GHOST            O Hamlet, what a falling off was there,

From me whose love was of that dignity

That it went hand in hand even with the vow

I made to her in marriage, and to decline

Upon a wretch whose natural gifts were poor

To those of mine.

But virtue, as it never will be moved

Though lewdness court it in a shape of heaven,

So lust, though to a radiant angel linked,

Will sate itself in a celestial bed

And prey on garbage.            (1.5.47-57)

O Hamlet, what a falling off was there: it’s the first time the Ghost addresses Hamlet by name, but here he could as well be speaking to himself, full of pain and bitter disgust and incredulity. What a come-down, let-down, what a disappointment. Didn’t she have any standards? To turn from me whose love was of that dignity that it went hand in hand even with the vow I made to her in marriage: I was her husband, in every possible way, for many years, bound tightly, through solemn vows. It’s a vivid image of commitment, the conjoined hands, invoked by a man of his word, who took it seriously all his life. And—here the Ghost shows his bitterness and anger more—to decline upon a wretch whose natural gifts were poor to those of mine. She chose HIM? After ME? A very poor second, my brother, no great qualities, no achievements. A pause while he contemplates this again, perhaps, with a tinge of self-disgust that he minds so much, that this is his brother he’s talking about with such contempt, as well as his beloved wife.

Then some more general moralising, still full of disgust and censoriousness, increasingly physical and sexual: but virtue, as it never will be moved though lewdness court it in a shape of heaven, so lust, though to a radiant angel linked, will sate itself in a celestial bed and prey on garbage. True virtue is impervious to all seductions, all blandishments; it’d be able to resist wantonness even if it dressed up as something heavenly. True virtue is absolute, impregnable. But lust will corrupt even the most angelic, the most beautiful, the most seemingly perfect—and once desire has been expressed and fulfilled in a lawful way, in a marriage bed, say, it can still be insatiable. Appetite, once awakened, cannot ever be fully satisfied, and so seeks out even those things which are disgusting.

It’s a misogynistic stereotype (the lusty widow) often cited in relation to the remarriage of widows in the early modern period, the suggestion being that once women have become sexually active within marriage, their appetites will be voracious, indiscriminate.

(As an aside, I try not to look ahead. But it’s just occurred to me—deep in the endgame of a book about Shakespeare and textiles—that garbage here perhaps anticipates, in a closely parallel speech by Hamlet in 3.4, the description of Claudius as the king of shreds and patches. Tailor’s scraps, sometimes legitimate, sometimes stolen, were known by the later sixteenth century as cabbage, which the OED suggests derives from garbage, citing Herrick using both words to mean the same thing in Hesperides. Time for a modicum of sleuthing to see if anyone else has commented on this and then, possibly, Notes and Queries here I come.)