This Sameness of Character [between Laertes and Hamlet], and Parity of Circumstances with the Hero, lessens his Importance, and almost divides our Attention and Concern between them; an Effect which Shakespear certainly did not intend to produce, nor can it be lessened by the Consideration of the treacherous Measures Laertes was prevailed upon to enter into against Hamlet, who had murdered his Father. . . . Thus has Shakespear, undesignedly, no doubt given us two Heroes instead of one in this Play; the only Difference between them is that one of them is a Prince, the other a Nobleman, and but for this slight Distinction the Play might have been as well called the Tragedy of Laertes as Hamlet. (p. 271).

About the middle of the sixteenth century, Francis de Belleforest, a French gentleman, entertained his countrymen with a collection of novels, which he intitles—“Histoires tragiques;” they are in part originals, part translations, and chiefly from Bandello: He began to publish them in the year 1564; and continu'd dedication to his fifth tome is dated six years after. In that tome, the troisieme Histoire has this title; “Avec quell ruse Amleth, qui depuis fut roy de Dannemarch, vengea la mort de son pere Horvuendille, occis par Fengon son frere, & autre occurrence de son histoire.” Painter, who has been mention'd before, compil'd his “Palace of Pleasure” almost entirely from Belleforest, taking here and there a novel as pleas'd him, but he did not translate the whole: other novels, it is probable, were translated by different people, and publish'd singly; this at least that we are speaking of, was so, and is intitled “The Hystorie of Hamblet;” it is a quarto, and black letter: there can be no doubt made, by persons who are acquainted with these things, that the translation is not much younger than the French original; though the only edition of it, that is come yet to my knowledge, is no earlier than 1608; that Sh. took his play from it, there can likewise be very little doubt.

“bicause sodaynly (contrary to expectation) this volume is risen to a greater heape of leaues, I doe omit for this present time sundry nouels of mery deuise, reseruing the same to be joyed with the rest of an other part, wherein shall succeede the remnant of Bandello, specially sutch (suffrable) as the learned Frenchman François de Belleforest hath selected.”

While it is true that Belleforest does not apply these specific adjectives [“praesumptione quam solertia abundantior”] to [Polonius] whom Sh.’s Hamlet was later to term “thou wretched, rash, intruding fool,” both the assurance or presumption, and lack of judgment, are clearly indicated in Belleforest’s account (largely unchanged from that of Saxo) of the sounselor’s activities. Among the friends of Feng (Claudius) there is one who, more than all the rest, suspects that Amleth’s madness is feigned. This friend proposes that an interview be arranged between Amleth and his mother, Queen Gerutha, and that a spy be concealed in the room to hear whether, in supposed privacy with his mother, Amleth will depart from his pretense of madness. The counselor further offers himself for the role of eavesdropper. Feng agrees, preparations are made, the friend secretly enters the queen’s chamber and hides under a quilt. On being summoned to the interview Amleth, cunning and cautious, suspects treachery. Still playing the madman, he leaps on to the quilt, flapping his arms and crowing like a rooster; then, feeling a man hidden underneath, Amleth runs him trhough with his sword. In Belleforest’s account, then, Polonius’s prototype is well characterized: presumption or assurance in suggesting this plot to ruin a royal prince, and lack of judgment certainly in underestimating the wisdom and cunning of Amleth. Saxo’s characterization of the man makes the picture no clearer, and hence is unnecessary here as an immediate source. (208-9).

Belleforest does not understand the age of saga and its ethical code. Saxo had generalized against women with reference to Hermutrude’s disloyalty. Belleforest increases the misogyny. He also apologizes for the savery of his story, which happened ‘long time before Denmark received the faith of Jesus Christ’, when ‘the common people were barbarous and uncivill and their princes cruell, without faith or loyaltie’. . . . Every point is obscured by laborious moralizing. At the close Belleforest apologizes again for writing ‘these strange histories, and of people that were uncivilized, that the vertue of these rude people may give more splendour to our nation.’”

The merest outline of the plot cannot fail to show the striking likeness between the tales of Hamlet and Lucius Junius Brutus. Apart from general resemblances (the usurping uncle; the persecuted nephew, who escapes by feigning madness; the journey; the oracular utterances; the outwitting of the comrades; the well-matured plans for vengeance), there are certain points in the former story which must have been borrowed directly from the latter. This is especially true of Hamlet’s device of putting the gold in the sticks. This could not be due to mere coincidence; and moreover, the evidence seems to show that Saxo himself borrowed this incident from the account of Brutus in Valerius Maximus; one phrase at least from the passage in the Memorabilia was transferred from Brutus to Hamlet [obtusi cordis esse]. (27-8)

And therefore composing and framing himself of purpose to counterfeit a noddie and a verie innocent, as suffering himself, and all that he had to fall into the kings hands as an escheat, he refused not to be misnamed Brutus, a name appropriate to unreasonable creatures; that under the shadow and colour of that surname, that courage of his lying close hid, which should one day set free the cittie of Rome, might abide the full time and appeare in due season. This Brutus being by the Tarquines brought to Delphi, as their laughing stock to make them pastime by the way, rather than a meet mate to accompany them, carried with him (as men say) for to offer and present unto Apollo, a golden rod within a staffe of cornell wood, made hollow for the purpose: the very type and resemblance by secret circumstances, of his naturall disposition. (80)

Reading Hamlet in the light of the Counter-Reformation histories discussed here may have a bearing on the critical investigation of Sh.’s religion and his use of sources, which remain topics of perennial interest. That the Saxo, Krantz, Magnus, and Belleforest versions all either commented, or were used to comment, in some way on Europe’s Reformations increases considerably the likelihood that Sh. selected the story precisely for its pertinence in this respect, as well as for its narrative fascinations. Sh. need not have read all (or indeed any) of the legend’s prose variants to have been aware of its consistently polemical status. Certainly he was not the first to bring confessionally controversial allusions to the narrative. Well before the Ghost emerged onto the Elizabethan stage from purgatorial fires, lamenting his deprivation of the Catholic last rites, Belleforest had definitively established the Counter-Reformation appropriation of the legend.

Given the ideological instability of Scandinavian legend in this period, no particular allegiances (Catholic or republican) on Sh.’s part may be deduced automatically from his selection of Hamlet’s part may be deduced automatically from his selection of Hamlet’s story for dramatization. In fact, recovering the forgotten Counter-Reformation contexts of the Hamlet legend allows us to see clearly, not a Catholic Sh., but just how much he banished from his Hamlet one-sided propagandizing for any particular cause, including one to which he may or may not have been personally committed. At every point, Sh. multiplies perspectives and possibilities in a manner quite opposite to the one-track interpretative ingenuity (or perversity) of the Catholic historians discussed here. Sh. finds nothing, for instance, to say about Lutherans in the covenant between King Hamlet and the king of Norway, but rather discovers a way of setting in motion another son (Fortinbras) seeking to reclaim what belonged to his father. Likewise, the sledded Polacks are no longer an ally who have let down the side of Swedish Catholicism, but a slightly exotic enemy, briefly glimpsed because King Hamlet vanquished them so speedily. (554-5)

. . . it would not be impossible to argue that the Hamlet story as it appears in Saxo and Krantz would have been adequate material for the man who wrote the Hamlet play. If it is not accepted . . . other versions of the Hamlet story should be considered, in the first play Krantz. In Krantz the author of Hamlet would have found a concise story of the revenge plot . . . and yet a few striking details (with parallels in Sh.), all in a language that should not have presented any difficulties even to a person with “small Latine” . . . (215)

It is obvious that Krantz’s influence on the English Hamlet, any at all, can have seen only secondary. But such indirect or supplementary information could conceivable have made Sh. or the author of the Ur-Hamlet disregard Hamlet’s adventures in England . . . So we cannot rule out the possibility that ‘it was through Krantz that the writer of Hamlet made his first acquaintance with the Horwendillus/Hamlet story.’ (30-1)

It is manifest from this passage [Nashe’s Epistle prefixed to Greene’s Arcadia] that some play on the story of Hamlet had been exhibited before the year 1589; but I am inclined to think that it was not Shakspeare’s drama, but an elder performance, on which, with the aid of the old prose History of Hamlet, his tragedy was formed.

Perhaps the original Hamlet was written by Thomas Kyd; who was the authour of one play (and probably of more) to which no name is affixed. The only tragedy to which Kyd’s name is affixed (Cornelia). is a professed translation from the French of Garnier, who, as well as his translator, imitated Seneca

The person whom Nashe had in contemplation in this passage was, I believe, Thomas Kyd. The only play to which is name is affixed (Cornelia), is a professed translation from the French of Garnier, imitated Seneca, as did also Kyd.

Not a tittle of distinct evidence exists to show that there was any other play of Hamlet but that of Shakspere; and all the collateral evidence upon which it is inferred that an early play of Hamlet than Shakspere’s did exist, may, on the other hand, be taken to prove that Shakspere’s original sketch of Hamlet was in repute at an earlier period than is commonly assigned as its date (92)

Only one Hamlet is known to English dramatic literature. But there appears to be little room for doubt that before Sh. wrote for the stage the legend of the Danish prince had been made the subject of a tragedy which passed into oblivion upon the appearance of the one that was to live in the world’s memory forever.

The original story of “Hamlet,” or “Amleth” is related by the Danish historian Saxo Grammaticus, and was adopted by Belleforest in his collection of novels, 1564. From the French of the novelist, it was rendered into English at an early date, and printed under the title of “The Hystorie of Hamblet.” If there were really a tragedy of “Hamlet” anterior to the immortal drama by Sh., we may reasonably assume that he derived the outline of his plot from that source. If no such play existed, he probably constructed it entirely from the rude materials furnished by “The Historie of Hamblet.”

Only one Hamlet is known to English dramatic literature. But there appears to be little room for doubt that before Sh. wrote for the stage the legend of the Danish prince has been made the subject of a tragedy which passed into oblivion upon the appearance of the one that was to live in the world’s memory forever.

whatever we find in both Belleforest and the German adaptor, or in both Belleforest and Sh., must have been in Kyd; for how else could the late dramatist have stumbled upon it? And whatever we find common to the German dramatist and Sh. must also have been in Kyd . . . .

It is probably needless to call attention to what must strike every one at the first glance, merely at the Dramatis Personae of Fratricide Punished, and that is the name given to Polonius, which is, except in one letter, the same as that in Q1. This is noted by all who have touched upon the subject of this German play. Again, the very same Hamlet shows that the adapter of the German play at least did not go to Belleforest for his tragedy. Furthermore, the allusion to Jephtha points so clearly to the old English ballad that I think there can be little doubt that in Fratricide Punished we have a translation of an old English tragedy and most probably the one which is the ground work of the Quarto of 1603.

Alphonsus is a tyrant and Claudius a usurper whose personal safety is seriously endangered by the growing opposition of their enemies. Each king, by what may be considered an accident, is faced with a hotheaded, bloodthirsty youth seeking revenge for the murder of a father, who in each case has been the counselor of the king. Both Claudius and Alphonsus allay suspicions that they have been connected with the murder, and, seizing this opportunity for disposing of their foes, direct the young revengers against them. (102)

The Hamlet Tragedy, as we have it, still bears marks of Senecan influence. The appearance of the Ghost crying for Revenge [but Ham.’s ghost does not] is due to the Roman tragedian. Madness, murder, the guilty wife are all motifs which pervade the drama of Seneca; but they are also present, or fore-shadowed, in Saxo-Belleforest.

Plutarch:

. . . he took to sea again, and was taken by pirates about the Isle of Pharmacusa : for those pirates kept all upon that sea-coast, with a great fleet of ships and boats. They asking him at the first twenty talents for his ransom, Caesar laughed them to scorn, as though they knew not what a man they had taken, and of himself promised them fifty talents. Then he sent his men up and down to get him this money, so that he was left in manner alone among these thieves of the Cilicians (which are the cruellest butchers in the world), with one of his friends, and two of his slaves only : and yet he made so little reckoning of them, that, when he was desirous to sleep, he sent unto them to command them to make no noise. Thus was he eight-and-thirty days among them, not kept as a prisoner, but rather waited upon by them as a prince. All this time he would boldly exercise himself in any sport or pastime they would go to. And other while he would write verses, and make orations, and call them together to say them before them : and if any of them seemed as though they had not understood him, or passed not for them, he called them blockheads and brute beasts, and, laughing, threatened them that he would hang them up. But they were as merry with the matter as could be, and took all in good part, thinking that this his bold speech came through the simplicity of his youth.

Than Pyrrhus entryd in to the temple of Appolyne and fonde there the kynge pryant abiding his deth/Than he ran vpon hym with a nakyd swered seeing Enas and Anthenor that guyded hym. He slewe there the kynge pryant tofore the hyghe awter/which was all bebledd of his blood. (2:667)

In sum, it is quite plausible that Sh. saw the 1599 Agamemnon and Orestes’ Furies, in all probability a redaction of the two-play Oresteia current among readers of Latin; he might even have become interested enough to look through scenes or passages of the Choephori (which was complete in the Latin text of the supposed Agememnon) and of Euripides’s Orestes. While writing Hamlet, he would have wanted to learn how other authors besides Caxton had told of Orestes: he must have recalled Caxton’s intermingling of the Pyrrhus and Orestes father-revenge stories, important to Hamlet in the Pyrrhus material of the First Player scene, and perhaps Caxton’s statement that writers left different versions of these events (44-5).

a. [1499; writ] The old copies are certainly right. Writ is used for writing by authors contemporary with Shakspeare. Thus, in The Apologie of Pierce Pennilesse, by Thomas Nashe, 1593: ‘For the lowsie circumftance of his poverty before his death, and sending that miserable writte to his wife, it cannot be but thou liest, learned Gabriel.’ Again, in Bishop Earle’s Character of a mere dull Physician, 1638: ‘Then followes a writ to his drugger, in a strange tongue, which he understands, though he cannot conster.’”

b. [TLN 1514: whiffe and winde] Malone (mmal1, BL 30,943 [f. 52v]): “The same expression is used by Nashe in his Apologie of Pierce Penniless 1593. ‘I fear-blast thee now & but with the wind of my weapon’.”

c. [TLN 3842: ore-crowes my spirit] Malone (ed. 1790): “Again, in the epistle prefixed to Nashe’s Apologie of Pierce Pennilesse, 1593: ‘About two yeers since a certayne demi-divine took upon him to set his foote to mine, and ouer-crowe mee with comparative terms.’

The Danes are bursten-bellied sots, that are to bee confuted with nothing but Tankards or quart pots, and Ouid might as well haue read his verses to the Getes that vnderstood him not, as a man talk reason to them that haue no eares but their mouths nor sense but of that which they swallowe downe their throates. God so loue me, as I loue the quicke-witted Italians, and therefore loue them the more, because they detest this surley swinish Generation. I need not fetch colours from other countries to paint the vglie visage of Pride, since her picture is set forth in so many painted faces here at home. What drugs, what sorceries, what oiles, what oyntments, doe our curuious Dames vse to inlarge their withered beauties? Their lips are as lauishly red, as if they vsed to kisse an okerman euery morning, and their cheeks suger-candied and cherry blusht so sweetly, after the colour of a newe lord Mayors postes, as if the pageant of their wedlocke hiliday were harde at the doore; so that if a Painter were to drawe any of their Counterfets on Table, he needs no more but wet his pencill, and dab it on their cheekes, and he shall haue vermillion and white enough to furnish out his worke, though he leaue his tar-boxe at home behind him. . . . but Dame Nature your nurse was partly in fault, else she might haue remedied it. She should haue noynted your face ouernight with Lac virginis, which baking vpon it in bed till the morning, she might haue pild off the scale like the skin of a custard, and making a posset of vergis mixt with the oyle of Tartary and Camphire, bathde it in a quarter of an houre, and you had been as faire as the floure of the frying pan. I warrant we haue old hucksters in this great Gandmother of Corporations, Madame Troynouant, that haue not backbited any of their neighbours with the tooth of enuy this twentie yeare, in the wrinckles of whose face, ye may hide false dice, and play at cherry-pit in the dint of their cheekes, yet these aged mothers of iniquitie will haue their deformities newe plaistred ouer, and weare nosegayes of yeolow haire on their furies foreheads, when age hath written Hoe God be here, on their bald burnt parchment pates. Pish, pish, what talke you of old age or balde pates? men and women that haue gone vnder the South pole, must lay off their furde night-caps in spight of their teeth, and become yeomen of the Vinegar bottle: a close periwig hides all the sinnes of an olde whore-master, but Cucullus non facit Monachum: tis not their newe bonnets will keepe them from the old boanach. Ware when a mans sins are written on his ey-browes, and that there is not a haire bredth betwixt them and the falling of sicknes. The times are dangerous: and this is an yron age, or rather no yron age, for swordes and bucklers goe to pawne a pace in Long-Lane: but a tinne age, for tinne and pewter are more esteemed than Latine. You that bee wise despise it, abhorre it, neglect it; for what shoulde a man care for gold that cannot get it. . . .

. . . Gluttony in meates, let me discend to superfluitie in drinke: a sinne, that euer since we haue mixt our selues with the Low-countries, is counted honourable: but before we knew their lingring warres, was held in that highest degree of hatred that might be. Then if we had seene a man goe wallowing in the streetes, or line sleeping vnder the boord, we would haue spet at him as a toade, and cald him foule drunken swine, and warnd al our friends out of his company: now he is no body that cannot drinke super nagulum, carouse the Hunters hoop, quaffe vpsey freze crosse, with healthes, gloues, mumpes, frolickes, and a thousand such dominiering inuentions. He is reputed a pesaunt and a boore that wil not take his licour profoundly. And you shall heare a Caualier of the first feather, a princockes that was but a Page the other day in the Court, and now is all to be frenchified in his Souldiers sute, stand vppon termes with Gods wounds you dishonour me sir, you do me the disgrace if you do not pledge me as much as I drunke to you: and in the midst of his cups stand vaunting his manhood: beginning euerie sentence, with when I first bore Armes, when he neuer bare any thing but his Lords rapier after him in his life. I haue beene ouer and visited a towne of Garrison as a trauailer or passenger, he hath as great experience as the greatest Commander and chiefe Leader in England. A mightie deformer of mens manners and features, is this vnnecessary vice of all other. Let him bee indued with neuer so many vertues, and haue as much goodly proportion and fauour as nature can bestow vppon a man: yet if hee be thirstie after his owne destruction, and hath no ioy nor comfort, but when he is drowning his soule in a gallon pot, that one beastly imperfection, will vtterlie obscure all that is commendable in him: and all his good qualities sinke like lead down to the bottome of his carrowsing cups, where they will lie like lees and dregges, dead and vnregarded of any man [I.4.23-38]

Bright tells us, for example, that ‘the ayre meet for melancholicke folke, ought to be thinne, pure and subtile, open, and patent to all winds: in respect of their temper, especially to the South, and Southeast.’ (p. 257) This lends point to Hamlet’s remark: ‘I am but mad north-north-west; when the wind is southerly I know a hawk from a handsaw. (II.ii. 374-5) More significant is the echo of Bright’s phrase, ‘the braine as tender as a posset curd’ (p. 13) in the Ghost’s account of the operation of poison on his body: ‘And with a sudden vigour it does posset/And curd, like eager droppings into milk.’ (I.v.68-9)

The whole speech, as Brandes notes (Will. Shak. p. 354), is a distillation of Montaigne, I. 19 ‘That to Philosophie is to learne how to die.’ To quote one or two passages from Florio’s trans.: ‘At the stumbling of a horse, at the fall of a stone, at the least prick with a pinne, let us presently ruminate and say with our selves, what if it were death itself? and thereupon let us take heart of grace, and call our wits together to confront her. . . . It is uncertain where death looks for us; let us expect her everie where. . . . I am ever prepared about that which I may be. . . . A man should ever, as much as in him lieth, be ready booted to take his journey, and above all things, looke he have then nothing to doe but with himselfe. . . . For why should we feare to lose a thing, which being lost, cannot be moaded? . . . what matter is it when it cometh, since it is unavoidable?’

Who have perswaded [man] that this admirable moving of heavens vaults, that the eternal light of these lampes so fiercely rowling over his head, that the horror-moving and continuall motion of this infinite vaste ocean were established, and continue somany ages for his commoditie and service? Is it possible to imagine anything so ridiculous as this miserable and wretched creature, which is not somuch as master of himself, exposed and subject to offences of all things, and yet dareth call himself Master and Emperour of this Universe? (225)

. . . the Forfeiture of the Good’s and Chattles, real and personal, shall have Relation to the Act done in the Party’s Life-time, which was the Cause of his Death ; and upon this the Parts of the Act are to be considered. And Walsh said, that the Act consists of three Parts. The first is the Imagination, which is a Reflection or Meditation of the Mind, whether or nо it is convenient for him to destroy himself, and what Way it can be done. The second is the Resolution, which is a Determination of the Mind to destroy himself, and to do it in this or that particular Way. The third is the Perfection, which is the Execution of what the Mind has resolved to do. And this Perfection consists of two Parts, viz. the Beginning and the End.
The Beginning is the doing of the Act which causes the Death, and the End is the Death, which is only a Sequel to the Act.
And of all the Parts the doing of the Act is the greatest in theLease And of all the Parts the doing of the Act is the greatest in theJudgment of our Law, and it is in Effect the whole, and the only Part that the Law looks upon to be material. For the Imagination of the Mind to do Wrong, without an Act done, is not punishable in our Law, neither is the Resolution to do that Wrong, which he does not, punishable, but the doing of the Act is the only Point which the Law regards; for until the Act is done it cannot be an Offence to the World, and when the Act is done it is punishable, Then here the Act done by Sir James Hales, which is evil and the Cause of his Death, is the throwing himself into the Water, and the Death is but a Sequel thereof, and this evil Act ought some Way to be punished. And if the Forfeiture shall not have Relation to the doing of the Act, then the Act shall not be punished at all, for inasmuch as the Person who did the Act is dead, his Person cannot be punished, and therefore there is no Way else to punish him but by the Forfeiture of those Things which were his own at the Time of the Act done, and the Act was done in his Life-lime, and therefore the Forfeiture shall have Relation to his Life-time, viz. to that Time of his Life in which he did the Act that took away his Life. [fol. 259-259a]

Serjeant Walsh argued that the act of suicide consisted of three parts.

(1.) The imagination, which is a reflection or meditation of the mind whether or not it is convenient for him to destroy himself, and what way it can be done.

(2.) The resolution, which is a determination of the mind to destroy himself, and to do it in that particular way.

(3.) The perfection, which is the execution of what the mind has resolved to do. And this perfection consists of two parts, viz: the beginning and the end.

Lord Brown, of the Court, said:

“Sir James Hales was dead, and how came he to his death? It may be answered by drowning — and who drowned him? Sir James Hales — and when did he drown him? In his life time. So that Sir James Hales being alive caused Sir James Hales to die! and the act of the living man was the death of the dead man. And then for this offence it is reasonable to punish the living man who committed the offence, and not the dead man. But how can he be said to be punished alive when the punishment comes after his death.”

Lord Chief Justice Dyer said among the things to be considered were:

“(1.) The quality of the offence of Sir James Hales.

“(2.) To whom the offence is committed.

“(3.) What shall he forfeit? Under this point the Court said he is adjudged none of the members of holy church if he drowned himself.

“Wherefore all the Justices agreed that the forfeiture of the goods and chattels real and personal of Sir James Hales shall have relation to the act done in his life-time, which was the cause of his death, viz: the throwing himself into the water.”

Though remarriage ordinarily terminates a widow’s quarantine, removal of a king who entered lawfully into possession is another matter entirely.  Sh.’s send-up of Hales v. Pettit in the Gravedigger’s preposterous legal analysis of Ophelia’s suicide has been long recognized as a close parody of counsel’s ingeniously ludicrous reasoning.  But what made this thirty-year old law report important enough for anyone in his audience under the age of fifty to recognize and appreciate his parody?    And how would Sh. know of it unless it were still being discussed?  The legal dispute in Hales v. Pettit arose when James Hales’ widow claimed ownership of a leasehold she and her husband acquired jointly, but that had been forfeited to the crown in penalty for his suicide and then granted over to defendant Pettit.”

This passage occurs in a book entitled Cardanus’ Comforte, and this seems to be the book which Sh. placed in the hands of Hamlet.

It was one of the many treatises written by one of the most extraordinary persons of the sixteenth century, Jerome Cardan, best known in our times as the inventor of the rule for solving equations of three dimensions in a particular case. The treatise written by him entitled Comfort attracted the attention of Edward Vere, Earl of Oxford, who was much abroad, and who caused an English translation of it to be published in 1573. The translation was made by Thomas Bedingfield, one of the Gentlemen Pensioners of Queen Elizabeth, and there are prefixed to it commendatory verses by Thomas Churchyard, who says of it— ‘This book bewrays what wretched wrack belongs to life of man, What burthens bore he on his back since first this world began.’ Here we have the ‘who would fardels bear’ of the monologue.

“The treatise is divided into three books. In the first we have an enumeration and description of various calamities to which man is subject. In the second the author treats of the alleviation of them, and comes to the conclusion that Death is the object most worthy the desire of man. In the third he illustrates the vain desires of men, and shews how their own faults and whims are the chief cause of their misfortunes.

“The whole of the first and second books thus bear we perceive a close resemblance to the subject of this soliloquizing; but the following passages seem to approach so near to the thoughts of Hamlet that we can hardly doubt that they were in the Poet’s mind when he put this speech into the mouth of his hero: ‘How much were it better to follow the counsel of Agathius, who right well commended death, saying, that it did not only remove sickness and all other grief, but also, when all other discommodities of life did happen to man often, it never would come more than once.’ Book ii.

‘“Seeing therefore with such ease men die, what should we account of death to be resembled to anything better than sleep, etc.’ Ibid.

“‘Moste assured it is that such sleeps are most sweet as be most sound, for those are the best where in like unto dead men we dream nothing. The broken sleeps, the slumber, and dreams full of visions, are commonly in them that have weak and sickly bodies.’ Ibid.

“Cardan died in 1575, and it is supposed was the voluntary cause of his own death.”

Hamlet’s situation as a grief-stricken hero caught in the toils of innumerable difficulties and dangers is typical, and is the one presented b Cardan, who says that allmen are in like case and that the remedy lies in the curing of the mind so that it wil rise above the trials of life. Cardan, in effect, reproaches man for allowing himself to become ‘lapsed in time and passion’ so that he habitually lets go ‘the important acting’ of a dread command, for suffering his mind to be tainted with worldly considerations, and for cowardice. These are Hamlet’s reproaches against himself; Hamlet’s plight is as intense as Cardan felt his own to be, and one may believe that, like Cardan’s, it is to be interpreted as exemplifying the common fate of all men. Laden with bereavement and with the most humiliating trouble, Hamlet proceeds along a road which Cardan tells us all men must travel. (930)

And now were any one plac’d on that tower, from whence Jove is fancied by the Poets to Survey the World, he would all around discern how many Grievances and Calamities our whole Life is on every Side encompassed with: How Unclean our Birth, how Troublesome our Tendance in the Cradle, how liable our Childhood is to a Thousand Misfortunes, how Toilsome and full of Drudgery our Riper Years, how Heavy and Uncomfortable our Old Age, and lastly, how Unwelcome the Unavoidableness of Death. Further, in every Course of Life how many Wracks there may be of torturing Diseases, how many unhappy Accidents may casually occur [sic], how many unexpected Disastes may arise, and what strange Alterations may one Moment produce? Not to mention such Miseries as Men are mutually the Cause of, as Poverty, Imprisonment, Slander, Reproach, Revenge, Treachery, Malice, Cousenage, Deceit, and so many more, as to reckon them all would be as puzz’ling Arithmetick as the numbering of the Sands.

And hereto that bewty breedeth temptation, temptation dishonor: for it is a matter almost impossible, and sieldome seene, that those two great enimies, bewty and honesty agree together . . . And though it fall out often that bewty and honesty are joined together, yet is falleth our sieldome, but that exquisite bewty is had in suspition. (qtd. 169)

The concluding words of the unfortunate Lord Essex’s prayer on the scaffold were these' “—-and when my life and body shall part, send thy blessed angels, which may receive my soule, and convey it to the joys of heaven. Hamlet had certainly been exhibited before the execution of that amiable nobleman; but the words here given by Horatio might have been one of the many additions made to this play. As no copy of an earlier date than 1604 has yet been discovered, whether Lord Essex’s last words were in our authour’s thoughts, cannot be ascertained.

Just so many years had king James been in England, when the quarto that is our guide in this play made it’s appearance; the aspect of the court was much different from that it wore in the days of Elizabeth, as is noted by all historians, and, it is likely, was not so polish’d: by combining these circumstances together, the editor is led to imagine,—that the play, in it’s new dress, was got up at that very time; and that the observation in this place has allusion to that time’s manners.

The kings of Denmark have been constant drinkers of Rhenish wine. It was the custom at Copenhagen, when Lord Molesworth was our ambassador to that court, in 1692, for the king to have his beker of Rhenish. Drinking to excess was the vice of the court and nation; and our author must have known, that, in his time, the King of Denmark, brother-in-law to James I. had no aversion to large draughts of wine. Sir John Harrington, in a letter to a friend, describes a masque, alled the Queen of Sheba, at which the two kings and the whole court were present, and all of them most shamefully intoxicated. . . . The two drunken majesties, of Great-Britain and Denmark, says Harrington, were so far inebriated, that the gentlemen of the bedchamber were obliged to carry them on their shoulders to their beds. Perhaps our author’s knowledge of this Bacchanalian bout was one reason why he insists so much on the drunkenness of the royal Dane.

It is very probable, that the Yorick here described was one of the court-fools hired to divert the leisure-hours of Queen Elizabeth. And it is most likely that our author celebrates the famous Clod, who died some time before the accession of K. James.

This, then, was the political situation at the exact moment Hamlet was written : the whole future of the realm turned on the question of the succession and the character of the future monarch ; the most direct heir to the realm was a prince who was melancholy by temperament, whose character seemed flawed by a vacillating will and a habit of procrastination ; on the other hand, he had an unexpected capacity for acting with decision in emergencies, as, for instance, in the Gowry conspiracy ; he was one of the most learned princes in Europe, and lie took an intcnsi; interest in philosophy and theology. His whole situation was tragic and difficult: his father had been murdered, and his mother had married the murderer ; to the amazement of Europe he had allowed his royal authority to be usurped and his own person placed in jeopardy by a man of the same title and family as the usurper, a person who, to the excited imagination of the time, seemed almost like a reincarnation of the same evil genius who had ruined the mother. (44-5)

The problem with reading historical inscription in Hamlet is that end points to identification are elusive; as soon as the reader finds a secure historical purchase, just one more fact or a differently perceived resemblance causes a landslide of semantic slippage . . . We must abandon the notion of single or dual historical correspondence in favor of a multidimensional constellation of references: the two Bothwells variously confounded James, who has been victimized like Hamlet, who seditiously hounds the king, who in turn is like the two Bothwells in both his villainy and frustrating power to evade punishment.” (159)

b) Henrici Scotorum Regis Manesad Jacobum Vium Filium

Similarly, Sh.’s involvement with Elizabethan astronomy was not confined to this childhood incident. In fact, in a lifetime that has left remarkably few clues, several point to a relation with those scientists most closely associated with the study of the new star.

Sh. uses the very Danish names Rosencrantz and Guildenstern in the play for two of Hamlet’s old Wittenberg friends who have been turned into spies by his wicked uncle . . . . the family names “Rosenkrans” and “Guldensteren” appear in the famous portrait showing Tycho surrounded by the coats-of-arms of his ancestors. This picture was published in the 1596 and 1601 editions of Tycho’s astronomical letters.

From minutes and accounts of the corporation of stratford-upon-avon,

Vol. III

(1577-1586; Public Record Office, Ancient Indictments 652, Part 2, 262; Trans. Richard Savage, London: The Dugdale Society, 1926)

11 February, 1579/80

Inquest at Tiddington on the Body of Katherine Hamlett

Inquisition . . . taken at Tiddington in the Country aforesaid on the eleventh day of February . . . before Henry Rogers, a coroner of the said lady the Queen . . . on a view of the body of Katherine Hamlett . . . spinster [a woman who spins], found there dead and drowned, on the oath of [the jury members]: Who say on their oath that the aforesaid Katherine Hamlett, on the seventeenth day of December in the twenty-second year of the reign of the aforesaid lady the Queen, going with a certain vessel, in English a pail, to draw water at the river called Avon in Tiddington aforesaid, it so happened that the aforesaid Katherine, standing on the bank of the same river, suddenly and by accident slipped and fell into the river aforesaid, and there, in the water . . . by accident was drowned, and not otherwise nor in other fashion came by her death. In testimony whereof both the coroner aforesaid and the jury aforesaid have set their seal to this inquisition . . . on the day, in the year, and in the place abovesaid.

So direct is the bearing of this work upon the ghost scenes of Hamlet, that some detailed examination of its contents seems desirable. Writing from the strictly protestant standpoint, Lavater acknowledges the existence of spirits, and declares ‘to whome, when, where, and after what sort spirits do appear and what they do work.’ They appear ‘especially in the night, and before midnight in our first sleep,’ being chiefly found ‘in the fieldes where battles have been fought,’ in places of execution, in woods, or in the ‘ruins and rubbish of castles.’ Such spirits show themselves ‘in sundry sort, sometimes in the shape of a man whome we know, who is yet alive or lately departed; other whiles in the likenesse of one whom we knowe not.’ In the second Part of his work he declares at full what is the Popish doctrine concerning such spirits. The Papists declare that they come from Purgatory, and are permitted to walk the earth for a season, ‘for the instructing and terrifying of the lyving.’ . . . Having set forth the Romish doctrine, Lavater proceeds to demolish it, and to show that these visions and spirits are ‘not the souls of dead men as some men have thought,’ but ‘either good or evill Angels,’ and quotes from Scripture and the Fathers to show that the devil has ‘power to appeare under the shape of a faithfull man.’ . . . [Sh.] makes use of the Reformation ghost question, both to furnish his ghost-scenes with an atmosphere which should take the place of that mephitic air of Tartarus through which the Senecan ghost moved, and also to throw fresh rays of light upon the character of Hamlet. When confronted with the catholic and the protestant doctrine as to ghosts, Sh. at once chooses the former—a choice which in no sense proves him to have been a catholic.”

. . . . It is certain that Souls cannot return in their body, which lies in the grave, reanimating it and giving it the movement and life it has lost. And hence, if they return perchance to this world by the will of God and appear to us, they take not a real but a phantasmal body. And those who believe that they return in their true body deceive themselves greatly, for it is only a phantom of air that they clothe themselves in, to appear visibly to men.’”

What he contests is the possibility of their assuming material form, and he is even bold enough to attempt to explain away apparitions in Holy Writ, like that at Endor. As for the idea that devils can assume the bodies of the dead, it appears to him no less idle and profane than the purgatorial theory which it superseded. In a word, apparitions are either the illusion of melancholic minds or flat knavery on the part of some rogue.

And heere, for a witnesse, doo I N. give thee N. my right hand, and doo plight thee my faith and troth, as God me helpe and holiedoome. And by the holie contents in this booke doo I N. sweare, that my spirit shall be thy true servant, all the daies of thy life, as is before rehearsed. And here for a witnesse, that my spirit shall be obedient to thee N. and to those bonds of words that be written in this N. before the bonds of words shall be rehearsed thrise ; else to be damned for ever : and thereto saie all faithfull soules and spirits, Amen, Amen.

Then let him sweare this oth *[Three times, in reverence (peradventure) of the Trinitie, P[ater]. F[ilius]. SS [Spiritus Sanctus] three times, and at everie time kisse the booke, and at everie time make marks to the bond. Then per- reference" ceiving the time that he will depart, get awaie the people from you, and get or take your stone or glasse, or other thing in your hand, and saie the Pater noster, Ave, and Credo, and this praier as folioweth. And in all the time of his departing, rehearse the bonds of words ; and in the end of everie bond, saie oftentimes ; Remember thine oth and promise.

for although thou see me heere in likenes of a spirite, yet thinke me to bee one of those Familiares Lares that were rather pleasantly disposed then endued with any hurtfull influence, as Hob Thrust, Robin Goodfellow¹ and such like spirites, as they tearme them of the buttry, famozed in every olde wives chronicle for their mad merrye prankes. Therefore sith my appearance to thee is in a resemblance of a spirite, think that I am as pleasant a goblin as the rest, and will make thee as merry before I part, as ever Robin Goodfellow made the cuntry wenches at their Cream- boules. With this he drewe more neere me, and I, starting backe, cried out: — In nomine Jew, avoid Sathan, for ghost thou art none, but a very divell, for the soules of them which are departed, if the sacred principles of theologie be true, never returne into the world againe till the generall resurrection, for either are they plast² in heaven, from whence they come not to intangle themselues with other cares, but sit continuallye before the seat of the Lambe, singing Alleluia³ to the highest; or else they are in hell. And this is a profound and certain apho- risme, Ab inferis nulla est redemptio. Upon these conclusive premises, depart from me, Sathan, the resemblance of whomsoever thou doost carrye. At this, pitching his staffe downe on the end, and crossing one leg over another, he answered thus :—why you horson dunce, think you to set Dick Tarlton non plus with your aphorismes ? . . . .

. . . . I would not take the foile at your hands, and that is this, I perceive by your arguments your inward opinion, and by your wise discretion what pottage you love : I see no sooner a rispe⁴ at the house end or a maipole⁵ before the doore, but I cry there is a paltry alehouse : and as soon as I heare the principles of your religion, I can saye, Oh, there is a Calvinist; what doo you make heaven and hell contraria immediata — so contrarie, that there is no meane betwixt them, but that either a mans soule must in post haste goe presently to God, or else with a whirlewind and a vengeance goe to the divell! yes, yes, my good brother, there is quoddam tertium, a third place that all our great grandmothers have talkt of, that Dant hath so learnedlye writ of, and that is purgatorie. What, sir, are we wiser then all our forefathers ? and they not onlye feared that place in life, but found it after their death: or els was there much land and annuall pensions given in vaine to morrowe-masse priests for dirges, trentals and such like decretals of devotion, whereby the soules in purgatorie were the sooner advanced into the quiet estate of heaven? Nay, more, how many popes and holy bishops of Eome whose cannons cannot erre, have taught us what this purgatory is: and yet if thou wert so incredulous that thou wouldest neither beleeve our olde beldames, nor the good Bishops: yet take Dick

Tarlton once for thine authour, who is now come from purgatory, and if any upstart Protestant deny, if thou hast no place of Scripture ready to confirme it, say as Pithagoras schollers did (ipse dixit) and to all bon companions it shall stand for a principle. I could not but smile at the madde merrye doctrine of my freend Richard, and therefore taking hart at grasse,¹ drawing more neere him, I praied him to tell me what Purgatory is, and what they be that are resident there ; as one willing to doo me such a favour, he sat him downe, and began thus:—

. . . there is no purgatory, but that it is a thing invented by the covetousness of the spirituality, only to translate all kingdoms from other princes unto them, and that there is not one word spoken of it in all Holy Scripture. . . . well I wote that this purgatory and the Pope’s pardons is all the cuase of translation of your kingdom so fast into their hands, wherefore it is manifest it cannot be of Christ, for he gave more to the temporal kingdom, he himself paid tribute to Caesar, he took nothing form him but taught the high powers should be always obeyed. . .”