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ChrisVeritas.blogspot.com
February 13, 2016
I am thy father’s spirit, doom’d for a certain term to walk the night…
Shakespeare’s Hamlet has been looked at from myriad angles, from the psychological to the philosophical.
But for me, the key to the drama is this oft overlooked fact: that what drives the plot is that Hamlet’s father is a spirit come back from purgatory (the place of purification before entering heaven).
This is really quite remarkable, given that the play was put on in Elizabethan England, a place where the Government had recently repudiated the Catholic Church (and whose censors were very strict regarding dramatic content). Hamlet's father's ghost would have been recognizable to anyone as belonging to the old/outlawed order of ideas; and, if you ask me, Shakespeare brought him back from the dead, in order to resurrect what the murdered King symbolically represents: the ancient Faith, and all the theology that was buried by Henry VIII.
I can only imagine the subdued ooh's and ah's, as the groundlings beheld this monarchic outlaw, passing portentous judgment on the unfaithful Queen, and her incestuous new marriage. A person could be forgiven, if the confluence of ideas caused him to believe that Hamlet was a coded rebuke of the Tudor Kings; who were, themselves, unfaithful to their Divine Spouse.
I can only imagine the subdued ooh's and ah's, as the groundlings beheld this monarchic outlaw, passing portentous judgment on the unfaithful Queen, and her incestuous new marriage. A person could be forgiven, if the confluence of ideas caused him to believe that Hamlet was a coded rebuke of the Tudor Kings; who were, themselves, unfaithful to their Divine Spouse.
How did this play ever make it onto the stage, you might ask?! Well, remember, this is "Denmark", not England. And though I believe such heady subtext does exist within the play, it easily becomes lost due to the fiery theatrics and clever wordplay.
It can't be overstated that Hamlet's father's ghost, who is "doom'd for a certain term" to suffer "tormenting flames", is what sets the entire plot in motion. This purgatorial theodrama, unabashedly inserted into the public arena, reflects directly on the Dynasty that banned it; killed it, essentially; just like the play's new King, Claudius, killed Hamlet's father. The death of the "Catholic King" is the central element of the play, and the conviction of the killer, the resolution. Along the way, the incestuous marriage of the "painted Queen", with her dead husband's inferior brother, is examined; and the whole affair ends in bloodshed (A Tudor specialty).
