Q - “Quietus”
As Branagh delivers Hamlet’s most famous soliloquy in the hall of mirrors, he brandishes a dagger when he comes to the line “…when he himself might his quietus make/With a bare bodkin” (3.1.75). This moment, more than any other, has historically given the audience reason to believe Hamlet may be considering suicide.
The word “quietus” is only used one other time in Shakespeare’s oeuvre: in Sonnet 126, long considered the termination of the “fair youth” sequence of poems. The sonnet even comes to an abrupt conclusion after the lines “Her [Time’s] audit, though delay’d, answer’d must be/And her quietus is to render thee.” The customary rhyming couplet is cut off, as if with a sudden slash of a knife.
This usage of “quietus” is an apt metaphor for the revenge Hamlet is seeking. Before Shakespeare employed it figuratively, the term literally meant “paying off a debt,” i.e. quietus est, a knight’s writ of discharge, being “quit” of his fee to the King. Hamlet, like a loyal knight, may also be considering his debt to his father in this moment, as a death is owed, and can be acquired with discretionary placement of a dagger (in Claudius’s body).
In Henry IV, Part 1, Hal admonishes Falstaff on the field of battle, reminding him that everyone owes God a death, to which Falstaff quips “‘Tis not due yet, I would be loath to pay him before his day” (5.1.125). Falstaff, as is his wont, is playing on the near-homophonic pronunciation of “death” and “debt,” rendering up gallows humor at every opportunity.
In the film Children of Men (2006), mankind is portrayed as essentially paying a severe debt to Nature, due to ecocidal activities that have caused a deadly pandemic and human infertility. In a clear reference to Hamlet’s speech, the suicide drug “Quietus” is advertised to the general populace, with the tagline “You decide when.” The film’s director, Alfonso Cuarón, and Kenneth Branagh share the distinction of being the only two individuals who have garnered Academy Award nominations in seven separate categories.
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