Meddling Parents

Throughout Hamlet, parents like to meddle in their children’s business and try to know everything going on in their lives.  They feel the need to control their children and spy on them if they are not able to figure out themselves. Polonius meddles in both of his children, Ophelia and Laertes’ lives and Gertrude and Claudius meddle in Hamlet’s life.

Gertrude and Claudius enlist the help of two of Hamlet’s friends to spy on him and figure out what is wrong with him. He has been acting strange and they know that he will not speak to them so they bribe his friends to gather information for them. “To draw him on to pleasures and to gather, So much as from occasion you may glean, Whether aught, to us unknown, afflicts him thus/ That, opened, lies within our remedy”(2.2.15-18).  Claudius asks his friends to figure out what is bothering Hamlet.

As for Polonius, he is the king of meddling. When Laertes leaves to go to Paris to study, Polonius sends a spy to ask about him and figure out what kind of mischief he is in. He enlists Reynaldo to travel to Paris and get information on his son. “Your bait of falsehood takes this carp of truth./ And thus do we of wisdom and of reach,/ With windlasses and with assays of bias/ By indirection find directions out”(2.1.62-65). He wants him to lead people into giving up what his son has been up to, whether it is going to brothels, drinking too much or gambling. He doesn’t have enough trust in his son to ask him so he must meddle and send in a spy. Polonius is also very meddlesome in Ophelia’s life. He treats her like she is a child and makes her tell him everything about her love relationship with Hamlet. She gives her father the love letters that Hamlet writes her and tells her father everything about Hamlet’s actions.

The parents in Hamlet are very meddlesome in their children’s’ lives and sometimes go about finding out what is going on in a sneaky way. Many children would feel an invasion of privacy and angry if they found out that their parents were using spies to track their actions and decipher their moods.