Seeming/Being in Hamlet

When I read Hamlet last month, I started finding some instances that involve the dichotomy of seeming and being that Hamlet mentions early in the play:

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 forced breathe,
No, nor the fruitful river in the eye,
Nor the dejected havior of the visage,
Together with all forms, moods, shapes 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 (I.ii.81-91)

Shortly after I started reading Hamlet, I also started Macbeth, and one of the essays in my edition (David Scott Kastan's "Words, Words, Words: Understanding Shakespeare's Language," which I think appears in all the Barnes & Noble editions of Shakespeare's plays) mentions this seeming/being dichotomy with regard to Claudius' announcement of his marriage to Gertrude:

Sometimes it is not the network of imagery but the very syntax that speaks, as when Claudius announces his marriage to Hamlet's mother:

Therefore our sometime sister, now our Queen,
Th' imperial jointress to this warlike state,
Have we--as 'twere with a defeated joy,
With an auspicious and a dropping eye,
With mirth in funeral and with dole in marriage,
In equal scale weighing delight and dole--
Taken to wife. (Hamlet, 1.2.8-14)

All he really wants to say here is that he has married Gertrude, his former sister-in-law: "Therefore our sometime sister... Have we... Taken to wife."  But the straightforward sentence gets interrupted and complicated, revealing his own discomfort with the announcement.  ...  The very unnaturalness of the sentence is what alerts us that we are meant to understand more than the simple relation of fact.

While reading Hamlet, I found an-other instance of this - where the syntax of the sentence reveals more meaning than the words themselves.  When Ophelia enters in Act II, Scene 1, she tells Polonius that she has been "so affrighted."  When asked the cause, she explains that

Lord Hamlet, with his doublet all unbraced,
No hat upon his head, his stockings fouled,
Ungart'red, and down-gyved to his ankle;
Pale as his shirt, his knees knocking each other,
And with a look so piteous in purport
As if he had been loosed out of hell
To speak of horrors--he comes before me.  (II.i.87-93)

Ophelia does the same thing that Claudius does in the previous act.  While Hamlet's appearance could very well contribute to Ophelia's fright of him, the only action in those seven lines is that "Lord Hamlet... comes before [her]."  Again, the syntax illustrates more than just the words, and here, it indicates the seeming/being dichotomy that's so important in the play.  Ophelia is putting more emphasis on what Hamlet looks like than on what he does.  More emphasis on how he seems (by means of his appearance) than on what he is (indicated by his action).  Interestingly, Hamlet himself points out this speaking syntax when he tells one of the actors to "Suit the action to the word, the word to the action" (III.ii.17-18).

Before the play (the play within the play) starts, Hamlet shares his plan (observing Claudius' reaction to the play, which Hamlet has re-written to resemble Claudius' murdering King Hamlet) with Horatio, explaining that he will "rivet [his eyes] to [Claudius'] face, / And after [they] will both [their] judgments join / In censure of his seeming" (III.ii.86-88).  In light of the seeming/being distinction, the word choice here seems important, but I don't quite know the whole implication.  Part of it seems to be that characters base their actions (their being) on others' appearances (their seeming).  Hamlet exhibits this with his watching Claudius' reaction just as Ophelia demonstrates this in her explanation of her fear at Hamlet's appearance.  Still, I feel there's more to this that I'm not grasping.

Claudius is attentive to the seeming/being thing too.  In Act IV, he questions Laertes' grief over Polonius death, wondering if it's genuine or not:  "Laertes, was your father dear to you? /  Or are you like the painting of a sorrow, / A face without a heart?" (IV.vii.120-122).

While it's not directly related to seeming or being (although "without [judgement] we are pictures of mere beasts" may relate), I found Claudius' lines in Act IV, Scene 5 really interesting.  Ophelia, mentally unstable after her father's death, has just left the scene.

O, this is the poison of deep grief; it springs
All from her father's death.  O Gertrude, Gertrude,
When sorrows come, they come not single spies,
But in battalions!  First, her father slain;
Next, your son gone, and he most violent author
Of his own just remove; the people muddied,
Thick and unwholesome in their thoughts and whispers
For good Polonius' death, and we have done but greenly
In hugger-mugger to inter him; poor Ophelia
Divided from herself and her fair judgment,
Without the which we are pictures of mere beasts;
Last, and as much containing as all these,
Her brother is in secret come from France;
Feeds on his wonder, keeps himself in clouds,
And wants not buzzers to infect his ear
With pestilent speeches of his father's death,
Wherein necessity, of matter beggared,
Will nothing stick our person to arraign
In ear and ear.  O my dear Gertrude, this,
Like to a murd'ring piece, in many places
Gives me superfluous death.  (IV.v.77-97)

Claudius is doing two different things here, and I can't quite believe either.  First, he's sympathizing for Ophelia and her unstable mental state because her father is dead, and yet Hamlet is in the same position without any of Claudius' good will.  Maybe Claudius views King Hamlet's death and its effect on Hamlet differently than he does Polonius' death and its effect on Ophelia because he had a hand in King Hamlet's death.  Still, it's almost literally incredible that he can't see how similar the situations are.

Second, he seems to be making puns about how he killed King Hamlet.  In Act I, Scene 5, the Ghost of King Hamlet explains that Claudius poured poison in his ear while he was sleeping in the orchard, which is how he died (I.v.66-82).  And here in Act IV, Claudius mentions "poison," a "father's death," "want[ing] not buzzers to infect his ear / With petilen[ce]," "In ear and ear," and "murd'ring."  He doesn't connect King Hamlet's death's effect on Hamlet with Polonius' death's effect on Ophelia, yet he seems to be remembering King Hamlet's death at the same time.