of the older gen of hamlet + reynaldo, in as much or as little detail as you like!
thanks for specifying or I might actually rant myself to death behind an arras /lh
I think I'm just gonna start by linking this piece on my hcs as to how poloclaudhamsr grew up in Elsinore together. some of this has changed especially after my playthrough of Elsinore the video game but my general ideas have not, really!
Okay, let's do this relationship by relationship. 2.4k under cut:
Polo & Claud
They're in a qpr. (link to a fic I wrote for a confession scenario) Claudius genuinely meant it when he told Laertes 'I loved your father', and Laertes understands implicitly - that's why he's willing to trust Claudius in their horrible plan. Claudius's remarkable loss of composure and strategy from Act IV onwards is directly and primarily caused by Polonius's death more than anything else.
I'm planning to do a separate essay on poloclaud eventually, so I'll just add a couple of highlights:
-They're always very happy to participate in and express approval for each other's plans. See: Claud's plan to send Hamlet to England which is approved by Polo, Polo's schemes to spy on Hamlet, and the like.
-They're used to asking for each other's approval, too. That's what Claud does when he's considering whether to approve of Laertes's leave, and that's Polo's whole schtick in Act II with "What do you think of me, my lord?"
-So, poloclaud depend on each other for validation, and trust the other to fulfil that need. Polo clearly cares super deeply about what Claud thinks of him.
-Claud is obviously a bit harder to read on that front. I think the outstanding moments are when he readily agrees to "be you and I behind the arras, then" (like what are you doing with your advisor in such an intimate concealed tight space. huh), when Polonius is the person to call for "lights, lights, lights" post-Mousetrap (He's probably dealt with Claudius's panic attacks before), and when they have this really soft conversation before the church/prayer scene
-The entire prayer scene exchange touches me so greatly. We have demonstration of trust on both sides, Polonius implicitly asking if Claud needs help, Claud waving it off and saying he's okay. And then Polonius is like "I'll meet with you before you go to bed". Like Okay. That Is A Very Specific Phrasing My Dear Advisor. Claudius of course readily agrees to it for reasons very apparent to me and you
-The fundamental reason that Claudius trusts Polonius so much and depends on Polonius for validation is because Polonius is the only person who (a) has closeness to Claudius and (b) isn't directly harmed by Claudius's crimes. Claudius's friendship with Polonius is "untainted", in Claud's eyes (we know he likes to use the taint metaphor from the church scene), so he has to trust Polonius and his judgement in order to convince himself that he's not an irredeemable monster, and spiral as a result!
-Polo is aware of what happened with Claud & HamSr but would like Claud to approach himself only when he's ready to confess. He doesn't do his signature espionaging during the church scene because he already deduced what Claud did based on the fact that he's going to church, his panic attack upon Mousetrap, and the like. He doesn't want to hurt Claud and risk Claud's breakdown by confronting Claud prematurely, and in doing so actually dooms them both. Heh.
Polo & HamSr
Polo was HamSr's advisor as well, though Claud also acted as advisor during the war. HamSr and Polo get along quite smoothly. A lot of people have pointed out that they have similarities of saying they'll be brief/have brevity and then go on a long rant. I find this endearing, and they surely bonded over this (link to relevant fic!). Suffice to say, they were best friends.
-Polo and HamSr were quite close as children. As much as HamSr doesn't want to admit it, he was rather melodramatic and theatre-kid-like, and so he and Polo got along in much the same way poloham get along in canon.
-HamSr was the one who encouraged Polo to go to college to dabble in a bit of theatre after the war was over. In fact, HamSr sent poloclaud to college together so that they could bond. He's a good wingman if nothing else...
-The war. Polo is quite attentive to the fact that HamSr became crueller and shorter-tempered and very, very difficult after the war. He's smart enough to know that it's the war's fault, which is why he volunteered himself for coordinating the diplomacy missions w/ Norway. He's more proficient than most people at talking HamSr out of one of his moods - only Gertrude does it better.
-HamSr couldn't sleep well after the war, and Polo can't sleep well due to his anxiety, so they take a lot of early-morning walks together through Elsinore, the battlements, and the orchard. They talk about a lot of things, but Polo knows that HamSr will clam up if he implies that the war has scarred him, so he does his best to make HamSr feel a little less on guard. In turn, HamSr doesn't question Polo's feelings towards Claudius so much either. But Polo still points out that HamSr isn't the happiest as king and feels constrained by his position, and they have a lot of therapeutic conversations about that.
-HamSr is very cognizant that he would make a worse father than Polonius, and this is why he entrusts Hamlet to be raised by others like Yorick - and Polonius, really. He sometimes yearns to be a more attentive father, but fears that Hamlet would end up like himself, bitter and unstable and violent, and so he entrusts Hamlet to Polo instead. (And Hamlet turned out to be like him anyway lol)
-Polo grieved for HamSr's death in private, mostly. He sensed that any mention of HamSr would upset Claud, and so kept things quiet with his own grief. But he visits HamSr's gravestone very often and leaves flowers.
-Polo has heard of rumours of HamSr's return as a ghost. He considered talking to HamSr, but he doubted that HamSr would provide any information that he couldn't deduce from Claudius. He was also unsure how much even more unstable HamSr would become if dead and vengeful. He decided that dead things would best stay buried - something that poloclaudhamsr all swore to each other around their teenage years.
-It's because Claud & HamSr's parents were physically and emotionally abusive and also forced Claud & HamSr to duel and hurt each other and Polonius found out via espionage which is why he decided to pursue the skill and the three of them ended up scheming to kill the horrible king and queen together and for a moment it was as if they had the world in their hands but things coalesce into a tragedy again and they repeat the cycle and nobody can save them
-Ahem. Where was I?
Polo & Gertrude
We know that, at the very least, Gertrude disapproves of Polo a bit: "more matter with less art". We also know that they seem to get along well enough to be on the same side regarding Hamlet's health. Gertrude also seems to care about Ophelia & Laertes after Polo dies.
One of my earliest Hamlet essays (link) was in fact about pologert being foils in their parenting. I was a good deal harsher to both of them than I am now - not because I thought poorly of them, rather because I felt the pressure to conform to how the Hamlet fandom by-and-large detests older gen. I've obviously grown a bit more confident in terms of staying true to my own self, since then!
-I've developed a fondness for pologert to have a friendly rivalry over winning Claudius's affections. They know each other well enough and know Claud well enough that they accept that Claud needs both of them. Polo is okay with stepping away when claudgert do allo things, and Gert is okay with stepping away when claudpolo do qpr things.
-Gert thought HamSr & Claud to both be total idiots upon first arriving at Elsinore, and it took her some time to get used to them, and then some more time to fall in love with either of them. She consulted Polo a lot in the early days about how Elsinore works and how to get along with the princes. Polo, in turn, was also glad to talk to someone who wasn't one of the two absolute idiot princes.
-Like HamSr, Gertrude also trusts Polonius to take care of Hamlet. When Hamlet runs to Gertrude about Polonius being 'mean' to him, Gertrude always correctly identifies that Hamlet is lying, because Polonius would never dare offend the crown prince that (a) has power over him and (b) he is incredibly fond of. Sometimes pologert joke about Polonius being Hamlet's real mom, because Hamlet is around him more than Gertrude.
-Polonius encouraged Gertrude and Ophelia to form a connection on both sides. Despite the values of misogyny he has internalized, he knows that it is incredibly ostracizing to have nobody like yourself to talk to, so he thought this bond useful for both people. Gertrude often tells Polo off when he's done something to hurt Ophelia, and Gertrude was also the person to teach Polo to apologize properly to his children when he is in the wrong. (That is why Polo apologizes to Ophelia in 2.1!)
-Pologert sit down for a nice cup of tea and maybe some of Polo practicing his dramatic line reading when HamSr & Claud are being insane as usual and they don't have other responsibilities.
-This just occurred to me: The way Gertrude grieved for Polo is similar to the way Polo grieved for HamSr. They both know it is a hugely sensitive topic around Claudius, so they keep it quiet and alone and at late night. The difference is that Gertrude knows that without Polo's help, Claudius will never recover from his own grief and anger and be irreversibly shattered. And so, as soon as Polo dies, Gertrude knows that the story will inevitably end in tragedy. This is why she's so muted towards Hamlet immediately after, why she drinks the poisoned wine, why she might've pushed Ophelia in a twisted attempt to save her from more nefarious threats, etc.
Polo & FortSr
They get along pretty well during Polo's diplomatic missions. FortSr appreciates having someone from Denmark who isn't as threatening as HamSr, though he does suspect that Denmark is a country of ramblers. Polo is unabashedly honest to FortSr about HamSr's many character flaws, and this was pretty useful in negotiating their peace agreement. They wrote regularly to each other about nonpolitical items (having children, etc) before FortSr died.
Polo & Rey
Kinda friends, definitely not partners. Spymaster and his assistant, who's slightly more spy, slightly less master. Boss and sidekick, patriarch and butler, consigliere and even-more-consigliere. It's them.
I will say, Will (heh): I read a lot of your Reynaldo content early on and my interpretation of Rey has been influenced a good deal by yours already! Somehow I haven't written my own polorey, though...gotta do that soon
-To recap how they properly met: HamSr & Claud know that Polo is horrible at cooking and wants to raise children. They assign the head cook of Elsinore to be his personal servant so that his children don't grow up with burned dinners. That head cook happens to be Reynaldo. Rey's about Claudius's age.
-Rey is a lot like Polo, even looking beyond the espionage. They both prefer to be non-confrontational when it comes to conflicts. They both have a love for acting - Polo would encourage Rey to go to college on Polo's money, but Rey'd rather stay with the family. They both like to inject a little amount of humour into the way they talk. They are both deeply concerned for the people around them - the 'family complex', if I could call it that - and they both struggle with expressing this concern in words. Rey tends to speak less when he is worried, while Polo tends to run his mind even more than usual.
-Suffice to say, they clicked as soon as they met. Rey adapted quickly to Polo's somewhat haphazard and chaotic manner (aka ADHD) and quirky quests, because Elsinore's kitchens were already quite chaotic. He's probably the best listener in Elsinore - and being a good listener is the best way to get close to Polonius's heart. Polonius takes a while to open up to Reynaldo completely about his anxieties - about HamSr, about Denmark, later about his children - and Reynaldo is very patient and takes it all in stride. It's very difficult to irritate this man, and Polonius finds (to his utter delight) that he doesn't have to stress himself out over proper presentation when talking to Reynaldo, and this means everything to him.
-It's very clear that - by canon - Polonius doesn't treat Reynaldo with any indication of class difference. Even the narration of Folger refers to him as Polo's "man", which is very poignant. He's Polonius's special little guy.
-While Polonius trusts Claudius to affirm and validate him, he trusts Reynaldo in a different manner - in that Reynaldo will always point out if he is being ridiculous (more so than usual, anyway) or tired or paranoid or what-have-you. He trusts Reynaldo to call him out, and this makes for very humorous situations when Laertes & Ophelia are around and Reynaldo joins in to roast Polonius. It's good that he realizes he needs humbling every now and then!
-Reynaldo had as much a hand in raising Laertes & Ophelia as Polo did. Polo (rightly) thinks that Rey is the sweetest nicest most whimsical parent in Elsinore, short of himself, and it warms his heart more than anything else to see the three of them happy together. Family is what Polo lives for, and Reynaldo is most certainly a vital part of what he considers his household and his family.
-When Polonius died, missive was sent from Claudius to Reynaldo^, who forwarded it to Laertes. Reynaldo was too stricken by grief, and asked Laertes for permission to remain in France for a while to sort himself out, which Laertes grants. By the time news of Ophelia's death and Laertes's duel reaches Reynaldo, he knows it's too late to do anything about it...but he also knows that Polonius would never blame him and Polonius would want him to live on. So he returns to Elsinore, gathers up what's left of the family's belongings, and seeks his own life. It's like Horatio's ending, somewhat; they're somewhat foils, I think?!
^claudrey had their own relationship which I will also need a separate headcanon post to elaborate on
this took me 2 hours. but I'm so glad I got it down. thanks Will
