ABSTRACT
In the final Act of Hamlet; the young Osric is sent to the Prince to bear a challenge from Laertes for a fencing-match, on which Claudius has laid a substantial wager. It is a moment of high drama; Laertes is embittered at Hamlet, and Claudius is fearful of him, because his life is at risk. Yet Shakespeare takes the opportunity to mock a certain kind of highly elaborate and Latinate English; when Osric addresses Hamlet, he replies in kind: OSRIC: Sir, here is newly come to court Laertes; believe me, an absolute
You might think that Hamlet is a little unfair here; with scarcely a hint from Osric he is off into a wonderful flight of fancy, in which his diction almost breaks down into nonsense. Unjust or not, this is an exemplary parodic interchange; Hamlet responds to the mild foolishness of Osric’s speech with full-blown mockery of it, in which the Latinate abstractions and the elegant metaphors are exaggerated to breaking point. Beyond the specifics of this
interchange, there is perhaps a parody here of the notorious elaborations of an Elizabethan prose style pioneered by Lyly in Euphues (1578-80).
