Hamlet and the Augean Stables of the World
Michael
Srigley
No name of a fictional character
is better known throughout the
world today than Hamlet. Many
reasons have been offered for
the strong appeal of Shakespeare’s
play on Hamlet to audiences
of widely different cultures
around the globe. One of them
has to do with the mystery of
Hamlet’s initial delay in avenging
his father’s murder. For most
of the play, Hamlet fails to
carry out his mission, and it
is only towards the end of it
that he begins to act decisively.
Hamlet’s transition from indecision
during the first four acts of
the play to resolute action
in the final act coincides with
the brief voyage he takes towards
England. On that voyage of only
a few days he changes radically.
He embarks as a university student
of between fifteen to eighteen
years of age; on his return
to Denmark after sailing towards
Denmark, he has aged rapidly.
From the information given by
Hamlet and the Clown in V .i.
139-157, Hamlet is now thirty
years old. Many attempts have
been made to explain (or explain
away) Hamlet’s swift ageing
towards the end of the play,
but as will be shown, it makes
good symbolic sense.
In the first four acts of
the play, Hamlet is presented
as a university student studying
at Wittenberg, accompanied by
the somewhat older Horatio acting
perhaps as his tutor and companion.
Horatio is presented as a follower
of the philosophical Stoicism
of Seneca, so fashionable in
Europe during the second half
of the sixteenth century .In
the midst of Hamlet’s studies,
news arrives of the sudden death
of his father and of his own
recall to Denmark. There the
Ghost of Old informs him that
he has been murdered by his
brother Claudius and that Hamlet
is to avenge his death. Hamlet’s
dilemma is increased by a certain
condition imposed on him by
his father’s Ghost. The Ghost
says to him:
But howsomever thou pursues
this act,
Taint not thy mind (I.iv
.84-5).
This condition –not to taint
his mind in the course of taking
revenge – forces on Hamlet the
duty of taking revenge dispassionately.
He is to do it as amoral duty
in order to rid Denmark of the
corruption represented by Claudius
and his courtiers, preserving
the Stoic calm represented by
the behaviour of his close friend,
Horatio. He must kill Claudius
as an act of dispassionate justice
and not out of a desire for
private revenge. This is one
of the tenets taught by Seneca
in his original presentation
of Stoicism.
The difficult challenge faced
by Hamlet faces all thinking
men and women today throughout
the world. Hamlet’s dilemma
is ours. Many today find that
the “something rotten in the
state of Denmark”, to use Hamlet’s
famous words, has now spread
to the whole of our planet,
and that like Hamlet we are
called upon to eliminate it
but do not know how or where
to begin, or whether we even
have the strength to ‘cleanse’
the world of its evils. May
not this be one reason why Hamlet
continues to be being played
in so many parts of the world?
We are all aware of the many
societies in the world where
a few live in luxury and many
are condemned to dire poverty
.The globe is divided between
the developed and the so-called
‘developing’ countries, a euphemism
often for ‘undeveloped’.Economic
greed is rampant while millions
of children starve. Obesity
spreads in one part of the world;
malnutrition reigns in another.
Vast sums are being spent by
industrial nations on armament
partly in response to the sensed
threat of the dispossessed seeking
to obtain their share of the
world’s goods. As we shall see,
the arming of Denmark at the
beginning of the play is matched
by the vast armament programmes
in many parts of the world today.
Our world, like Hamlet’s Denmark,
is “out of joint” and like him,
many of us are tempted to murmur:
O cursed spite,
That ever I was born to set
it right (I.v.188-9).
Young Hamlet does not feel
adequate to the task imposed
on him. He speaks of this sense
of inadequacy in his first soliloquy
where he says of his uncle Claudius,
the murderer of his own father,
that he “is no more like my
father / Than I to Hercules”
(I.ii.152-3). This is the first
of several mentions of Hercules
in the play. It expresses Hamlet’s
sense of inadequacy to perform
the ‘labour’ demanded of him
by his father’s Ghost.
The specific challenge faced
by Hamlet can be compared with
the challenge Hercules confronted
on his Eleventh Labour. This
involved the enormous task of
‘Cleansing the Augean Stables’.
As we shall see, although Hamlet
denies any resemblance to Hercules,
he does in the end find the
herculean strength to perform
the task imposed on him. To
gain a deeper understanding
of Hamlet’s dilemma in Shakespeare’s
play and so of the comparable
dilemma now facing the world,
let us turn to Alice Bailey’s
reading of this particular Labour
of Hercules, the one in which
he undertakes to cleanse the
stables of King Augeus of Elis
of its huge piles of horse-dung.
Before beginning this Labour,
Hercules, she writes, is instructed
by his spiritual mentor as follows:
For long you have pursued
the light which flickered first
uncertainly, then waxed to a
steady beacon, and now shines
for you like a blazing sun.
Turn now your back upon the
brightness; reverse your steps;
go back to them for whom the
light is but a transient point,
and help them make it glow.
Direct your steps to Augeus
whose kingdom must be cleansed
of ancient evil ( The Labours
of Hercules p. 180).
Instead of advancing into
further spiritual light, Hercules
is told to turn his back on
it and return to aid his fellow
human beings to discover their
own inner light. His appointed
task is to cleanse the kingdom
of Augeus of its “ancient evil”.
The form taken by the ancient
evil that exists in Augeus’s
realm is described in this way:
When Hercules approached
the realm where Augeas was the
ruler, a horrid stench that
made him faint and weak assailed
his nostrils. For years, he
learnt, King Augeas had never
cleared away the dung his cattle
left within the royal stables.
Then, too, the pastures were
so amply dunged, no crops could
grow. In consequence, a blighting
pestilence was sweeping through
the land, wreaking havoc with
human lives (Labours, p. 180).
The rotting dung piled high
in the royal stables, or spread
deeply over the fields and causing
crops to fail, leads to the
pestilence afflicting and killing
Augeus subjects.
In this respect Augeus’ sick
realm closely resembles Hamlet’s
Denmark. As one of the guards
says, “There is something rotten
in the state of Denmark” (I.iv.90).
The pestilence in Augeus’s kingdom
caused by the decomposing cattle-dung
corresponds to “the things rank
and gross in nature” which afflict
Denmark under Claudius’ s rule.
Throughout the play we find
the same imagery of rot caused
by over-manuring. It is present,
for example, in Hamlet’s advice
to his mother, Gertrude, on
how to cleanse her soul:
Mother, for love of grace,
Lay not that flattering unction
to your soul,
That not your trespass but
my madness speaks;
It will but skin and film
the ulcerous place,
Whilst rank corruption, mining
all within,
Infects unseen. Confess yourself
to heaven;
Repent what’s past, avoid
what is to come,
And do not spread the compost
o’er the weeds,
To make them ranker. Forgive
me this my virtue,
For in the fatness of these
pursy times
Virtue itself of vice must
pardon beg,
Yea, courb and woo for leave
to do him good
(lII.iv.144-155).
The “rank corruption” that
has been spread through Denmark
by Claudius has infected Hamlet’s
mother. It is working within
her like a hidden ulcer which
“mining all within, / Infects
unseen”. To spread thick compost
on such moral weeds is to make
them even “ranker”. Using heavy
irony, Hamlet asks his mother’s
forgiveness for his virtue in
speaking this way to her, for
“in the fatness of these pursy
times” virtue must beg leave
of vice to speak. Again, the
image is of over-indulgence
and its moral and physical consequences.
Hamlet uses the word ‘rank’
twice in this passage. The Oxford
English Dictionary (OED) gives
it the following range of meanings:
‘of a luxuriant, gross or coarse
quality’, ‘grossly rich, heavy
or fertile, liable to produce
rank vegetation’, ‘having an
offensively strong smell; rancid’,
‘lustful, licentious; in heat’
and ‘corrupt, foul, festering’.
The word ‘pursy’ reinforces
the sense of ‘gross indulgence’
of the word ‘rank’. It is defined
in OED as “Having a full rich
purse; rich, wealthy” but by
extension it signified self-
indulgence. A passage in John
Manningham’s Diary for 1602,
about the time perhaps when
Shakespeare first version of
Hamlet was being performed,
is cited: “One said, ‘yong Mr
Leake was verry rich and fatt’,
‘True’, said B. Reid, ‘pursy
men are fatt for the most part”’.
For ‘pursy’ we might say today
‘stinking-rich’.
In his appraisal of the Danish
character, Hamlet speaks of
the heavy drinking of the Danes
which has earned them the reputation
abroad of being drunkards. He
goes on to speak of similar
weaknesses in various individuals
which mining all within and
infecting them invisibly at
first, finally cause rank corruption
in that person:
So, oft it chances in particular
men,
That for some vicious mole
of nature in them
As, in their birth, – wherein
they are not guilty,
Since nature cannot choose
his origin, –
By the o’ergrowth of some
complexion,
Oft breaking down the pales
and forts of reason,
Or by some habit that too
much o’er-leavens
The form of plausive manners;
that these men, –
Carrying, I say, the stamp
of one defect,
Being nature’s livery , or
fortune’s star, –
Their virtues else – be they
as pure as grace,
As infinite as man may undergo
–
Shall in the general censure
take corruption
From that particular fault;
the dram of eale
Doth all the noble substance
of a doubt
To his own scandal (Hamlet,
ed. Dover Wilson, I. iv. 23-38).
This long, contorted speech,
with its delayed conclusion,
(much discussed and emended
in various ways) concerns the
corruption of a person’s reputation
in the eyes of others by some
innate fault which overshadows
or destroys their otherwise
good qualities. It is almost
as if Shakespeare is thinking
of some inherited fault in a
single nation over which the
individual has no control. In
this long speech Hamlet attempts
to explain to Horatio the effect
of heavy drinking on Claudius
and his drunken courtiers as
a form of national disease.
The King, he tells him, is taking
“his rouse” or bumper of wine
and knocking “his draughts of
Rhenish down” (I.iv.8, 10).
Hamlet refers contemptuously
to these boozy festivities of
the Danish court, taking place
so soon after the death of his
father, as a “heavy-headed revel”.
It is this behaviour that had
earned the Danes the reputation
abroad, both “east and west”,
of being drunkards. It is the
“vicious mole of nature in them”
which is turning them into madmen.
What is this ‘vicious mole
of nature’ that is causing corruption?
It is normally taken to be the
small brown spot or blemish
that can appear on the skin,
but this mole is said to be
in them rather than on them.
Might it not also be the mole
that lives underground and undermines
the surface from within, just
as Hamlet’s father’s Ghost moves
from place to place in the cellerage
beneath Hamlet and his companions?
Hamlet calls him “old mole”
and asks “canst work i’ the
earth so fast? A worthy pioner
[digger]!” (I.v.162-3). By extension,
the ‘mole of nature’ afflicting
Denmark is also the aggrieved
Ghost. He too is a source of
infection. The Ghost tells Hamlet:
I am thy father’s spirit;
Doom’ d for a certain term
to walk the night,
And for the day confined
to fast in fires
Till the foul crimes done
in my days of nature
Are burnt and purged away
(I.v.9-13).
He is in Purgatory for his
sins. At the end of his long
speech to Hamlet, he again reminds
him that he was
Cut off even in the blossoms
of my sin,
Unhousel’d, disappointed,
unaneled (I. v. 76- 7).
These technical terms, meaning
‘lacking the sacrament’, ‘without
time for penance’, and ‘without
supreme unction’, indicate that
Old Hamlet was in a state of
sin when he died. He was not
only unpurged of his sins, but
after his murder he has become
an unappeased ghost calling
for revenge on his murderer.
In this sense, Old Hamlet is
again presented as a powerful
source of poisonous infection
in the state of Denmark.
The imagery of rotting fermentation,
recalling the great heaps of
dung rotting in the stables
of Augeus, is exploited cunningly
in a speech by Claudius. To
spur on young Laertes to take
revenge on Hamlet for slaying
his father, Polonius, Claudius
asks him if he truly loves his
father, and explains why he
asks:
There lives within the very
flame of love
A kind of wick or snuff that
will abate it;
And nothing is at a like
goodness still,
For goodness, growing to
a plurisy,
Dies in his own too-much
(IV. vii.115-8).
He is suggesting to Laertes
that even his great filial love
can die in its own excess and
act like ‘a plurisy’. In the
seventeenth century, this was
a condition of the blood, caused
by over-rich food, afflicting
both animals and human beings.
In a work on the diseases of
cattle first published in 1587,
“a plurisie of blood” is said
to afflict young horses when
they feed excessively and “being
fat will increase blood, and
so grow to a plurisie and die”
(Leonard Mascal, Treatise on
Cattle, p. 187). In Shakespeare’s
time ‘pleurisy’ also meant ‘superabundance,
excess’ (OED, 2,fig). In Claudius’
use of it, it signifies the
excess of Laertes’ love which
destroys itself. It is a further
variation on the theme of rankness,
understood as an excess or a
‘too-much’ of fertility, caused
by over-manuring.
Early in the play, Hamlet
describes the world in similar
terms.
O fie! ‘tis an unweeded garden
That grows to seed; things
rank and gross in nature
Possess it merely [ entirely]
(I.ii.135- 7).
A variation of this image
of rank growth, cited earlier,
is found in Hamlet’s advice
to his mother:
And do not spread the compost
on the weeds
To make them ranker (l11.iv.151-2).
In Shakespeare’s day as today
a compost could also be ‘a prepared
manure’. (OED, 3).
The cumulative effect of
this imagery in the play is
to evoke the idea of excessive
manuring creating an over-rich
soil and a consequent unhealthy
growth of plants. It causes
rankness. Figuratively, it is
a disease causing an inner fermentation,
or a pleurisy which over-heats
the blood, or a disease which
is likened to a hidden ulcer
or impostume gradually coming
to a head. It is generalised
as the “something rotten in
the state of Denmark”. It manifests
in the form of corpulence or
pursy fatness. It is above all
the “rank corruption mining
all within” which is undermining
the whole state of Denmark as
once it had undern1ined the
realm of Augeus. It is the equivalent
of modem over-eating and its
consequences, now rampant in
the US and spreading in Europe,
and of the excessive use of
chemical fertilizers in agriculture.
In the Eleventh Labour of
Hercules in which Hercules offered
to “cleanse the filthy stables”
in return for a herd of Augeus’
cattle, the king became suspicious
that Hercules planned to seize
his throne. He therefore imposed
a seemingly impossible condition
on him. This was to cleanse
the pullulating stables in the
space of a single day. Hercules
left the king, and “wandered
through the blighted place,
and saw a cart go by piled high
with dead, the victims of the
pestilence” (p. 181). He then
noticed two rivers, the Alpheus
and the Peneus, and an idea
came to him of how he could
successfully perform his Labour
in such a short time. He would
divert one of rivers into the
other and turn their combined
currents in the direction of
the dung-filled stables. He
did just this. The torrent of
water then “swept away the long-accumulated
filth” and “the realm was purged
of all its fetid murk”. But
Aegeus refused to keep to his
side of the bargain to reward
Hercules with cattle, and banished
him from his land. Hercules
returned later and drove Augeus
into exile.
The pestilence caused by
the rank dung piled high in
the stables and on the meadows
of Aegeus ‘ s realm and which
had been poisoning his people
corresponds to the fetid and
poisonous rankness spreading
through Claudius’s kingdom.
In modern terms it corresponds
not only to excessive eating
but also to the poisoned state
of the world’s seas, forests
and land caused by excessive
chemical pollution by the developed
countries as well as the ruthless
and reckless consumption of
the world’s natural resources.
How can any young person
be asked to take up arms against
such a vast sea of troubles?
No wonder that young Hamlet
studying at university shrank
from the responsibility of undertaking
such a huge task. This brings
us to another puzzle of this
already puzzling play.
At the beginning of the play
Hamlet is presented as a student
studying at the University of
Wittenberg in Germany and this
would make him between fifteen
to eighteen years old, depending
on how long he had been studying
there. But after his return
to Denmark after a few days
at sea bound for England in
the middle of the play, Shakespeare
goes out of his way to make
it clear that he is now thirty
years old. The gravedigger tells
Hamlet, whom he does not recognise,
that he has been a sexton ever
since young Hamlet was born
and this was thirty years ago
(V.i.137 ff). Hamlet does not
correct him. We are left with
the impression that after only
a few day’s at sea heading for
England Hamlet has aged rapidly
and is a decade or so older
than he was before leaving for
England. The puzzle has been
much discussed without any consensus
being arrived at.
As suggested earlier, it
is possible that Hamlet’s rapid
ageing has a symbolic significance.
When we turn to Alice Bailey’s
account of the Eleventh Labour
of Hercules, we are told that
“for thirty years the stables
had not been cleared so that
the filth had accumulated” (Labours,
p. 190). She goes on to discuss
the significance of this period
of thirty years in terms of
a human being. Thirty is “3
multiplied by 10, and 3 is the
number of the personality and
10 is the number of completion”
(Labours, p. 191). It is implied
that Hercules, thirty years
old when he undertakes his Eleventh
Labour, is now a fully developed
personality, now ready to dedicate
his actions in service to his
soul. Could it be that in making
Hamlet thirty years old on his
return to Denmark, instead of
an adolescent as he would have
had been only a few days before,
Shakespeare wished to indicate
that he had now reached the
traditional age of maturity
.He was no longer the youth
of the first half of the play
when he denied that he was a
Hercules, but a mature man of
thirty, at last ready to attempt
the cleansing of Denmark as
a true Hercules. As Annemarie
Schimmel writes in her, The
Mystery of Numbers (New York,
Oxford, UP, 1993):
Thirty is a number connected
with order and justice. In ancient
Rome, a man had to reach the
age of 30 to become a tribune,
and according to biblical traditions,
both Moses and Jesus began their
public preaching at that age
(p. 239).
The commencement of Christ’s
mission at the age of thirty
is also discussed by Alice Bailey.
In her work From Bethlehem to
Calvary, Alice Bailey also links
the symbolism of the number
thirty with Christ’s age when
He was baptised in the Jordan
by John the Baptist:
Christ had reached maturity.
Tradition tells us that He was
thirty years old when He was
baptised and started on His
brief but spectacular career.
..Speaking symbolically, it
was necessary that He should
be thirty year old, for there
is significance in that number,
where humanity was concerned.
Thirty signifies the perfecting
of the three aspects of the
personality–the physical body,
the emotional nature and the
mind. ...When these three parts
of man’s lower nature are functioning
smoothly, and together form
a unit for the use of the inner
man, an integrated personality,
or an efficient lower self,
is the result. To this the number
thirty testifies. Ten is the
number of perfection, and thirty
testifies to perfection in all
three parts of the equipment
of the soul (p. 88).
Through baptism, Christ at
the age of thirty demonstrated
for human beings the possibility
of creating an integrated personality
in preparation for its use by
the soul. The purification and
alignment of the three vehicles
of expression was achieved and
stabilised by the cleansing
waters of the Jordan. The significance
of these cleansing waters is
conveyed by Alice Bailey in
the following passage:
There can be no achievement
without purification; there
is no possibility of our seeing
and manifesting divinity without
passing through the waters that
cleanse. An “ascetic purification”
and an enforced abstinence from
much that has hitherto been
deemed desirable is going on
in the world, and none of us
can escape it. This is due to
the breakdown of the economic
system and the many other systems
which are proving ineffectual
in the modem world. Purification
is being forced upon us, and
as a consequence a truer sense
ofvalues must eventuate. A cleansing
from wrong ideals, a racial
purification from dishonest
standards and undesirable objectives,
is being powerfully applied
at this time. Perhaps this means
that many in the race today
are going down to Jordan, to
enter its purifying waters.
A self-applied ascetic purification,
and the recognition ofits value
by the pioneers of the human
family, may succeed in bringing
them to the portals of initiation
(p. 92).
Alice Bailey also points
out that we are entering the
sign of Aquarius, the Water
Carrier, and that “Christ, in
this great initiation, entered
into the stream, and the waters
passed over Him” (98). Finally
she comments on the significance
of name of the river Jordan:
Jordan means “that which
descends,” but also, according
to some commentators, that which
“divides,” as a river divides
and separates the land. In the
symbolism of esotericism, the
word “river” frequently means
discrimination (p. 100).
In the light of this symbolism,
the two rivers that Hercules
diverts through the stables
ofAegeus stand for an “ascetic
purification”. They wash away
the poisonous dung that has
accumulated there and bring
to an end the pestilence that
had been carrying off his subjects.
These various resemblances
between Christ and Hercules
that have been traced are not
arbitrary. From early Christian
times onwards, Hercules was
seen as a pagan exemplar of
Christ. As Marcel Simon has
shown in his Hercule et le Christianisme
(Paris, 1955), from Dante onwards
the Labours of Hercules were
regarded as “concealing a higher
mystery”. Later, in the
Renaissance period, the notion
of the Christian Hercules became
widely accepted among scholars,
artists and writers as an esoteric
mystery , or he was seen as
a pagan forerunner of Christ.
Michaelangelo, for example,
did not hesitate to portray
Christ as Hercules in his Last
Judgement, while J .B. Zelotti
painted his ‘Hercules on the
Funeral Pyre’ with outstretched
arms and gazing towards the
heavens. Simon suggests that
this fresco might well be called
‘Hercules-Christ’ (p. 184).
In the light of the long
tradition of Hercules as a Christ-like
pagan hero, reaching a climax
in the Renaissance period, it
was natural for Shakespeare
to present Hamlet first as a
student unwilling to take up
Hercules’ club. It was also
natural that after his return
from the sea-voyage to England
he returned as a mature man
and an increasingly determined
warrior. In keeping with the
Hercules tradition, it was to
be expected that Hamlet would
describe Claudius and his drunken
Court in terms ofhidden disease,
indulgence, overheated blood,
rankness and fatness. Nor at
a period when Hercules was taken
as a forerunner or pagan exemplar
of Christ is it strange that
Hamlet should swiftly mature
in the second half of the play
from being a teenager to a mature
man of thirty .In the Renaissance period when it
was customary to search for
hidden or allegorical meanings
in poetry , plays, paintings
and emblems, the sudden ageing
of Hamlet would have invited
interpretation by its very incongruity.
As Gabriel Harvey, a contemporary
of Shakespeare, wrote in about
1599 in the margin of one of
his books,
The younger sort takes much
delight in Shakespeare’s Venus
and Adonis: but his Lucrece,
& his tragedie ofHamlet,
prince of Denmarke, have it
in them, to please the wiser
sort (Virginia Stem, Gabriel
Harvey (Oxford, 1979) pp. 127-8).
For more solid evidence that
the ‘wiser sort’ of Elizabethans
or Jacobeans would have regarded
the mature Hamlet as a contemporary
Hercules cleansing the stables
of Augeus at the age of thirty
, we turn to the translation
of Ovid’s Metamorphoses made
between 1621 and 1626 by George
Sandys. In his commentary on
this translation, Sandys gives
a brief summary of Hercules’s
cleansing of the stables of
Augeus and then comments on
its moral meaning. He wrote:
This filthy stable representeth
the Court of Augeus; contaminated
with luxury, and all sorts of
uncleanesse: which by the expulsion
of the vitious king and his
Parasites, was said to have
beene purged by Hercules .
Later in the same Commentary,
he writes that his
conquests ouer beasts and
monsters were chiefly invented
to expresse the excellency of
Virtue in subduing inordinate
affections: as Intemperence
by the Bore, rash Temerity by
the Lion, by the Bull Anger,
Panick Fear by the Hart, Uncleanesse
of life by Augeus his stable.
With little change in Sandys’
words, we could likewise say
that the Court of the murderous
Claudius and his drunken parasites,
contaminated by vice and all
sorts of uncleanness, was finally
purged by a resolute Hamlet.
The change that occurred
in Hamlet from prevarication
to resolute action took place
after his voyage towards England.
Hamlet later tells Horatio that
shortly after embarking he discovered
the plot of Claudius and of
his accomplices, Rosencrantz
and Guildenstern, to take his
life. On a rash impulse, which
he attributes to “a divinity
that shapes our ends” (V.ii.10),
he opened their commission and
found orders for his own death.
He rewrote the commission ordering
Rosenkrantz and Guildenstern
to be killed. He was then captured
by pirates who acting like “thieves
of mercy” carry him back to
Denmark, while his two companions
sail on to their deaths in England.
This marks the first time in
the play when, obeying a God-sent
premonition, Hamlet acts promptly.
This decisiveness marks a profound
change in his nature.
The change is further indicated
soon afterwards in his conversation
with Horatio just before his
fencing match with young Laertes.
He says:
Thou would not think how
ill all’s here about my heart–but
it is no matter (V.ii.210-211)
Here, Hamlet dismisses his
premonition of death as irrelevant,
dubbing it “a foolery, ...a
kind of gainsaying as would
perhaps trouble a woman” (V.ii.2l3-2l4
) When Horatio suggests they
cancel the match, Hamlet replies:
Not a whit, we defy augury.
There is a special providence
in the fall of a sparrow. If
it be now, ‘tis not to come–ifit
be not to come, it will be now–
if it be not now, yet it will
come–the readiness is all. Since
no man, of aught he leaves,
knows what is’t to leave betimes,
let be (V.ii.217-222).
Hamlet has reached a state
of mind in which he accepts
that death will come when it
comes. Seneca, the Roman philosopher
who was so influential on the
Elizabethan dramatists, expresses
this state of acceptance as
follows, using the imagery of
life as a sea-voyage:
For the only safe harbour
in this life’s tossing, troubled
sea is to refuse to be bothered
about what the future will bring
and to stand ready and confident,
squaring the breast to take
without skulking or flinching
whatever fortune hurls at us
(Seneca: Letters from a Stoic
(Penguin Classics, 1969, 190).
Just as Hamlet claims in
the speech above that “the readiness
is all”, so Seneca had written:
I don’t know what’s going
to happen; but I do know what
is capable of happening –and
none of this will give rise
to any protest on my part. I’m
ready for everthing (Seneca:
Letters from a Stoic, p. 155).
In such plays as Pericles
and The Tempest, written after
Hamlet, such sea voyages are
given a symbolic meaning. There
the sea takes on its ancient
Christian attributes of the
Sea of Life, with its storms
calms and shipwrecks, which
human beings attempt to cross
to the distant shore of salvation.
An example of this symbolic
understanding of the sea can
be given from An Epistle ofComfort
written by Shakespeare’s contemporary,
Robert Southwell, the Jesuit
priest and poet:
She [the Church] is a sure
ship, and wrought so cunningly
by our heavenly shipwright,
that, howmuchsoever the sea
rage and the winds beat upon
it, howmuchsoever this ship
be tossed amongst the waves,
it is kept from sinking and
it runneth on. And doubtless
sink it cannot, having at the
stem him of whom it is said,
the sea and the winds obey him
(An Epistle of Comfort London:
1966, p. 12).
I have claimed that Hamlet
is as modem today in its basic
themes as in Shakespeare’ s
day. This is because Shakespeare
recognised the archetypal nature
of Hamlet’s dilemma. In addition
to discreet references to Hercules’
Eleventh Labour, it contains
an allusion to the ancient theme,
also popular in the Renaissance,
of ‘Hercules Choice’ or ‘Hercules
at the Crossroads’ where a man
in armour, lying half-asleep,
has to choose between the steep
and narrow path of virtue and
the broad and pleasant path
of vice or indulgence. In his
Eleventh Labour, Hercules makes
a choice to take the steep right-hand
fork and undertake a seemingly
impossible task. So finally
does Hamlet after much deliberation.
We could speak of ‘Hamlet’s
Choice’, and by the same token
of ‘Our Choice’ today. Which
way shall we take?
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