The prayer scene

Claudius, unnerved by the play, has decided to send Hamlet to England immediately. He briefs Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, who will accompany the prince and bring sealed letters from Claudius. The two leave to make preparations. Polonius enters to confirm that he will hide behind the arras in Gertrude's chamber to overhear the meeting. He goes.

Claudius, alone, kneels and tries to pray. The soliloquy he gives is the play's most direct moral confrontation. He knows what he has done — "O, my offence is rank, it smells to heaven" — and knows it carries Cain's primal curse, "a brother's murder." He wants to repent, but cannot. He still has what the murder won him: the crown, his ambition, the queen. He cannot ask forgiveness while still possessing the proceeds of the crime. "May one be pardoned and retain the offence?" He kneels to try to force his heart into prayer.

Hamlet enters, sword drawn. He could kill Claudius now. He stops. The reasoning he gives is theological: a man killed at prayer goes to heaven, his soul shrived; killing him here would not be revenge but reward. He wants to catch Claudius in some act of sin — drinking, gambling, in his mother's bed — so that the soul falls instead of rising. He sheathes the sword and goes to Gertrude's chamber. Claudius, oblivious of his danger, finishes the soliloquy with the play's most devastating couplet: "My words fly up, my thoughts remain below — words without thoughts never to heaven go." The prayer was empty. Heaven did not hear him. Hamlet, who let him live for fear of granting him heaven, was wrong about the whole transaction.