To be or not to be..." "...so like the king that was and is the question of these wars
"Look where my abridgements come." - Hamlet
"We need more light to find your meaning
out." - Love's Labour's Lost
Come my friend, sit down a while,
and let me
Assail your eyes with that which I have seen
On the printed page, on the living stage,
In sparkling pixels, on the giant screen,
And on sleepless nights, and in restless
dreams.
Be All My Sins Remembered
by Ray Eston Smith Jr
e-mail address: thyorison@yahoo.com
in memory of my father, Lt. Col. R Eston Smith
This web page hosted by Jim Haldenwang
Acknowledgements:
Bookstores, the continuing frontier.
Libraries, I only wish they were privatized so I would not have to acknowledge so great a debt to government.
Mrs. Black, my 10th-grade English teacher. When I first set foot in her classroom, I was expecting the usual stale rules of grammar and pretentious babble about Literature. Instead, she taught me how to think.
George Polya, author of "How to Solve It". It works.
Michael Malone and his novel, "Handling Sin", about a father's lively legacy to his son. In the darkest part of my life, before I had seen the light in Hamlet, his book gave me a ray of hope.
Jim Haldenwang, or I do forget myself.
To Robin, with almost all the holy vows of heaven.
Chapter 1 Mine Uncle, More Like My Father
Chapter 2 Extorted Treasure in the Womb of Earth
Chapter 3 Usurp Your Sovereignty of Reason
Chapter 4 Old Men in the Book of his Brain
Chapter 5 Hamlet’s Transformation
Chapter 6 Or I Do Forget Myself
Chapter 7 The Voice of Denmark
Chapter 8 Tis a Vice to Know Him
Chapter 9 To Inherit the Earth
Chapter 10 He Himself is Subject to his Birth
Chapter 11 A Breeder of Sinners
Chapter 13 The Cloud, the Cannon, and in the Cup a Union
Chapter 14 A Camel in My Mind’s Eye
Chapter 16 O, How the Wheel Becomes It!
Chapter 17 Some Part of Poland
Chapter 19 There Is Something Fishy in the State of Denmark
Chapter 21 The Honey of His Music Vows
Chapter 22 Neither a Borrower Nor a Lender Be
Chapter 23 A King’s Remembrance
Chapter 24 The Time Is Out of Joint
Chapter 25 With Borrowed Sheen
Chapter 27 To Thine Ownself Be True
Chapter 28 Most Sovereign Reason
Chapter 32 Disclaiming from a Purposed Evil
Chapter 33 A Necessary Question of the Play
Chapter 34 The Majesty of Buried Denmark
Chapter 2 Shakespeare, Breakspear, and Broken Pole
Chapter 3 Dangerous Conjectures In Ill-breeding Minds.
Chapter 4 In Thy Orisons Be All My Sins Remembered
Chapter 5 You the Judges Bear a Wary Eye.
Chapter 6 He Hath Borne Me On His Back
Chapter 7 It Harrows Me with Fear and Wonder
Chapter 9 The Strange Baker’s Daughter
Chapter 10 Shakebag, Falstaff, and Woodcock.
Chapter 12 Ten Thousand Lesser Things
Chapter 14 How Henry’s Divorce Led to Global Warming
Part III - Whither Wilt Thou Lead Me?
Chapter 1 More Things Dreamt of in My Philosophy
Chapter 3 Your Father Lost a Father, and That Father Lost, Lost His
Chapter 4 Born To Set It Right
Chapter 5 Mud in My Mind’s Eye
Chapter 7 Dawn in the Land of the Rising Sun
Chapter 9 Where There's Will There’s a Ray
Chapter 10 An Offense to Reason Most Absurd
Chapter 13 A Springe to Catch Woodcocks
Chapter 14 And in the Cup a Dis-Union
Chapter 16 The Scope Of These Delated Articles
Chapter 18 He Hath Borne Me on His Back
Chapter 20 The Dog Will Have His Day
Chapter 21 The Ghost of Venice
Chapter 23 Whither Wilt Thou Lead Me?
Chapter 25 He Hath Borne Me on His Back
Chapter 26 The Battlefield of Ideas
Chapter 27 Old Dynamite In the Womb of Earth
Chapter 28 So Hallow'd and So Gracious Is the Time.
Chapter 29 A Voice on the Radio
Chapter 31 Must There No More Be Done?
Chapter 32 Reflections on Hamlet
Chapter 34 This Eternal Blazon Must Not Be
Chapter 35 Extorted Treasure .For Which They Say You Spirits Oft Walk In Death
Chapter 37 Like a Bridge Over Troubled Water
Chapter 38 The Beauty of the World
What more can be said about Hamlet? After you read this book you will ask, "How could so many critics have missed so much?". Past critics have failed to find the answers in Hamlet because they have failed to ask the right questions. They have been blinded to the mysteries in Hamlet by that ever-premature question, "What more can be said?" But there is a necessary question of the play yet to be considered: To be or not to be -- what? That is the question.
To live and to love living. That is the answer. In search of that answer, we constantly question the world. And the answer comes, more than from any other part of the world, from the minds of men (and womb-men). This book is an attempt to find part of the answer in one work conceived in the mind of one man -- in Hamlet by William Shakespeare.
I am about to
reveal to you a secret that has been hidden in plain sight for almost four
hundred years. Most of the clues are in the most performed, most written-about
play in the English language. Other clues, though less obtrusive, can be found
in any large library. Clues such as:
- The English Pope and his fertility well,
and Henry VIII and his first queen. - A divorce decreed at Blackfriars.
- An imaginary kick from an imaginary fetus when the Pole Star danced.
- The day the canon disseminated "seminary".
- A brass door-knocker shaped like a nose.
- The mole under William Allen's right eye.
- Will's birthday and the day before,
Henry's birthday and the day after.
Kit's birthday and the day after, and the day after that. - A 16th-century cannon called a "falcon" (but not Maltese).
- A bunghole.
- Domini canis will have his day.
- Two provincial roses.
- A Strange baker and his "daughter."
- Christopher Marlowe was no truant.
- The name of a forest or Shakespeare's kin,
an anonymous play and a hamlet that destroyed itself,
and two games of backgammon interrupted by murders. - Black Will and George Shakebag.
- "When a man's verses cannot be understood...it strikes a man more dead than a great reckoning in a small room."
- A printer named Woodcock.
- Christopher Marlowe's father's hometown,
a messenger's mistress who did Yeoman's service,
and a dagger in Christopher Marlowe's eye. - The twice-told tale of a St Valentine's Day murder.
- You, me, us, I am Rick, know ye not that?
- A painfully inquisitive man named Topcliffe,
a place called Marshallsea,
and a chilling tale of two shoulder bones. - A loose cannon, eight crushed bodies, and a bride-to-be.
- A cannon salute to "Henry VIII",
Global warming,
back to Blackfriars.
In "Part 2 - Where Truth Is Hid"
I will use the foregoing clues to reveal what Hamlet tells us about
Shakespeare, but first, in "Part 1 - So Like
the King," I will investigate what Shakespeare told us about Hamlet. Finally, in Part III - Whither Wilt Thou
Lead Me?, in lieu of
academic credentials, I offer my Hamletonion autobiography.
“Who’s there?” The rest of the play answers that initial
question. Hamlet is the “mirror of
fashion” and most of the other characters reflect some aspect of
Hamlet. But who is Hamlet? A “soldier, scholar.” The son of his warrior father, but also one
who “could be bounded in a nut shell and count myself a king of infinite
space.” Hamlet the soldier rants
in golden couplets of warlike noise, while Hamlet the scholar unfolds himself
through inaction and silence. But to be
true to himself, Hamlet has to recognize that he is both soldier and
scholar. He is the princely soldier who
courageously returns to the fate awaiting him in his native soil (a
graveyard). But he is also the gentle
scholar who confesses the sins of his warlike nature.
The "necessary
question of the play" for Hamlet is "to be or not to be..."
"...so like the king that was and is the question of these wars."
That is Hamlet's dilemma. And that is Shakespeare's dilemma.
In the following
essays, motifs, metaphors, puns, and wordplay are the keys to the themes of Hamlet:
villain dwelling =
hamlet
whirling words:
arrant knave = nave of a church where Hamlet will "go pray"
................. = nave of wheel of fortune.
whale = wheel
"a fine revolution"
sinews grown
instant old = weak hams
clouds = Claudius
cannon to the clouds = canon gainst self-slaughter
mole of nature...breaking down the pales and forts of
reason
= old mole ("what if it usurp your sovereignty of reason?"}
Hamlet
Mine uncle, my father's brother, but no more like my father than I to Hercules.
But later we see that Hamlet is very much like Hercules:
Hamlet
My fate cries out,
And makes each petty artery in this body
As hardy as the Nemean lion's nerve.
The Nemean lion was a mythical beast with an almost invincible hide, which could only be cut by its own claws. After strangling the lion, Hercules fashioned a tunic for himself from its hide, which he cut with its own claws. This is similar to the way Hamlet killed Rosencrantz and Guildenstern with their own message, Laertes with his own sword, and Claudius with his own poisoned cup).
Hamlet
Let Hercules himself do what he may,
The cat will mew and dog will have his day.
Hercules went mad and murdered his own family, just as Hamlet went mad ("from himself" was "taken away" by the ghost) and murdered his could-have-been father-in-law, indirectly causing the death of his should-have-been wife. "The cat will mew" refers to the du-cat. Polonius was a rat killed by a du-cat ("a rat? Dead, for a ducat"). The dog was Ophelia, the "dead dog", the "good kissing carrion" which when touched by the sun/son (Hamlet) would "breed maggots" in her "bride-bed" (her grave).
Claudius
...................but this gallant [Lemord]
Had witchcraft in 't, he grew unto his seat,
And to such wondrous doing brought his horse,
As he had been incorps'd and demi-natur'd
With the brave beast
Laertes said of Lemord "I know him well." But, as Hamlet said, "to know a man well, were to know himself." So let's exercise a little poetic license and assign some of Lemord's metaphoric qualities to Laertes. "Lemord" is French for "the death". Demi-natured with a horse is a good description of a centaur. Hercules was killed indirectly by a centaur whom he had previously killed, just as Hamlet was killed by Laertes after he had killed Laertes.
Hamlet.
Do the boys carry it away?
Rosencrantz.
Ay, that they do, my lord; Hercules and his load too.
This refers to the competition between the new boy acting companies and the older companies such as Shakespeare's, which performed at the Globe Theater. The emblem of the Globe was a picture of Hercules holding up the Earth. (According to the legend, Hercules needed help from Atlas to perform one of his Tasks. So, to free himself for Hercules’ Task, Atlas shrugged off the Earth onto Hercules for a while.) This might relate Shakespeare to Hercules, but where is the connection with Hamlet? After Hamlet died, Fortinbras provided the connection by echoing "the boys [captains] carry it [Hamlet/Hercules] away," except this time Hamlet/Hercules/Shakespeare is carried to the stage.
Fortinbras
Let four captains
Bear Hamlet, like a soldier, to the stage
Thus, as Hamlet
was like Hercules, so was his uncle like his father. Hamlet's father was
valiant, proud, war-like, rash, revengeful, and ambitious. Hamlet's
uncle was cautious, intelligent, flexible, devious, manipulative, and ambitious.
Their common vice was ambition (for control of dirt). Both were
doomed to "fast in fires" because neither could give up his
earthly kingdom.
Claudius
... O! what form of prayer
Can serve my turn? 'Forgive me my foul murder?'
That cannot be; since I am still possess'd
Of those effects for which I did the murder,
My crown, mine own ambition, and my queen.
May one be pardon'd and retain the offence?
Claudius knows that he can save his soul if and only if he gives up his earthly kingdom, but he chooses damnation. Hamlet's father has exactly the same problem (but doesn't know it):
Ghost
Of life, of crown, of queen, at once dispatch'd;
Cut off even in the blossoms of my sin,
Unhousel'd, disappointed, unanel'd,
No reckoning made, but sent to my account
With all my imperfections on my head
Note that the ghost did not ask his son to pray for him ("pity me not"), which would be the traditional remedy for a soul trapped in purgatory. What imperfections were on his head? What sin had he committed since his last confession? The sin he was still committing even after death – he could not give up his "extorted treasure in the womb of earth."
Horatio
If there be any good thing to be done,
That may to thee do ease and grace to me,
Speak to me:
If thou art privy to thy country's fate,
Which happily foreknowing may avoid,
O! speak;
Or if thou hast uphoarded in thy life
Extorted treasure in the womb of earth,
For which, they say, you spirits oft walk in death, [Cock crows.
Speak of it: stay, and speak! Stop it, Marcellus.
"Good
thing to be done" - silence. Avoid "thy country's fate"
- silence. "Extorted treasure in the womb of earth" - a
cock crows and the ghost flees. Perhaps Horatio hit a sore spot.
How can the dead King Hamlet possibly reclaim his kingdom? His son ("born to set it right") can do it for him. That son even has the same name, Hamlet. True, the son has a different mind than his father, but that can be fixed.
HAMLET
So, oft it chances in particular men,
That for some vicious mole of nature in them,
As in their birth, wherein they are not guilty,
Since nature cannot choose his origin,
By the o'ergrowth of some complexion [mole]
Oft breaking down the pales and forts of reason
HAMLET (to his father’s Ghost)
Well said, old mole! Canst work i'the earth so fast?
A worthy pioneer!" [A pioneer was a military engineer, whose duties included burrowing under pales (walls) and forts to plant explosives to break them down.]
Hamlet
...you, my sinews, grow not instant old,
But bear me stiffly up!)
Hamlet's sinew's have grown "instant old" because he has just been possessed by the ghost of an old man - his father.
Horatio.
What art thou that usurp'st this time of night
Horatio
What if it...,
deprive your sovereignty of reason
Ophelia
...Now see that noble and most sovereign reason,
...Blasted....
Hamlet
... Remember thee!
Yea, from the table of my memory
I'll wipe away all trivial fond records,
All saws of books, all forms, all pressures past,
That youth and observation copied there;
And thy commandment all alone shall live
Within the book and volume of my brain,
Unmix'd with baser matter
Driven by his love for his father, Hamlet has allowed his father to usurp the sovereignty of his brain. He has erased himself from the book of his brain and written his father there. He continued to write in that same "table of [his] memory":
Hamlet
O villain, villain, smiling, damned villain!
My tables,--meet it is I set it down,
That one may smile, and smile, and be a villain
At least I'm
sure it may be so in
So, uncle, there you are
Claudius
Be as ourself in Denmark.
If you hate someone, you think about him a lot. An image of him lives in your brain. That image can acquire a kind of autonomy, making you behave as your enemy behaves. In short, by hating your enemy, you allow your enemy to possess you. Hamlet seems to be taking notes not just on how to recognize a smiling villain, but also on how to be one.
If you love someone, you may want to give that person all that you have. But if your dearest friend demands that you give up your very self, then that dearest friend becomes your dearest foe.
Hamlet
Would I had met my dearest foe in heaven [or Purgatory]
Ere I had ever seen that day, Horatio!
My father, methinks I see my father!
Hamlet loved his
father and was therefore possessed by his father. Hamlet hated his uncle and
was therefore possessed by his uncle. But father and uncle both had the same
values – they valued dirt over people - as in the graveyard.
Busy-body Polonius will join the other "tedious old men" occupying Hamlet's brain:
Polonius
I'll board him presently
Polonius sees Hamlet reading a book (the book and volume of his brain) and asks him what he is reading.
Hamlet.
Slanders, sir: for the satirical rogue says here that old men have grey beards, that their faces are wrinkled, their eyes purging thick amber and plum-tree gum, and that they have a plentiful lack of wit, together with most weak hams: all which, sir, though I most powerfully and potently believe, yet I hold it not honesty to have it thus set down; for you yourself, sir, should be old as I am, if, like a crab, you could go backward.
Polonius. [Aside]
Though this be madness, yet there is method in't...
"Old men have grey beards" = Hamlet's father
"His beard was grizzled, no?"
"eyes purging thick amber" = Polonius.
"a plentiful lack of wit" = Claudius
"With witchcraft of his wit, with traitorous gifts,
O wicked wit and gifts, that have the power
So to seduce!"
"Wit and gifts" refers to Bishop Whitgift, the man who instigated the crack-down on recusants which perhaps caused the decline in fortunes of Shakespeare's father. Also, Whitgiftsigned Shakespeare's marriage license (when he married an older woman) and later he signed the license for the publication of Shakespeare's "Venus and Adonis," a poem about a boy seduced by a goddess. "Plentiful lack" mocks Claudius first speech: "defeated joy."
"weak hams" = Hamlet, weakened but still present in his own brain.
"I hold
it not honesty to have it thus set down" Hamlet knows he was not being true to himself when he set down
these tedious old men in the book and volume of his brain.
Horatio
What if it...
...assume some other horrible form,
Which might deprive your sovereignty of reason
Hamlet.
Yea, from the table of my memory
I'll wipe away all trivial fond records,
All saws of books, all forms, all pressures past,
That youth and observation copied there;
And thy commandment all alone shall live
Within the book and volume of my brain,
Claudius
...Something have you heard
Of Hamlet's transformation; so call it,
Sith nor the exterior nor the inward man
Resembles that it was. What it should be,
More than his father's death, that thus hath put him
So much from the understanding of himself,
I cannot dream of: ...
Ophelia
...Now see that noble and most sovereign reason,
....Blasted...
The transformation of the message borne by Rosencrantz and Guildenstern is symbolic of the transformation of Hamlet into his father’s image.
Horatio
How was this seal'd?
Hamlet.
Why, even in that was heaven ordinant.
I had my father's signet in my purse,
Which was the model of that Danish seal;
Folded the writ up in form of the other,
Subscribed it, gave't the impression, placed it safely,
The
changeling never known...
Hamlet envies the
First Player, who, metaphorically, has broken the voice of
Hamlet.
...Could force his soul so to his own conceit
That from her working all his visage wann'd,
Tears in his eyes, distraction in's aspect,
A broken voice, and his whole function suiting
With forms to his conceit?
Hamlet
I am myself indifferent honest; but yet I could accuse me of such things that it were better my mother had not borne me: I am very proud, revengeful, ambitious
"But yet...proud, revengeful, ambitious" - this is a description of his father, not of Hamlet when he is himself.
Hamlet
...though I am not splenitive and rash,
Yet have I something in me dangerous,
Which let thy wiseness fear
The "something in me dangerous" is his father, who is in his brain In the end, Hamlet exorcised the old men from his brain, reclaimed his own values, and saved his soul:
Hamlet
Was't Hamlet wrong'd Laertes? Never Hamlet:
If Hamlet from himself be ta'en away,
And when he's not himself does wrong Laertes,
Then Hamlet does it not, Hamlet denies it.
Who does it, then? His madness: if't be so,
Hamlet is of the faction that is wrong'd;
His madness is
poor Hamlet's enemy.
We’ve seen how Hamlet "wiped away every trivial fond record that youth and observation copied" "in the table of [his] memory" - in other words, how he forgot himself. But what was Hamlet like before he forgot himself?
Hamlet
Horatio, or I do forget myself!
And what was Horatio like?
Hamlet
Horatio, thou art as just a man
As e'r my conversation cop'd withal.
................................
...thee, that no revenue hast
But thy good spirits to feed and clothe thee.
.................................
Since my soul was mistress of her choice
And could of men distinguish, her election
Hath sealed thee for herself......
...For thou hast
Been as one, in suffering all, that suffers
Nothing. A man that fortune's buffets and
Rewards hast ta'en with equal thanks.
And blessed are those
Whose blood and judgment are so well co-mingled
That they are not a pipe for fortune's finger
To sound what stop she please. Give me that man
That is not passion's slave and I will wear him
In my heart's core, ay, in my heart of heart,
As I do thee.
Hamlet was unaware at first that he had from himself been taken away, but though he knew not why, he knew that he had lost something:
Hamlet
...I have of late—but wherefore I know not--lost all my mirth, forgone all custom of exercises; and indeed it goes so heavily with my disposition that this goodly frame, the earth, seems to me a sterile promontory, this most excellent canopy, the air, look you, this brave o'erhanging firmament, this majestical roof fretted with golden fire, why, it appears no other thing to me than a foul and pestilent congregation of vapours. What a piece of work is a man! how noble in reason! how infinite in faculty! in form and moving how express and admirable! in action how like an angel! in apprehension how like a god! the beauty of the world! the paragon of animals! And yet, to me, what is this quintessence of dust? man delights not me: no, nor woman neither, though by your smiling you seem to say so.
Hamlet
O God, I could
be bounded in a nut shell and count myself a king of infinite space
Laertes
he...may give his saying deed...no further
Than the main voice of
Hamlet
Pray God, your voice, like a piece of uncurrent gold, be not cracked within the ring.
Gertrude
This is mere madness,
And thus a while the fit will work on him,
Anon, as patient as the female dove,
When that her golden couplets are disclosed,
His silence will sit drooping.
Hamlet
I had my father’s signet in my purse,
Which was the model of that Danish seal,
Folded the writ up in form of the other,
Subscribed it, gave't the impression, placed it safely,
The changeling never known.
Horatio
His purse is empty already: all ‘s golden words are spent.
Hamlet
…the rest is silence.
Hamlet.
Dost know this water-fly?
Horatio.
No, my good lord.
Hamlet
Thy state is the more gracious; for 'tis a vice to know him. He hath much land, and fertile: let a beast be lord of beasts, and his crib shall stand at the king's mess: 'tis a chough; but, as I say, spacious in the possession of dirt.
Hamlet.
...to know a man well, were to know himself.
Horatio does not know Osric, but Hamlet knows him all too well. Horatio represents Hamlet's true unambitious self. Osric represents the man that Hamlet was born to be, the man Hamlet has struggled not to be.
Gertrude
This is mere madness,
And thus a while the fit will work on him,
Anon, as patient as the female dove,
When that her golden couplets are disclosed,
His silence will sit drooping.
Hamlet
I had my father’s signet in my purse,
Which was the model of that Danish seal,
Folded the writ up in form of the other,
Subscribed it, gave't the impression, placed it safely,
The changeling never known.
Horatio (referring to Osric)
His purse is
empty already: all ‘s golden words are spent.
Hamlet had his
father’s signet, the golden couplets of the voice of
Just as Hamlet Sr exhorted Hamlet to ‘remember," so Hamlet exhorts Osric to ‘remember."
Ghost.
...Hamlet, remember me.
Hamlet.
I beseech you, remember--
Hamlet tells Osric
to put his hat on his head because "'tis very cold; the wind is
northerly." But Osric is reluctant to put his hat on his head. This is
echoed by Hamlet's reluctance to let Claudius "put a great wager on
[his] head." But the wind is northerly ("I am but
mad north-north-west." The ghost appeared "when yond same star
that's westward from the pole had made his course to illume that part of heaven
where now it burns."), so Hamlet accepts the wager on his head as
Osric runs off with the shell on his head.
Hamlet was born to
carry on a line of kings. Those kings were bound to Danish dirt by birth and
fate. The "liegemen to the Dane" were "friends to this
ground" Claudius exhorted Hamlet to "be as ourself in
Hamlet's father had once fought a duel to the death with old Fortinbras to acquire a piece of ground "the inheritance of" which fell to Hamlet.
Hamlet
How long hast thou been a grave-maker?
First Clown
Of all the days i' the year, I came to't that day that our last king Hamlet overcame Fortinbras.
Hamlet.
How long is that since?
First Clown
Cannot you tell that? every fool can tell that: it was the very day that young Hamlet was born
Was this then Hamlet's "inheritance" - a graveyard?
Hamlet (standing over a grave)
The very
conveyances of his lands will hardly lie in this box; and must the inheritor
himself have no more, ha?
Laertes
... his will is not his own,
For he himself is subject to his birth
Hamlet
That for some vicious mole of nature in them,
As in their birth, wherein they are not guilty,
Since nature cannot choose his origin
Hamlet
But, to my mind, though I am native here
and to the manner born, it is a custom
More honor'd in the breach than the observance.
Hamlet
O cursed spite that I was born to set it right
Hamlet
it were better my
mother had not borne me
Fortune has doomed
Hamlet, from birth, to lose his true self for a kingdom.
Claudius
...your father lost a father,
That father lost, lost his, and the survivor bound
In filial obligation ...
Bernardo
I think it be no other but e'en so:
Well may it sort that this portentous figure
Comes armed through our watch; so like the king
That was and is the question of these wars.
Hamlet
virtue cannot so innoculate our old stock but we shall relish of it
Hamlet is from a long line of warlike kings. It’s a custom he would like to breach, but it is difficult to overcome his old stock. If he marries Ophelia and has a son, that son will likely be another death-dealing warrior-king.
Hamlet
...why wouldst thou be a breeder of sinners?
Hamlet
For if the sun breed maggots in a dead dog, being a good kissing carrion,--Have you a daughter?
Polonius
I have, my lord.
Hamlet
Let her not walk i' the sun: conception is ablessing: but not as your daughter may conceive.
Here sun relates to Hamlet’s father who was like Hyperion, the sun-god. If Hamlet breeds true to his old stock, he and his son will both be like Hamlet’s dead father. If Ophelia conceives a child with Hamlet, she will be breeding sinners -- maggots to eat the dead of future wars.
Polonius
Though this be madness, yet there is method in 't. Will you walk out of the air, my lord?
Hamlet
Into my grave.
Polonius
Indeed, that is out o' the air.
How pregnant sometimes his replies are!
Horatio
Or if thou hast uphoarded in thy life
Extorted treasure in the womb of earth,
For which, they say, you spirits oft walk in death, [Cock crows.
Ophelia
... They say the owl was a baker's daughter.
Lord, we know what we are, but know not what we may be.
There was a legend about a baker who told his daughter to give a loaf of bread to a beggar. She only gave him half a loaf (as Ophelia gave Hamlet part of herself, reserving the greater half for her father). The beggar turned out to be Jesus Christ, who then turned the baker's daughter into an owl. In Shakespeare's time, the owl was a portent of death.
Ophelia
Then up he rose, and donn'd his clo'es,
And dupp'd the chamber door,
Let in the maid, that out a maid
Never departed more.
On the surface,
this song has a bawdy meaning. A man opens the door of his room and lets in a
virgin. When she leaves the room, she is no longer a virgin. But it also has a
deeper, morbid meaning. "Dupped" means "open
upward", as with a cellar door, or a coffin lid. So the man let a maid
enter his coffin and she never left it, with or without her virginity. This
foreshadows the last act, where, rather than Ophelia entering Hamlet's grave, he
enters hers. If she hadn't committed suicide before he returned (to
Ophelia
Quoth she, 'Before you tumbled me,
You promised me to wed.'.
He answers,
'So would I 'a done, by yonder sun,
And thou hadst not come to my bed.'.
Gertrude (5,2,237)
I hop'd thou shouldst have been my Hamlet's wife.
I thought thy bride-bed to have deck'd, sweet maid,
And not have
strew'd thy grave.
Hamlet
His virtues else, be they as pure as grace,
As infinite as man may undergo,
Shall in the general censure take corruption
From that particular fault. The dram of eale
Doth all the substance of a daub
To his own scandal.
"Dram
of eale" has been correctly interpreted as "dram of
evil". That is the surface meaning. But the deeper meaning is "drama
filial (dram-o f-eale)". Within the context of the play, the drama
filial is the "Mousetrap",
the play that Hamlet hoped would catch the conscience of his father’s killer.
"Hamlet" is itself a filial drama, because it is
a drama about the conflict between filial duty and being true to oneself. (And
in Part 2, I will show how "Hamlet" is Shakespeare’s drama
filial about his father and his secret godfather.)
Claudius
How is it that the clouds still hang on you?
Hamlet
Not so, my lord; I am too much i' the sun.
The obvious pun is sun / son. Hamlet is too good a son to be cheerful less than two months after his father’s death. But there is also a metaphor on clouds and sun. Later in the scene, Hamlet compares his father to Hyperion, the sun-god:
Hamlet
So excellent a king; that was, to this,
Hyperion to a satyr
Thus sun is a metaphor for Hamlet’s father, and now clouds is an obvious pun on Claudius. Hamlet is too loyal to his father (too much i' the sun) to shift his loyalty to Claudius (to be under the clouds.) This should prepare the audience for a more subtle pun on clouds / Claudius:
Claudius
No jocund health that
But the great cannon to the clouds shall tell,
And the king's rouse the heavens all bruit again,
Re-speaking earthly thunder. Come away.
[Exeunt all but Hamlet]
Hamlet
O, that this too too solid flesh would melt
Thaw and resolve itself into a dew!
Or that the Everlasting had not fix'd
His canon 'gainst self-slaughter! O God! God!
Hamlet is not contemplating his own self-slaughter, rather he is wishing that Claudius would kill himself. Claudius (cloud) has just ordered his cannon to fire at the clouds. Hamlet wishes Claudius’ solid flesh would melt and turn into a dew (a cloud). Then, by aiming his cannon at the clouds, Claudius would be slaughtering himself. But, alas, the Everlasting has fixed His canon (religous law) 'gainst self-slaughter and Claudius has fixed (aimed) his cannon 'gainst self-slaughter – for now.
Later we learn more about the Danish custom of firing cannon when the king drinks:
[A flourish of trumpets, and ordnance shot off, within]
Horatio
What does this mean, my lord?
Hamlet
The king doth wake to-night and takes his rouse,
Keeps wassail, and the swaggering up-spring reels;
And, as he drains his draughts of Rhenish down,
The kettle-drum and trumpet thus bray out
The triumph of his pledge.
Horatio
Is it a custom?
Hamlet
Ay, marry, is't:
But to my mind, though I am native here
And to the manner born, it is a custom
More honour'd in the breach than the observance.
The custom
under discussion is not heavy drinking. The custom is the firing
of cannon (ordnance) when the king drinks a pledge.
It symbolizes the unity of the king with his kingdom, emphasized with the weapons
he uses to obtain and keep that kingdom. It is the King’s pledges, not his
drinking, that gets
In the end, Hamlet
gets his wish. Claudius does metaphorically slaughter himself with his own
cannon. To the accompaniment of cannon fire, Claudius drinks from a cup
symbolizing his union with
Claudius
Let all the battlements their ordnance fire:
The king shall drink to Hamlet's better breath;
And in the cup an union shall he throw,
Richer than that which four successive kings
In
And let the kettle to the trumpet speak,
The trumpet to the cannoneer without,
The cannons to the heavens, the heavens to earth,
'Now the king drinks to Hamlet.
Claudius
Stay; give me drink. Hamlet, this pearl is thine;
Here's to thy health.
[Trumpets sound, and cannon shot off within]
Give him the cup.
Hamlet
Here, thou incestuous, murderous, damned Dane,
Drink off this potion. Is thy union here?
Follow my mother.
[Claudius dies]
[A
dead march. Exeunt, bearing off
the dead bodies; after which a peal of ordnance is shot off]
Hamlet
Do you see yonder cloud that's almost in shape of a camel?
Polonius
By the mass, and 'tis like a camel, indeed.
A camel? A cloud? Claudius? Where?
Hamlet
Would I had met my dearest foe in heaven
Or ever I had seen that day, Horatio!
My father, methinks I see my father.
If your father is your foe, I can see that he would be your dearest foe, Hamlet, but he's not quite in heaven -- it sounds more like he’s on his way to heaven, going through purgatory:
Ghost
I am thy father's spirit,
Doom'd for a certain term to walk the night,
And for the day, confin'd to fast in fires
Till the foul crimes done in my days of nature
Are burnt and purg'd away.........
Let me get this straight, Hamlet::
Your father is like your Uncle Claudius.
Claudius (cloud-ius) is like a cloud that’s like a camel.
The camel-cloud is floating in heaven.
You wish to see your dearest foe in heaven.
Then you see your father.
Is he in heaven? Or in purgatory?
Hamlet, where is your father?
Horatio
Oh where, my lord!
Hamlet
In my mind's eye, Horatio.
In your mind's eye? Or in purgatory? Or both?
Your father or your uncle? Or both?
Your dearest foe or a camel? Or both?
A camel in your mind's eye?
Hamlet
Why, what should be the fear?
I do not set my life at a pin's fee
So now you're a pin, Hamlet?
And there's a camel in your eye?
MATHEW, 19, 24. HOLY BIBLE in the King James version.
Jesus
And again I say unto you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the Kingdom of Heaven
Some people misconstrue this biblical passage to mean that wealth is evil. Actually, it means that some rich men can't get into heaven because they value their worldly possessions more than their souls; they value Situation more than Self. Being rich is not a sin; even killing a brother to gain a kingdom is not an unforgiveable sin. But the man who values an earthly kingdom more than his own soul is doomed to fast in fires. Such a man is Claudius:
Claudius
What if this cursed hand
Were thicker than itself with brother's blood,
Is there not rain enough in the sweet heavens
To wash it white as snow? Whereto serves mercy
But to confront the visage of offense?
And what's in prayer but this two-fold force,
To be forestalled ere we come to fall,
Or pardon'd, being down? Then, I'll look up;
My fault is past. But, O! what form of prayer
Can serve my turn? 'Forgive me my foul murder'?
That can not be since I am still possess'd
Of those effects for which I did the murder,
My crown, mine own ambition, and my queen.
May one be pardon'd and retain the offense?
..........................................
Try what repentance can: what can it not?
Yet what can it, when one can not repent?
And such a man is Hamlet's father:
Horatio (to the Ghost)
Or if thou hast uphoarded in thy life
Extorted treasure in the womb of earth,
For which, they say, you spirits oft walk in death...
Hamlet's father is in purgatory by choice, because he refuses to leave his "extorted treasure."
These two foolish old men (and Polonius too) are trying to go camel-like through Hamlet’s mind’s eye. Forget the camels -- what’s happening to the poor needle?
Horatio (speaking of the ghost of Hamlet’s father)
A mote it is to trouble the mind’s eye.
Hamlet (after killing Polonius, whom he mistook for Claudius)
I do repent; but heaven hath pleas’d it so,
To punish me with this and this with me;
That I must be their scourge and minister.
Pity the poor camel-crammed needle; that scourge and minister; purgatory personified.
By following a tenuous thread between three innocent words, camel, pin, and eye, my imagination has traced Hamlet’s father, his Uncle Claudius, and the false steward Polonius going camel-like through the purgatory in Hamlet’s mind’s eye. At this point, perhaps the reader agrees with Horatio:
Horatio
‘Twere to consider too curiously, to consider so.
Hamlet
No, faith, not a jot; but to follow him thither with modesty enough and likelihood to lead it, as thus:
Before the age of Joe Camel, in the Elizabethan age, "camel" had just one vivid connotation -- the biblical metaphor of the camel going through the eye of the needle. The camel appears just four times in all of Shakespeare’s works; twice in Troilus and Cressida, once in Richard II, and once in Hamlet.
TROILUS AND CRESSIDA
Panduros
Achilles! a drayman, a porter, a very camel.
You cur!.
Thersites
Mars his idiot! Do, rudeness, do, camel, do, do.
Thersites
I say this
.......
Has not so much wit -
.......
As will stop the eye of Helen’s needle...
RICHARD II
Richard
It is as hard to come as for a camel
To thread the postern of a small needle’s eye.
So the mere presence of the word "camel" is enough to send us in search of the needle (or pin) and its eye (Hamlet’s mind’s eye). But must our search lead us to Purgatory?
Horatio
There’s no offence, my lord.
Hamlet
Yes, by Saint Patrick, but there is, Horatio,
And much offence, too...
A New Variorum Edition of Shakespeare, edited by Horace Howard Furness, Hamlet, volume 1, New York, American Scholar Publications, INC, 1965, first published in 1877, page 111:
136. Saint Patrick] TSCHISHWITZ: If Sh. had wished to be historically correct, he would have made a Dane swear by St Ansgarius. But since the subject concerned an unexpiated crime, he naturally thought of St Patrick, who kept a Purgatory of his own. See The Honest Whore [pt 2, I, I, p 330, Dodsley ed 1825, where the text reads, ‘St Patrick, you know keeps Purgatory,’ and not as the learned German quotes, ‘keeps his Purgatory.’ Ed]
There is a very personal clue that Hamlet/Shakespeare’s mind was Purgatory. In Stratford Guild Chapel there was a mural of Judgment Day. Although the mural was daubed over with whitewash about the time Shakespeare was born (in belated obedience to a government edict against religious icons and image