Hamlet #5

This is one of the most important—and overlooked—moments in the Hamlet play.

There are many verses in the Bible that relate to mourning the dead.

This is the one verse I find most interesting:

To all things there is an appointed time, and a time to every purpose under the heaven. A time to be born, and a time to die: a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted. A time to slay, and a time to heal: a time to break down, and a time to build. A time to weep, and a time to laugh: a time to mourn, and a time to dance.

Ecclesiastes 3:1-4

GNV

So, every single thing has its own time. While there should be a time to mourn, there is no definitive time limit. And there is no suggestion that mourning can be impious.

With this moment in the play, Shakespeare is referring to the argument between Catholics, with their funeral rites and traditions, and Protestants during the Reformation, who were rejecting such rites and traditions.

English Protestant reformers, like Thomas Cromwell, Thomas Cranmer, and William Cecil, sought to leave such remove such rituals on the grounds that they were superstitious, and not biblical. There was a question whether such mourning would undermine salvation, and God’s providence.

The events of Hamlet’s story belong somewhere in the 12th, 13th, or 14th century—when Denmark was a Catholic nation.

Claudius says that this mourning is not only wrong, but that it is impious. To Claudius, it is sinful, it is blasphemous.

With these few lines, Claudius is establishing the fact that he is the strictest of Protestant Reformers—when the Reformation did not reach Denmark until the early 16th century.

In this moment in the play, Shakespeare is alerting the audience that the play is not meant to be historically accurate. He is declaring that his play has a different purpose. He has a message that he intends to deliver—and naturally, the message has to do with religion, first and foremost.

The Reformation began in Denmark during the reign of King Christian III. He was inspired by Martin Luther, who advised Christians to mourn in moderation. Luther did not say that it is impious or blasphemous to mourn excessively.

King Claudius is more hardline than Luther and King Christian.

Why?

At first, his advice to Hamlet seems sound and wise. But we later learn that Claudius has murdered his own brother, married his sister-in-law, and stolen the crown from Prince Hamlet.

Shakespeare wanted to demonstrate to us that Claudius is the worst of hypocrites. Claudius is the last person who should preach to anyone. And there is a moral that Shakespeare wants us to learn—that holier-than-thou people might very well be the worst of sinners.

Also, there was one man in Shakespeare’s lifetime who was another holier-than-thou hypocrite. Shakespeare even knew the man well, and was often in his company. He was the most powerful man in England for many of the same years that Shakespeare was performing for Queen Elizabeth at court.

Even Grok knows who I mean. I asked Grok this question: “Which men in the governments of the monarchs of England believed or wrote about how it is impious or even blasphemous to mourn the dead for a long time?”

Grok listed Thomas Cromwell, Thomas Cranmer, and William Cecil. But it is only Cecil who lived at the same time that Shakespeare was working as a playwright in London. It was Cecil who enforced Protestantism as the state religion.

If there was anyone whom Shakespeare could have overheard saying that mourning is “impious” it would have been Cecil.

In this very early moment in the play, Shakespeare is striking a blow at Cecil, and the corrosive effect that he had on the Church in England in the late 16th century.

It was not the first time nor the last time that he would attack Cecil. They were bitter enemies.

Shakespeare wrote the Hamlet play in 1601, about 3 years after Cecil died.

Shakespeare is attacking the kind of stinginess of spirit and hard-heartedness that Cecil represented, when it came to mourning the dead.

Shakespeare did not want England to be a nation where people were discouraged from mourning their loved ones.

Shakespeare knew that the power that he had as a playwright, writing his very best play, could very well undo all of the damage that Cecil had done.