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Word Nerd: "offal" and "kite"
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Act 2,
Scene 2
Lines 564-569

An explanation of the words "offal" and "kite" in Act 2, Scene 2 of myShakespeare's Hamlet.

myShakespeare | Hamlet 2.2 Word Nerd: Offal and Kite

Hamlet

Ha, why, I should take it. For it cannot be    
But I am pigeon-livered, and lack gall
To make oppression bitter; or ere this
I should have fatted all the region kites
With this slave's offal. Bloody, bawdy villain!     
Remorseless, treacherous, lecherous, kindless villain!    
Video Transcript: 

RALPH: Offal is literally the stuff which falls off when you are doing farm work — for instance wood chips, or grain husks.

SARAH: When you are preparing an animal carcass for eating, what falls off are the parts of the animal you are not going to eat, like the internal organs.

RALPH: A kite is a falcon-like bird. No relation to a hoddy-peak or a hoddy-dod.

SARAH: The child's toy, that we fly in parks and at the beach, is named a kite because it resembles this bird.

RALPH: So Hamlet is saying that he should have made all the falcons in the nearby region fatter by feeding them Claudius's internal organs after killing him. The slave in the line is Claudius, and it's simply a term of insult.