Hamlet Solved #1

This is the first entry in a series about how Shakespeare uses Scripture in his Hamlet play.

I am indebted to Naseeb Shaheen for his masterful work, “Biblical References in Shakespeare’s Plays”, which I am using as a springboard for my insights. He is very perceptive about which biblical verses Shakespeare used in his plays, but it is my intention to reveal why Shakespeare used them in the first place.

Shakespeare uses the word "mote"—to refer to the ghost of King Hamlet.

His use of such a rare word in Scripture is a message:

Following Luke 6.42, Shakespeare is announcing that his purpose for the whole play is to pull the mote out of the eye of Queen Elizabeth, for whom the play was written, in 1601.

Following Matthew 7.3, Shakespeare is accusing the Queen of being a hypocrite, who has a beam in her own eye.

Luke 6.42 “42 Either how canst thou say to thy brother, Brother, let me pull out the mote that is in thine eye, when thou seest not the beam that is in thine own eye? Hypocrite, cast out the beam out of thine own eye first, and then shalt thou see perfectly to pull out the mote that is in thy brother’s eye.”

Matt 7.3 “And why seest thou the mote, that is in thy brother’s eye, and perceivest not the beam that is in thine own eye?”

GNV