We’ve previously looked at how to express story structure through dialogue, and in this article I’d like to draw on Hamlet for some techniques for writing subtext in dialogue.

☞ You might also want to pick up the dialogue worksheet and the good dialogue checklist.

01 | Puns & Word Play

POLONIUS.
What do you read, my lord?

HAMLET.
Words, words, words.

Throughout the play, and in almost every conversation, Hamlet uses some sort of word play to “encrypt” his thoughts, or share them in private witticisms with the audience or with Horatio.

These witticisms are often made at the cost of characters of slower understanding, such as this example of zeugma exacted on Polonius:

POLONIUS.
My honourable lord, I will most humbly take my leave of you.

HAMLET.
You cannot, sir, take from me anything that I will more willingly part withal, except my life, except my life, except my life.

POLONIUS.
Fare you well, my lord.

• What themes are on the character’s mind?
• What words related to this theme can they play with, linguistically?
• Who fails to understand the word play and takes the words at face value?

02 | Echoing

GERTRUDE.
… Thou know’st ’tis common, all that lives must die,
Passing through nature to eternity.

HAMLET.
Ay, madam, it is common.

Echoing others’ words can often be a sign of the speaker buying time to think (of a politic response, a prevarication, or a lie). However, in Hamlet’s case, the echoing draws attention to the language itself and what it reveals about the speaker’s thoughts, and how they reinterpret what’s been said.

• Find key words that the character can echo.
• How do the meaning of these words shift from speaker to speaker?

03 | Asides

HAMLET.
[Aside.] A little more than kin, and less than kind.

While asides require some additional explanation in prose works as compared to the simple stage directions of scripts, words that are mumbled under one’s breath, whispered to other characters, or that go unheard, can be useful for describing an immediate emotional response or recoil.

• What does the character have the (uncontrollable) urge to express that they don’t want the other party to hear?

☞ For further exploration of theatrical speech: How to Make Your Story Theatrical.

04 | Thinking Out Loud

HAMLET.
About, my brain! I have heard
That guilty creatures sitting at a play,
Have by the very cunning of the scene,
Been struck so to the soul that presently
They have proclaim’d their malefactions.
For murder, though it have no tongue, will speak
With most miraculous organ. I’ll have these players
Play something like the murder of my father
Before mine uncle. I’ll observe his looks;
I’ll tent him to the quick. If he but blench,
I know my course.

Hamlet’s soliloquys quite clearly reveal the thoughts that are plaguing him. Being privy to this processing of that character’s thoughts and feelings primes the audience to hear the subtext in his later dialogues.

• What thoughts and feelings does the character reveal while speaking to themselves?
• How do these thoughts and feelings colour their conversations with others?

05 | Connotations

QUEEN.
If it be,
Why seems it so particular with thee?

HAMLET.
Seems, madam! Nay, it is; I know not seems.
’Tis not alone my inky cloak, good mother,
Nor customary suits of solemn black,
Nor windy suspiration of forc’d breath,
No, nor the fruitful river in the eye,
Nor the dejected haviour of the visage,
Together with all forms, moods, shows of grief,
That can denote me truly. These indeed seem,
For they are actions that a man might play;
But I have that within which passeth show;
These but the trappings and the suits of woe.

Hamlet’s persistent attention to what lies below the surface of what “seems” (and even “beseems”) directs the audience to question words and look for hidden meanings.

1. How can you direct the reader to look for meaning beneath “surface appearances”?
2. How does the character assert that their words are genuine?

06 | Veiled Insults

HAMLET.
… That great baby you see there is not yet out of his swaddling clouts.

ROSENCRANTZ.
Happily he’s the second time come to them; for they say an old man is twice a child.

The inability to understand puns can suggest that a character is unintelligent, but both inside jokes and veiled insults can also give the impression that the speaker is themselves mean spirited and spiteful.

• Who does the character insult?
• Why do they feel the need to resort to veiled insults?
• How does this affect the reader’s perception of the character?

07 | Deflection & Equivocation

KING.
Now, Hamlet, where’s Polonius?

HAMLET.
At supper.

KING.
At supper? Where?

HAMLET.
Not where he eats, but where he is eaten. A certain convocation of politic worms are e’en at him.

Hamlet rarely answers questions directly. Instead, he diverts, reframes, or responds with something tangential. While the other characters attribute the erratic nature of his speech to his madness, the audience can sense that Hamlet is “sounding them out” and even baiting them to betray their own secrets.

When a character avoids a direct answer, the audience is led to wonder what they’re hiding and why.

• What questions does the character avoid?
• How do they change the subject?
• What do other characters reveal in response to this evasion?

08 | Dramatic Ambiguity

HAMLET.
… But, come; for England! Farewell, dear mother.

KING.
Thy loving father, Hamlet.

HAMLET.
My mother. Father and mother is man and wife; man and wife is one flesh; and so, my mother. Come, for England.

The audience’s knowledge of the ghost’s story, as well as of Hamlet’s feigned madness, allow for more layered interpretations of the speeches he makes.

1. Here Hamlet may simply be insulting Claudius by calling him womanly.
2. Considering the recent murder, Hamlet’s rhetoric regarding man and wife might have a threatening ring to it, because he thinks that his mother is complicit in the death of his father (the ghost Hamlet).
3. On the other hand, he could be thinking of the ghost’s injunction to spare his mother, and using this rhetoric as another tactic to delay taking decisive action.

• What information can you impart to the reader before the dialogue takes place, in order for them to understand the undercurrents in the conversation?
• What are three possible interpretations of the same utterance?