‘O, what a rogue and peasant slave am I!’ (Hamlet): Hamlet exclaims in one of his more despairing soliloquies in Shakespeare’s play. But what prompts him and what does he say in this important speech in the play? Hamlet’s soliloquy comes in act 2 scene 2, shortly after he has spoken with the players or actors, and just before he hatches his fiendish plan to try to determine the guilt of his uncle.
As the words which precede the speech, ‘Now I am alone’, indicate, Hamlet is about to launch into a soliloquy, in which he thinks out loud about his predicament. Hamlet explains his reasoning: the Ghost that appeared to him claimed to be his father, but what if it was the devil merely assuming the appearance of his father, in order to trick him into killing Claudius? Ascertaining Claudius’ guilt more empirically, by observing his face when the play is performed, will be more convincing grounds on which to condemn his uncle.
‘O, what a rogue and peasant slave am I!’, as that opening line of the soliloquy makes clear, is dominated by insult and ‘a-cursing’ (as Hamlet himself puts it). But look at how the words Hamlet starts off applying to himself (he is a ‘peasant slave’, and wonders, ‘who calls me villain?’) are soon twisted and reapplied not to himself, but to his uncle (the kites would feed on the ‘slave’s offal’, meaning Claudius’ internal organs after Hamlet had killed him and left him out for the birds to feed on; Claudius is a ‘bloody, bawdy villain’ and a ‘remorseless, treacherous, lecherous, kindless villain’.
The soliloquy is also, though, a searching account of Hamlet’s attitude to gender: masculinity is associated with action, and Hamlet feels he is being chided for his lack of masculinity, because he is spending more time talking about whether to enact his revenge than he is actually getting on with it. Note the language he uses is highly gendered: he likens himself to a ‘drab’ and a ‘whore’ (both terms for a prostitute in Elizabethan England), and a ‘scullion’ or kitchen girl. These are just some of the terms of abuse Hamlet throws about in this soliloquy.
Of course, this speech is also slightly unfair on Hamlet, too, and it goes to the core of what Hamlet’s delay in the play really signifies. He’s reprimanding himself for failing to take action, but it’s only through thinking through his predicament that he arrives upon his plan for the actors to perform a play that, he hopes, will tease out Claudius’ guilt. So it’s not as if he’s sitting about idly doing nothing. As the final words of the soliloquy make clear, in words that have since become proverbial, ‘the play’s the thing’. And Hamlet’s telling reference to having been ‘prompted to my revenge by heaven and hell’ also reveals that there is still some doubt in his mind over the authenticity of the Ghost claiming to be his father (why ‘heaven and hell’ otherwise?). The play’s the thing, all right: for Hamlet, acting (on a stage) rather than ‘acting’ (i.e. walking up to Claudius straight away and running him through with a sword) will be the way he will get his revenge.
