HAMLET                     For it cannot be

But I am pigeon-livered and lack gall

To make oppression bitter, or ere this

I should ha’ fatted all the region kites

With this slave’s offal – bloody, bawdy villain,

Remorseless, treacherous, lecherous, kindless villain.

Why, what an ass am I: this is most brave,

That I, the son of a dear murdered,

Prompted to my revenge by heaven and hell,

Must like a whore unpack my heart with words

And fall a-cursing like a very drab,

A stallion! Fie upon’t, foh! About, my brains!         (2.2.511-522)

For it cannot be—there’s no possible other explanation—but I am pigeon-livered and lack gall to make oppression bitter. I’m a coward, lily-livered, meek, shy and retiring; no fight in me. Bloodless. It must be the case indeed, or ere this—before now—I should ha’ fatted all the region kites with this slave’s offal—and the pigeon suggests the birds of prey whom—had he not been a coward—Hamlet would have already fed with the guts of his uncle, Claudius, the regicide and usurper. He switches from self-reproach to anger (which adds to his self-reproach): he’s so appalling, my uncle, bloody, bawdy villain, violent, lustful, remorseless, treacherous, lecherous, kindless villain. Claudius isn’t showing the smallest sign of remorse; he showed no pity to my father; he committed the ultimate betrayal in killing him, his king and his brother—he’s full of lust (again), he’s unnatural. It’s spittle-flecked, those internal rhymes, the plosive bloody, bawdy, the hissing less, less. Claudius is imagined as an absence, a lack—just as Hamlet hates himself for his own insufficiencies and failures, defines himself by his own losses too.

Well, hark at me, the big brave shouty man, he almost says. Why, what an ass am I—such a fool, a despicable fool—this is most brave, all my swaggering and bravado, I’m certainly doing my father proud! That I, the son of a dear murdered—he can choke on it, a crack in the voice—my father, he’s dead, he was murdered, my father—prompted to my revenge by heaven and hell, by the divine desire for justice, the infernal, siren call to vengeance, the whole created order, everything that is, on the earth and above and below it—so, this is all I can do? like a whore unpack my heart with words? Say things I don’t feel, mouth platitudes (about love, especially) rather than acting out of genuine feeling. Is this really the best I can do, to fall a-cursing like a very drab, swearing and shouting like a common prostitute? (Some unappealing misogyny underpinning the self-reproach.) or even a stallion? (Some editors prefer scullion—the lowest kitchen servant—but stallion suggests male prostitute; more self-loathing, in sexualised terms.) Fie upon’t, foh! I disgust myself, I reject myself, curse myself!

About, my brains! But what can I do? Think, think—after all, it’s what I do, perhaps the only thing I can do.