Hamlet's Use of Language

Hamlet is intimidating, head-strong, and stubborn.  This is made obvious through his choice of words and uses of metaphors, irony and puns throughout Shakespeare’s Hamlet.  The tongue sparring is found throughout the play, but mostly when Hamlet is speaking to the King (Claudius, his uncle), Polonius, and Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.   Less frequently, he turns his words against others like his mother and Ophelia.  He enjoys turning deserving people’s own words against them and making them squirm with the very things he says.   

            The first time we hear Hamlet he uses verbal irony against the King, Claudius.  When Claudius calls him cousin—meaning relative, Claudius is Hamlet’s late father’s brother—and son—for Claudius is now married to Hamlet’s mother—Hamlet retorts, “A little more than kin, a little less than kind.”  He says he is “too much in the sun,” not really referring to the celestial body but to the homophone “son.”  Claudius is abusing the term “son” in Hamlet’s eyes, for Claudius has quickly married his widowed mother and Hamlet is not yet done mourning his birth father’s death.

            Hamlet’s abusive language does not go unnoticed.  Even the dim-witted Polonius seems to notice: “How pregnant sometimes his replies are!” he says, “A happiness that often that madness hits on, which reason and sanity could not so prosperously be delivered of.”  Once Hamlet gets sparring he doesn’t slow down.  This is what he enjoys doing, it excites him, and he’s good at it.

            Often Hamlet speaks with double meanings, irony or puns, but not always.  Hamlet doesn’t waste his good wit on the dull Polonius, he just says things to mess with him.  When Polonius says the play is too long, Hamlet says his beard is too long.  Hamlet messes with Polonius and Polonius takes it.  An example of this is when Hamlet is looking up the clouds he says he sees one that looks like a camel.  Polonius agrees it looks like a camel.  Then Hamlet changes his mind and says it looks like a weasel and then a whale.  Each time Polonius agrees.   It doesn’t take a genius to realize that camels, weasels and whales look nothing alike, but Polonius, eager to please Hamlet, who is just proving his wit, takes it all in stride, oblivious to the fact that he is Hamlet’s joke.

            Most of the time, Hamlet makes his mean remarks to those the reader would usually deem deserving: Claudius, Polonius, and Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.  Occasionally, however, Hamlet will turn around Ophelia’s words or those of his own mother.  One example is when Hamlet and Gertrude are in her chambers talking Gertrude says, “Hamlet, thou hast thy father much offended.”  She means he has offended Claudius with his bad attitude and harsh words.  Hamlet says almost the same exact words back to her, but coming from Hamlet they have a very different meaning.  “Mother, you have my father much offended.”  They are not talking about the same man.  Hamlet is speaking of his late father, brother of Gertrude’s current husband, and he is accusing her.  Hamlet genuinely loves his mother, but not even she can escape his harsh tongue.

            Hamlet’s use of metaphor is almost as impressive as his use of irony.  He can use metaphors, too, to insult his victims.  He calls Rosencrantz a sponge because he “soaks up the king’s countenance, his rewards, his authorities. . . . When he needs what [Rosencrantz] has gleaned, it is but squeezing [him], and [the sponge] shall be dry again.”  Rosencrantz likely has no idea what Hamlet is talking about, but with a little investigation the meaning becomes clearer to the readers.  To Hamlet, Rosencrantz is sucking up the king’s attentions and when the king no longer requires his assistance, he will take those attentions back.  All this meaning can be found in Hamlet’s simple metaphoric image of a wet sponge being wrung out after use.

            Hamlet sometimes carries his metaphors and puns a little too far.  When the setting is gone dark and all other characters are distraught, Hamlet keeps a cool head and keeps the irony flowing from his mouth.  He has just killed Polonius and stashed the body, which is serious business indeed, but when asked where the body is hidden, Hamlet replies with two words only: “At supper.”  Claudius falls right into Hamlets verbal trap and asks, “At supper where?”  Hamlet then launches into one of his most vivid speeches and carries his pun through:

            “Not where he eats, but where he is eaten.  A certain convocation of politic worms are e’en at him.  Your worm is your only emperor for diet.  We fat all creatures else to fat us, and we fat ourselves for maggots.  Your fat king and your lean beggar is but variable service—two dishes but to one table. . . . A man may fish with the worm that hath eat of a king and eat of the fish that fed of that worm. . . . [And this is] how a king may go a progress through the guts of a beggar.”

            Basically, this is one of the biggest insults anyone could ever give a king, and Hamlet says it all so matter-of-fact like.  Hamlet has just told his father in law that worms are above him on the food chain, for when Claudius is dead the worms will eat him.  And a king and a beggar are the same meal to a maggot.  This is very insulting, as a king would never want to be thought of as being anything near a beggar.  And then Hamlet says that a beggar could be higher than a king on the chain if he eats the fish that ate the worm that ate the king.  Hamlet knows exactly what he is doing.

Hamlet is brilliant at come-backs and insults.  He always abuses and often accuses through his use of irony, metaphors, and puns.  He uses his language to drive his point hard into the ears of his victims, to make them squirm under his glance.  Hamlet’s language is what makes him who he is.  His language is what intimidates.