Works Cited: The Player's Speech in Hamlet
Cultural references can either enhance a work of art or confuse an audience. For many students, this becomes evident when they first encounter the works of William Shakespeare.
Encyclopedia Britannica makes two salient points about allusions:
In this series, creatively titled "Works Cited", I'll be discussing the roles that allusions can play and some of the fun rabbit-holes that are opened up by some of my favorite allusions. Each installment will serve as a guided tour through a particular work, its sources, and, ultimately, its significance to the work as a whole (to borrow a phrase from the AP Literature and Composition exam). This inaugural installment will focus on one of my favorite dramatic monologues: the Player's speech in Hamlet.
Because this essay is fairly long, I have separated it into six sections to make it easier to read in several sittings.
1) Introduction: The Player's Speech in Hamlet
2) The Rugged Pyrrhus
3) Priam's Slaughter
4) Hecuba, the Mobled Queen
5) The Play's the Thing
6) Conclusion
With all of that out of the way, let's talk about one of the most curious items in the entire Shakespearean canon.
If it live in your memory, begin
at this line--let me see, let me see:
'The rugged Pyrrhus, like th' Hyrcanian beast,'--
it is not so; it begins with Pyrrhus (Shakespeare II.ii.470-476)
Hamlet offers to begin the speech, but initially stumbles and compares Pyrrhus to a tiger (Bradley 418). As Hamlet continues, this minor gaffe turns out to be a fairly accurate assessment of Pyyrhus' character:
'The rugged Pyrrhus, he whose sable arms,
Black as his purpose, did the night resemble
When he lay couchèd in th' ominous horse,
Hath now this dread and black complexion smeared
With heraldry more dismal. Head to foot
Now is he total gules, horridly tricked
With blood of fathers, mothers, daughters, sons,
Baked and impasted with the parching streets,
That lend a tyrannous and damnèd light
To their lord's murder. Roasted in wrath and fire,
And thus o’ersizèd with coagulate gore,
With eyes like carbuncles, the hellish Pyrrhus
Old grandsire Priam seeks.'
So, proceed you. (II.ii.477-490)
The speech proper begins with Pyrrhus inside the Trojan Horse, biding his time until is finally able to avenge his father. Note Shakespeare's use of color to drive the plot: Pyrrhus' arms, face, and purpose are defined by darkness at first, but once Pyrrhus emerges and begins his butchery, he paints himself red with the blood of his victims. Here, Shakespeare has made a curious alteration to Vergil's version of the story by changing Pyrrhus' defining color(s). The Aeneid depicts Pyrrhus with "glittering arms / and helm of burnished brass" (Vergil II.470-471), wrought in the "barbaric gold" of Achilles' armor (II.504). In Hamlet, Pyrrhus is defined less by his father's legacy and more by his own dark purpose. Achilles is never mentioned. Shakespeare trades the legendary shining armor for the stark blackness of Pyrrhus' murderous intent, made manifest in the warrior's "sable arms" and his "dread and black complexion". Then, after his period of wanton violence, Pyrrhus takes on a new defining color: the dismal heraldry of blood.
It is no accident than half of the speech's preamble is dedicated to blood. Though Hamlet is practically salivating by the end of this first section, he has not managed to make much progress in his own revenge plot, so one can only imagine Hamlet's satisfaction in performing these lines. He could be that avatar of vengeance, "roasted in wrath and fire, / and thus o'ersized with coagulate gore". However, Hamlet is clearly not Pyrrhus. Where is Hamlet's murderous resolve? Did he not promise the ghost of his murdered father that "thy commandment all alone shall live / within the book and volume of my brain" (Shakespeare I.v.110-11)? What exactly has Hamlet accomplished since speaking to the ghost?
Moreover, Hamlet's final description of Pyrrhus characterizes the Greek warrior as predatory and possibly evil. The formerly "rugged Pyrrhus" is now "the hellish Pyrrhus", whose eyes burn like "carbuncles" or swollen boils. Similarly, the Aeneid characterizes Pyrrhus in reptilian terms, poised for attack "like some swollen viper, fed on poison-leaves (Vergil 2.472). It would seem that Vergil and Shakespeare took different paths to arrive at similar destinations. Despite the nature of Pyrrhus' plight, Pyrrhus is not depicted as a sympathetic figure. Rather, his thirst for revenge has consumed him from the inside out.
Thus, Hamlet's breathless performance of these first dozen lines is odd, to say the least. It is clear that Hamlet identifies with Pyrrhus' righteous fury. The fact that Hamlet can recall this section from memory helps connect him to this ruthless Greek avenger, "the tigerish, treacherous man of blood whose acts are monstrous, hellish, and promiscuously visited on guilty and innocent alike" (Miller 7). However, is Hamlet willing or able to become the Danish equivalent of Pyrrhus? He relishes the opportunity to perform the speech's gory preamble, but his final line - "So, proceed you" - abruptly ends his imagined, vicarious bloodlust. Ironically, Hamlet has the Player perform the part of the speech that is actually about revenge. It is almost as if Hamlet identifies more with the idea of violence than the actual machinations of it.
While the speech's first section feels more like a montage or a tone poem that introduces Pyrrhus and his conflict, the second movement focuses on Priam, King of Troy, who is desperately fighting for survival:
'Anon [Pyrrhus] finds him
Striking too short at Greeks; his antique sword,
Rebellious to his arm, lies where it falls,
Repugnant to command. Unequal matched,
Pyrrhus at Priam drives; in rage strikes wide;
But with the whiff and wind of his fell sword
Th’ unnervèd father falls. (Shakespeare II.ii.493-499)
The imagery here is fairly straightforward and described like "a play-by-play account of a sporting match" (Levin 210), albeit one for which Priam is woefully unprepared. The king's blade swings wildly, as if unwilling or unable to find its targets. Vergil paints an even more pitiful image in the Aeneid, depicting Priam hunched over an altar with "bleeding wounds", clutching his "useless blade of steel" (Vergil 2.500-512). In order to add drama to the scene, Shakespeare adds some theatrical swordplay as Pyrrhus gets the jump on Priam, swings first, and misses. Priam is bowled over by the ensuing "wind", but his death is temporarily delayed as Pyrrhus is distracted by the sounds of the city crumbling around him:
Then senseless Ilium,
Seeming to feel this blow, with flaming top
Stoops to his base, and with a hideous crash
Takes prisoner Pyrrhus' ear: for, lo, his sword,
Which was declining on the milky head
Of reverend Priam, seem'd i' th' air to stick.
So, as a painted tyrant, Pyrrhus stood,
And, like a neutral to his will and matter,
Did nothing. (Shakespeare II.ii.499-507)
Just as Hamlet delays his own revenge later on in Act 3, Pyrrhus does not immediately kill the king, but instead holds his sword aloft like "a painted tyrant" as he listens to the carnage wrought by his fellow Greeks. Struck by this sudden commotion, Pyrrhus can't help but listen. Shakespeare has largely preserved the source material's imagery, which describes how "Pyrrhus' left hand clutched / the tresses old and gray; a glittering sword / his right hand lifted high" (Vergil 560-562), but slows down the scene's pace to a crawl in order to capture this iconic moment.
The one major difference between Hamlet and the Aeneid is the exact nature of Priam's death. Numerous events from Vergil's account are completely absent in the Player's speech. In the Aeneid, Pyrrhus, "frenzied with slaughter" (2.496), hacks his way into the inner courts of the temple as King Priam and Queen Hecuba flee. Polites, one of Priam's sons, is mortally wounded by a "thick rain of spears" and dies in his father's arms1. Holding the corpse of his son, Priam makes a last-ditch effort to save himself. He attempts to shame Pyrrhus for killing Polites, shouting that Achilles, Pyrrhus' "pretended sire", afforded Priam more dignity than this. Then, Priam feebly hurls a spear at Pyrrhus, who easily deflects the projectile and jeers, "Take these tidings, and convey message to my father [...] Be sure and say how Neoptolemus hath shamed his sires”(Vergil 543-558). Thus, not only is Polites' death omitted in the Player's speech - Shakespeare hardly gives Priam any opportunity to defend himself or reason with his soon-to-be murderer.
It is particularly interesting that Priam's pathetic final appeal didn't make the cut. One could argue that Priam's last words make him seem even more pathetic. However, Shakespeare's hand-picked details emphasize Pyrrhus' bloodlust more than Priam's miserable end, and consequently, neither Pyrrhus nor Priam are humanized in the Player's speech. Pyrrhus is defined by his revenge while Priam might as well be a lamb yielding to its inevitable slaughter.
It is not long before Pyrrhus, like Hamlet at the end of his own bloodthirsty recitation, suddenly snaps out of this reverie. What follows is the first of several increasingly bombastic and referential lines that invokes several mythological figures by name:
But, as we often see, against some storm,
A silence in the heavens, the rack stand still,
The bold winds speechless and the orb below
As hush as death, anon the dreadful thunder
Doth rend the region, so, after Pyrrhus' pause,
Aroused vengeance sets him new a-work;
And never did the Cyclops' hammers fall
On Mars's armour forged for proof eterne
With less remorse than Pyrrhus' bleeding sword
Now falls on Priam. (Shakespeare II.ii.513-517)
Shakespeare adds this calm before the storm, possibly to add dramatic tension to the aforementioned delay. This pause is short-lived, as Pyrrhus smites Priam with seemingly superhuman fury. The loftiness of the language actually makes the blow felt rather than seen, especially when compared to the simple brutality of Vergil's account, which describes Pyrrhus burying his sword "far as the hilt in that defenceless heart (Vergil 551). In the Player's speech, there are no specific details concerning Priam's death. Pyrrhus "swings into action by way of an epic simile" (Levin 211), evoking the single-minded vengeance with which the Cyclops forged the tools of Kronos' destruction, yet the speech neglects to describe the actual moment that Pyrrhus achieves his goal.
Instead, we receive an impassioned apostrophe (not the punctuation mark, but the figure of speech) that interrupts the action:
Out, out, thou strumpet, Fortune! All you gods,
In general synod, take away her power;
Break all the spokes and fellies from her wheel,
And bowl the round nave down the hill of heaven,
As low as to the fiends! (Shakespeare II.ii.518-522)
Priam's death is apparently so pathetic that the speech's narrator castigates Fortune and the fickle wheel that gives her power. Here, another source of inspiration emerges: the 13th century Carmina Burana - a collection of poems that would later inform Carl Orff's composition of the same name - which begins with two pieces about the goddess Fortune. One of these is appropriately named "Fortunae Plango Vulnera," or "Mourn the Blows of Fortune". These introductory poems describe how Fortune's wheel could lead one person "to achieve prosperity" just as easily as another could be "plunged into misery". However, Fortune's wheel was always turning, so while a king might "sit at the top," the anonymous speaker in Carmina Burana warns, "let him beware of ruin!" (Betts). Such was Priam's fate. Once the ruler of a prosperous kingdom, Priam is butchered like an animal before a silent pantheon of Gods.
This apostrophe, like the rest of this second movement, further illustrates Pyrrhus' depravity. Pyrrhus was no hero in the first movement of the speech, and as the First Player cries out to the Gods, it is clear that the audience is not meant to see Priam's death as honorable or just. In order to hammer this point home, Shakespeare shifts the focus away from Pyrrhus, first with this appeal to the Gods and then with the final movement, which turns the audience's attention to the bereaved Queen of Troy.
After a brief interjection from Polonius, who complains that the speech is "too long", Hamlet beseeches the Player to continue where he left off. The Player obliges, and introduces Hecuba:
'But who, O, who had seen the mobled queen [...]
Run barefoot up and down, threatening the flames
With bisson rheum; a clout upon that head
Where late the diadem stood, and for a robe,
About her lank and all o’erteemèd loins,
A blanket, in the alarm of fear caught up;
Who this had seen, with tongue in venom steep'd,
'Gainst Fortune's state would treason have
pronounced (Shakespeare II.ii.526-537)
Wearing only a blanket as a crude robe (Church), a crownless Hecuba stumbles through the burning wreckage of her city, striking such a pitiful figure that any witness with a heart would join the Player in cursing Fortune. The core sentiment is borrowed from the aforementioned poem "Fortunae Plango Vulnera", whose speaker had once "flourished, happy and blessed, but now has "fallen from the pinnacle, deprived of [his] glory". However, he should have seen this coming, for "under the axle we read, Queen Hecuba" (Betts). According to both Carmina Burana and Hamlet, Hecuba's plight is a textbook example of Fortune's cruelty.
All three parts of the Player's speech, including Hamlet's opening section, are brought to a close in the following seven lines:
But if the gods themselves did see her then
When she saw Pyrrhus make malicious sport
In mincing with his sword her husband's limbs,
The instant burst of clamour that she made,
Unless things mortal move them not at all,
Would have made milch the burning eyes of heaven,
And passion in the gods. (Shakespeare II.ii.538-544)
As Queen Hecuba sees her husband hacked to pieces in front of her, she raises a cry so devastating that the Gods themselves - who had previously stood by as Trojan men, women, and children were butchered in the streets - would be moved to tears. Here, Shakespeare's draws from Ovid rather than Vergil. Harry Levin notes the similarity between the last two lines of the Player's speech and Ovid's description of Hecuba's fate in the Metamorphoses (Levin 208). Following even more tragic circumstances (most notably her enslavement and the murders of her daughters), Hecuba goes mad and begins howling like a dog. Ovid writes, "Her sad fate moved the Trojans and the Greeks, / her friends and foes, and all the heavenly gods" (Ovid XIII.572-575). This specific connection is extremely important for what happens next. If the thought of gods crying wasn't sad enough, the Player himself bursts into tears when he reaches the speech's emotional conclusion.
The speech ends here, but the Player's passionate performance sets Hamlet's revenge plot into motion, inspiring Hamlet to prove his uncle's guilt once and for all. His subsequent soliloquy (which ends the scene and act) demonstrates the speech's importance, not just as an catalyst for action, but also as a complex and emotionally resonant work of art.
Because this essay is meant to be an examination of the Player's speech, I will not be analyzing Hamlet's soliloquy in exhaustive detail. Rather, I will address the specific lines which highlight the importance of the Player's speech.
After Polonius, Rosencrantz, Guildenstern, and the players leave the hall, Hamlet launches into a lengthy monologue about what he has just witnessed and what he plans to do next. Curiously, he "does not, as we might expect, reflect on the significance for himself as revenger of either Pyrrhus or Hecuba" (Miller 9). Instead of identifying with Pyrrhus' ruthless requital or the multifaceted tragedy of Hecuba's loss2; Hamlet focuses instead on the Player's delivery. The baffled Hamlet remarks,
Is it not monstrous that this player here,
But in a fiction, in a dream of passion,
Could force his soul so to his own conceit
That from her working all his visage wann'd,
Tears in his eyes, distraction in's aspect,
A broken voice, and his whole function suiting
With forms to his conceit? and all for nothing!
For Hecuba!
What's Hecuba to him, or he to Hecuba,
That he should weep for her? (Shakespeare II.ii.577-587).
This is the first of several metafictional comments in Hamlet's soliloquy. A dramatic work was itself performed within a dramatic work - an actor playing an actor delivered a speech for Hamlet and for us. Through Hamlet, Shakespeare specifically uses the words "function" and "form" to describe how the speech transcends the bounds of fiction and speaks to something fundamentally human, though Hamlet does not understand how this is possible at this point in his monologue. How, he wonders, could an actor feel so strongly about a fictional character's plight? Moreover, "What would he do / Had he the motive and the cue for passion / That I have?" (II.ii.587-589).
Hamlet then uses this soliloquy as an opportunity to criticize his inability to conjure this same emotional intensity and apply it to something more useful, like avenging his father. Harry Levin observes that "the soliloquy is the mirror-opposite of the speech [...] where the speech leads from action to passion, the soliloquy reverses this direction" (Levin 213). We see this in Hamlet's rather self-centered and melodramatic reflection on his own life:
Why, what an ass am I! This is most brave,
That I, the son of a dear father murdered,
Prompted to my revenge by heaven and hell,
Must, like a whore, unpack my heart with words
And fall a-cursing like a very drab (Shakespeare II.ii.611-615)
Ironically, Hamlet scolds himself for giving too many soliloquies. All he has done thus far is talk. Since speaking to his father's ghost at the end of Act 1, he has made no tangible progress. It is at this moment that Hamlet, for the first time in the play, begins to channel his passions towards something productive. His self loathing, which has hitherto been vague and aimlessly nihilistic3, suddenly has a goal: to motivate Hamlet towards action.
About, my brains! Hum, I have heard
That guilty creatures sitting at a play
Have by the very cunning of the scene
Been struck so to the soul that presently
They have proclaim'd their malefactions;
For murder, though it have no tongue, will speak
With most miraculous organ. I'll have these players
Play something like the murder of my father
Before mine uncle: I'll observe his looks;
I'll tent him to the quick: if he but blench,
I know my course. (II.ii.617-627)
At long last: plot development. Just as the Player was overcome by a particularly potent piece of drama, Claudius will not be able to hide his guilt when faced with a similar performance, especially since it will be engineered to bring his crimes out into the open. Hamlet will hire these actors put on a play that is very similar to his father's murder. If Claudius reacts, Hamlet will have all the proof he needs to pursue his revenge plot further. "The play's the thing," Hamlet proclaims. "Wherein I'll catch the conscience of the king" (II.ii.633-6-34).
This scene does something special for its audience, which includes Hamlet and the readers/viewers of the play as a whole. Not only does it break the fourth wall by performing drama within drama; it also comments on the transformative power of art. Hamlet initially found it difficult to understand how an actor could be brought to tears by a fictional story. Thirty lines later, he made a tentative yet tangible first step towards fulfilling the promise that he made to his father.
Although the Player's speech has divided critics for centuries, most acknowledge that it is, at the very least, a unique specimen in Shakespeare's extensive bibliography. Its closest cousin would be Mercutio's "Queen Mab" speech in Romeo and Juliet, another baffling monologue that begins with melodramatic flair, takes several unexpected turns, and unexpectedly ends in a scene of emotional vulnerability.
When I first encountered this speech about 11 years ago, I was drawn to the sound and fury of its language. The violent passions of its characters came to life over the course of 70 vivid, occasionally grandiose lines of blank verse. Over the years, I have come to appreciate the rich literary and mythological backdrop onto which Shakespeare projects his own themes. The complex layers of meaning reveal themselves as one traces each idea to its source. Given the Bard's inclination towards adapting both history and mythology in his work, it should come as no surprise that Shakespeare cobbled together several different accounts as he wrote the Player's speech. This retelling of Priam's slaughter may not be wholly original, and its inclusion in Hamlet may continue to be controversial for centuries to come. Nonetheless, it endures as an example of Shakespeare's self-awareness as a playwright and his hopes as an artist. Hamlet initially uses the speech to gauge the actors' talents; we can do the same for the craftsman who put it all together.
Come, give us a taste of your quality. Come, a passionate speech.
2 It is not clear whether Hamlet makes a connection between the tragic figure of Hecuba and his own mother, and if he does, there is the question of how. According to Anthony Miller's essay "Mirrors of Revenge", Hamlet may see his mother as a similarly "hapless and incidental victim of revenge" or as a shamelessly re-married widow "whose grief for her murdered first husband has fallen scandalously short of Hecuba's" (Miller 8-9). I'm inclined towards the latter, as the former would show a degree of compassion that has been suspiciously absent from Hamlet's soliloquies thus far.
Let's look at the math. In his first major monologue, Hamlet spends a total of 15 lines (I.ii.147-162) criticizing his mother's infidelity, claiming, among other things, that
Ere yet the salt of most unrighteous tears
Had left the flushing in her galled eyes,
She married. O, most wicked speed, to post
With such dexterity to incestuous sheets! (I.ii.159-162)
Hamlet associates the crime of incest with Queen Gertrude and not Claudius. At this point in the play (i.e. before Hamlet learns that his father was murdered by Claudius), Hamlet does not mention that Claudius betrayed his brother by marrying Gertrude, but he is very specific about Gertrude betraying her husband by marrying Claudius. In fact, he only has about four lines that target Claudius, and they only really serve to describe Claudius' inferiority compared to the late King Hamlet, "no more like my father than I to Hercules" (I.ii.157-158). Then, in the final scene of Act 1, Hamlet ignores his ghostly father's command to "taint not thy mind, nor let thy soul contrive / against thy mother aught" (I.v.92-93). Fewer than 20 lines later, Hamlet refers to his mother as a "most pernicious woman" (112). Thus, as meaningful as it might be for Hamlet consider his mother's loss of her first husband and the potential horrors that she may have to endure if Hamlet kills Claudius, there is little to no evidence in Hamlet's subsequent lines that he was thinking of his mother at all. ↩
3 Up until this scene, Hamlet has criticized his mother and uncle for their incestuous marriage without much purpose. The only tangible goal that he has entertained so far has been suicide, as seen in Act 1 Scene 2:
O, that this too too solid flesh would melt
Thaw and resolve itself into a dew!
Or that the Everlasting had not fix'd
His canon 'gainst self-slaughter! O God! God!
How weary, stale, flat and unprofitable,
Seem to me all the uses of this world!
Fie on't! ah fie! 'tis an unweeded garden,
That grows to seed; things rank and gross in nature
Possess it merely.
Hamlet opens that soliloquy by wondering aloud why God has made suicide a sin. The remainder of the speech focuses entirely on his mother and uncle, leading the audience to believe that his existential anguish stems from his inability to do anything about this matter. Even after he learns the truth about Claudius from his father's ghost the end of Act 1, Hamlet's pledge to the dead king is fairly vague:
Yea, from the table of my memory
I’ll wipe away all trivial, fond records,
All saws of books, all forms, all pressures past,
That youth and observation copied there,
And thy commandment all alone shall live
Within the book and volume of my brain,
Unmixed with baser matter. Yes, by heaven! (Shakespeare I.v.105-111)
Hamlet may swear that he will live only for revenge, but until he hears the Player's speech, he has absolutely no sense of direction. His only plan is "To put an antic disposition on," (I.v. 192) until he can figure out what to do next. ↩
Betts, Gavin. "The Carmina Burana of Carl Orlaff." Complete Latin (Teach Yourself Books). Hodder and Stoughton, London, and McGraw Hill, New York, fourth edition 2010, http://tylatin.org/extras/index.html. Accessed 23 June 2018.
Bradley, A.C. "Note F: The Player's Speech in Hamlet." Shakespearean Tragedy: Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth.
2nd ed. London: Macmillan, 1905, pp. 413-419, http://www.shakespeare-navigators.com/bradley/tr413.html#note. Accessed 25 May 2018.
Church, Samuel Harden. "'The Mobled Queen.' Samuel Harden Church Defends Line in Hamlet as Genuine." Letter. The New York Times, 22 Sept. 1913.
https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1913/09/22/100406045.pdf. Accessed 19 Feb. 2018.
Colderidge, Samuel Taylor. "Notes on Hamlet." Coleridge's Lectures on Shakespeare and Other Poets and Dramatists. Edited by Ernest Rhys. Everyman's Library, 1914, pp.135-149, http://library.umac.mo/ebooks/b32318819.pdf. Accessed 25 May 2018.
Levin, Harry. "An Explication of the Player's Speech." Hamlet, edited by Cyrus Hoy. 2nd ed., W. W. Norton & Company, 1992, pp. 207-216.
Miller, Anthony. "Hamlet, II.ii - III.iv: Mirrors of Revenge." Sydney Studies in English, vol 11, 1985, pp 3-22. https://openjournals.library.sydney.edu.au/index.php/SSE/article/view/412/382. Accessed 25 May 2018.
Oakley, Howard. "Infanticide: Astyanax and Making of Myth." The Eclectic Light Company, 15 Feb 2017. https://eclecticlight.co/2017/02/05/infanticide-astyanax-and-making-of-myth/. Accessed 25 May 2018.
Ovid. Metamorphoses. Brookes More. Boston. Cornhill Publishing Co. 1922, http://data.perseus.org/citations/urn:cts:latinLit:phi0959.phi006.perseus-eng1:13.494-13.575. Accessed 23 June 2018.
Shakespeare, William. The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark. Edited by Barabara A. Mowat and Paul Werstine, Folger Shakespeare Library. http://www.folgerdigitaltexts.org/download/pdf/Ham.pdf.
Vergil. Aeneid. Theodore C. Williams. trans. Boston. Houghton Mifflin Co. 1910, http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=urn:cts:latinLit:phi0690.phi003.perseus-eng2:2.469-2.505. Accessed 25 May 2018.
Encyclopedia Britannica makes two salient points about allusions:
- "Most allusions based on the assumption that there is a body of knowledge that is shared by the author and the reader and that therefore the reader will understand the author’s referent."
- "Over time, as shared knowledge changes, allusions can also reveal the unspoken assumptions and biases of both authors and readers."
In this series, creatively titled "Works Cited", I'll be discussing the roles that allusions can play and some of the fun rabbit-holes that are opened up by some of my favorite allusions. Each installment will serve as a guided tour through a particular work, its sources, and, ultimately, its significance to the work as a whole (to borrow a phrase from the AP Literature and Composition exam). This inaugural installment will focus on one of my favorite dramatic monologues: the Player's speech in Hamlet.
Because this essay is fairly long, I have separated it into six sections to make it easier to read in several sittings.
1) Introduction: The Player's Speech in Hamlet
2) The Rugged Pyrrhus
3) Priam's Slaughter
4) Hecuba, the Mobled Queen
5) The Play's the Thing
6) Conclusion
With all of that out of the way, let's talk about one of the most curious items in the entire Shakespearean canon.
1) Introduction: The Player's Speech in Hamlet
We’ll have a speech straight. Come, give us a taste of your
quality. Come, a passionate speech. (Shakespeare II.ii.454-456)
When Rosencrantz and Guildenstern - Hamlet's bumbling friends - hire a troupe of actors to cheer up the gloomy Prince of Denmark, Hamlet's disposition immediately brightens. He greets the men warmly and immediately requests that they perform a speech in order to demonstrate their dramatic chops. Hamlet requests that the head actor (henceforth referred to as "the Player") perform a particular monologue that went unappreciated when Hamlet heard it last. He recalls that it was perhaps too fancy for the peasant groundlings ("’twas caviary to the general" [II.ii.461]), but nonetheless memorable for its artistry. The speech in question was "Aeneas' tale to Dido; and / thereabout of it especially, where he speaks of / Priam's slaughter" (Shakespeare II.ii.471-473).
I have always enjoyed this speech for the intensity and vividness of its language, but I would be lying if I said that the controversy surrounding the speech wasn't also a factor. Scholars have questioned its inclusion in Hamlet for centuries. Romantic poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge once praised the speech's "epic narrative" but also complained that the language itself becomes "too poetical", wrought with "lyric vehemence and epic pomp" (Coleridge 149). Modern Shakespeare critics still find themselves divided along these lines. In an "Explication of the Player's Speech," Harry Levin writes that the scene has been regarded with "less admiration than curiosity and less curiosity than bewilderment" (Levin 207) while A.C. Bradley notes that in Shakespeare's bibliography, "there is no passage so faulty, [but] there is also no passage of quite the same species" (Bradley 417).
Like much of Shakespeare's work, the Player's speech borrows from several sources. At its most basic level, this speech loosely adapts a specific story from the second book of Vergil's Aeneid (lines 469 - 558), which was written approximately 1600 years before Hamlet. It describes how Pyrrhus - also known as Neoptolemus, son of Achilles - seeks to avenge his father's death by murdering Priam, King of Troy. Paris, Priam's son, not only started the Trojan War; he also managed to kill Achilles with a well-aimed arrow (and Apollo's help). While there are a lot of names to keep track of, the fundamental conflict - a son hell-bent on avenging his father's death - is fairly easy to discern. The mythological allusions add new layers of complexity that further enhance the speech's explorations of loss and retribution.
In this essay, I'll be examining the Player's speech and its sources, noting the similarities and differences as I go. Shakespeare has distilled Vergil's original account into a lean but powerful tale of revenge that serves two primary purposes. The most obvious is to inspire Hamlet's plot against his uncle. The second, more subtle function of the speech is to serve as a sort of metafictional commentary on art and its ability to evoke emotion.
If you'd like to whet your appetite before moving on, you can peruse this version of the text and listen to this particularly powerful rendition of the scene, taken from a 1961 performance directed by George Rylands:
quality. Come, a passionate speech. (Shakespeare II.ii.454-456)
When Rosencrantz and Guildenstern - Hamlet's bumbling friends - hire a troupe of actors to cheer up the gloomy Prince of Denmark, Hamlet's disposition immediately brightens. He greets the men warmly and immediately requests that they perform a speech in order to demonstrate their dramatic chops. Hamlet requests that the head actor (henceforth referred to as "the Player") perform a particular monologue that went unappreciated when Hamlet heard it last. He recalls that it was perhaps too fancy for the peasant groundlings ("’twas caviary to the general" [II.ii.461]), but nonetheless memorable for its artistry. The speech in question was "Aeneas' tale to Dido; and / thereabout of it especially, where he speaks of / Priam's slaughter" (Shakespeare II.ii.471-473).
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| Hamlet and the Players in Peter Hall's 1965 production |
I have always enjoyed this speech for the intensity and vividness of its language, but I would be lying if I said that the controversy surrounding the speech wasn't also a factor. Scholars have questioned its inclusion in Hamlet for centuries. Romantic poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge once praised the speech's "epic narrative" but also complained that the language itself becomes "too poetical", wrought with "lyric vehemence and epic pomp" (Coleridge 149). Modern Shakespeare critics still find themselves divided along these lines. In an "Explication of the Player's Speech," Harry Levin writes that the scene has been regarded with "less admiration than curiosity and less curiosity than bewilderment" (Levin 207) while A.C. Bradley notes that in Shakespeare's bibliography, "there is no passage so faulty, [but] there is also no passage of quite the same species" (Bradley 417).
Like much of Shakespeare's work, the Player's speech borrows from several sources. At its most basic level, this speech loosely adapts a specific story from the second book of Vergil's Aeneid (lines 469 - 558), which was written approximately 1600 years before Hamlet. It describes how Pyrrhus - also known as Neoptolemus, son of Achilles - seeks to avenge his father's death by murdering Priam, King of Troy. Paris, Priam's son, not only started the Trojan War; he also managed to kill Achilles with a well-aimed arrow (and Apollo's help). While there are a lot of names to keep track of, the fundamental conflict - a son hell-bent on avenging his father's death - is fairly easy to discern. The mythological allusions add new layers of complexity that further enhance the speech's explorations of loss and retribution.
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| Ilioupersis, or the Fall of Troy (490 BC) |
In this essay, I'll be examining the Player's speech and its sources, noting the similarities and differences as I go. Shakespeare has distilled Vergil's original account into a lean but powerful tale of revenge that serves two primary purposes. The most obvious is to inspire Hamlet's plot against his uncle. The second, more subtle function of the speech is to serve as a sort of metafictional commentary on art and its ability to evoke emotion.
If you'd like to whet your appetite before moving on, you can peruse this version of the text and listen to this particularly powerful rendition of the scene, taken from a 1961 performance directed by George Rylands:
Some final notes before moving on: I will try my best to limit block quotes to the Player's speech itself. This way, the contents of the speech will be visually distinct from other quoted sources, and its progression will be easier to track throughout this post. Also, all image credits are linked in their respective captions. Both of these choices result in some minor violations of MLA formatting rules. Finally, when referring to the Aeneid's author, I will be spelling his name as "Vergil" rather than "Virgil" to match the translation that I've used. The latter spelling is more common, but since the man's name was Publius Vergilius Maro, the former seems more accurate.
2) The Rugged Pyrrhus
at this line--let me see, let me see:
'The rugged Pyrrhus, like th' Hyrcanian beast,'--
it is not so; it begins with Pyrrhus (Shakespeare II.ii.470-476)
Hamlet offers to begin the speech, but initially stumbles and compares Pyrrhus to a tiger (Bradley 418). As Hamlet continues, this minor gaffe turns out to be a fairly accurate assessment of Pyyrhus' character:
'The rugged Pyrrhus, he whose sable arms,
Black as his purpose, did the night resemble
When he lay couchèd in th' ominous horse,
Hath now this dread and black complexion smeared
With heraldry more dismal. Head to foot
Now is he total gules, horridly tricked
With blood of fathers, mothers, daughters, sons,
Baked and impasted with the parching streets,
That lend a tyrannous and damnèd light
To their lord's murder. Roasted in wrath and fire,
And thus o’ersizèd with coagulate gore,
With eyes like carbuncles, the hellish Pyrrhus
Old grandsire Priam seeks.'
So, proceed you. (II.ii.477-490)
The speech proper begins with Pyrrhus inside the Trojan Horse, biding his time until is finally able to avenge his father. Note Shakespeare's use of color to drive the plot: Pyrrhus' arms, face, and purpose are defined by darkness at first, but once Pyrrhus emerges and begins his butchery, he paints himself red with the blood of his victims. Here, Shakespeare has made a curious alteration to Vergil's version of the story by changing Pyrrhus' defining color(s). The Aeneid depicts Pyrrhus with "glittering arms / and helm of burnished brass" (Vergil II.470-471), wrought in the "barbaric gold" of Achilles' armor (II.504). In Hamlet, Pyrrhus is defined less by his father's legacy and more by his own dark purpose. Achilles is never mentioned. Shakespeare trades the legendary shining armor for the stark blackness of Pyrrhus' murderous intent, made manifest in the warrior's "sable arms" and his "dread and black complexion". Then, after his period of wanton violence, Pyrrhus takes on a new defining color: the dismal heraldry of blood.
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| Ilioupersis (520-510 BC) |
It is no accident than half of the speech's preamble is dedicated to blood. Though Hamlet is practically salivating by the end of this first section, he has not managed to make much progress in his own revenge plot, so one can only imagine Hamlet's satisfaction in performing these lines. He could be that avatar of vengeance, "roasted in wrath and fire, / and thus o'ersized with coagulate gore". However, Hamlet is clearly not Pyrrhus. Where is Hamlet's murderous resolve? Did he not promise the ghost of his murdered father that "thy commandment all alone shall live / within the book and volume of my brain" (Shakespeare I.v.110-11)? What exactly has Hamlet accomplished since speaking to the ghost?
Moreover, Hamlet's final description of Pyrrhus characterizes the Greek warrior as predatory and possibly evil. The formerly "rugged Pyrrhus" is now "the hellish Pyrrhus", whose eyes burn like "carbuncles" or swollen boils. Similarly, the Aeneid characterizes Pyrrhus in reptilian terms, poised for attack "like some swollen viper, fed on poison-leaves (Vergil 2.472). It would seem that Vergil and Shakespeare took different paths to arrive at similar destinations. Despite the nature of Pyrrhus' plight, Pyrrhus is not depicted as a sympathetic figure. Rather, his thirst for revenge has consumed him from the inside out.
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| The Rape of Polyxena by Pyrrhos (1860–1865) by Pio Fedi. |
Thus, Hamlet's breathless performance of these first dozen lines is odd, to say the least. It is clear that Hamlet identifies with Pyrrhus' righteous fury. The fact that Hamlet can recall this section from memory helps connect him to this ruthless Greek avenger, "the tigerish, treacherous man of blood whose acts are monstrous, hellish, and promiscuously visited on guilty and innocent alike" (Miller 7). However, is Hamlet willing or able to become the Danish equivalent of Pyrrhus? He relishes the opportunity to perform the speech's gory preamble, but his final line - "So, proceed you" - abruptly ends his imagined, vicarious bloodlust. Ironically, Hamlet has the Player perform the part of the speech that is actually about revenge. It is almost as if Hamlet identifies more with the idea of violence than the actual machinations of it.
3) Priam's Slaughter
While the speech's first section feels more like a montage or a tone poem that introduces Pyrrhus and his conflict, the second movement focuses on Priam, King of Troy, who is desperately fighting for survival:'Anon [Pyrrhus] finds him
Striking too short at Greeks; his antique sword,
Rebellious to his arm, lies where it falls,
Repugnant to command. Unequal matched,
Pyrrhus at Priam drives; in rage strikes wide;
But with the whiff and wind of his fell sword
Th’ unnervèd father falls. (Shakespeare II.ii.493-499)
The imagery here is fairly straightforward and described like "a play-by-play account of a sporting match" (Levin 210), albeit one for which Priam is woefully unprepared. The king's blade swings wildly, as if unwilling or unable to find its targets. Vergil paints an even more pitiful image in the Aeneid, depicting Priam hunched over an altar with "bleeding wounds", clutching his "useless blade of steel" (Vergil 2.500-512). In order to add drama to the scene, Shakespeare adds some theatrical swordplay as Pyrrhus gets the jump on Priam, swings first, and misses. Priam is bowled over by the ensuing "wind", but his death is temporarily delayed as Pyrrhus is distracted by the sounds of the city crumbling around him:
Then senseless Ilium,
Seeming to feel this blow, with flaming top
Stoops to his base, and with a hideous crash
Takes prisoner Pyrrhus' ear: for, lo, his sword,
Which was declining on the milky head
Of reverend Priam, seem'd i' th' air to stick.
So, as a painted tyrant, Pyrrhus stood,
And, like a neutral to his will and matter,
Did nothing. (Shakespeare II.ii.499-507)
Just as Hamlet delays his own revenge later on in Act 3, Pyrrhus does not immediately kill the king, but instead holds his sword aloft like "a painted tyrant" as he listens to the carnage wrought by his fellow Greeks. Struck by this sudden commotion, Pyrrhus can't help but listen. Shakespeare has largely preserved the source material's imagery, which describes how "Pyrrhus' left hand clutched / the tresses old and gray; a glittering sword / his right hand lifted high" (Vergil 560-562), but slows down the scene's pace to a crawl in order to capture this iconic moment.
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| La Mort de Priam (1861) by Jules Lefebvre |
The one major difference between Hamlet and the Aeneid is the exact nature of Priam's death. Numerous events from Vergil's account are completely absent in the Player's speech. In the Aeneid, Pyrrhus, "frenzied with slaughter" (2.496), hacks his way into the inner courts of the temple as King Priam and Queen Hecuba flee. Polites, one of Priam's sons, is mortally wounded by a "thick rain of spears" and dies in his father's arms1. Holding the corpse of his son, Priam makes a last-ditch effort to save himself. He attempts to shame Pyrrhus for killing Polites, shouting that Achilles, Pyrrhus' "pretended sire", afforded Priam more dignity than this. Then, Priam feebly hurls a spear at Pyrrhus, who easily deflects the projectile and jeers, "Take these tidings, and convey message to my father [...] Be sure and say how Neoptolemus hath shamed his sires”(Vergil 543-558). Thus, not only is Polites' death omitted in the Player's speech - Shakespeare hardly gives Priam any opportunity to defend himself or reason with his soon-to-be murderer.
It is particularly interesting that Priam's pathetic final appeal didn't make the cut. One could argue that Priam's last words make him seem even more pathetic. However, Shakespeare's hand-picked details emphasize Pyrrhus' bloodlust more than Priam's miserable end, and consequently, neither Pyrrhus nor Priam are humanized in the Player's speech. Pyrrhus is defined by his revenge while Priam might as well be a lamb yielding to its inevitable slaughter.
It is not long before Pyrrhus, like Hamlet at the end of his own bloodthirsty recitation, suddenly snaps out of this reverie. What follows is the first of several increasingly bombastic and referential lines that invokes several mythological figures by name:
But, as we often see, against some storm,
A silence in the heavens, the rack stand still,
The bold winds speechless and the orb below
As hush as death, anon the dreadful thunder
Doth rend the region, so, after Pyrrhus' pause,
Aroused vengeance sets him new a-work;
And never did the Cyclops' hammers fall
On Mars's armour forged for proof eterne
With less remorse than Pyrrhus' bleeding sword
Now falls on Priam. (Shakespeare II.ii.513-517)
Shakespeare adds this calm before the storm, possibly to add dramatic tension to the aforementioned delay. This pause is short-lived, as Pyrrhus smites Priam with seemingly superhuman fury. The loftiness of the language actually makes the blow felt rather than seen, especially when compared to the simple brutality of Vergil's account, which describes Pyrrhus burying his sword "far as the hilt in that defenceless heart (Vergil 551). In the Player's speech, there are no specific details concerning Priam's death. Pyrrhus "swings into action by way of an epic simile" (Levin 211), evoking the single-minded vengeance with which the Cyclops forged the tools of Kronos' destruction, yet the speech neglects to describe the actual moment that Pyrrhus achieves his goal.
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Out, out, thou strumpet, Fortune! All you gods,
In general synod, take away her power;
Break all the spokes and fellies from her wheel,
And bowl the round nave down the hill of heaven,
As low as to the fiends! (Shakespeare II.ii.518-522)
Priam's death is apparently so pathetic that the speech's narrator castigates Fortune and the fickle wheel that gives her power. Here, another source of inspiration emerges: the 13th century Carmina Burana - a collection of poems that would later inform Carl Orff's composition of the same name - which begins with two pieces about the goddess Fortune. One of these is appropriately named "Fortunae Plango Vulnera," or "Mourn the Blows of Fortune". These introductory poems describe how Fortune's wheel could lead one person "to achieve prosperity" just as easily as another could be "plunged into misery". However, Fortune's wheel was always turning, so while a king might "sit at the top," the anonymous speaker in Carmina Burana warns, "let him beware of ruin!" (Betts). Such was Priam's fate. Once the ruler of a prosperous kingdom, Priam is butchered like an animal before a silent pantheon of Gods.
This apostrophe, like the rest of this second movement, further illustrates Pyrrhus' depravity. Pyrrhus was no hero in the first movement of the speech, and as the First Player cries out to the Gods, it is clear that the audience is not meant to see Priam's death as honorable or just. In order to hammer this point home, Shakespeare shifts the focus away from Pyrrhus, first with this appeal to the Gods and then with the final movement, which turns the audience's attention to the bereaved Queen of Troy.
4) Hecuba: The Mobled Queen
'But who, O, who had seen the mobled queen [...]
Run barefoot up and down, threatening the flames
With bisson rheum; a clout upon that head
Where late the diadem stood, and for a robe,
About her lank and all o’erteemèd loins,
A blanket, in the alarm of fear caught up;
Who this had seen, with tongue in venom steep'd,
'Gainst Fortune's state would treason have
pronounced (Shakespeare II.ii.526-537)
Wearing only a blanket as a crude robe (Church), a crownless Hecuba stumbles through the burning wreckage of her city, striking such a pitiful figure that any witness with a heart would join the Player in cursing Fortune. The core sentiment is borrowed from the aforementioned poem "Fortunae Plango Vulnera", whose speaker had once "flourished, happy and blessed, but now has "fallen from the pinnacle, deprived of [his] glory". However, he should have seen this coming, for "under the axle we read, Queen Hecuba" (Betts). According to both Carmina Burana and Hamlet, Hecuba's plight is a textbook example of Fortune's cruelty.
.jpg) |
| "Derniere & miserable ruyne, bruslement & saccagement de Troye la grand, par les Grecs", or "Last and miserable ruin, abrupt & treacherous, of Troye the great, by the Greeks". Pyrrhus (left) takes Trojan women captive (center) |
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All three parts of the Player's speech, including Hamlet's opening section, are brought to a close in the following seven lines:
But if the gods themselves did see her then
When she saw Pyrrhus make malicious sport
In mincing with his sword her husband's limbs,
The instant burst of clamour that she made,
Unless things mortal move them not at all,
Would have made milch the burning eyes of heaven,
And passion in the gods. (Shakespeare II.ii.538-544)
As Queen Hecuba sees her husband hacked to pieces in front of her, she raises a cry so devastating that the Gods themselves - who had previously stood by as Trojan men, women, and children were butchered in the streets - would be moved to tears. Here, Shakespeare's draws from Ovid rather than Vergil. Harry Levin notes the similarity between the last two lines of the Player's speech and Ovid's description of Hecuba's fate in the Metamorphoses (Levin 208). Following even more tragic circumstances (most notably her enslavement and the murders of her daughters), Hecuba goes mad and begins howling like a dog. Ovid writes, "Her sad fate moved the Trojans and the Greeks, / her friends and foes, and all the heavenly gods" (Ovid XIII.572-575). This specific connection is extremely important for what happens next. If the thought of gods crying wasn't sad enough, the Player himself bursts into tears when he reaches the speech's emotional conclusion.
The speech ends here, but the Player's passionate performance sets Hamlet's revenge plot into motion, inspiring Hamlet to prove his uncle's guilt once and for all. His subsequent soliloquy (which ends the scene and act) demonstrates the speech's importance, not just as an catalyst for action, but also as a complex and emotionally resonant work of art.
5) The Play's the Thing
After Polonius, Rosencrantz, Guildenstern, and the players leave the hall, Hamlet launches into a lengthy monologue about what he has just witnessed and what he plans to do next. Curiously, he "does not, as we might expect, reflect on the significance for himself as revenger of either Pyrrhus or Hecuba" (Miller 9). Instead of identifying with Pyrrhus' ruthless requital or the multifaceted tragedy of Hecuba's loss2; Hamlet focuses instead on the Player's delivery. The baffled Hamlet remarks,
Is it not monstrous that this player here,
But in a fiction, in a dream of passion,
Could force his soul so to his own conceit
That from her working all his visage wann'd,
Tears in his eyes, distraction in's aspect,
A broken voice, and his whole function suiting
With forms to his conceit? and all for nothing!
For Hecuba!
What's Hecuba to him, or he to Hecuba,
That he should weep for her? (Shakespeare II.ii.577-587).
This is the first of several metafictional comments in Hamlet's soliloquy. A dramatic work was itself performed within a dramatic work - an actor playing an actor delivered a speech for Hamlet and for us. Through Hamlet, Shakespeare specifically uses the words "function" and "form" to describe how the speech transcends the bounds of fiction and speaks to something fundamentally human, though Hamlet does not understand how this is possible at this point in his monologue. How, he wonders, could an actor feel so strongly about a fictional character's plight? Moreover, "What would he do / Had he the motive and the cue for passion / That I have?" (II.ii.587-589).
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| Kenneth Branagh as Hamlet, after the Player's speech. |
Hamlet then uses this soliloquy as an opportunity to criticize his inability to conjure this same emotional intensity and apply it to something more useful, like avenging his father. Harry Levin observes that "the soliloquy is the mirror-opposite of the speech [...] where the speech leads from action to passion, the soliloquy reverses this direction" (Levin 213). We see this in Hamlet's rather self-centered and melodramatic reflection on his own life:
Why, what an ass am I! This is most brave,
That I, the son of a dear father murdered,
Prompted to my revenge by heaven and hell,
Must, like a whore, unpack my heart with words
And fall a-cursing like a very drab (Shakespeare II.ii.611-615)
Ironically, Hamlet scolds himself for giving too many soliloquies. All he has done thus far is talk. Since speaking to his father's ghost at the end of Act 1, he has made no tangible progress. It is at this moment that Hamlet, for the first time in the play, begins to channel his passions towards something productive. His self loathing, which has hitherto been vague and aimlessly nihilistic3, suddenly has a goal: to motivate Hamlet towards action.
About, my brains! Hum, I have heard
That guilty creatures sitting at a play
Have by the very cunning of the scene
Been struck so to the soul that presently
They have proclaim'd their malefactions;
For murder, though it have no tongue, will speak
With most miraculous organ. I'll have these players
Play something like the murder of my father
Before mine uncle: I'll observe his looks;
I'll tent him to the quick: if he but blench,
I know my course. (II.ii.617-627)
At long last: plot development. Just as the Player was overcome by a particularly potent piece of drama, Claudius will not be able to hide his guilt when faced with a similar performance, especially since it will be engineered to bring his crimes out into the open. Hamlet will hire these actors put on a play that is very similar to his father's murder. If Claudius reacts, Hamlet will have all the proof he needs to pursue his revenge plot further. "The play's the thing," Hamlet proclaims. "Wherein I'll catch the conscience of the king" (II.ii.633-6-34).
This scene does something special for its audience, which includes Hamlet and the readers/viewers of the play as a whole. Not only does it break the fourth wall by performing drama within drama; it also comments on the transformative power of art. Hamlet initially found it difficult to understand how an actor could be brought to tears by a fictional story. Thirty lines later, he made a tentative yet tangible first step towards fulfilling the promise that he made to his father.
6) Conclusion
When I first encountered this speech about 11 years ago, I was drawn to the sound and fury of its language. The violent passions of its characters came to life over the course of 70 vivid, occasionally grandiose lines of blank verse. Over the years, I have come to appreciate the rich literary and mythological backdrop onto which Shakespeare projects his own themes. The complex layers of meaning reveal themselves as one traces each idea to its source. Given the Bard's inclination towards adapting both history and mythology in his work, it should come as no surprise that Shakespeare cobbled together several different accounts as he wrote the Player's speech. This retelling of Priam's slaughter may not be wholly original, and its inclusion in Hamlet may continue to be controversial for centuries to come. Nonetheless, it endures as an example of Shakespeare's self-awareness as a playwright and his hopes as an artist. Hamlet initially uses the speech to gauge the actors' talents; we can do the same for the craftsman who put it all together.
Come, give us a taste of your quality. Come, a passionate speech.
Notes
1 A number of additional sources also describe how Pyrrhus murders an infant named Astyanax, who was the grandson of King Priam and the son of Hector, crown prince of Troy. In some, Pyrrhus hurls Astyanax off a tower or high wall, while in others, Pyrrhus stabs Astyanax with his sword and then proceeds to beat Priam to death with the child's corpse (Oakley). ↩2 It is not clear whether Hamlet makes a connection between the tragic figure of Hecuba and his own mother, and if he does, there is the question of how. According to Anthony Miller's essay "Mirrors of Revenge", Hamlet may see his mother as a similarly "hapless and incidental victim of revenge" or as a shamelessly re-married widow "whose grief for her murdered first husband has fallen scandalously short of Hecuba's" (Miller 8-9). I'm inclined towards the latter, as the former would show a degree of compassion that has been suspiciously absent from Hamlet's soliloquies thus far.
Let's look at the math. In his first major monologue, Hamlet spends a total of 15 lines (I.ii.147-162) criticizing his mother's infidelity, claiming, among other things, that
Ere yet the salt of most unrighteous tears
Had left the flushing in her galled eyes,
She married. O, most wicked speed, to post
With such dexterity to incestuous sheets! (I.ii.159-162)
Hamlet associates the crime of incest with Queen Gertrude and not Claudius. At this point in the play (i.e. before Hamlet learns that his father was murdered by Claudius), Hamlet does not mention that Claudius betrayed his brother by marrying Gertrude, but he is very specific about Gertrude betraying her husband by marrying Claudius. In fact, he only has about four lines that target Claudius, and they only really serve to describe Claudius' inferiority compared to the late King Hamlet, "no more like my father than I to Hercules" (I.ii.157-158). Then, in the final scene of Act 1, Hamlet ignores his ghostly father's command to "taint not thy mind, nor let thy soul contrive / against thy mother aught" (I.v.92-93). Fewer than 20 lines later, Hamlet refers to his mother as a "most pernicious woman" (112). Thus, as meaningful as it might be for Hamlet consider his mother's loss of her first husband and the potential horrors that she may have to endure if Hamlet kills Claudius, there is little to no evidence in Hamlet's subsequent lines that he was thinking of his mother at all. ↩
3 Up until this scene, Hamlet has criticized his mother and uncle for their incestuous marriage without much purpose. The only tangible goal that he has entertained so far has been suicide, as seen in Act 1 Scene 2:
O, that this too too solid flesh would melt
Thaw and resolve itself into a dew!
Or that the Everlasting had not fix'd
His canon 'gainst self-slaughter! O God! God!
How weary, stale, flat and unprofitable,
Seem to me all the uses of this world!
Fie on't! ah fie! 'tis an unweeded garden,
That grows to seed; things rank and gross in nature
Possess it merely.
Hamlet opens that soliloquy by wondering aloud why God has made suicide a sin. The remainder of the speech focuses entirely on his mother and uncle, leading the audience to believe that his existential anguish stems from his inability to do anything about this matter. Even after he learns the truth about Claudius from his father's ghost the end of Act 1, Hamlet's pledge to the dead king is fairly vague:
Yea, from the table of my memory
I’ll wipe away all trivial, fond records,
All saws of books, all forms, all pressures past,
That youth and observation copied there,
And thy commandment all alone shall live
Within the book and volume of my brain,
Unmixed with baser matter. Yes, by heaven! (Shakespeare I.v.105-111)
Hamlet may swear that he will live only for revenge, but until he hears the Player's speech, he has absolutely no sense of direction. His only plan is "To put an antic disposition on," (I.v. 192) until he can figure out what to do next. ↩
Works Cited
"Allusion." Encyclopedia Brittanica, https://www.britannica.com/art/allusion. Accessed 23 May 2018.Betts, Gavin. "The Carmina Burana of Carl Orlaff." Complete Latin (Teach Yourself Books). Hodder and Stoughton, London, and McGraw Hill, New York, fourth edition 2010, http://tylatin.org/extras/index.html. Accessed 23 June 2018.
Bradley, A.C. "Note F: The Player's Speech in Hamlet." Shakespearean Tragedy: Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth.
2nd ed. London: Macmillan, 1905, pp. 413-419, http://www.shakespeare-navigators.com/bradley/tr413.html#note. Accessed 25 May 2018.
Church, Samuel Harden. "'The Mobled Queen.' Samuel Harden Church Defends Line in Hamlet as Genuine." Letter. The New York Times, 22 Sept. 1913.
https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1913/09/22/100406045.pdf. Accessed 19 Feb. 2018.
Colderidge, Samuel Taylor. "Notes on Hamlet." Coleridge's Lectures on Shakespeare and Other Poets and Dramatists. Edited by Ernest Rhys. Everyman's Library, 1914, pp.135-149, http://library.umac.mo/ebooks/b32318819.pdf. Accessed 25 May 2018.
Levin, Harry. "An Explication of the Player's Speech." Hamlet, edited by Cyrus Hoy. 2nd ed., W. W. Norton & Company, 1992, pp. 207-216.
Miller, Anthony. "Hamlet, II.ii - III.iv: Mirrors of Revenge." Sydney Studies in English, vol 11, 1985, pp 3-22. https://openjournals.library.sydney.edu.au/index.php/SSE/article/view/412/382. Accessed 25 May 2018.
Oakley, Howard. "Infanticide: Astyanax and Making of Myth." The Eclectic Light Company, 15 Feb 2017. https://eclecticlight.co/2017/02/05/infanticide-astyanax-and-making-of-myth/. Accessed 25 May 2018.
Ovid. Metamorphoses. Brookes More. Boston. Cornhill Publishing Co. 1922, http://data.perseus.org/citations/urn:cts:latinLit:phi0959.phi006.perseus-eng1:13.494-13.575. Accessed 23 June 2018.
Shakespeare, William. The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark. Edited by Barabara A. Mowat and Paul Werstine, Folger Shakespeare Library. http://www.folgerdigitaltexts.org/download/pdf/Ham.pdf.
Vergil. Aeneid. Theodore C. Williams. trans. Boston. Houghton Mifflin Co. 1910, http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=urn:cts:latinLit:phi0690.phi003.perseus-eng2:2.469-2.505. Accessed 25 May 2018.