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"Bloody, bawdy villain"
Context and Language Videos
Act 2,
Scene 2
Lines 564-568

A discussion of Hamlet's frustration with his own inability to act in Act 2, Scene 2 of myShakespeare's Hamlet?

myShakespeare | Hamlet 2.2 Discussion: Bloody, Bawdy Villain

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!     
Video Transcript: 

RALPH: Pigeons, like doves, are docile, tame birds; while gall is secreted by the liver was thought to be the source of anger. Hamlet accuses himself of lacking gall, unable to get angry enough to find the taste of oppression bitter.

SARAH: If he could feel that anger, he would have fed Claudius's guts to the vultures by now.

RALPH: The last few lines here are directed towards Claudius. It's as if thinking about Claudius's crimes has called up his image up in front of Hamlet, and finally gotten him angry — so now these insults are finally not directed at himself, but at his enemy.