Let the bloat King tempt you again to bed, Pinch wanton on your cheek, call you his mouse, And let him, for a pair of reechy kisses, Or paddling in your neck with his damned fingers, Make you to ravel al this matter out, That I essentially am not in madness, But mad in craft.

First – this is a CRAZY long sentence. Why?
Second – Hamlet sure has a lot of descriptive details of his mom’s sexual relationship with Claudius. I don’t put any real stock in the Freudian readings of this play. I do not think Hamlet actually wants to sleep with his mother.
However – I can see where that reading comes from. It’s lines like this. It has an erotic specificity. Hamlet is aware of or imagining some very intimate details about his mother’s sex life.
Third – why the bloat King? Is he calling Claudius fat? Actually? Or fat with power? Or is it, perhaps, a way to say he’s full of hot air? Just calling Claudius fat doesn’t seem quite cutting enough.

Gertrude calls Hamlet fat at the end of the play in a way that feels affectionate. To just call Claudius fat would feel a little small and petty. I feel like Bloat has to reference something a little bigger.

One thought on “Let the bloat King tempt you again to bed, Pinch wanton on your cheek, call you his mouse, And let him, for a pair of reechy kisses, Or paddling in your neck with his damned fingers, Make you to ravel al this matter out, That I essentially am not in madness, But mad in craft.

  1. Guy Hardy's avatar Guy Hardy October 27, 2022 / 9:43 am

    I have puzzled over this passage since high school. ”Reechy kisses” was simple enough to fathom, but “pinching wanton on your cheek” and “paddling in your neck with his damnéd fingers” escaped me for so very long.

    It was the cheek reference that left me wondering for quite some time. Then (ironically enough) I remembered the common—if discouraged—high school practice of grabbing girls’ butts. Thinking of this as the cheek being referred to made the whole reference much more clear.

    But what, then, of this “neck”? Even high school, with all of its locker-room prurience, could not discover the meaning to me. It would be much longer before I took note of the preposition used: “in”.

    How does one paddle IN the neck?

    Could this be a reference to applying (damned) fingers to a neck one would conceivably put fingers INto in such a situation? (neck… cervical [spine/pelvis]… cervix… ?)

    I cannot believe I am the first person to get to this point, but I have been unsuccessful in my search for other similar analysis.

    Anything?

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