ACT IV SCENE III & IV

… I suppose that I’m the only one who’s mourning Polony’s death at this point. Well… this will all eventually have to blow up in our “tragic hero’s” face sooner or later so I always have Hammy’s demise to look forward to! Yes, Polony, your untimely death shall be avenged! (Hahaha just kidding. Wow that sounded really horrible.)

Anyways, in this scene we have King Claudius address the murder of Polony by directly confronting an even crazier-than-usual Hamlet. Claudius asks for his councilor’s whereabouts, Hamlet simple responds that he’s at supper, not that he’s supping, but rather, he’s being supped on.

“Not where [Polonius] 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. That’s the end.” (22-27)

My initial reaction to his indirect response was basically a quizzical stare accompanied with a giant question mark stationed in the middle of my brain. What? How in the world did we get from Polony’s whereabouts to worms and kings and beggars and their guts?! Well, since we know by now that there’s a method to Hamlet’s “madness,” let’s take his little wormy speech apart, shall we?

It’s probably safe to assume that this is obviously all metaphorical, an analogy to something. Since our sidenotes suggests that the “convocation of politic worms” most likely referred to the Diet of Worms, if “politic worms” are meant to represent the politicians, “supper” probably represents an even bigger concept/thing – the world.

Hamlet says that Polonius is being eaten by these politic worms. According to wikipedia (such a reliable source, I know), the Diet of Worms is most famous for summoning Martin Luther, the founder of Protestantism, to renounce his views under the orders of the Pope. Shakespeare was a man of the Elizabethan era in England, the period in which Queen Elizabeth Tudor ruled (Kyahh, the Tudors! I love the Tudors! Just saying.). The Queen was well known to be a dedicated Protestant, and England, at the time, pretty much agreed that Protestantism was the best. (In fact, if I do remember correctly, England despised the Catholics, particularly the Catholic Spaniards.) It’s possible that when Shakespeare says that the “convocation of politic worms are e’en at him,” he says it in a negative connotation, since the Diet of Worms was against the Protestant movement, and England (Shakespeare’s beloved country) very much promoted it. Therefore politic worms = bad. Eating up Polony like they tried to nibble at Luther.

He proceeds to speak of Claudius’ worm (“your worm”) – which either refers to Claudius’ own Diet of Worms, aka Claudy’s little minions, which, in Hamlet’s mind, comprise of Rosencrantz, Guildenstern, and Polonius, or it’s saying that Claudius himself is a politic worm. The latter sounds like it would make more sense since Polonius is still the victim who was eaten at supper here. He then says that it’s “your only emperor for diet.” Translation? His schemes as a politic worm to eat away at people is all that occupies his diet/mind? Possibly.

The following sentences are especially trick, as Hamlet delves into the world of fat. “We fat all creatures else to fat us, and we fat ourselves for maggots.” This reminds me a lot of the shadow conversation Hamlet had with his friends in an earlier part of the play, how if ambition is simply a shadow of a dream, then kings (with ambition) are shadows of the beggars (without ambition). We all depend on each other to feed ourselves, our ambition, our desires, only to “fat ourselves for maggots,” insects that eat anything from food to dead bodies. Makes it sound like Hamlet is saying all our greedy ambition leads to nothing, or death, and is meaningless. “Your fat king and your lean beggar is but variable service – two dishes but to one table. That’s the end.” It doesn’t matter if one is king and the other is a beggar, either way they “fat” others and they “fat” themselves.

So… if we piece together the puzzle… this basically translate into -

“Not where [Polonius] eats, but where he is eaten. A certain convocation of politic worms are e’en at him” = ”You used Polonius to the very end, and like a worm, you ate away at him.”

“Your worm is your only emperor for diet. We fat all creatures else to fat us, and we fat ourselves for maggots.” = “You only think of how to use other people for your own benefit. It’s in our human nature to be ambitious and to use each other for our ambition, but it’s all pointless in the end because we all die anyway.” (Italics = unsure about.)

“Your fat king and your lean beggar is but variable service – two dishes but to one table. That’s the end.” = “What difference is a king and a beggar when their services are simply interchangeable? They’re both humans. They contribute the same thing to life. They both die.“

So where is Polonius, Hamlet? Being eaten by worms. As usual.

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