Worms and beggars will triumph over Kings - Herod Antipas and Hamlet 4.3

In Hamlet 4.3, instead of “Long live King Claudius!” Hamlet names worms as emperors [1]: Eventually, worms will overcome every king, after which even a beggar might eat, digest, and defecate a monarch. In the end, the meek (including beggars and worms) inherit the earth and its kingdoms [2]. 

But how can a beggar defecate a king? 

(Some people in the USA, terrorized by ICE, may be asking the same thing.) 

Hamlet explains the food chain to Claudius, who has lied consistently in the play about a key murder for which he is responsible: 

KING  Now, Hamlet, where’s Polonius?

HAMLET  At supper.

KING  At supper where?

HAMLET  Not where he eats, but where he is eaten. A
certain convocation of politic worms are e’en at
him. Your worm is your only emperor for diet. We
fat all creatures else to fat us, and we fat ourselves
for maggots. Your fat king and your lean beggar is
but variable service—two dishes but to one table.
That’s the end.

KING  Alas, alas!

HAMLET  A man may fish with the worm that hath eat
of a king and eat of the fish that hath fed of that
worm.

KING  What dost thou mean by this?

HAMLET  Nothing but to show you how a king may go a
progress through the guts of a beggar.

KING  Where is Polonius?

HAMLET  In heaven. Send thither to see. If your messenger
find him not there, seek him i’ th’ other
place yourself.
(4.3.19-39)

“Seek him in the other place yourself” means “Go to [damnation] yourself” - phrased in a way polite enough to pass the censors’ and Master of Revels’ scrutiny.

Worms eating a king recalls Herod Agrippa struck by an angel and consumed by worms in Acts 12:23 [3].

This fits with the Memento Mori tradition (you are mortal, dust, and to dust you shall return), and ubiquitous images of the wheel of death, already ancient in Shakespeare’s time and referenced numerous times in his plays [4].

But here Hamlet makes it more pointed, using the death of Polonius to make a very personal reminder about mortality. It may seem a safe thing to say, especially if merely found on a tapestry or an illustration in a book. Claudius knew of the plan of Polonius to spy on Hamlet and Gertrude, and knew it could have been him, stabbed by Hamlet behind an arras.

Hamlet gives Claudius notice: Your days are numbered before you become a feast for worms. 


NOTES: All references to Shakespeare plays are to the Folger Shakespeare Library online versions: https://shakespeare.folger.edu

[1] For “worm as your only emperor for diet” see Hamlet 4.3.24. As many others have noted, this is also a reference to Martin Luther at the Diet of Worms, when the plan was to get Luther to recant or else burn him at the stake as a heretic, but he escaped with the help of a disguise and a sponsor.

[2] See Matthew 5:5 (from the Sermon on the Mount) and Ps. 37:11 (“But meek men shall possess the earth, and shall have their delight in the multitude of peace.” Geneva Trans.)

[3] Also see Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews - Book XIX, chapter 8, par. 2. https://penelope.uchicago.edu/josephus/ant-19.html

[4] Hamlet refers in his “to be or not” speech to “outrageous fortune” (3.1);
the First Player in Hamlet 2.2 speaks of “strumpet Fortune” (as does Constance in King John 3.1), with the First Player saying that the synod of the gods should break Fortune’s wheel;
Ophelia in 4.5 says, “O how the wheel becomes it” in her apparently mad ramblings.
Edmund in King Lear 5.3 refers to how “the wheel is come full circle”;
and in Antony and Cleopatra 4.15, Cleopatra says, “That the false huswife Fortune break her wheel”.


IMAGES: Four images of the “Wheel of Fortune” or “Fortuna’s Wheel,” showing at times the rise and fall of kings (top) who start at lower left (sometimes as infants) and who sometimes rise to thrones (top) but later become beggars or corpses (lower right).

Upper Left: King Arthur and Fortune. Detail from BL Royal 18 D ii, fol. 30v, via the British Library. Public domain via https://faculty.arts.ubc.ca/sechard/GRAPHICS/fortune1.jpg

Upper Right: Rota uite que fortuna uocatur (The wheel of life is called fortune). Shelfmark: IC.35. Author: Anon.
Date: [1460?]. British Library archive. Public domain via https://www.imagesonline.bl.uk/cdn/britishlibrary/previews/69/ce1f887e40668c27c766ce798ae45cea/35/0a9688b7fc1b97daf9c36910049f87df/20636.jpg

Lower Right: Ancient Astrolabe Illustration: Fortuna Spinning Her Beloved or Feared Wheel in Medieval Times. Pinterest, fair use/public domain.

Lower Left: Wheel of Fortune from the Hortus Deliciarum (Garden of delights), written in the late 12th century by Herrad of Hohenbourg, Abbess of Mont-Sainte-Odile. Public domain via https://msuweb.montclair.edu/~furrg/mel/images/wheel_of_fortune_Hortus_Deliciarum.jpg 

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