Another question regarding Polonius' body is: Why did Hamlet hide it in the first place? He dragged it out of his mother's bedroom out of consideration for her feelings. But he didn't have to hide it unless he had some motive for doing so. He has apparently decided to pretend to be insane. When Rosencrantz and Guildenstern ask him where he has hidden the body, he replies in such terms that they can't understand him. Then at the end of this short scene he "runs off" crying "Hide fox, and all after" (Act 4, Scene 2). No doubt he is improvising. He wants them to think that in his madness he believes they are all playing a game, including Polonius, who, he pretends to believe, is really alive but hiding. After all, Polonius really was hiding behind the arras, and this may have suggested to Hamlet the notion of pretending that they were all playing a game comparable to our contemporary game of Hide and Seek. In the game of Hide Fox, and All After, it appears that only one player hides and all the others look for him. The one who finds the fox becomes the fox himself, which is the role everybody wants. Hamlet suggests that he found Polonius hiding and has now become the fox himself.
There is nothing insane about Hamlet. If he had told Rosencrantz and Guildenstern where he had hidden the body, that would be the same as admitting that he had killed him. Obviously they would have found the body with a stab wound and bloody clothing. No one but Gertrude really knows that Hamlet killed Polonius. Claudius only knows what Gertrude told him, and she didn't tell him everything. And Rosencrantz and Guildenstern only know what Claudius told them.
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