"Hamlet," Protestantism, and the Mourning of Contingency: Not to Be (review)
Phebe Jensen
Hamlet has sometimes been critically interpreted as a modern man struggling against the strictures of the past, a character who represents the rise of Protestant (or secular) individualism from the ashes of Catholicism, a prince whose story demonstrates the potential—and potential pitfalls—facing the human intellect once released from the restraints of medieval superstition. That narrative, implicitly supported by the teleological assumptions of Whig historiography, is turned on its head by John E. Curran Jr.'s study. In this book, it is Catholicism, not Protestantism, that represents "human and cosmic potentialities" (202). Hamlet is said to be "a Catholic . . . caught in a strictly Protestant world" (5) who wants to live by the "hopeful, Catholic idea of being" (19) but must, in Act 5, accept his imprisonment within the limiting strictures of "predestinarian Protestantism" (5). The play is ultimately a lament for "what has been lost with the fall of Catholicism".
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The phrase 'the teleological assumptions of Whig historiography' has been running through my head the last few weeks. It seems to describe the mechanism that has conflated a Catholic Earl and the militant Protestant Prince Hamlet.
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Inverted History:
Oxford's fame subsumed by the classically-inspired militant Protestant ideology - a way of life that was embraced by his own son and heir. In his place, a 'Protestant' image of Shakespeare, crafted over time by the 'teleological assumptions of Whig historiography' has come to dominate Shakespeare and authorship studies. A decidedly Protestant England 'reverse-engineered' a Protestant Shakespeare.
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The Significance of Milton's 'Star-y pointing Pyramid':
On Shakespeare. 1630
WHat needs my Shakespear for his honour'd Bones,
The labour of an age in piled Stones,
Or that his hallow'd reliques should be hid
Under a Star-ypointing PYRAMID?
Dear SON OF MEMORY, GREAT HEIR OF FAME, [ 5 ]
What need'st thou such weak witnes of thy name?
Thou in our wonder and astonishment
Hast built thy self a live-long Monument.
For whilst to th' shame of slow-endeavouring art,
Thy easie numbers flow, and that each heart [ 10 ]
Hath from the leaves of thy unvalu'd Book,
Those Delphick lines with deep impression took,
Then thou our fancy of it self bereaving,
Dost make us Marble with too much conceaving;
And so Sepulcher'd in such pomp dost lie, [ 15 ]
That Kings for such a Tomb would wish to die.
(Milton - Republican - pomp and circumstance part of the 'Court-fucus' that the King and his courtiers painted themselves with in order to deceive others and conceal their own political and moral illegitimacy.)
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Pyramid:
Webster and Cervantes, by F. M. Todd The Modern Language Review © 1956
...Yet there is a passage in the 1623 quarto [Duchess of Malfi] which could not have been in the play as acted in 1614. In, V.v, 95 Bosola says to the Cardinal:
I do glory
That thou, which stood'st like a huge Piramid
Begun upon a large, and ample base,
Shalt end in a little point a kind of nothing.
This is quite plainly an echo from chapter VI of the second part of Don Quixote, where Quixote is describing to his niece the various types of pedigree. The first category contains those who have risen from nothing, the second those who have always been great; then he goes on:
'Others who although they had great beginnings end in a point like a pyramid, having diminished and destroyed their beginning until it ends in nothing like the point of a pyramid, which as compared with its base or seat is nothing.'
On the next page in the same chapter he gives examples
'Of those who began great and ended in a point.' and 'All these families and lordships have ended in a point and nothing.'
The similarities seem to be too numerous and too close to be merely accidental. The pyramid was often enough used during the seventeenth century as an illustration of diminution, although its use by both Webster and Cervantes as an illustration of decay or decline is rather specialized. Moreover this is not simply a case of the use of the one image. Not only is Webster's pyramid in Cervantes, but also its base, its 'beginnings', its point, and the similarity between this point and nothing. Both writers are using the pyramid to describe the course of human life, although Webster is talking of one man's fall, Cervantes of a family's.
****************************** Shelton translation Don Quixote:
Others, that though they had great beginnings, yet they end pointed like a Pyramis, having lessened and annihilated their beginning, till it ends in nothing... Thousand of examples there bee of such, as began in greatnesse, and lessened towards their end...All these Lordships ended, pointed, and came to nought.
****************************** In 1743, the 9th Earl of Pembroke was Henry Herbert, a fine scholar noted for his artistic and literary tastes. His father was also the grandson of Philip Herbert, husband of Susan de Vere, one of the Incomparable Brethren to whom Shakespeare's first folio was dedicated. It was Henry Herbert who commissioned an exact replica of Peter Scheemakers' statue of Shakespeare, which only two years before had been acquired for Westminster Abbey. This replicated statue is precise in every detail except one. The one exception is that the Abbey's Shakespeare is pointing to a scroll on which has been written lines taken from The Tempest (Act iv: sc 1) –
The Cloud-capp'd Towers, / The Gorgeous Palaces / The Solemn
Temples, / The Great Globe itself / Yea, all which it inherit / Shall
Dissolve; / And like the baseless Fabric of a Vision / Leave not a
rack behind. It may, perhaps, be mentioned that a change of text has taken place within the penultimate line. This should read - And, like this insubstantial pageant faded, but the sense remains unaltered.
The Wilton Shakespeare, although identical in all other respects, has the poet's finger pointing to the same scroll, but upon which appears…the immortal lines taken from Macbeth:
Life's but a walking shadow; a poor player,
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more:
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Wilton - portrait of Henry de Vere and Double-Cube room features Perseus (heroic virtue) slaying the Gorgon.
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Signifying NIHIL:
Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more: it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.
Macbeth, Act 5, Scene 5
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Nihil:
Empty sound, dead letter, vox et praeterea nihil; "a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing"; "sounding brass and a tinkling cymbal."
Unsubstantiality
Nothing, naught, nil, nullity, zero, cipher, no one, nobody; never a one, ne'er a one; no such thing, none in the world; nothing whatever, nothing at all, nothing on earth; not a particle; (smallness); all talk, moonshine, stuff and nonsense; matter of no importance, matter of no consequence. thing of naught, man of straw, John Doe and Richard Roe, faggot voter; nominis umbra, nonentity; flash in the pan, vox etpraeterea nihil.
vox et praeterea nihil: A voice and nothing more; a mere sound; hence, fine words without weight or meaning
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Rollett solution to the Sonnet Dedication - three inverted pyramids
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Another Fulke Greville - Maxims, Characters and Reflections, Critical, Satirical and Moral (1756):
...It is certainly true, however little to be accounted for, that the inhabitants of every country have a peculiar characteristic, by which they are distinguished from all others. Every language therefore must have peculiar advantages and disadvantages; it must be more adapted to express those ideas that have a particular connection with the prevailing genius and temper of the people that use it, and must be less adapted to express those ideas which have a particular connection with the temper and genius of others. As to the different characteristics of France and England, they will be best distinguished by a view of each as represented by the other; because the peculiarities of each being then exaggerated, will be more easily discerned. If we believe what a Frenchman would say of England, and an Englishman of France, we shall conclude that one of these Countries is gawdy and fantastic, the other destitute of fancy; one idly volatile, the other solemnly busy; that one is profligate in her manners, the other wants gallantry; one is too fond of company, and the other of solitude; one is trifling, the other formal; one is too much in jest, the other too much in earnest; one carries the gaiety of conversation between the sexes into indelicacy and libertinism, the other renders it insipid by an aukward reserve in one sex, and an ungracious bashfulness in the other; one reasons too much, the other too little: in the production of imagination one indulges a wild and licentious luxuriancy, the other is too tamely fond of exactness, propriety, and rule; for as one is more extensive in her ideas, so is she less precise; and as the other is less extensive, so is she more precise. It is not here necessary, to draw the line of truth between these two accounts; it is sufficient to observe, that there is at least a propensity in the two nations to these excesses, and that when they err, they err in every particular on opposite sides. The general difference is now much less than it was ten years ago: whether we shall continue to approach each other till we meet, or whether we shall withdraw into our original limits, time only can determine.
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Wild, fanciful, unrestrained Oxford/Shakespeare's 'Foreign' Manners and Style - too French, too Italian:
Gabriel Harvey's satirical portrait of the Earl of Oxford:
Speculum Tuscanismi
Since Galatea came in, and Tuscanism gan usurp,
Vanity above all: villainy next her, stateliness Empress
No man but minion, stout, lout, plain, swain, quoth a Lording:
No words but valorous, no works but womanish only.
For life Magnificoes, not a beck but glorious in show,
In deed most frivolous, not a look but Tuscanish always.
His cringing side neck, eyes glancing, fisnamy smirking,
With forefinger kiss, and brave embrace to the footward.
Large bellied Cod-pieced doublet, uncod-pieced half hose,
Straight to the dock like a shirt, and close to the britch like a diveling.
A little Apish flat couched fast to the pate like an oyster,
French camarick ruffs, deep with a whiteness starched to the purpose.
Every one A per se A, his terms and braveries in print,
Delicate in speech, quaint in array: conceited in all points,
In Courtly guiles a passing singular odd man,
For Gallants a brave Mirror, a Primrose of Honour,
A Diamond for nonce, a fellow peerless in England.
Not the like discourser for Tongue, and head to be found out,
Not the like resolute man for great and serious affairs,
Not the like Lynx to spy out secrets and privities of States,
Eyed like to Argus, eared like to Midas, nos'd like to Naso,
Wing'd like to Mercury, fittst of a thousand for to be employ'd,
This, nay more than this, doth practice of Italy in one year.
None do I name, but some do I know, that a piece of a twelve month
Hath so perfited outly and inly both body, both soul,
That none for sense and senses half matchable with them.
A vulture's smelling, Ape's tasting, sight of an eagle,
A spider's touching, Hart's hearing, might of a Lion.
Compounds of wisdom, wit, prowess, bounty, behavior,
All gallant virtues, all qualities of body and soul.
O thrice ten hundred thousand times blessed and happy,
Blessed and happy travail, Travailer most blessed and happy.
'Tell me in good sooth, doth it not too evidently appeare, that this English Poet wanted but a good PATTERNE before his eyes, as it might be some delicate, and choyce elegant Poesie of good M. Sidneys, or M. Dyers (ouer very Castor, & Pollux for such and many greater matters) when this trimme geere was in hatching: Much like some Gentlewooman, I coulde name in England, who by all Phisick and Physiognomie too, Might as well have BROUGHT FORTH all goodly faire CHILDREN, as they have Now some ylfavoured and DEFORMED, had they at the tyme of their Conception, had in sight, the amiable and gallant beautifull Pictures of ADONIS, Cupido, Ganymedes, or the like, which no doubt would have wrought such deepe impression in their fantasies, and imaginations, as their children, and perhappes their Childrens children to, myght have thanked them for, as long as they shall have Tongues in their heades."
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Characterizing Oxford's 'alien' and 'un-English' Genius - disconnected from the prevailing genius and temper of the English:
Learning from 'Queer' History: Finding ways to recover what has been deliberately dropped (amnesty, oblivion) from history (sometimes) by the 'teleological assumptions of Whig historiography':
Jonathan Goldberg and Madhavi Menon, Queering History:
Paying attention to the question of [sexuality] as a question involves violating the notion that history is the discourse of answers, a discourse whose commitment to determinate signification, Jacques Ranciere has argued, provides false closure, blocking access to the multiplicity of the past and to the possibilities of different futures."
Similar to the current experience of those who pursue the question of authorship. Stratfordians provide a 'discourse of answers'. Coming to terms with the idea of a Shakespeare/Oxford forced to play the role of alien 'Other' obscured by the emerging and ultimately dominant militant Protestant control of British history. Catholic, medieval-minded cosmopolite Oxford remains on the wrong side of English history while his book (paradoxically) resides at the centre.
Shakespeare's appeal - can it be explained in part by the notion of the aristocratic je-ne-sais-quois?
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Queer \Queer\, a. [Compar. Queerer; superl. Queerest.] [G.
quer cross, oblique, athwart (cf. querkopf a queer fellow),
OHG. twer, twerh, dwerah; akin to D. dvars, AS,
[thorn]weorh thwart, bent, twisted, Icel. [thorn]verr thwart,
transverse, Goth. [thorn]wa[`i]rhs angry, and perh. to L.
torqyere to twist, and E. through. Cf. Torture, Through,
Thwart, a.]
1. At variance with what is usual or normal; differing in
some odd way from what is ordinary; odd; singular;
strange; whimsical; as, a queer story or act. `` A queer
look.'' --W. Irving.
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'Tis better to be vile than vile esteem'd,
When not to be receives reproach of being,
And the just pleasure lost which is so deem'd
Not by our feeling but by others' seeing:
For why should others false adulterate eyes
Give salutation to my sportive blood?
Or on my frailties why are frailer spies,
Which in their wills count bad what I think good?
No, I am that I am, and they that level
At my abuses reckon up their own:
I may be straight, though they themselves be bevel;
By their rank thoughts my deeds must not be shown;
Unless this general evil they maintain,
All men are bad, and in their badness reign.
(Bevel \Bev"el\, n. [C. F. biveau, earlier buveau, Sp. baivel; of
unknown origin. Cf. Bevile.]
1. Any angle other than a RIGHT angle; )
