"The story of Elizabeth's birth goes back to the year 1527, when Henry VIII was afflicted with three related emotions; mounting concern over his Queen's advancing years and continued barrenness; the prick of religious conscience for having married his deceased brother's wife; and a violent sexual attraction for a young lady of the court, who obstinately insisted that sharing her sovereign's crown was a prerequisite for sharing his bed.
As a young man, Henry had fulfilled his father's deathbed request that he marry Catherine, daughter of Isabella and Ferdinand of Spain and widow of Prince Arthur. Special papal dispensation had been arranged so that the young king might violate the Book of Leviticus, which clearly stated that'If as man shall take his brother's wife, it is an unclean thing...'" [37]
The belief that incest sterilizes not only the mother's womb but lays fallow the earth as well , exists among all peoples [48;pg. 163]. The theme is central to Sophocles "Oedipus Rex". Cleon travels to the Oracle of Delphi to inquire as to the causes of famine and infertility in the land of Thebes:
" For the city, as thou thyself seest, is now too sorely vexed, and can no more lift her head from beneath the angry waves of death; a blight is on her in the fruitful blossoms of the land, in the herds among the pastures, in the barren pangs of women; and withal the flaming god, the malign plague, hath swooped on us, and ravages the town; by whom the house of Cadmus is made waste, but dark Hades rich in groans and tears." [49]
Incest in Hamlet is inseparable from its consequent sterility. No fine distinction need be made between the incest of King and Queen, (as defined by the moral code of the day), the hothouse provincialism of the court, and the self-preoccupied, ingrown mental life of its protagonist :
"I could be bounded in a nutshell
Yet count myself lord of infinite space
Were it not that I have bad dreams"
Hamlet's very thought processes reveal this incestuous dependency of the mother of thought to the child of action: time and again, thought aborts action at its very moment of its fruition. Even as planted crops are constrained to flourish by the ground in which they are rooted, so are the possibilities open to Hamlet limited by the sterile environment surrounding him.
At the heart of the 400 -year -old controversy over Hamlet's "character" lies this simple question: does he hesitate and procrastinate because of some congenital psychological complex or moral defect? (The over-insistence on a 'fatal flaw'has been the occasion for many a trite interpretation of the play : viz. the voice-over introduction to the Olivier film. ) Or do his reservations rather signify intelligence, a mind in control of itself, isolated and friendless against a world gone mad? Or are we dealing with a mere technical device, some way to drag the story out so that the audience will get its money's worth?
Or, indeed, is this central figure a moral monster, [21] waiting for the right opportunity to guarantee that the circumstances of Claudius'death are as horrible possible?
The "answer", of course, presupposes that the "question" is well posed, which of course it is not. In the first place, (following T.S. Eliot), we possess a corrupted script that was clearly re-worked many times to suit different audiences and different occasions. What's come down to us is filled with more than its share of inconsistencies , anachronisms and far-fetched situations . It's enormous power as a theatrical masterpiece consists precisely in the fact that, when properly done, it can move us so deeply that we don't realize how much of it makes no sense at all. (See the chapter on Hamlet in [18] )
My intention in emphasizing this fundamental leitmotif of incest/sterility is to suggest that despite a certain amount of confusion in the story, the play succeeds brilliantly through its'accumulation of metaphors of psychic processes: of barrenness and depression , incest and sterility, fear and rejection, lust and corruption, etc. It is by means of these that the magnificent coherence of Hamlet as theatrical experience is assured .
In particular, the motif of incest-barrenness-miscarriage-death rings throughout the play like a welkin bell, like the 4-note figure unifying every measure of Beethoven's 5th Symphony. It is present in virtually every speech, image and metaphor: the "bitter cold" on the battlements, because of which Francisco is "sick at heart"; not even the mice dare stir. The guard is "harrowed with fear and wonder" at the apparition of the Ghost who, once so mighty, is now so weak and 'sterilized'that his own men strike at him with partisans [33] .
Laertes reminds us that: " The canker galls the infant of the spring, too oft before the buttons be disclosed. " And the Ghost exclaims that"...lust, though to a radiant angel linked, will sate itself on a celestial bed, and prey on garbage. "
Claudius boasts overtly of a marriage consummated on the murder of his own brother: " ...with mirth in funeral and dirge in marriage. " Laertes rushes off to France to waste his youth in brothels , perhaps to contract venereal diseases that will render him as impotent as the house of Denmark. Finally, as if the theme were in any need of a more explicit statement, Hamlet advances to the front of the stage, and says:
The Father had died. As in coitus, the seed once deposited, the male principle, whether it be Tammuz , Adonis, Christ or old Hamlet , perishes . The death of the inseminator is ever prelude to the rebirth of nature.
Yet for Hamlet the fruit of rebirth has been stifled in the poisoned climate of the domestic situation: adultery, murder, usurpation, incest. All his hopes have miscarried, all present things embittered. In the perspective of such grievous loss, of what avail is it for his father's Ghost to fire him up for revenge?
"The canker galls the infant of the spring. " The infant of action, the child of resolution, "sicklied oÕer by the pale cast of thought", has no placenta on which to draw its sustenance . The righteous cause alone is insufficient to generate action, as with many another 'one-man revolution' in which the rebel finds himself isolated even by those in whose name he claims to seek justice.
" We have already talked about the fact that a playwright gives us only a few minutes out of the whole life of his characters. He omits much of what happens off the stage. He often says nothing at all about what has happened to his characters while they have been in the wings, and what makes them act as they do when they have returned to the stage. He have to fill in what he leaves unsaid. Otherwise we would have only scraps and bits to offer out of the life of the persons we portray. You cannot live that way so we must create for our parts comparatively unbroken lines." [46]
The dangers implicit in the application of this procedure to Hamlet are are of mythic proportions. Everyone falls into one sort of error or another when doing so. It is not wise to go too far out on one's own. For one thing, many of the sources of confusion in the standard text are cleared up by reference to earlier versions. One example: in the 'standard version' found in modern editions [1,2,3,4] , the role of Horatio is reduced to that of a shadow, a foil for Hamlet.This sketch may be enriched by consulting sources such as Der Berstrafte Brudermord , and what one knows of the Ur-Hamlet . [12] In these earlier versions Hamlet reveals the message of Ghost to Horatio on the night he receives it. Horatio then advises him not to place excessive trust in the Ghost, and suggests the stratagem of the play-within-a-play. With this restoration how much confusion is cleared away!
One should therefore study the historical background and evolution of the play before intuiting a "story" designed to unify everything in some production of it .Even so, it has become a tradition for directors to excise lines that seem, in the light of their particular take on the plot of Hamlet, to make no sense at all.
Misled by their eagerness to "reconstruct" what may have happened off-stage, inventive directors always end up writing their own play. Stanislavski himself was one of the worst offenders in this regard. His pre- scripts' for "Othello" and ChekhovÕs "Sea-Gull" ( in which , having taken too literally the authorÕs enigmatic comment that the play is a comedy, he introduces liberal choruses of frogs and dogs ), are more correctly described as novels by Stanislavski with condescending acknowledgments to Shakespeare and Chekhov for suggesting their plots !
For anyone concerned with avoiding the worst sins of over-indulgence, the reconstructive procedure must be applied with the greatest caution. Our own purpose in doing so is limited to clarifying underlying philosophical and psychological motifs which appear, to us, to be actually present in the play. As this approach to this play in particular has always had the effect of bringing out what is most fatuous in even the greatest writers ( cf. Goethe , Hugo, Coleridge, Nietzsche , Schlegel , etc.) , it will be immediately abandoned once it has served its purpose:
When he hears of his father's death, Hamlet is a student at Wittenberg . His reactions are mixed. On the one hand he deeply grieves the loss of a loved parent. " He was a man, take him for all in all. I shall not look upon his like again. " On the other he naturally anticipates that now he can assume the role for which his entire upbringing has been a preparation. Even in an age when monarchy is predominantly ceremonial, one readily empathizes with the plight of a Prince Charles of England: forced to spend decades languishing in the wings as he awaits his part in the historical pageant , sensing that by the time it arrives he will be too old to put his own ideas, such as they, are into practice, he may easily be excused for wishing that, since his mother will have to pass away anyway , he should not be deprived of the chance of exercising authority on his own. This is so slight in our own day that it does not add up to a leaning towards matricide, but in the past such conflicts of filial affection with duty must have been quite intense.
There are therefore good reasons to conclude that Hamlet's display of grief is excessive, even unnatural. It is only because, as we soon learn, that its scope encompasses much more than the death of a father, that its appropriateness becomes evident. He therefore packs up his textbooks, rapiers and tennis rackets, bids good-bye to teachers and cherished school friends, and returns to Denmark, burning with ambitious projects years in the making. Scattered throughout the play are hints of the kinds of reforms he might have instituted had he not been denied the opportunity:
"But I do prophesy th'election lights
On Fortinbras. He has my dying voice" (V, ii, 349-350)
This appears to us dubious at best. In the original Saxo Grammaticus account Geruth is the daughter of a reigning king of a much large entity. The royal bloodline, and therefore the dynastic succession , passes through her , not through either ørvendil or Fengi:
" According to Saxo, King R¿rik of Denmark put the brothers ørvendil and Fengi in charge of Jutland. ørvendil won the hand of the kingÕs daughter Geruth, by whom he had a son Amleth. But Fengi was envious of his brother, murdered him, wed his widow, and ruled Jutland alone." [24, pg.1]
This one sentence in Hamlet suggests, at most, that elections were held only when the succession was contested by several candidates . One possible interpretation of this remark, which is made only a few minutes before Hamlet expires, is that the monarchy has become elective because the entire royal family has been wiped out. This does not imply an entirely elective monarchy. Consider these lines:
Hamlet: Sir, I lack advancement
Rosencrantz : How can that be, when you have the voice of the King himself for your succession in Denmark?
Hamlet : Ay sir, but 'while the grass grows'.... III, ii, 347)
Rosencrantz's remark merely implies that Claudius has given a verbal promise that none of his children, either from previous liaisons, or directly from his marriage with Gertrude, will take precedence over Hamlet's claim to the throne. The promise is worthless, of course, and one is only astonished that Rosencrantz gives it any credence. Finally we have:
Hamlet : Does it not, think thou, stand me now upon
He that killed my King and whored my mother,
Popped in between th'election and my hopes,
Thrown out his angle for my proper life ..... V,ii,64
The passage implies that the "election" would have unquestionably fallen on the side of Hamlet's ascension, and may well imply that it would have been between him and his mother - who, being a woman, would probably not have prevailed. Shakespeare's "Denmark", much as the England of his time, did not favor queens when kings were available. This being so, Hamlet's anger at Claudius also has, apart from his father's revelations, a personal basis. The usurpation not only denies him a kingdom, but put a false king, one lacking the blood royal, on the throne.
Disappointment might, by itself, bring forth little more than a sigh of regret and a speedy return to Wittenberg. Even the blatant hypocrisy of the king's speech might have been overlooked. The court fills him with loathing and disgust; getting away as speedily as possible makes the best of a bad bargain.
Yet now he looks into his mother's eyes and knows, for a certainty, that all is lost. For he sees, with that infallible insight into the hearts of wayward parents which is the birthright of all children, that her soul is dead.
"A beast that wants discourse of reason
Would have mourned longer " (I, ii, 150 )
His revered mother, truly a Clytemnestra before the fact has, if all unsuspecting, bartered fidelity and love for adultery and wanton lust. Note that she does not appear to be lustful in character. One finds nothing in the play, besides Hamlet's hostile depiction of her, to indicate any excessive lewdness. Polonius is a lot dirtier than she is. All the same : though she may not "know", scientifically speaking, that her former husband was murdered by the present one, yet she indeed does "know", in the Biblical sense, of his monstrous deed through having shared in its fruits. Inasmuch as sexual intimacy has always been deemed a species of knowledge, she is irrecoverably destined for Hell; and no court of appeal can save her.
She promenades through the court, engaging in all its amusements, all unassuming, with that unself-conscious authority that 18 to 30 years 15 of rule have given her. Like everyone in the play she is deft in repartee, delighting in fencing matches of wit: quick to upbraid the "good, old man" ( " More matter with less art " ) , criticize The Mousetrap ( "The lady doth protest too much, methinks ") , and scold her son ("Thou hast thy father much offended") . Time and again she shows herself to be filled with solicitation and affectionate concern for Hamlet, Ophelia, and others around her. Despite all this, the poisoning of her spirit is so far advanced by the time we encounter her in Act I, ii, that all spiritual vitality has been extinguished in her. She has become a kind of living death, a mannequin, a moving, breathing, conversing thing that mocks life. More metaphor than human, living embodiment of the Barren Mother, incarnation of incest, miscarriage , abortion , misconception, deity of blighted harvests, failed hopes, lost causes, acid soil. It is this message, stamped on his mother's features as from a mighty press, which kills all that remains of Hamlet's hopes. Under the pressure of despair, he takes refuge in extravagant grief, a grieving that is at once physical and metaphysical. It is not for the soul of his departed father alone, nor for his blighted hopes. He grieves his mother's soul. He grieves the extinction of that divine spark present in all of us, yet seemingly extinguished in her. He recoils in terror at the contemplation of the eternity of suffering awaiting her. Without fail, he returns to this subject at every opportunity, from their first dialogue, overcharged with chilling insinuations of eternal damnation:
Queen: Thou know'st 'tis common. All that lives must die,
Passing through nature to eternity.
Hamlet: Ay, madam, 'tis common (Emphasis added) (I, ii,72)
to their last exchange which, if given a metaphysical interpretation, is even more horrible:
Hamlet: How does the queen?
King: She swoons to see thee bleed.
Queen: No, no, the drink, the drink! O my dear Hamlet!
The drink, the drink! I am poisoned! (V,ii,13)
To the very end she clutches at her son to save her from agonies so fiendish that his father's are rendered derisory by contrast:
",,, I could a tale unfold whose lightest word
Would harrow up thy soul, freeze thy young blood,
Make thy two eyes start like stars from their sphere
Thy knotted and combined locks to part,
And each particular hair to stand on end,
Like quills upon the fretful porpentine." (I,v,16)
But the "drink", the unhallowed liquor which she invokes four times in torment, that delectable ambrosia received " honeying over the nasty sty", in the foul embrace of her husband's murderer, has placed her beyond all hope of redemption.