Quote Analysis

Hamlet comments to Horatio that the age has become so refined that even peasants now come close in status to courtiers, causing friction.

The body metaphor—'toe of the peasant' approaching 'heel of the courtier'—makes class hierarchy literally spatial and physical, with the peasant nipping at the courtier's heels from behind. 'Galls his kibe' (rubs his chilblain, a sore on the heel) turns social climbing into a skin irritation, something that chafes and annoys. The image is both comic and genuinely uncomfortable: social mobility becomes a painful friction rather than progress, and Hamlet's perspective is the courtier's, feeling the peasant's encroachment as an injury.

Use this to argue that Hamlet's social observations reveal his own class position even as he critiques hierarchy—the metaphor frames peasant advancement as something that irritates the courtier rather than something that benefits the peasant, showing Hamlet's mixed feelings about the leveling he elsewhere seems to endorse.