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All Site ContentHamletAct 4Scene 7
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"arrows, too slightly timbered"
Metaphor
Act 4,
Scene 7
Lines 9b-24

An explanation of the phrase “too slightly timbered” in Act 4, Scene 7 of myShakespeare’s Hamlet.

Claudius

                                                 Oh , for two special reasons,
Which may to you perhaps seem much unsinewed,
But yet to me they are strong. The queen, his mother,
Lives almost by his looks, and for myself  
(My virtue or my plague, be it either which)
She's so conjuncconjunctive to my life and soul
That, as the star moves not but in his sphere,
I could not but by her. The other motive 
Why to a public count I might not go
Is the great love the general gender bear him,
Who, dipping all his faults in their affection,
Would, like the spring that turneth wood to stone, 
Convert his guilts to graces so that my arrows,
Too slightly timbered for so loud a wind,
Would have reverted to my bow again,
And not where I had aimed them.    

In this metaphor, Claudius’s accusations against Hamlet could come back to hurt him, just as an arrow made from too light a wood could be blown back by the wind to harm the archer.