Hamlet’s Garbage

In Gilbert and Sullivan’s The Mikado, the prince Nanki-Poo, disguised as a wandering minstrel, terms himself ‘a thing of shreds and patches’, adapting and recycling Hamlet’s insulting description of his uncle-stepfather Claudius as ‘a king of shreds and patches’ (III. iv. 99), in comparison with his father the old king. Editors have glossed this as ‘ragged patchwork (as contrasted with the paragon of your precedent lord)’ (III. iv. 96), or even ‘the patchwork costume of the stage clown’. I propose that this is a livelier, more pointed and perhaps more sinister conceit than editorial glosses have previously allowed, and in particular I argue that it is recalling the Ghost’s own bitter denunciation of his queen’s transference of her affections to his usurping, murderous brother: ‘Lust … will sate itself in a celestial bed | And prey on garbage’ (I. v. 55-7), via an association of hell, theft, tailors, and textiles.