Assassins could not turn More
kindless than this care.
lecherous,
kindless villain!- 581) and then catches himself doing so
Bloody, bawdy villain, Remorseless, treacherous, lecherous,
kindless villain O vengeance.16
Bloody, bawdy villain!/Remorseless, treacherous, lecherous,
kindless villain!/O, vengeance!' (2.2.565-9).
Shakespeare's depiction of Claudius as a "treacherous, lecherous,
kindless villain" (2.2.581), given over to lust and drink, is certainly consistent with a leprous disposition.
Thus, in one line, Hamlet talks about what an actor would do if he had his own cue for passion: He would "drown the stage with tears," "cleave the general ear," "Make mad the guilty," "appall the free," "Confound the ignorant," and "amaze." Just a few lines later, he packs six more verbs into one line: "calls," "breaks," "Plucks," "blows," "Tweaks," and "gives." Hamlet is also not averse to loading adjectives onto a noun, as in "Remorseless, treacherous, lecherous,
kindless villain!" As we will observe later, the soliloquy strives to convey the richness of inner speech in its own form of ut pictura noesis.
How cruel and
kindless the terrorists can be, that picture is in front of us.
["this slave" links forward to "villain"] C: Remorseless, [homoioteleuton; rhyme] D: Treacherous, D: Lecherous, C:
Kindless B: Villain!
ALTHOUGH a number of readers thought the word "
kindless" does not exist, it does - it means heartless.
different kinds" (Nelson 1970, 257) and are themselves intrinsically
kindless. Insofar as it is up to us to assign things to kinds, we are left with what has been called the ultimate form of conventionalism (Doepke 1996, 189).
"And although the Chinese was definitely a colored man even if not a Negro, he was only he, single peculiar and barren; not just kinless but even
kindless, half the world or anyway half the continent (we all knew about San Francisco's Chinatown) sundered from his like and therefore as threatless as a mule." Faulkner might in fact be describing his perception of Oxford's lone Chinese laundryman, bound by class and face into his isolation.
Hamlet as played by Toby Stephens was often more action hero than introspective prince, so that in his "rogue and peasant slave" soliloquy that ends 2.2 Stephens pounded his weapon on the ground at each word in his "Remorseless, treacherous, lecherous,
kindless villain!" (2.2.581) so as eventually to leave it stuck in the floor.