SHAKESPEARE’S HAMLET: RENAISSANCE RULING ON REVENGE AND RELIGIOUS REDEMPTION

SHAKESPEARE’S HAMLET: RENAISSANCE RULING ON REVENGE AND

RELIGIOUS REDEMPTION

A Thesis

Presented

to the Faculty of

California State University Dominguez Hills

In Partial Fulfillment

of the Requirements for the Degree

Master of Arts

in

Humanities

by

Michele Witte

Spring 2007

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PREFACE

Formulating an undiscovered, viable topic for a possible M.A. thesis based on

Shakespeare’s Hamlet Prince o f Denmark has been a daunting task. Hamlet’s

psychological complexity has been examined and re-examined by thousands of scholarly

critics. However, it is important to consider the ways in which Hamlet’s psychological

makeup reflects the interest and beliefs held by the Elizabethans. There have been few

more interesting times in history than when civilization became modem through a break

from the medieval world, closely followed by a newly-developed challenge to the

powerful Roman Catholic Church: the Protestant Reformation. In Shakespeare’s Hamlet,

Elizabethans were able to appreciate a tragic hero who contemplated important religious

ideologies.

After researching the theological beliefs of the Protestant Reformers as well as the

papal edicts valued by Catholics, I realized that Queen Elizabeth and her constituents

were faced with critical responsibilities that would reshape Western religion. Although I

had read Shakespeare’s Hamlet in high school, then again in my second year of college,

and still again in England at Oxford University where I was given the unique opportunity

to psychoanalyze the play with the guidance of an interesting and highly-educated Don, I

only recently began to consider the religious implications in the play. Formerly, I viewed

Prince Hamlet as a strictly-psychological character. I did not previously realize that

Hamlet’s psychological makeup can be seen as a direct reflection of the religious

pandemonium during Elizabethan times. I believe this shift in critical awareness came

with my readings of two contemporary New York Times Best Sellers: Dan Brown’s The

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DaVinci Code and Karen Armstrong’s A History o f God: The 4,000 Year Quest o f

Judaism, Christianity and Islam. I decided to read the former because my devout Irish-

Catholic mother told me that it was “banned by the Pope” and to read it was a “mortal

sin.” The latter I stumbled upon in the writing of this thesis. While spending my

childhood in Catholic schools with weekly masses and an organized system of receiving

sacraments, I ignored the idea that religion is a man-made interpretation of the Bible.

The DaVinci Code caused thousands of Catholics to question their faith. Some formed a

new belief in the Gnostic Gospels while others now believe in a revised story of the Holy

Grail. Neither was the case for me. However, it is interesting to me that the author was

able change the ways some people viewed their faith through an intellectual and accurate

description of legendary symbols altered by historical individuals and organized

religions. The novel is powerful in that it causes one to contemplate not only individual

beliefs but beliefs held by others. A History o f God argues that religion is an organized

creation of man’s interpretation of the Scriptures. The author examines the historical

influences that shaped three monotheistic religions. The book is valuable in that it is a

factual, historical study about the fundamentals of religions with little commentary or

opinion. After reading these two works and researching the ideas of the great Reformers,

I developed a newly-found interest in the history of religions. It is interesting to consider

that had there not been a printing press, or if Luther had not been able to translate the

Bible, or if there had not been the ability to mass-produce the Bible so that commoners

could read it, or if Martin Luther had been burned at the stake, would the Reformation

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have existed? Would Luther’s Articles been so widely received? Would there be a later

need for a search for religious freedom in a New World?

As I sit here in the suburbs of the great city of New York, contemplating the still-

too-recent events of 9/11,1 am beginning to recognize the power of awareness. This

power can lead to a very necessary acceptance and tolerance of world religions. This

type of awareness surfaced, in part, with the great thinkers known as the Protestant

Reformers and continues with the American right to freedom of religion. Examining

Hamlet as a play that recognizes and illuminates religious variations without a concrete

statement about the “right” religion will possibly lead the reader to conclude that

individuals must coexist with each other regardless of religious beliefs.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

PAGE

COPYRIGHT PAGE............................................................................................................... ii

APPROVAL PAGE................................................................................................................ iii

PREFACE................................................................................................................................ iv

TABLE OF CONTENTS.......................................................................................................vii

LIST OF FIGURES...............................................................................................................viii

ABSTRACT............................................................................................................................ ix

CHAPTER

1. INTRODUCTION.............................................................................................................. 1

2. A FIVE ACT REVELATION ABOUT REDEMPTION................................................ 9

3. SHARED BIBLICAL MARKERS.................................................................................. 18

4. IMPLIED CATHOLICISM.............................................................................................. 23

5. IMPLIED PROTESTANTISM........................................................................................27

6. CONCLUSION................................................................................................................. 40

WORKS CITED..................................................................................................................... 43

vii


LIST OF FIGURES

PAGE

1. Historical and Literary Events in England from 1483-1603..........................................8

viii


ABSTRACT

This thesis addresses the Catholic and Protestant markers in Shakespeare’s

tragedy Hamlet Prince o f Denmark. I examine specific primary sources including the

writings of Martin Luther and John Calvin as well as the sixteenth-century Book o f

Common Prayer. Secondary sources include new historicists’ critiques of the play that

reflect Hamlet’s Humanist thought patterns. I argue that Hamlet is a representation of a

Renaissance man and analyze the ways in which the play might have appealed to

Shakespeare’s society: Elizabethan England. The Elizabethans were able to appreciate a

tragic hero who contemplated important religious ideas and questioned issues such as

salvation, religion, redemption, and societal laws and order. The ambiguous religious

direction of the play reflects the disconcerted religious sensitivity of Elizabethan

England.


1

CHAPTER 1

INTRODUCTION

I do not distinguish by the eye, but by the mind, which is the proper judge.

Seneca

In Paradise Lost, John Milton writes: “Revenge, at first though sweet, / Bitter ere

long back on itself recoils” (9.171-72). At the very end of Paradise Lost, Adam and Eve

take their secluded lives in the Garden of Eden into the real world. In Genesis, it is in

this real world that their son, Cain, is branded and fated to miserable life because of

jealousy and the murder of his brother. In Shakespeare’s Hamlet Prince o f Denmark,

another jealous brother commits murder and his nephew-son is fated to a miserable life.

Hamlet must assume a political role that conflicts with his religious and moral values.

His internal conflict and the circumstances that lead to his tragic downfall are a result of a

psychological complexity that reflects the religious turmoil of Elizabethan England.

While Queen Elizabeth ruled England, England endured religious unrest, a new

Church of England state religion, a constant threat of war with powerful Roman Catholic

European nations, and a Queen who opted to avoid marriage, a political decision to

appease both Catholics and Protestants. It is easily understood why an English

playwright would choose to write a play with conflicting religious implications.

Shakespeare used the motifs of deceit and pretense throughout the play to question issues

such as salvation, religion, redemption, and societal laws and order. Because these issues

are central to and in many ways define the Elizabethans, Hamlet reveals the religious

pandemonium of its times.


Unlike the traditional Roman revenge tragedy, Shakespeare highlights Hamlet’s

predicament rather than acts of violence within the play. The revenge storyline existed

centuries before the birth of the famous English writer. Its origins can be traced to Greek

and, later, Roman tragedies. Lucius Annaeus Seneca (4 B.C.-A.D. 65) wrote several

Roman tragedies based on Greek myths. Shakespeare presented several elements of the

Senecan revenge tragedy in Hamlet.

Like Seneca, Shakespeare did not exploit on-stage violence but rather related it to

the circumstances of the tragic hero. Seneca’s distinctive use of the supernatural such as

witches and ghosts is highlighted in the Ghost of Hamlet’s father. And finally

Shakespeare’s use of soliloquies and asides parallels Seneca’s changing of the traditional

Greek tragedy.

The 1100’s Saxo Grammaticus’ The History o f the Danes, Books I-IX contains a

story about a character named Amleth who, like Hamlet, slays the uncle who has

murdered his father. It is likely that Thomas Kyd capitalized on the popularity of revenge

tragedies in Elizabethan England and wrote an earlier version of Hamlet, now lost.

Although Saxo Grammaticus told a similar story of revenge, adultery and feigned

madness four hundred years prior to the Elizabethan version, Kyd’s “lost” version

includes the Ghost as the seeker of revenge. Shakespeare was most likely familiar with

his contemporary’s work and wrote Hamlet as a re-enactment of this story. Shakespeare

includes the Ghost of King Hamlet: the most illuminating Catholic marker in the play.

Hamlet’s father remains trapped in purgatory and needs his son to help aid in his

ascension into heaven. The existence of the Ghost and Hamlet’s reaction to it begins the


3

action of the play and highlights Hamlet’s search for religious truths, a quest that

represents his tragic flaw.

Although the true authorship of Kyd’s version of Amleth is not provable with

documents, critics can turn to Kyd’s play, The Spanish Tragedy, which includes other

elements which Shakespeare seems to have incorporated into Hamlet: “a procrastinating

protagonist who berates himself for talking instead of acting and who dies as he achieves

his revenge” and “a play within a play, a heroine whose love is opposed by her family,

and another woman who becomes insane and commits suicide” (Boyce 238-39).

From 1601 to 1611 Shakespeare focused on the tragedies and romances and

during this “second phase” of his writing he wrote Hamlet. According to Russ

McDonald, Shakespeare’s dramatic structures “faithfully represent the variety and

complexity of the theatrical culture he inhabited” (81). English audiences knew that in a

tragedy they would witness the misfortune of a powerful individual. “Death is the tragic

counterpart to the marriage that concludes comedy.” However, Hamlet’s suffering does

not begin or end with his death; his unspeakable suffering includes failure, waste,

disappointment and self-destruction. Hamlet is not a procrastinator but rather a seeker of

truth.

Hamlet does not make one fatal mistake based on an incomplete self knowledge.

Hamlet does not contain a clearly identifiable tragic flaw. However, Hamlet’s mistakes

are consistent with Aristotle’s description of hamartia (error or flaw). Hamlet is

internally conflicted between religious uncertainties. His flaw is that he procrastinates in

killing Claudius while he searches for religious truths. Through Hamlet’s hamartia, the


4

audience experiences catharsis through Hamlet’s spiritual and emotional cleansing in his

“readiness is all” speech and subsequent tragic death.

McDonald continues to argue that “the play represents the collision between the

hero’s admirable aim and the traps and obstacles that the world places in his way.” His

idealism ends in the tragic death of Polonius, Ophelia’s suffering and suicide and the

entrapment of a hero “in the very world he has set out to oppose” (81-108). It is

important to consider that Shakespeare highlights this idealism and opposition through

the use of Catholic and Protestant markers throughout the play. Hamlet opposes a world

that cannot give him definite answers for his religious questions. Although succession

and regicide, critical issues in Shakespeare’s day, are illuminated in the play, the Prince

of Denmark can be best appreciated for his complicated psychological dimension that

causes a variety of spectators to relate to him in various ways.

Although Shakespeare drew most of the context for his historical plays from

Raphael Holinshed’s reporting of the histories of England, Scotland, and Ireland in 1577

known as Holinshed ’s Chronicles, the information presented can also be seen in his

tragedies, namely Hamlet. William Harrison, in A Description o f Elizabethan England

written for Holinshed’s Chronicles, asks: “Is it not strange that a peevish order of religion

(devised by man) should break the express law of God, who commandeth all men to

honour and obey their kings and princes, in whom some part of the power of God is

manifest and laid open unto us?” (5:1). In Hamlet’s late medieval Danish society he

would be doubly justified in killing King Claudius: he would be avenging his father’s

death and the death of a noble king. But rather than an honor, avenging his father’s death


is a curse on Hamlet: “The time is out of joint: O cursed spite / That ever I was bom to

set it right!” (I.v. 189-90). Based upon social and political principles, Hamlet should

have avenged his father’s murder immediately after the Ghost’s initial appearance.

However, Hamlet’s procrastination in avenging his father’s death is a result of his natural

instinct to question what is right, lawful and just. He struggles with making the decision

to do “what is moral, and unsure” (IV.iv.7). If Hamlet is to rightfully avenge his father’s

most brutal murder, he must first abandon the idea that God will decide individual fate.

To the Elizabethans, religious questions were divided between two groups: Protestants

and Catholics. Within Protestantism, most were divided between the passionate beliefs

of Martin Luther and the political agenda of John Calvin. The implied religious conflicts

in Hamlet highlight the various beliefs affecting these groups and Hamlet’s search for

religious truths while causing his tragic downfall.

When grouped together, the church and religion, spirituality, and one’s individual

interpretation of the Bible often cause confusion, frustration and disparity. Such

challenges divided Queen Elizabeth’s constituents, neighboring European Nations, and

Shakespeare’s Prince Hamlet. Although the Bible serves as a foundation for both

Protestant and Catholic religions, interpretations of the Scriptures are often contradictory,

much like Hamlet’s paradoxical thoughts and actions in the play. The great reformers,

Luther and Calvin, as well as the great confessions of Protestantism such as The French

Confession of Faith (1559), The Second Helvetic Confession (1566), The Thirty-Nine

Articles of the Church of England, attest to a fact that the Bible is the written Word of

God. Luther states: “The preacher must preach only the Word of Holy Scripture, for the


6

Bible is the very Scripture of the Spirit.. .it can [not] be otherwise, for the Scriptures are

divine; in them God speaks, and they are His Word. To hear or to read the Scriptures is

nothing else than to hear God” (qtd. in Bridges 15). Catholics conform to the same idea:

the Scriptures are paramount and fundamental, although they add the tradition of the

papal edicts and the early Church Fathers. By rejecting the idea of an infallible pope,

Protestants separated themselves from Catholic tradition. Thus, Elizabethans were faced

with the challenge of separating the Scriptures from its Catholic orientation. This, of

course, was an issue of debate, a question that caused turmoil and conflict throughout

England and European Nations while Shakespeare was writing his plays. Hamlet mirrors

conflicting religious theologies such as those seen in Martin Luther and Saint Thomas

More’s writings and sermons as well as John Calvin’s Institutes o f Christian Religion.

Hamlet has two consciences: one that tells him to avenge his father’s death and

one that tells him killing the murderer is wrong. This parallels two conflicting Biblical

passages in which both Catholics and Protestants believed. Contradicting the Old

Testament, Jesus delivers an alternative to an eye for an eye: “You heard that it is said,

‘an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.’ But I say to you, offer no resistance to one

who is evil. When someone strikes you on your [right] cheek, turn the other one to him as

well” (Mt. 5:38-42). Prince Hamlet must decide whether it is nobler to seek revenge or

“turn the other cheek” and allow God to decide Claudius’ fate. This form of double

consciousness makes Hamlet a complicated character. Although Hamlet would be right

in avenging his father’s death based on the historical context as well as the historical

setting of the play, his procrastination is evident and caused by an inner moral


7

conscience: “whether it be / Bestial oblivion, or some craven scruple / Of thinking too

precisely on th’ event” (IV.iv.39-41). Hamlet becomes a seeker of truth, causing his

procrastination throughout the play and becoming his tragic flaw.

The Ghost of Hamlet’s father and the existence of purgatory, Ophelia’s right to a

Christian burial and Claudius’ inability to pray are but a few reflections of the

discrepancies between Catholic and Protestant faiths. Likewise, the implied political

conflicts presented in the play reflect several political and religious situations. Queen

‘Bloody’ Mary and her persecution of Protestants, her sister Elizabeth’s Protestant

beliefs, a later James I and his passing of the treason act in Parliament may explain issues

in the play such as Claudius’ drastic measures to usurp and keep the crown that clearly

belonged to Hamlet and Hamlet’s political role in ridding Denmark of a treasonous King.

However, the most illuminating religious implications can be seen in Hamlet’s inner

consciousness. Hamlet states: “conscience doth make cowards of us all” ( III.i.82).

Although most editors agree that conscience here is the ability to think and reason, for

Hamlet it is also his moral questioning about sin and how to achieve salvation in the

afterlife. Ironically, it is Hamlet’s equivocating thoughtfulness and moral scruples on the

subject of murdering Claudius that make him the play’s compelling hero. The Biblical

and religious insinuations in the play offer Elizabethans insight into the religious

quandary that the Elizabethans endured.


00

MartinLutherd.1546

Act of Uniformity forbade the use o f Catholic Mass

Queen Mary, Catholic monarch, reigned until 1558,persecutingProtestants

V I

Act o f Uniformity of Common Prayer passes, making non- attendance at church punishable by law.

The 39 Articles are ratified by Queen Elizabeth

James I commissions English translation of King James Bible

a V| 1492 | 1509 1549 1552 1553 1558 1559 1564 1571 c.1601 1603

Henry VIII, “Defender o f Faith”, becomes King of England;Birth of John Calvin: Protestant Reformer

Prayer Book of 1549 modified and implemented

Queen Elizabeth, Protestant monarch, succeeded her sister Mary and proceeded to restore the work o f her father, Henry VIII. She reigned for 45 years.

WilliamShakespearebom

Shakespeare writes Hamlet Prince o f Denmark

Figure 1: Timeline representing important historical and literary events before and after William Shakespeare’s creation of Hamlet Prince o f Denmark.

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9

CHAPTER 2

A FIVE ACT REVELATION ABOUT REDEMPTION

Saepe intereunt aliis meditantes necem [Those who plot the destruction o f others

often fa ll themselves] Phaedrus

The foundation of Hamlet’s internal conflict is mostly parallel to the religious

conflicts that engulfed the sixteenth century: predestination vs. free will, Divine grace vs.

papal indulgences, and Catholic theology vs. that of Luther or Calvin, the Sacrament of

Penance vs. God’s redemption, paramount Scriptures vs. the infallible pope. With all of

the contradictions stemming from different interpretations of the Bible it is

understandable that Hamlet, a representative character of a Renaissance man, spends his

time searching for the way to salvation. Roy W. Battenhouse, in his study of Elizabethan

and Jacobean drama, accurately defines Hamlet as a representation of Elizabethan times:

“In an age when thinking was emerging from the dominance of Christian dogma to

become once again, as in Classical times, man-centered - when Pico was raising new

hopes by his Oration on the Dignity o f Man, and Calvin new anguish by his outcry over

man’s lost dignity - Shakespeare brought the mood of the times to a focus in Hamlet”

( 1).

Hamlet’s procrastination after meeting the Ghost and learning about his father’s

most unnatural murder reflects his desire to understand the truth about salvation, a

religious quest that leads to his downfall. Although some scholars suggest that Hamlet

procrastinates because he doubts the Ghost’s honesty, a closer reading of Act I may


10

suggest the opposite. Hamlet cries out to the Ghost: “Art you there / Truepenny?”

(I.v. 150-51), in order to learn more about the murder. Hamlet’s belief that the Ghost is a

“truepenny” rather than counterfeit suggests that he believes the Ghost is a trustworthy

source. His procrastination throughout the next four Acts reflects his search for religious

truths, the truth about his purpose in life and his place in Eternity. Although critics argue

that Hamlet questions the validity of the Ghost and feigns madness accordingly, it is also

conceivable that Hamlet believes the Ghost from its first appearance and that he

procrastinates due to his rejection of what religions dictate, what he is told, and what he

has learned. Although Hamlet procrastinates in order to learn what path he should take to

assure a secured afterlife, he is clear about his mission to aid in his father’s ascension

from purgatory to heaven, a distinctly Catholic idea. He wants to learn the truth about

salvation and the afterlife. The chaotic ideas that come to Hamlet in his feigned madness

are caused by his religious quandary which, in turn, causes him to delay. His

predicament reflects the Elizabethan state of religious confusion.

When Hamlet learns that his uncle killed his father to usurp the crown, his first

course of action is to use the Mousetrap Play in order to deceive Claudius into revealing

his guilt while he continues to contemplate a course of action for revenge. The actors in

Hamlet share a commonality with the actors in the Mousetrap Play. The actors in Hamlet

are “dramatizing, not a historical truth but a truth, nevertheless, about this world - is it

real or illusory? - in which we the audience exist” (Cannon 208). Reality and illusion are

highlighted in the Mousetrap Play, mirroring Hamlet’s ability to feign madness. By

feigning madness Hamlet is able to procrastinate while determining whether his political


11

role to rid Denmark of a treasonous King parallels God’s plan for him, if there is one. In

both the play and the play within the play, ideas are separated into contradictions:

“appearances and reality, fact and fiction, theater and life - are metaphorically rejoined”

(209). Horatio, the learned scholar, will serve as a witness to the King’s reaction. As

planned, Claudius is unsettled at the ending of the Mousetrap Play, proving his guilt.

However, Hamlet needs further proof that killing Claudius is the right course of action

and decides to continue to feign madness while he formulates a plan. Hamlet’s quest to

learn what is unsure had begun in Act I. He compares earth not to one of God’s greatest

creations but rather an “unweeded garden” ... “rank and gross in nature” (I.ii. 135-36). It

is not a paradise, a Garden of Eden, but rather a place where he is trapped to mourn the

loss of his father while contending with the marriage of his mother to his uncle. The

story of creation begins the Bible and a description of God’s creation of man. His

purpose in life and his place in the afterlife are questions of concern for Hamlet. He

spends the next four Acts attempting to find the answers and, in the final Act, dies, to

some extent because of his religious procrastination.

In Act II, Hamlet’s lack of understanding about man’s purpose in life becomes

apparent. When Polonius asks Hamlet, “What do you read, my lord?” Hamlet responds,

“Words, words, words.” This repetition highlights the idea that Hamlet is not quick to

accept an idea simply because it is written. When probed further about the “matter” that

Hamlet reads, Hamlet explains that what he reads is “slander”: the author of the book is a

“satirical rogue” who argues that old men have “grey beards,” their faces are “wrinkled,”

and they have a “plentiful lack of wit.” Hamlet contemplates the course of a man’s life.


12

His point to Polonius is that if a man can go backwards through life, Polonius shall grow

old like Hamlet. The insult, according to Polonius, is “madness,” yet “there is method in

it yet” (Il.ii. 196-206). Later in the scene, Hamlet explains to Rosencrantz and

Guildenstem that the earth is a “sterile promontory,” that humans are “mere dust” and

that air is “foul and pestilent.” “Man delights [him] not - nor woman neither” (297-309).

Hamlet begins to recognize that the courtiers are agents of Claudius and, after

Rosencrantz states “the world’s grown honest,” Hamlet determines that honest people

such as himself are imprisoned in the rotten state of Denmark. Ronald Knowles, in his

article “Hamlet and Counter Humanism,” describes Hamlet’s belief that “there is nothing

either good or bad, but thinking makes it so” as a skepticism that Hamlet is unable to

adopt fully. “What is considered bad in one society is perfectly acceptable in another”

(1056). Hamlet’s melancholy is caused by his exposure to the society that surrounds him.

Something is rotten in the state of Denmark.

Hamlet continually expresses his discontentment with his place in the world.

Customs are “damned,” fortune is “outrageous,” Denmark is a “prison with many

confines, wards and dungeons.” He longs that his “too too solid flesh would melt.” He

detests earthly things and longs for the afterlife. But the way into Eternity is unclear; he

must use his reason and logic to learn the path rather than blindly follow religious ideas.

However, his logic and reason become tools for procrastination. Throughout, particularly,

Acts I and II, Hamlet questions everything but understands nothing. Hamlet’s Denmark

is a “land of Christianity in decay.. .his behavior oscillates between Euphuistic courtesy

and savage spleen, between torments of conscience and rejection of all conscience,


13

between intricate caution and revenge” (Battenhouse 38). Hamlet, a scholar who

ironically lacks so much knowledge, is a contradicting force of nature. His conflicting

viewpoints and attempts to better understand truths about the nature of man, sin,

redemption and religion are his hamartia.

After experiencing the loss of his father, facing the remarriage of his mother to his

uncle, learning that his father has been murdered as well as the shocking identity of the

murderer, being visited by his dead father and asked to avenge that death, and losing his

connection with Ophelia, Hamlet’s burden becomes catastrophic. He must decide

whether his free will to murder the king will lead to an unknown place in heaven, hell or

purgatory. Salvation has become a gamble, a risk Hamlet will not readily take. His

procrastination in ridding Denmark of a treasonous king is understandable. He questions

all ideas of redemption and salvation, knowing that his decisions will affect his place in

the afterlife. As a thinker and an intellectual, Hamlet searches for an unknown, non-

provable awareness. This search has become a daunting task and one that leads him to

have irrationally-rational suicidal thoughts in the famous Act III “To be, or not to be”

soliloquy: “Whether ‘tis nobler in the mind to suffer / The slings and arrows of

outrageous fortune, / Or to take arms against the sea of troubles” (Ill.i.55-58). Hamlet

questions what “dreams” might come true in his final sleep. This unknown is the reason

why people make the “calamity of life so long” (65-68). According to Knowles, in his

essay on counter-humanism, Hamlet’s dilemma finds perfect expression, yet its

significance is beyond his grasp:


14

We have the opening exordium; “To die, to sleep” adds a confirmatory

argument; “To sleep, perchance to dream” offers a rebuttal; “For who

would bear the whips and scorns of time” offers an extensive dilation,

followed by the epilogue, “Thus conscience does make cowards of us

all...” The particular locution, “To be, or not to be,” forces upon us, but

not Hamlet, the awareness that the question he asks, and the speech which

seemingly considers it, neutralize the suffering being between words and

actions. (1052)

Soon after this contemplation, Hamlet abruptly murders Polonius. He has no remorse:

“A rat? Dead like a ducat, dead.” The Lord Chamberlain, who has spent his days

meddling in people’s lives with his words, words, words, lies dead on the floor while

Hamlet explains to Gertrude that “heaven hath pleased it so / To punish me with

[Polonius], and [Polonius] with me / That I must be their scourge, and minister” (Ill.iv.

173-75). Hamlet transforms from a prince with integrity into a “scourge of God” when

he abandons his ethics and brutally kills Polonius. Hamlet begins to recognize his place

in the world and his life’s course. He must send a message that one must not follow what

one is told but rather make decisions based on what is righteous.

In Act IV, as Hamlet plays “Hide fox, and all after,” the British game of “hide and

seek” with Polonius’ body, he explains to Rosencrantz and Guildenstem that Polonius’

body is “with the king, but the king is / not with the body, the king is a thing” (IV.iii.26-

27). When asked what Hamlet means by a “thing” he explains, quite simply, “Of

nothing” (29). This exchange might serve as a statement about the Elizabethan view of


15

kings and nobility. The King (the head of the “body,” or the people) is not the rightful

supreme ruler. After Hamlet’s transformation in Act III, his inaction is reversed. He kills

Polonius and is ready to make his own decisions about ridding Denmark of its corrupt

King.

It is abundantly clear by the final Act in the play that Hamlet is not satisfied with

one definite answer about salvation, redemption, honor, politics, religion or the afterlife.

He continues to question the ambiguity of what is right and moral. However, he begins

to recognize that God’s will determines man’s fate. His journey at sea seems to have

been not only a physical one but also spiritually transforming. Hamlet is exuberant as he

explains his finding of the fateful letters sent by Claudius to England through courtiers

Rosencrantz and Guildenstem. After a feeling of restlessness, Hamlet finds the letters

that are meant to seal his death. He says to Horatio: “There's a divinity that shapes our

ends” (V. ii. 10). He also conveniently finds the King’s seal: “Why, even in that was

heaven ordinant” (V. ii. 48). Through God’s will, Hamlet realizes, his life was spared

allowing him to accomplish what he is supposed to do: kill the treasonous Claudius.

As Hamlet watches the gravediggers unearth skulls, he comes to understand that

man is bom from dust and to dust he will return. A lawyer, a great buyer of land, the

inheritor of that land, will, according to Hamlet, remain as dead as the parchments that

secured their lives. In the end, neither the man nor his legal documents offer assurances,

and those who seek assurance in such parchments are “sheep and calves” (V. iv.122).

Hamlet’s one true understanding is that people should not follow the common way of

thinking. Hamlet offers this advice to Horatio: “We must speak by the card, or


16

equivocation will undo us. By the Lord, Horatio, this three years I have took note of it:

the age is grown so pick’d that the toe to the peasant conies so near the heel of the

courtier, he galls his kibe” (135-40). Kings, princes and courtiers, who are said to be

godly in nature, are no different from peasants or commoners.

The celebration of man found in Renaissance humanism is countered by Hamlet.

Hamlet’s actions throughout the play contradict the thoughts he reveals through different

soliloquies within the play. It is his internal quest to learn the truth about life, death and

the afterlife that results in each step he takes towards resolving the external conflict,

avenging his father’s death. Hamlet begins to realize that his quest to understand the

physical and spiritual worlds may soon result in his tragic death.

Hamlet’s psychological makeup includes adherence to and rejection of religious

beliefs, a dilemma Elizabethans may have shared. Thomas Macaulay, in The History o f

England from the Accession o f James the Second, reasons that this religious dilemma was

inevitable: “Yet even in the sixteenth century a considerable number o f those who quitted

the old religion followed the first confident and plausible guide who offered himself, and

were soon led into errors far more serious than those which they had renounced” (1: 13).

In Hamlet’s case, he uses his conscience as both a plausible moral guide and ability to

reason. Throughout the play, Hamlet’s indecisiveness in killing Claudius is based on

religious and moral conflicts. He is summoned to complete a task and although it is his

duty to do so, Hamlet delays throughout four acts. By the end of the play one must draw

one’s own conclusions about sin, salvation and redemption, which becomes the apparent

purpose of Hamlet’s earthly existence: to assure the “unsatisfied” that their ability to


17

reason and individual morals are more important than what religion dictates to them.

Goethe’s Hamlet does not convey to the world a warning example of justice: “it is by

mere accident that the criminals are at last punished” (qtd.in Steinberg 2). Hamlet’s

questioning of religious truths causes him to procrastinate in ridding Denmark of its

treasonous King.

The audience cannot classify Hamlet as a Catholic, Protestant, scholar, madman,

or enlightened. The play begins with the appearance of a ghost that represents the

spiritual world. In the final Act the appearance of Yorick’s skull represents the physical

world. Hamlet’s quest to learn the meaning of both the physical and spiritual worlds is

exploited throughout Shakespeare’s longest play. When confronted with death, Hamlet

turns to his trusted friend Horatio: “Report me and my cause aright / To the unsatisfied”

(321-22). Hamlet’s fate is secured, and the known function of his life is posthumous: his

story will help others who are unsatisfied to question for themselves what is just, moral

and righteous.


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CHAPTER 3

SHARED BIBLICAL MARKERS

The incident that begins the action of the play, Prince Hamlet’s realization that his

father was killed by his uncle, mirrors the Biblical passage about one brother that kills the

other in an act of jealousy. This Biblical passage serves as an explanation of the

existence of good and evil: Cain murders his benevolent brother in an act of jealousy, lies

about the murder, the murder is discovered and Cain is damned. Deception is a key

element in what is known as the world’s first murder. God asked Cain “Where is your

brother?” Cain attempted to deceive God: “How should I know? I am not his keeper”

(Gen. 4: 28). Although it appears that Claudius’ initial reasoning for killing his brother

was to usurp the crown, the fact that he then marries his brother’s wife proves that he

desired all that belonged to his brother. Claudius disobeys several commandments by

killing the King and usurping control over Denmark and also commits one of the seven

deadly sins by allowing envy to overpower his morality. A mirror of Cain’s story begins

the action of the play.

Hamlet’s initial conflict mirrors two simple but fundamental Biblical commands

to which both Catholics and Protestants could relate: “Honor your father and your

mother, that you may have a long life in the land which the Lord, Your God, is giving

you. You shall not kill” (Ex. 20:12-13). The belief is reinforced in Jesus’ command

spoken in the Gospel of Matthew: “If you want to have life forever, obey the

commandments” (19:17). Hamlet cannot obey both commandments simultaneously. He


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cannot honor his father by aiding in his ascension into heaven and avenging his murder

without murdering Claudius. This presented a dilemma that even the most devout would

find difficult to resolve. Hamlet must first contemplate the value of free will. Free will

and determination and the idea of ideal grace provoked the thoughts of Renaissance men

as did the idea of predestination. If man is predestined, then God has an unknown plan

regardless of man’s free will. If free will determines one’s fate, then man must make the

right decisions or risk heavenly consequences. Both beliefs contradict the idea that

Fortune spins her wheel to determine man’s fate. Hamlet is a representation of a

Renaissance man, “a Renaissance man confronted with the modem predicament of what

to do with his free will, an intellectual whose growing disgust with man.. .drives him to

feign madness, wish for the final sleep, or seek consolation in the only occupation he can

still enjoy: the play” (Lamont 2). By the end of the play, Shakespeare once again

reminds us of the Biblical brothers. While watching the gravediggers dig Ophelia’s

grave, tossing skulls from the earth in the process, Hamlet says to Horatio: “That skull

had a tongue in it, and could sing once. How the knave jowls it to the ground, as if ‘twere

Cain’s jawbone, that did the first murder! This might be the pate of a politician, which

this ass now o’er reaches one that would circumvent God” (V. i. 72-75).

Hamlet analyzes the physical world and realizes that man comes from dust and to dust he

will return. God’s will is important in that it will lead one into eternity.

Ophelia’s right to a Christian burial is a divisive issue in the play. Whether or not

Ophelia committed suicide highlights the Catholic belief that denies Christian funerals

for people who destroy God’s greatest creation by committing suicide. However, the


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Protestant markers are also illuminated in this final scene before Hamlet’s death. The

contradicting beliefs are highlighted by the gravediggers. The First Clown argues that

Ophelia drowned herself: “she willfully seekd her own salvation” (V. i. 2). However, his

ignorance is highlighted by his lack of wit. He pretends to know Latin but uses the term

“se offendendo” for “in self defence” rather than the accurate se defendendo. The First

Clown argues that Ophelia could not have drowned unwittingly, explaining to the Second

Clown: “If I drown myself wittingly, it argues an act, and an act hath three branches—it

is to act, to do, to perform” (11-12). Again, the Clown’s ignorance is highlighted. The

Clown confuses the British law that one had to be in one’s right mind to be held

accountable for his or her actions. According to British law, Ophelia would have had to

imagine committing suicide, decide to commit suicide, and complete the act of suicide.

The Clown simply uses synonyms for one phase of the law. By ignoring the

premeditation or a prior imagining of the act, the Clown does not see the point that

Ophelia’s madness made her not responsible for the act of suicide and entitled to a

Christian burial. The conversation between the Clowns highlights the re-occurring theme

of man’s lack of wisdom and need of knowledge.

In his commentary Ecclesiastical Law in HAMLET: The Burial o f Ophelia,

originally presented before The Shakespeare Society o f New York on June 9, 1885, R.A.

Guernsey discusses Ophelia’s rights to a Christian burial:

By the canon law, whether Ophelia was sane or insane, if she deliberately

caused her own death, she was not entitled to the burial rites of the church,

for churchmen contended then as now that in all cases of suicide the

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.

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deceased should be denied the burial rites of the church, and the clergy

ought not to be bound by the decision of the Coroner's jury in such cases.

(3:1)

However, before 1603 the statute law required a minister to attend and bury all persons in

the parish churchyard, and to read or sing certain prayers as approved in the act of

uniformity of worship without regard to the religious belief or doctrine of the deceased:

Under the ancient law as well as under the 39 articles of the church, the

decision of the coroner's jury, he being a magistrate, must be followed by

the church as to the voluntary or involuntary act of self-destruction. If the

former was found by the coroner, the body was denied the church rites of

burial and was buried by the coroner according to the local custom of the

parish. If the latter was found, as was the case when the subject was

deemed insane, then the rites of burial must be used by the ministers, but

only in the parish churchyard, under the penalty prescribed in the act of

uniformity of Elizabeth and in the 68th canon of 1603. (3:2)

This explains the Doctor’s unenthusiastic and reluctant attitude at Ophelia’s burial: “Her

death was doubtful, / and but that great command o’ersways the order, / she should in

ground unsanctified been lodg’d” (V. i. 223-35). The priest argues that to sing a requiem

“should profane the service of the dead” (34).

Shakespeare is ambiguous about the nature of Ophelia’s death. However, it is

after witnessing the burial of Ophelia that Hamlet finally comes to the determination that

nothing happens that is not of God’s design. Intellect and conscience as the ability to


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reason may conflict with religious ideologies and create a dilemma that caused Hamlet to

procrastinate in killing Claudius while he attempted to understand sin, revenge, and

redemption. Hamlet makes the fateful decision to go to the match against Laertes even

though he fears the outcome: “There is a special providence in the fall of a sparrow. If it

be now, ‘tis not to come; if it be not to come, it will be now” (V. ii. 212-14). Catholics

and Protestants understand Hamlet’s Biblical reference to Matthew 10:29: “Are not two

sparrows sold for a farthing? And one of them shall not fall to the ground without your

father.” Hamlet will let what is meant to be happen: “ .. .the readiness is all. Since no

man, of aught he leaves, knows what is’t to leave / betimes, let be” (215-17).

John Donne’s sermons reflect Anglican views derived by the Book o f Common

Prayer. In one o f his sermons about the idea of original sin, Donne explains that God’s

world is a “uniformity” or several unified parts of “an instrument perfectly in tune.”

However, due to original sin men put the instrument out of tune. But “God rectified all

again by putting in a new string, semen mulieris, the seed of a woman, the [Messiah]” (2).

He explains that people, due to Christ’s birth, work, death and resurrection, must turn

from sin and be obedient to God’s will. In recognizing that God’s will is paramount,

Hamlet makes the decision to assume a political role that will be determined by God’s

will. Hamlet quickly becomes the tragic hero: he enters the fencing contest, is wounded

by Laertes, watches his mother die from poison, and finally kills Claudius, avenging his

father’s death and ridding Denmark of a treasonous king.


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CHAPTER 4

IMPLIED CATHOLICISM

Reason directs those who are truly pious and philosophical to honour and love only what is true,

declining to follow traditional opinions, i f these be worthless.Saint Justin Martyr

Although many of the religious references in the play reflect shared beliefs

between Catholics and Protestants, several scenes in the play serve as strictly Catholic

markers. The characterization of the Ghost of Hamlet’s father and Hamlet’s desire to do

what is right is central to the implied Catholic references in the play. The appearance of

the Ghost in Act I begins the action of the play and the Catholic implications.

Conventional Catholics, although often criticized in Europe during the Elizabethan era,

would sympathize with but not pity the Ghost’s predicament. The Ghost must spend time

in purgatory, a place of torment where he will pay for his sins before going to heaven:

“Doom’d for a certain term to walk the night” (I.v. 10). The Ghost explains to his son that

Claudius killed him before he had the opportunity to assure himself a place in heaven.

While the Ghost slept, his evil brother “Cut off even in the bosoms of my sin,” or killed

him before he was able to confess his sins. The Sacrament of Penance, where Catholics

confess their sins to a priest in order to seek absolution, is a fundamental necessity if one

wishes to enter the gates of heaven. Catholic doctrine requires a belief in the existence of

purgatory and the receiving of the Sacraments. Upon seeing the Ghost, Horatio states:

“I’ll cross it, though it blast me,” possibly a pun on making the sign of the cross (I.i.27).

However, his belief that the Ghost is stuck in a place between heaven and hell is apparent


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when he begins speaking to the ghost. Horatio, after asking the ghost whether it has

come to warn them about the future of Denmark, continues by asking:

.. .if thou hast uphoarded in thy life

Extorted treasure in the womb of earth,

For which, they say, your spirits oft walk in death,

Speak of i t . . .(136-139)

Horatio is alluding to the Catholic belief that one must suffer in purgatory if his sins were

not sufficient enough for Hell, yet were sins that should have been confessed and

repented. While waiting for the Ghost to reappear and before knowing the ghost’s

identity, Bernardo explains to Horatio and Marcellus that the ghost is portentous because

it “Comes armed through our watch so like the King / That was and is the question of

these wars” (110-111). Horatio also seems bitter towards the former King, calling the

King “our valiant Hamlet” but sarcastically following with: “For so this side of our

known world esteem’d him” (84-85). King Hamlet’s partial responsibility for the present

state of Denmark contributes to the explanations of why his soul is lingering in purgatory.

The Ghost continues to explain that he was poisoned “Unhous’led,” or without Eucharist

and without the Catholic Sacrament of Anointment. He was murdered “unanel’d,” or

unanointed, which further explains his position in purgatory (77).

Hamlet’s initial belief that he must aid in his father’s ascent into heaven further

highlights this Catholic marker. The new historicist pioneer Stephen Greenblatt, in

Hamlet in Purgatory, gives an intellectual account of purgatory as both a belief and an

institution. He explains that in the mid-sixteenth century, English authorities “abruptly


2 5

changed the relationship between the living and dead” by declaring that purgatory was a

false "poem" and banning the practices that Christians relied on to ease the passage to

Heaven for themselves and their dead loved ones. Greenblatt discusses the immense task

lawmakers and bureaucrats had in trying to dissolve the system of purgatory, a system

that “brings real gold and silver into the coffers of the Catholic Church” (39). However,

it was clear that paying the Catholic Church for prayers to assure a loved one’s passage

into heaven was financially beneficial to the Church and economy. Greenblatt refers to

John Donne’s Elegy VI, which states: “I hate dead names.” Donne warns his mistress

that she is teaching him to fall away from his old faith:

Thus taught, I shall

As the nations do from Rome, from this love fall when I

Am the recusant, in that resolute state,

What hurts it me to be excommunicate? (qtd. in Greenblatt 40)

Greenblatt explains the reasons why Catholic tradition assigns souls to purgatory:

theologians had for centuries pondered the fate of those Christians who were neither

completely good nor completely bad, and, in particular, the fate of those at the brink of

death burdened with some sins for which they had not done (or had begun but had not

completed) the canonical penance. The sins in question were not the gravest ones, mortal

sins for which Hell was the inescapable punishment, but lesser ones (“venial sins,” as a

distinction frilly formulated in the twentieth century put it), for which, if justice were to

be satisfied, some punishment was still due (43).


26

Hamlet shares the dilemma presented. Although he must sin by killing Claudius, he

seeks to determine whether his sin is indeed a “lesser one,” considering the fact that he

would be ridding Denmark of a treasonous King as well as avenging the death of a noble

one. He must further contemplate if some punishment will be due upon his death. Will

he be one for whom the bells toll? As a scholar, Hamlet can understand what Greenblatt

calls the poetics of purgatory: “[Protestants] charted the ways in which certain elemental

human fears, longings and fantasies were being shaped and exploited by an intellectual

elite who carefully packaged fraudulent, profit-making innovations as if they were

ancient traditions” (46). Greenblatt discusses the opposing positions that challenge each

other in the play. He suggests that Hamlet is a “young man from Wittenberg with a

distinctively Protestant temperament” who is haunted by a “distinctively Catholic ghost”

(240). Greenblatt suggests that what we call “ideology,” then, Renaissance England

called “poetry.”

Although the Catholic references and implications in the play pale in comparison

to the Protestant markers, Queen Elizabeth’s constituents might have sympathized with

Hamlet’s dilemma and might have wondered if he would share the same fate as Thomas

More, the devout Catholic, knighted by Henry VIII, named lord chancellor of England,

beheaded for treason while Luther and Calvin were spreading ideas that would form the

Reformation.


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CHAPTER 5

IMPLIED PROTESTANTISM

The three great elements o f modern civilization: Gunpowder, Printing, and the Protestant Religion.

Thomas Carlyle

Hamlet’s procrastination in killing Claudius and avenging his father’s murder

results in an internal struggle that eventually causes his tragic downfall. Much of this

struggle is based on Hamlet’s inability to conform to one moral belief about death and the

afterlife. Shakespeare’s contemporaries had various opinions about death and

redemption and the Protestant reformers sought a change in the widely-held Catholic

beliefs mentioned in Chapter 4. A break up of the medieval world cannot be attributed

simply to the new Protestant beliefs held by Martin Luther; Elizabethans reaped the

rewards of a modem civilization that was developed by events such as the end of

feudalism, the rise of humanism, increased trade and commerce, and the development of

the printing press. However, Luther’s greatest contribution mirrors Hamlet’s questioning

of what is unsure. Dr. John Dillenberger, president of the Graduate Theological Union in

Berkeley and former teacher at Princeton, Harvard, Columbia and Drew Universities,

analyzes Martin Luther’s central contribution to the Protestant Reformation that so

greatly affected the Elizabethans: “Generally, the medieval church defined the

righteousness of God as the demanding justice of God; for the mature Luther, by contrast,

the righteousness of God was fundamentally the mercy of God” (xviii). The demanding

God that entraps the Ghost of King Hamlet in purgatory is in sharp contrast to the

merciful God whom Hamlet requires.


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While mourning his father’s death and mother’s remarriage to his uncle, Hamlet

asks the new King if he can return to Wittenberg, a college made famous as the school

Martin Luther attended to study theology. Lectures in the Bible were an important part of

reformed universities in Europe: “Under the impact of Humanism, the Wittenberg

University was recognized in 1518 to provide instruction in the Bible.. .It is likely that

Melanchthon’s Loci Communes (1521), the first systematic theology of Protestantism,...

replaced the Lombard in the Protestant universities” (Green 12). It is Hamlet’s education

in philosophy and theology at Wittenberg that makes him believe that life on earth is

“weary, stale, flat and unprofitable”; Hamlet longs for the afterlife: “O that this too too

solid flesh would melt, / Thaw, and resolve itself into a dew” (I.ii.129-133). In this first

soliloquy, Hamlet’s conflicting religious values become apparent even before he learns

about his father’s murder. “Or that the Everlasting had not fix’d / His canon ‘gainst self

slaughter” (132). Fixing the Catholic canon was the focal point of the reformers.

Elizabethan and Jacobean drama often reflects the laborers that formed the 1640

English Revolution. Ben Jonson’s character Zeal of the Land Busy in Bartholomew Fair

was a comic figure with an uncompromising commitment to a political ideal; he can be

compared to the Calvinist saints who were described as men of “hypocritical zeal,

meddlesome, continually on the move, nervously and ostentatiously searching for godly

things to do” (Walzer 3). Jonson’s dramas, like Shakespearean drama, were not confined

by any strict limits of structure. “Realism and restraint scored a triumph once in a while,

as in the satirical comedies of Ben Jonson, but most of the great plays give evidence of a

frank desire to exploit emotion and set forth the glory of man in action upon the stage just


2 9

as Raphael, Titian, and Michelangelo had set it forth in painting and sculpture” (Bradner

14). Shakespeare’s Prince Hamlet serves as a direct reflection of such emotion.

Hamlet’s contradictory thoughts about death and the afterlife mirror those of

Shakespeare’s contemporaries. On the one hand, Francis Bacon argues that fear of death

is weak and cowardly because death is a natural part of life: “Men fear death, as children

fear to go in the dark; and as that natural fear in children is increased with tales, so is the

other” (1). Yet it is a fear of death that dissuades Hamlet from suicide:

For in that sleep of death what dreams may come,

When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,

Must give us pause, there’s the respect

That makes calamity of so long life. (III.i.65-68)

According to Hamlet, not knowing what the afterlife will be causes people to withstand

their lives on earth. The Anglican priest John Donne, in his own funeral service that he

wrote and delivered shortly before he died entitled Deaths Duel (1631), discusses the

importance of the last moments of life: “The tree lies as it falls it’s true, but it is not the

last stroake that fells the tree, nor the last word nor gaspe that qualifies the soule.. . . Our

critical day is not the very day of our death: but the whole course of our life” (153).

French philosopher Michel de Montaigne, who lived in the century prior to Donne,

disagrees (1575): “in this last scene between ourselves and death, there is no more

pretense. We must use plain words, and display such goodness or purity as we have at the

bottom of the pot” (343). Hamlet questions what the afterlife might be if he dies with sin


30

or without living a good, moral earthly life. Although Catholic, Montaigne is also

skeptical about what has been said about death:

We put one question, and they return us a whole hive. As no event, no

face, entirely resembles another, so do they not entirely differ: an

ingenious mixture of nature. If our faces were not alike, we could not

distinguish man from beast; if they were not unlike, we could not

distinguish one man from another; all things hold by some similitude;

every example halts and the relation which is drawn from experience is

always faulty and imperfect. Comparisons are ever coupled at one end or

the other; so do the laws serve, and are fitted to every one of our affairs,

by some wrested, biased, and forced interpretation. (343)

Hamlet shares this skepticism. He is determined to rely on his own ability to reason to

determine his actions. However, Montaigne understands that humankind is indeed

human: “Chaque home porte la forme entiere de I’humaine condition [Every man

beareth the whole stampe of humane condition]” (qtd. in Ryan 29). Kiernan Ryan, fellow

of New Hall, Cambridge, examines this point and argues that "‘what starts to evolve is the

understanding that every individual is also a human being, whose facilities, experiences

and aspirations are shared, or sharable, with the rest of the species” (29). Hamlet

procrastinates in killing Claudius throughout most of the play because he wants to first

determine for himself the moral course of action. Protestantism and Catholicism, because

they are religions devised by man, leave many questions to blind faith. An intellectual

thinker like Hamlet might reject any type of blindness to facts. Hamlet does not trust


31

written words and corrupt politics. Hamlet might understand Montaigne’s description of

laws that are served by biased and forced interpretations. Lars Engle explains

Montaigne’s point: “Montaigne's bottomless self-awareness and his humane skepticism

demonstrate that modem tendencies to understand human individuality in terms of

psychological interiority and the capacity to retain private judgment had a prominent and

widely read Renaissance exemplar” (227). However, Hamlet is not just an individual; he

is a prince whose purpose in life is to inherit the throne. Concerning princedom, Luther

turned to Proverbs 28:16: “A prince that wanteth understanding will oppress many with

injustice.” Likewise, Calvinists appreciated the sin of trying to understand God’s will.

Luther investigates the issue:

No matter how good and equitable the laws are, they all make exceptions

of cases o f necessity, in which they cannot be enforced. Therefore, a

prince must have the law in his hand as firmly as the sword, and decide in

his own mind when and where the laws must be applied strictly or with

moderation, so that reason may always control all law and be the highest

law and rule over all laws. (393)

Hamlet’s dilemma is for the prince to understand whether or not he should allow his

conscience to create reasons for and against killing Claudius. Luther’s message is clear:

“A prince must follow [Moses’] example to proceed with fear; he must depend neither

upon dead books nor upon living heads, but cling solely to God” (394). However,

Luther rejected the idea that man should use his ability to reason in order to understand

the unexplained. Karen Armstrong explains this rejection: “God, [Luther] insisted,


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strictly forbade speculative discussion about his nature. To attempt to reach him by

means of reason alone could be dangerous and lead to despair.. .the Christian should

appropriate the revealed truths of scripture and make them his own” (278).

If Hamlet is to avenge his father’s murder by killing the murderer, would he

achieve salvation? Explaining that men are sinners and not “perfectly spiritual,” Luther

states that men will achieve this perfection only on the last day, “the day of the

resurrection of the dead” (67). John Calvin advises men “not to indulge in curiosity, not

to speak, or think, or even desire to know, concerning obscure subjects, anything beyond

the information given in the Divine Word, to forsake unprofitable speculations, which

have neither certainty nor daily use to leave to God the knowledge of himself ’ (qtd. in

Walzer 24). In a discussion about the differences between Calvinist, Lutheran and

Catholic ideologies, Walzer explains that Calvin’s writings might be called a “theology

anti-theological,” noting that Calvin was not sympathetic to men “tortured by the

problem of salvation.” Luther was a theologian whose “compelling concern was always

with the private knowledge of God.” Catholics combined Christian morality and

salvation, refraining from sin and receiving absolution through the Sacrament of Penance

after sinning in order to achieve salvation. Protestantism attempted to push the same

further and further apart. “As these differences became more and more apparent,

Protestant Christianity came to suggest either a privately cultivated communion with God

or a social religion” (Walzer 23-25). The Protestant references throughout the play

contradict the Catholic markers previously discussed. Hamlet’s attempt to understand

religious quandaries causes him to procrastinate as he seeks religious truths.


33

Hamlet considers his own life’s course and decides that the sin of killing Claudius

will make him unprepared for Heaven. He does not, however, consider the actual sin

itself. Sir Thomas More’s godly instruction, written while imprisoned in the Tower of

London (1534), states: “Bear no malice nor evil will to no man living. For either the man

is good or [wicked].. .If he be nought, either he shall amend and die good and go to God,

or abide nought, and die nought, and go to the devil” (119). Hamlet ignores the words of

the Catholic martyr. He is concerned with his own afterlife and not with justifying the

murder of Claudius.

Protestantism was founded in part by Martin Luther’s challenges to the Pope’s

authority on the issue of receiving sacraments, forming a belief system that dismisses the

necessity of Penance and the validity of purgatory. Luther argued that purgatory was

simply a financial resource to benefit the Church rather than a scripturally-based valid

belief. The question of the sacraments, particularly the Sacrament of Holy Communion,

was debated perhaps most passionately by Luther. The issue needed to be addressed as

Luther argued which sacraments should remain in Protestantism due to their scriptural

foundations and which sacraments should be banned due to their place in the Catholic

canon. The questions about Jesus’ physical and spiritual “body” greatly increased in the

second half of the sixteenth century. Although both Catholics and Protestants agreed that

the scriptures state “Do this in remembrance of me,” there remained questions as to what

constituted the “body” of Christ. Lee Wandel, in his examination of the Eucharist in the

Reformation, notes the importance of the Eucharist to sixteenth century Europeans:


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What is ‘my body’? What does it mean to have a ‘body’? What sort of

body did Christ have? In that moment, in the sixteenth century, 1500 years

after his death and resurrection, did he sit corporeally at the right hand of

the Father or was he corporeally present among Christians on earth? Was

Christ’s body human?...The questions revealed a visceral diversity among

human beings who had held themselves unified by a single text, (xi)

Luther and Calvin attempted to answer such questions. Luther wanted the holy bread and

wine to be made available to the laity and not just priests. Calvin, on the other hand,

examined the power, or lack thereof, of the Eucharist. He warned that understanding the

body and blood of Christ is “too high a mystery” to express in words. However, he

warned people never to “subscribe to the falsehood that Christ is not present in the

Supper if he is not secreted under a covering of bread” (Institutes 270). Calvin wrote this

explanation in Book Four, the title of which can be translated to: Outward Means by

which God Helps Us. Catholics disagreed and remained loyal to their beliefs in the

Sacrament of Holy Communion. This religious seesaw of ideas mirrors Hamlet’s

paradoxical thoughts about salvation.

Neither Hamlet nor Claudius considers a need of Penance. This Protestant marker

is based on the premise that the Sacrament of the Reconciliation is not Biblical but rather

used to bring the Roman Catholic Church money and power. Hamlet must kill

Claudius in order to aid in his father's ascension into heaven. This contradictory Catholic

marker is based on the canon: one must receive the Sacrament of Penance to be absolved

from sin or, in death, atone for his or her sins in purgatory. Shakespeare’s use of irony to


3 5

highlight Hamlet's "soul searching" or seeking the truth about what happens to one's

soul after leaving the physical world causes him to make the fateful decision not to kill

Claudius when given the ideal opportunity. His procrastination while truth seeking

contributes to his downfall. If Hamlet would have killed Claudius while Claudius was

“at prayer” Hamlet, Gertrude, Laertes and Polonius would not have encountered their

tragic ends.

Hamlet believes that the Ghost needs his help and is indeed in purgatory, a

distinctly Catholic belief. However, the same Hamlet who believes his father is trapped

in purgatory cannot kill Claudius while thinking he is praying. If Claudius were a

Catholic seeking redemption, his prayers for forgiveness would have required a priest

since Catholics cannot be absolved from sin without a priest’s absolution. Hamlet’s

reaction to seeing Claudius on his knees in prayer is to delay in his revenge until Claudius

is less fit for heaven. Claudius’ inability to pray does not surface from a Catholic belief

that a priest must be present, but rather the fear that his intentions are unjustifiable:

. . .what form of prayer

Can serve my turn? ‘forgive me my foul murther,?’

That cannot be since I am still possess’d

Of those effects for which I did the murther. (III. iii. 51-54)

Claudius’ predicament lies not in the fact that a priest is not present, but rather that he

still reaps the rewards of his sin: “[his] crown, [his] own ambition, and [his] queen” (55).

Hamlet decides not to kill Claudius in his present state of prayer: “And am I then

revenged / To take him in the purging of his soul, / When he is fit and season’d for his


36

passage? No!” (84-87). Shakespeare uses Protestant and Catholic markers to hint at a

solution to Hamlet’s rational questioning of unsure religious truths about salvation.

Hamlet remains skeptical and, moments later, kills Polonius, yet another mistake caused

by his search for religious truth.

The irony that Claudius is unable to pray and Hamlet cannot kill Claudius while

believing him to be in prayer contributes to the recurring theme of how one might

achieve salvation. The issue of the sacraments, particularly penance, was debated by the

reformers. Martin Luther’s belief in the grace of God, a focal point of his sermons and

letters, directly contradicts the Catholic argument that forgiveness can come only through

a priest’s absolution. In his 52nd out of 95 theses, Luther states: “It is vain to rely on

salvation by letters of indulgence, even if the commissary, or indeed the pope himself,

were to pledge his own soul for their validity” (495). Like letters of indulgence, the

monetary value of purgatory to the Roman Catholic Church had Elizabethans questioning

the validity of a place called purgatory. The sacrament of reconciliation must be

preformed regularly in order to escape purgatory. Challenging the Catholic belief, Martin

Luther states: “In the world you see how hard it is to approach the Roman emperor and

gain help; but a devout Christian can always come to God with a humble, believing

prayer and be heard” (244). Donne also contradicts this belief, although not until on his

deathbed:

if my infirmity overtakes me, thou forsake me not. Say to my soul, My

son, thou hast sinned, do so no more; but say also, that though I do, thy

spirit of remorse and compunction shall never depart from m e.. .thy long-


3 7

lived, thy everlasting mercy, will visit me, though that which I most

earnestly pray against, should fall upon me, a relapse into those sins which

I have truly repented, and thou hast fully pardoned. (23)

Here, Donne addresses sin, forgiveness, salvation, but not purgatory. Although Donne’s

sermons were written after Hamlet was first preformed, his Anglican beliefs reflect ideas

that stemmed from the Book o f Common Prayer, of which Elizabethans were very

familiar. The Anglican Church, finalized by James I shortly after Shakespeare wrote

Hamlet, was comprised of a belief system already common to Elizabethan England.

Elizabethans could appreciate Shakespeare’s presumably deliberate variations between

Catholic and Protestant markers in Hamlet. Hamlet’s belief in purgatory and religious

questions about how one achieves salvation mirrors both the Catholic belief in salvation

and the Protestant uncertainty about fate.

Hamlet’s preoccupation with sin and salvation delays his duty to kill Claudius,

inadvertently causing the death of his mother and ultimately causing his own tragic

downfall. As the dutiful Ophelia meets Hamlet in Act III, she carries the book Polonius

had previously given her, presumably the Book o f Common Prayers. Hamlet greets her:

“The fair Ophelia. Nymph, in thy orisons / Be all my sins remembered” (Ill.i.88-89).

Here, Hamlet is combining fate and myth (“Nymph”) with religious prayer (“orisons”).

He is preoccupied with sin and the way to salvation. The same Hamlet that believes his

father is trapped in purgatory seeks the grace that Martin Luther so passionately

defended.


38

It is important to consider that the only characters to see the ghost reflect a

younger, educated generation. Horatio, a Wittenberg scholar and possible representation

of stoicism, is the only character that is trusted to help Hamlet execute his plan to reveal

the king’s guilt. Likewise, Shakespeare “leaves the present state of religion in Denmark

ambiguous.” Hamlet initially appears as the only person mourning his father’s death.

He “does not really remember why or how he should remember his father; he has

forgotten the old way to pray for the dead” (Low 461-463). At the beginning of the play,

Hamlet is melancholy, mourning his father’s death. However, he does not offer prayers

for the dead. This Protestant marker reflects Luther’s belief that God’s ideal grace will

bring salvation. However, Hamlet believes that his father’s soul is lingering in purgatory

and will remain so until Hamlet aids in his ascension. Hamlet delays in helping his

suffering father while he contemplates religious questions both consciously and with

conscience. In the 1559 Book o f Common Prayer, the reasons for the eradication are

clear:

the moste weightie cause of the abolishement of certain Ceremonies was,

that thei wer so farre abused, partly by the supersticious blindnesse of the

rude and unlearned, and partly by the unsaciable avarice of such as sought

more their owne lucre, then the glorye of God: that the abuses could not

well be taken awaye, the thing remaining still. (8)

Although the ceremony of a paid prayer for the dead was abused and subsequently taken

away, mourning and remembrance continued to be a preoccupation for many

Elizabethans who experienced the deaths of loved ones. Hamlet shares this


3 9

preoccupation. Throughout the play, he attempts to understand his earthly moral

responsibilities and his place in the afterlife.


40

CHAPTER 6

CONCLUSION

I f you look at history you'll find that no state has been so plagued by its rulers as when power has

fallen into the hands o f some dabbler in philosophyor literary addict.

Erasmus

Hamlet is a prince, a Wittenberg scholar, a philosopher, a thinker, a humanist, a

Catholic, a Protestant, and, most importantly, Shakespeare’s tragic hero. He is not an

Erasmus or a John Colet lecturing at Oxford nor is he a Saint Thomas More imprisoned

and executed for his beliefs. Hamlet is a character who reflects a Renaissance man, a

complicated character whose tragic downfall is at least partly caused by his lack of

understanding about man’s physical and spiritual, earthly and heavenly existence. It has

been said that there have been few more turbulent times than the Renaissance. The

Protestant Reformation marked great changes in England, changes that were both well

and ill-received, causing triumph for some and disappointment for others. Hamlet

attempts to understand what it takes to achieve salvation, how one’s sins are redeemed,

and whether man or God is responsible for revenge. He is not heroic in a traditional

sense, i.e. ridding Denmark of a treasonous, tyrannical King. He is heroic in that he

followed his own morals as well as his ability to reason, ultimately drawing the

conclusion that God’s will is paramount. He transcended his beliefs from ones that made

him a coward to ones that would serve as an example of a workable solution to questions

of faith.


41

Religious beliefs, based on Biblical scriptures, vary as greatly as Hamlet’s

personal philosophies. Martin Luther and John Calvin attempted to challenge the widely-

accepted beliefs instilled by an infallible Pope supported by the wealthy and powerful

Roman Catholic Church, a daunting task for even the highly educated and passionately

devout. They were successful. Lutherans and Calvinists have reaped the rewards of their

efforts for over four hundred years. Hamlet cannot conform to an organized system of

belief. He questions and falters, makes decisions, then quickly changes his mind.

However, this flaw makes him the play’s hero: his story will be told to the “unsatisfied.”

Hamlet begins with allusions to Biblical passages and ends in the same. The play

is circular: the beginning leads to the end which takes the reader back to the beginning.

Hamlet never fully answers the questions he asks, and the audience is challenged to

decide for itself whether or not Hamlet acted morally and justly. A Catholic Hamlet is as

doomed as a Protestant Hamlet; both theologies would lead him to his tragic downfall.

Elizabethans were faced with contradicting, conflicting religious ideals that defined the

era. Hamlet’s suffering does not end with his death. He is afflicted with failure and self-

destruction. Hamlet’s hamartia is his procrastination as he seeks religious truths.

Hamlet begins a quest to avenge his father’s brutal murder. His primary

motivation is to defend a cause on behalf of others. Shakespeare incorporates several

elements of a quest narrative in his tragedy. Hamlet is called upon by a presumably

Catholic Ghost, seeks the help and guidance of Horatio, a learned, stoic scholar, in order

to complete his quest, and upon completion of his quest transforms from a melancholy


4 2

questioner of truth to the hero whose story will encourage others to use reason and logic

rather than dictated beliefs.

The conflicting and contradicting religious implications in the play allow one

insight into the religious pandemonium of Elizabethan times. The disputes that divided

Queen Elizabeth’s constituents and neighboring European Nations mirror many of

Hamlet’s paradoxical thoughts and actions in the play.


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44

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Documents

SHAKESPEARE’S HAMLET: RENAISSANCE RULING ON REVENGE AND RELIGIOUS REDEMPTION