So why did you marry that sleazeball?

"Look here, upon this picture, and on this,
the counterfeit presentment of two brothers."

                                                           Hamlet       (III, iv)

Hamlet's problem isn't madness. Among other things, he's just plain mad. Mad at his mother for her hasty remarriage to her dead husband's brother, Claudius. Debatable questions of incestuousness aside, Claudius bears the mark of Cain: he murdered the elder Hamlet to get his hands on both the crown and Queen Gertrude,  not necessarily in that order. Evidently, he didn't regard the younger Hamlet as formidable enough to worry too much about.

In a scene that's been interpreted and reinterpreted for centuries (the same could be said for the entire play), Hamlet confronts his mother about her "o'erhasty marriage" just moments after stabbing Polonius, Claudius' chief courtier. Polonius had chosen a hiding place that wasn't sufficiently sword-proof. Clearly, Gertrude's behavior has set Hamlet on an angry roar.

Dispose of Polonius' body? He'll get to that in a minute. What Hamlet wants to know right now is, "Mum, how could you so quickly transfer your affection from this superman to this slob?"

Scholars point out that there's a bit of room for speculation as to whether Shakespeare, when writing this scene, imagined Hamlet showing his mother two small, locket-framed portraits of the two kings, past and present. An alternative possibility would be larger paintings, perhaps on a wall or elsewhere. But modern productions of Hamlet often opt for lockets worn around the neck as tokens of affection: comparing the miniatures brings the two characters in the scene (three, if you count the dead one) very close to one another, making the psychological tension all the more unsettling.

Pictured above, from the collection of Agecroft Hall, is a miniature embroidered portrait of England's King Charles I. It is made of silk, satin, and silver and gold thread and is displayed in a silver-colored metal mount, measuring about four and three-quarter inches in height. The portrait dates to the mid-17th century, when Charles I became a martyr in the eyes of English Royalists while remaining anathema to Parliamentarians.

Unfortunately for Charles, the Parliamentarians had the sharper axe, and they didn't mind using it.

Needlework portraits of the executed king reportedly became so popular and finely done that some were said to contain strands of his hair. Evidently the expression, "Any way to make a buck" has a distinguished ancestry.