TEXT:
HAMLET (continued)
I prithee, take thy fingers from my throat;
For, though I am not splenitive and rash,
Yet have I something in me dangerous,
Which let thy wisdom fear: hold off thy hand.
CLAUDIUS
Pluck them asunder.
GERTRUDE
Hamlet, Hamlet!
ALL
Gentlemen!
Attendants part them.
HORATIO
Good my lord, be quiet.
HAMLET
Why I will fight with him upon this theme
Until my eyelids will no longer wag.
GERTRUDE
O my son, what theme?
HAMLET
I loved Ophelia: forty thousand brothers
Could not, with all their quantity of love,
Make up my sum. What wilt thou do for her?
CLAUDIUS
O, he is mad, Laertes.
GERTRUDE
For love of God, forbear him.
HAMLET
'Swounds, show me what thou'lt do:
Woo't weep? woo't fight? woo't fast? woo't tear thyself?
Woo't drink up eisel? Eat a crocodile?
I'll do't. Dost thou come here to whine?
To outface me with leaping in her grave?
NOTES:
The Humours
The four humours date back at least to medicine in the time of Hippocrates. Ancient Greek medicine identified four humours - black bile (whose name in Greek gives us the word melancholy), yellow bile, phlegm and blood. Galen suggested that an excess of any of these led to one of four personality types: melancholic, choleric, phlegmatic and sanguine. Although rejected by most of modern medicine, in this breakdown we do have the seeds that grew into personality indicators like the Meyers-Briggs test and its many off-shoots. You can check out Episode 27 for more details of how these relate to Hamlet. In this episode, Hamlet suggests that he is not splenetic - prone to the kinds of complaints that the spleen should govern. This feels quite ironic, given that the spleen was especially associated with melancholy, one of Hamlet’s major traits, and more loosely with bad temper or anger - which he has also displayed!
Forty
Forty is often the number Shakespeare uses for a whole heap of things - forty shillings, forty ducats, you name it. It’s large enough to be impressive but also still a conceivable number. Likewise here, forty thousand is huge but still comprehensible. (Although we’ll have an even bigger number next week!)
Minced Oaths
A minced oath is an expression formed by adapting a blasphemous or taboo word or phrase, in order to reduce the offence it might cause. Since Shakespeare was writing under the watchful eye of a censor, in a time when Puritans were gaining influence, he couldn't write the full versions of any curses or swearwords or expletives. As a result we have various items - sblood, swounds/zounds, and the very common 'Marry' - which is a contraction of 'By the Virgin Mary'. There's even an argument that the word 'bloody' as a curse word came into use as a contraction of 'By Our Lady'! Likewise in episode 68 we have ‘God’s bodykins’ - a rather cute way for Hamlet to swear at Polonius. More recently, Ophelia said “Gis”, a contraction of “Jesus”.
Eisel (Vinegar)
Eisel is a long-obsolete word for vinegar, and can be traced (via Middle English and Old English) to the Latin acetum or acetillum. While researching this episode I read a completely different explanation of this word that suggests that Hamlet means the river Ijssel (also pronounced EYE-sel), a tributary of the Rhine. Here the suggestion would be that Laertes might drink a river dry as a feat to show the extent of his love for Ophelia. Drinking a river and eating a crocodile might thereby be considered impossible tasks.
Crocodiles
Crocodiles show up in three other plays by Shakespeare - Henry VI.ii, Othello and Antony and Cleopatra. No surprise that Shakespeare’s play set on the Nile has two crocodiles, while both others are discussed for their artificial and untrustworthy tears.