What does Hamlet mean when he begins to detail the food chain?

Answer 1

Hamlet is using the food chain as a metaphor to talk about the nature of power and hierarchy in society. By detailing how a king can be eaten by a common peasant, he is highlighting the fragility and unpredictability of power dynamics. Ultimately, Hamlet is reflecting on the idea that even the most powerful individuals are subject to the whims of fate and mortality.

Answer 2

"Hamlet: A man may fish with a worm that has eat of a king, and eat of the fish that has 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."

I assume this to be the passage in question. Hamlet is not interested in the concept of a food chain, nor is he telling Claudius some interesting facts about Biology. He is trying to unnerve him. People don't like to think of their bodies being food for something else at all. Hamlet is not only talking about this unpleasant but undeniable fact, but at the same time is using it to put Claudius on a level with beggars, which is difficult for a snob like Claudius to take.

In the previous passage, he talks about how the same worms eat beggars as do kings. "Your fat king and your lean beggar are but variable service--two dishes, but to one table." In this one he extends the idea so the king has indirectly become the beggar's food, an ignominious end for a proud man.

Hamlet will continue to explore this interesting question of what happens to our bodies after we die in the gravedigger scene. "To what base uses we return, Horatio. Why may not imagination trace the noble dust of Alexander till 'a find it stopping a bunghole?"