HAMLET                     And yet within a month

(Let me not think on’t – Frailty, thy name is woman),

A little month, or e’er those shoes were old

With which she followed my poor father’s body,

Like Niobe, all tears. Why, she –

O God, a beast that wants discourse of reason

Would have mourned longer – married with my uncle,

My father’s brother (but no more like my father

Than I to Hercules).               (1.2.145-153)

Hamlet’s becoming more and more distressed, and angry, too, angry with his mother in particular, with women in general (there’s a streak of misogyny that runs through a lot of his anger and unhappiness). And yet within a month—not even a month after my father died (he continues to be hazy about how much time has passed)—but then he tries to step back from this thought, as if it’s too hot, too painful to hang on to, let me not think on’t, no, don’t go there… too late, vitriol, spitting it out: frailty, thy name is woman! weak, fickle, inconstant—unfaithful. She’s betrayed my father, cuckolded him, even! All because she’s too weak to resist, can’t control herself, her appetites. (This train of thought has partly been suggested by Hamlet’s nostalgic recollection of his mother’s clear and enduring desire for his father.) A little month, barely even that, or e’er those shoes were old, with which she followed my poor father’s body—and it doesn’t need there to be a note here on the likely flimsiness of queenly footwear at the time, the point is the pathos, partly—imagining old shoes, footsteps, footprints, and walking behind a coffin (which Hamlet did too, that’s what he’s remembering, and he thinks about her shoes because his eyes were downcast, on the ground, as he walked in the funeral procession)—but also reducing Gertrude to her shoes, a thing, not a person. At the funeral at least, not that long ago, she was like Niobe, all tears, like the classical archetype of excessive weeping (but Niobe wept for her children, not her husband, and was turned into a weeping rock); there’s an implicit accusation of neglect here, partly, Hamlet thinking, why doesn’t my mother care about how I feel, what I’m going through? where’s her empathy?

Why she—and he interrupts himself again—O God, a beast that wants discourse of reason would have mourned longer. An animal, irrational, less than human, would have been more seemly, more protracted in its grief. But not my mother! She’s not even as decorous, as capable of deep feeling, as a dumb animal. She married with my uncle, my father’s brother. Hamlet spells it out, spits it out in disgust. And yeah, he might be my father’s brother, but he’s not like my father at all! But no more like my father than I to Hercules. (This is tinged with special pleading if one actor is doubling Claudius and the Ghost: are they physically alike but temperamentally different? Or is Hamlet desperate to make this distinction no matter what, even though they were quite alike?) No, they’re no more alike than I’m like—Hercules! That’s a joke, right, I’m a student, not superman. And I’m feeling pretty inadequate right now.