u/Easy_Demand_7372

While most people who read Hamlet equate Shakespeare's Denmark as a thinly veiled analogue to Elizabethan England, especially Oxfordians who equate Polonius with Lord Burghley, I was struck recently by considering the differences between Shakespeare's Denmark and the England he lived in.

The main thing that interests me is that Shakespeare imagines Denmark as globalised and lacking a central identity, which I assume would've contrasted with England's intense patriotism at the time and its isolationism from the rest of Europe. We see this through Hamlet basically living in Germany and Laertes living in France, Claudius using swiss mercenaries and never native soldiers [where are my switzers?], or the way that the norwegians march through denmark to Poland. I suppose my question is to any historians, is Shakespeare making some critique of Europe here? At his time was England isolationist with a hereditary monarchy that could contrast with the weak state of Denmark, where kings are chosen by lot and all the important people seem to want to be away from Denmark as much as possible, or was England more of a player in Europe than I thought it would be.

I rarely see Denmark as a state very emeshed in the politics of Europe being discussed. Is there any historical merit to this idea? Personally I believe that Shakespeare is critiquing the excesses of English monarchy at many points in the play, but using a state shown to be unpatriotic and opportunistic which lacks a great chain of being type succession in order to not appear like he's critiquing monarchy itself.

Why should a well-educated young man have second thoughts when it comes to killing a close relative who also happens to be the king of the land and the husband of his own mother? This is some enigma indeed, and the problem is not that a satisfactory answer has never been found but that we should keep looking for one. Should our enormous critical literature on Hamlet fall someday into the hands of people otherwise ignorant of our mores, they could not fail to conclude that our academic tribe must have been a savage breed, indeed. After four centuries of controversies, Hamlet's temporary reluctance to commit murder still looks so outlandish to us that more and more books are being written in an unsuccessful effort to solve that mystery. The only way to account for this curious body of literature is to suppose that back in the twentieth century no more was needed than the request of some ghost, and the average professor of literature would massacre his entire household without batting an eyelash. - Amir Khan

Please comment any questions or notes - and if you have any required reading you’d like me to read l’d love recommendations.

I will assume that anyone reading this is familiar with Hamlets parallels to the biblical story of Cain and Abel.

There is a doubling in hamlet shown through its two sets of brothers - Hamlet Sr and Claudius, Laertes and Prince Hamlet [I have thrown my arrow over my house and hit my brother] . Both of these Cain and Abel adjacent pairs end up fighting over the affection of a woman, Gertrude or Ophelia. So if we extend the metaphor slightly, the God figure in both these retellings is the female.

Let’s extend this conceit. Hamlet‘s main goal during the play seems to be whether to redeem or condemn his mother - paralleling the problem of evil. When hamlet wonders “why is she in bed with that devil” the fallen man also asks “why is God in bed with the Devil“. Just as in real life, the answer to this question is multifaceted and not possible to square without a real reevaluation of the perceived omnipotence of the target.

And that makes the ending tragic. Gertrude kills herself like how Jesus dies, and Hamlet the fallen man is impetulant to the end and unable to understand how much his mother has protected him from Claudius. and yet when she dies Hamlet is given the clarity of mind to take his revenge. Like how Jesus‘ sinless nature is what made his sacrifice worthy, similarly hamlet is unable to avenge his feudal and sinful father because he knows that even claudius’ deceitful killing is within the bounds of war which Hamlet Sr grappled himself to, whereas Hamlet’s mother - the most selfless character in the play - is a far more palatable subject for revenge.

Now we get to the difficult part - how to square Ophelia with this interpretation. Throughout the play Gertrude pays special attention to the young woman - being far gentler to her than polonius. I believe that Gertrude is a shrewd enough politician to know intimately her position as a kingmaker whose advocacy and marriage authority put Claudius on the throne. Similarly I believe she understands that that is broadly the role of women in the court - to be vessels for power and to be fought over by feudal lords, something which hamlet almost grasps when he says “Wise men know well what monsters you make of them”. And so I see Gertrude as preparing Ophelia to be the next lamb to slaughter just as she was - “I thought thou should’ve been my hamlets wife”. And ….

<THEORY AND EXTROPOLATION, this may not be fully supported by the text but it’s symmetry is too potent to ignore>

I believe that’s what caused her suicide. Her realisation that her life was not her own, shown by the snippets of old songs, and her realisation that women, as gods, are expected to excuse the sins of men and, when it comes to it, die for them, disillusioned her with her own life and caused her suicide.

Overall Hamlet touches on a very real dichotomy in patriarchal societies - the deification of women with the express goal that by making them “angels” “nymphs” and “mermaids” they will also be expected to act god-like - which in a Christian context often means “sacrificial“. Hamlets mad quest to figure out the nature of his own mother is representative of a society trying to square the nature of an Omnibenevolent God with the reality of a world full of pain, blending it with the realisation of a man that his own mother is not immune to sin or that she cannot act perfectly all the time.

NOTES

Why did she marry Claudius? - Claudius is not only evil but also sweet, charming and kind. She may just like him for who he is, not knowing he killed his brother. Also she needs to protect herself and her son and she probably had very little contact with other bachelors.

Do you think Shakespeare meant all this? - Broadly yes. While I doubt he’d have put it as frankly as I did I think he was writing at a time steeped in religious confusion where the relationship between God and Man did feel like a parents betrayal.