Abstract
Kietzman argues that Hamlet views the rotten world of Denmark through the prism of the biblical book of Judges, the only book he names when calling Polonius Jephthah. Kietzman shows how key narrative images from Judges—Jephthah’s vow (male use of women), Jael’s murder of Sisera (Gertrude’s “murder” of Old Hamlet), and Gideon’s skeptical response to the call to deliver Israel (Hamlet’s call to deliver Denmark from idolatry) provide the poetic nuclei that make up the deep fantasy of Shakespeare’s play. Hamlet moves toward reforming the corrupt monarchy through the lateral covenants he makes with Horatio (as Julia Lupton argues), but even more importantly, with the players and the theater audience. These relationships provide the framework that finally enables him to take revenge in a morally responsible way.
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- 1.
Charles Whitney suggests that the speech derives in part from Marlowe’s Dido, Queen of Carthage; Brian Cummings suggests it comes from the second book of Virgil’s Aeneid. Charles Whitney, Early Responses to Renaissance Drama (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 63. Cummings’ chapter on Hamlet deals with the theme of luck and how that concept, which we tend to think of as secular, actually had religious implications in the sixteenth century. One of the few biblical places where the word “luck” is used is Judges 2:15 in Matthew’s Bible of 1537, commonly attributed to the hand of William Tyndale. The passage explains, although Cummings does not go into it, that “evyl lucke” visited on the Israelites stemmed from their broken covenants. See Brian Cummings, Mortal Thoughts: Religion, Secularity, and Identity in Shakespeare and Early Modern Culture (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), 214–215.
- 2.
Dover Wilson identifies the song as being from a play titled Jephthah in the repertory of the Admiral’s Company, cited in James Black, “Hamlet’s Vows,” Renaissance and Reformation 14 (1978): 40.
- 3.
Walter Brueggemann, The Covenanted Self: Explorations in Law and Covenant (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 1999), 3–4.
- 4.
Stephen Greenblatt, Hamlet in Purgatory (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2001).
- 5.
Julia Reinhard Lupton, Thinking with Shakespeare: Essays on Politics and Life (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011), 81.
- 6.
Harold Fisch, Hamlet and the Word: The Covenant Pattern in Shakespeare (New York: Frederick Ungar, 1971), 94.
- 7.
The phrase “time of apprenticeship” is used by Paul Ricoeur to describe covenant. Ricoeur, Figuring the Sacred: Religion, Narrative, and Imagination (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 1995), 226.
- 8.
Victor Turner, Dramas, Fields, and Metaphors, 88–89. Cited in Brian Crockett, The Play of Paradox: Stage and Sermon in Renaissance England (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1995), 34.
- 9.
John Milton, in the mid 1640s, considered writing a tragedy called “Gideon Iconoclastes.” Given the fact that he chose another subject from Judges for Samson Agonistes, we can be sure that he found much in Judges that mirrored his political concerns. We also know that Milton was under the influence of Shakespeare and his characters, and I would not be surprised if he, in fact, had not perceived the connections in a character like Hamlet to these biblical prototypes. Whitney, Early Responses to Renaissance Drama, 265.
- 10.
Lupton says that Hamlet’s achievement is a “reorientation of the vertical sovereignty at Sinai towards its horizontal axis in collective covenant.” My reading agrees with hers, however, I believe she is wrong to split the vertical and horizontal axes of covenant which are always interrelated and also wrong to read the covenant with God or even a godlike figure in terms of hierarchy or sovereignty. Lupton, Thinking with Shakespeare: Essays on Politics and Life, 89
- 11.
Gabriel Josipovici, The Book of God: A Response to the Bible (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1988), 126, 127, 129.
- 12.
Brueggemann, Covenanted Self, 12.
- 13.
William Desmond, Perplexity and Ultimacy (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1995), 95–96, 67–68.
- 14.
Brueggemann, Covenanted Self, 12–13.
- 15.
Lupton suggests that Hamlet prophesies “more distinctive forms of constitutionalism that just might emerge from a genuine crisis in the crown,” and I believe theater provides the analogue of such a form. Lupton, Thinking with Shakespeare, 79.
- 16.
James Bednarz, Shakespeare and the Poet’s War (New York: Columbia University Press, 2001), 253–254.
- 17.
Fisch, Hamlet and the Word, 95.
- 18.
Ibid., 105.
- 19.
Daniel Elazar, Covenant and Polity in Biblical Israel (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 1996), 281.
- 20.
Janet Adelman, Suffocating Mothers: Fantasies of Maternal Origin in Shakespeare’s Plays, Hamlet to The Tempest (New York: Routledge, 1992), 23
- 21.
Black suggests that the Jephthah reference may also reflect an uneasiness in Hamlet’s mind about the vow he has taken to revenge. He makes the good point that Polonius becomes, for Hamlet, the nearest convenient mirror, a glass in which Hamlet sees not just Polonius “the prating fool … but also himself, a Jephthah.” Black, “Hamlet’s Vows,” 41.
- 22.
Jo Ann Hackett, “In the Days of Jael: Reclaiming the History of Women in Ancient Israel,” in Immaculate and Powerful, eds. Clarissa Atkinson, Constance Buchanan, and Margaret Miles (Boston: Beacon Press, 1985), 30.
- 23.
Debora Shuger discusses the popularity of literary treatments of the Jephthah story in the Renaissance; she notes that Protestant exegetes argue that Jephthah did not kill his daughter but consecrated her virginity to God. Control of Ophelia’s virginity preoccupies both Laertes and Polonius, and Hamlet comments on this with his quips to Polonius. Shuger, The Renaissance Bible: Scholarship, Sacrifice, and Subjectivity (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994), 137.
- 24.
These three stories were obviously linked in Shakespeare’s associative imagination by a shared narrative structure and thematic concerns. For a discussion of their similarities, see Anne Michele Tapp, “An Ideology of Expendability: Virgin Daughter Sacrifice in Genesis 19.1–11, Judges 11.30–39 and 19.22–26,” in Anti-Covenant: Counter-Reading Women’s Lives in the Hebrew Bible, ed. Mieke Bal (Sheffield: The Almond Press, 1989), 157–174.
- 25.
Nona Feinberg, “Jephthah’s Daughter: The Parts Ophelia Plays,” in Old Testament Women in Western Literature, ed. Raymond-Jean Frontain and Jan Wojcik (Conway AR: UCA Press, 1991), 136.
- 26.
The Levite uses the death of his concubine as an excuse to begin civil war among the tribes. Ophelia’s death incites Laertes and Hamlet to compete over her dead body in her grave. In a similar way both the rapes of Lavinia and Lucrece in Shakespeare’s Titus and “Rape of Lucrece,” are crimes that incite male political revenge and revolution.
- 27.
Hannibal Hamlin, focusing on allusions to the Genesis fall story, notes that the garden was a metaphor for the chaste female body. See Hamlin, The Bible in Shakespeare (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), 159.
- 28.
Adelman, Suffocating Mothers, 17.
- 29.
There is no mention of poisoning through the ear while the king is sleeping in the orchard. In both the Historiae Danicae and the analogue Hystorie of Hamblet (which may have had an earlier source), the brother is described as setting upon the king, and both mention his “bloody hands.” Geoffrey Bullough, Narrative and Dramatic Sources of Shakespeare, Vol. 7 (London: Routledge Paul, 1957), 62, 87. See also Frank Kermode, Introduction to Hamlet in The Riverside Shakespeare, ed. G. Blakemore Evans (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1973), 1137.
- 30.
Adelman, Suffocating Mothers, 16
- 31.
James I, “The Trew Law of Free Monarchies,” The Political Works of James I, ed. Charles McIlwain (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1918), 60.
- 32.
Marcia Pally emphasizes that covenants are not stipulative in motive or in telos and require free response. Pally, Covenant and Commonwealth: Economics, Politics, and Theologies of Relationality (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2016), 185–186.
- 33.
I agree with Adelman’s claim that Hamlet’s primary psychological task is to “remake his mother,” but, unlike Adelman, I see him motivated by the desire to engage and covenant with his mother not by the desire to subject or subdue in a male narrative of self-determination. Adelman, Suffocating Mothers, 31.
- 34.
Terence Hawkes, Shakespeare’s Talking Animals: Language and Drama in Society (London: Edward Arnold, 1973), 106.
- 35.
Lupton over-values, without sufficient analysis, the friendship between Hamlet and Horatio. She does touch on Horatio’s courtly deference to which Hamlet responds by asserting parity in friendship. See Lupton, Thinking with Shakespeare, 80. But Harold Fisch is a better reader of this friendship, noting the way Horatio’s stoicism inhibits his ability to reciprocate Hamlet’s affection. Fisch, Hamlet and the Word, 48–50.
- 36.
Fisch, Hamlet and the Word, 79.
- 37.
Ibid., 94–95.
- 38.
Ibid., 95.
- 39.
Terry Reta, “Vows to the Blackest Devil”: Hamlet and the Evolving Code of Honor in Early Modern England, Renaissance Quarterly 52 (Winter 1999): 1070–1086.
- 40.
John Calvin, Commentary on Genesis, tr. Rev. John King (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Book House, 1979), 1: 416; 2: 85.
- 41.
Josipovici notes the way Judges reads as a “parody of Genesis and Exodus.” Josipovici, The Book of God, 121.
- 42.
Bruce R. Smith, The Acoustic World of Early Modern England (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999), 218.
- 43.
Lupton, Thinking with Shakespeare, 81. It is not biblically correct to associate the vertical axis of covenant with hierarchy. Although God and man are incommensurate, covenanting involves willed concessions and limitation of power on both sides. As Daniel Elazar writes, “in covenanting with humans, God at least partially withdraws from controlling their lives.” Elazar, Covenant and Polity in Biblical Israel, 2
- 44.
Lupton, Thinking with Shakespeare, 86. While I agree that Horatio supports Hamlet, he never quite enters into a free conversation; and dialogue is a crucial component of covenant. Even at the end of the play when Hamlet asks whether he isn’t justified in killing Claudius, Horatio is silent.
- 45.
Huston Diehl, Staging Reform, Reforming the Stage: Protestantism and Popular Theater in Early Modern England (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1997), 86.
- 46.
Whitney, Early Responses to Renaissance Drama, 1, 65–66.
- 47.
Bednarz, Shakespeare and the Poet’s War, 4.
- 48.
Ibid., 230.
- 49.
Calvin, Commentary on Genesis, 1: 452.
- 50.
Ibid., 1: 452.
- 51.
Franco Moretti suggests that the dumb shows and choruses that open and close each act of Gorboduc provide “a temporal and semantic context” of reason opposed to the will of a tyrant. In Shakespearean tragedy, because there is no formal rational response to the implosion of tyrants, the spectators are left to think for themselves, creating the conditions for the formation of a “rational public.” Moretti misses the impact of Reformed theo-political ideas on the tragic form, and covenant is the main one: the Shakespearean pattern is that tyranny gives way to covenantal kingship. Moretti, “’A Huge Eclipse’: Tragic Form and the Deconsecration of Sovereignty,” Genre 15 (Spring and Summer 1982): 18–19.
- 52.
Mary Thomas Crane, “Shakespeare and Innovation,” paper presented at Shakespeare and His Culture On State and On the Page, conference at Detroit, MI, March 11, 2016.
- 53.
Adelman, Suffocating Mothers, 24.
- 54.
The shift from Pyrrhus to Hecuba is another moment where agency shifts from male to female, and I am surprised that Adelman does address this in her essay.
- 55.
Fisch views Hamlet’s soliloquies as addressed to an otherness. Because he believes that the underlying model for them is religious meditation, in his analysis, we might imagine that otherness as God. But Hamlet is such a self-reflexive play, so centrally concerned with theater, that it makes better sense to understand the audience as the Other; and Hamlet’s subjectivity produced in the moment of communication with the audience. Fisch, Hamlet and the Word, 76. Bridget Escolme, Talking to the Audience: Shakespeare, Performance, Self (New York: Routledge, 2005), 65.
- 56.
Cummings, Mortal Thoughts, 175.
- 57.
Franz Rosenzweig, Understanding the Sick and the Healthy: A View of World, Man, and God (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999), 93.
References
Articles
Black, James. “Hamlet’s Vows.” Renaissance and Reformation 14 (1978): 33-48.
Moretti, Franco. “‘A Huge Eclipse’: Tragic Form and the Deconsecration of Sovereignty.” Genre 15 (Spring and Summer 1982):7–40.
Reta, Terry. “Vows to the Blackest Devil”: Hamlet and the Evolving Code of Honor in Early Modern England.” Renaissance Quarterly 52 (Winter 1999): 1070–1086.
Books
Adelman, Janet. Suffocating Mothers: Fantasies of Maternal Origin in Shakespeare’s Plays, Hamlet to The Tempest. New York: Routledge, 1992.
Bednarz, James. Shakespeare and the Poet’s War. New York: Columbia University Press, 2001.
Brueggemann, Walter. The Covenanted Self: Explorations in Law and Covenant, edited by Patrick Miller. Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 1999.
Bullough, Geoffrey. Narrative and Dramatic Sources of Shakespeare, Vol. 7. London: Routledge Paul, 1957.
Calvin, John. Commentaries on the First Book of Moses, Called Genesis. Translated by John King. 2 vols. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Book House, 1979.
Crockett, Brian. The Play of Paradox: Stage and Sermon in Renaissance England. Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1995.
Cummings, Brian. Mortal Thoughts: Religion, Secularity, and Identity in Shakespeare and Early Modern Culture. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013.
Desmond, William, Philosophy and Its Others: Ways of Being and Mind. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1990.
Diehl, Huston. Staging Reform, Reforming the Stage: Protestantism and Popular Theater in Early Modern England. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1997.
Elazar, Daniel. Covenant and Commonwealth: From Christian Separation through the Protestant Reformation. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 1996.
Escolme, Bridget. Talking to the Audience: Shakespeare, Performance, Self. New York: Routledge, 2005.
Feinberg, Nona. “Jephthah’s Daughter: The Parts Ophelia Plays.” In Old Testament Women in Western Literature. Edited by Raymond-Jean Frontain and Jan Wojcik, 128-43. Conway, AR: UCA Press, 1991.
Fisch, Harold. Hamlet and the Word: The Covenant Pattern in Shakespeare. New York: Frederick Ungar, 1971.
Greenblatt, Stephen. Hamlet in Purgatory. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2001.
Hackett, Jo Ann. “In the Days of Jael: Reclaiming the History of Women in Ancient Israel.” In Immaculate and Powerful: The Female in Sacred Image and Social Reality. Edited by Clarissa Atkinson, Constance Buchanan, and Margaret Miles. Boston: Beacon Press, 1985.
Hamlin, Hannibal. The Bible in Shakespeare. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013.
Hawkes, Terence. Shakespeare’s Talking Animals: Language and Drama in Society. London: Edward Arnold, 1973.
James I, King of England. “The Trew Law of Free Monarchies”. In The Political Works of James I. Edited by Charles McIlwain. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1918.
Josipovici, Gabriel. The Book of God: A Response to the Bible. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1988.
Kermode, Frank. Introduction to Hamlet in The Riverside Shakespeare. Edited by G. Blakemore Evans. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1973.
Lupton, Julia Reinhard. Thinking with Shakespeare: Essays on Politics and Life. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011.
Pally, Marcia. Commonwealth and Covenant: Economics, Politics, and Theologies of Relationality. Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans, 2016.
Ricoeur, Paul. Figuring the Sacred: Religion, Narrative, and Imagination. Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 1995.
Rosenzweig, Franz. Understanding the Sick and the Healthy: A View of World, Man, and God. Translated by Nahum Glatzer. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1999.
Shuger, Debora. The Renaissance Bible: Scholarship, Sacrifice, and Subjectivity. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994.
Smith, Bruce R. The Acoustic World of Early Modern England. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999.
Tapp, Anne Michele. “An Ideology of Expendability: Virgin Daughter Sacrifice in Genesis 19.1–11, Judges 11.30–39 and 19.22–26.” In Anti-Covenant: Counter-Reading Women’s Lives in the Hebrew Bible. Edited by Mieke Bal, 157-74. Sheffield: The Almond Press, 1989.
Whitney, Charles. Early Responses to Renaissance Drama (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006.
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Kietzman, M.J. (2018). Hamlet, Judge of Denmark in a Time “Out of Joint”. In: The Biblical Covenant in Shakespeare. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-71843-9_4
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