Hamlet Sentinels & "A House Divided"

QUESTION: Why would Shakespeare - at a time of English succession and tension between Jesuits & the throne AND other Catholics - write a play that begins with two sentinel named after monastic-movement founders, arguing over who’s in charge at the change (succession) of the watch?

Some scholars would like for us to think that only certain names in Shakespeare are meaningful and more deserving of our attention, perhaps when they point to, say, classical texts (especially if that’s an area of the particular scholar’s interest), but probably meaningless in other cases:

“Oh, Francis and Bernard were just common names, no particular meanings in those names at all….” This is what we sometimes read from authoritative scholarly texts regarding the names of the sentinels.

But Julia Kristeva and other champions of intertextuality might remind us that each occurrence of a word is related to every other occurrence of that word (and perhaps especially those that precede it).

In Christian England, many persons named Hamnet, Francis, and Bernard may have simply been named after a family friend, neighbor, or relative. But even those had earlier namesakes, and the church has often preferred for infants to take baptismal names of saints.

In the cases of Francisco and Bernardo, they ultimately lead back to a saint (Francis) who founded a monastic movement with a presence in England before the dissolution of the monasteries, and another who reformed a monastic movment (Bernard, who reformed the Cistercian order).

At the time, since there were penalties against recusant Catholics, suspicions of treason, and arguments between Rome and English Catholics about who was in charge, Shakespeare could not write a play about tensions and disagreements between Jesuits and other local Catholics, disagreeing about who was to be in charge of English Catholics, and expect it to be performed. But those disagreements were real around the time Shakespeare wrote or revised Hamlet.

He could not write about those things, but he could write about sentinels named after Francis of Assisi and Bernard of Clairvaux, saints whose lives held some stark contrasts; and he could let these sentinels disagree about who was in charge at the changing of the watch.

So maybe Shakespeare's Hamlet is not only about a question of succession for kings - should a son or a brother replace a dead king? - but also hints at other disagreements about successions of power as well, including those about religious authority?

OLD RESEARCH, NEWLY PONDERED:
Starting in 2017 and continuing into early 2018 (as long-followers of my blog know), I was researching (and yes, seemingly obsessed with) the names of Francisco and Bernardo, the two sentinels in Hamlet.

These names correspond not only with Francis of Assisi and Bernard of Clairvaux, but also with two assassins who were as famous still in Shakespeare's time as John Wilkes Booth is still famous in our own time for the assassination of Abraham Lincoln.

In spite of the dissolution of monasteries (1536-41), Francis of Assisi and Bernard of Clairvaux were still associated in most minds of the time with monastic movements that previously had a strong presence in England, with some of these monasteries relatively close to Shakespeare's birthplace in Stratford on Avon. Some of the youngest monks from those monasteries were probably still alive and living nearby, if they had not refused to take oaths of allegiance and been executed.

Regarding the assassins, Shakespeare was born 86 years after the Pazzi Conspiracy, which unfolded in a cathedral in Florence: Assassins attempted to kill brothers Lorenzo and Giuliano de’ Medici, a banking family. They were successful in killing Giuliano, but Lorenzo escaped, though wounded. This was a scandal that shocked all of Europe, in part because it reached as high as (and had the approval of) the pope at the time.

I was born about the same number of years after the Lincoln assassination as Shakespeare was born after the Pazzi conspiracy, and in grade school, wrote a report about it. Cultures and media technology have changed quite a bit, but there's a strong chance that the Pazzi Conspiracy was as well-remembered in England in Shakespeare's lifetime as the Lincoln assassination is still remembered today.

The Pazzi assassins were named Bernardo and Francesco, and the pope at the time, Pope Sixtus IV, was involved. Sixtus had been born Francesco della Rovere, and before becoming a pope, had been a Franciscan. So the involvement of two assassins named after Francis and Bernard, and a pope named after Francis in particular, seems to illustrate vividly how corrupt certain elements in the Catholic church had become, especially to violate the namesake of Francis, a man of peace. 

C. Elliot Brown noted in 1876 that the names of the sentinels in Hamlet are the same as those of the Pazzi assassins, and in a 1995 book called Apocalypse and Armada, Frank Ardolino shows that Thomas Kyd’s play, The Spanish Tragedy—the best-known English revenge tragedy before Hamlet—contained allusions to the Pazzi conspiracy. Ardolino makes a strong case, and it's hard not to consider that Hamlet, written or revised shortly thereafter, contains similar allusions in the sentinel names.

In my 2017-2018 research, I found many possible connections between events in the lives of the two saints and Hamlet. I also thought about the contrast between the saints, Bernard having preached a Crusade, and Francis having met in peace with the Sultan of Egypt during a later Crusade.

But it felt as if perhaps I was missing something.


[Image: The British Museum: Hamlet and Ophelia, Act III, Sc i. By Dante Gabriel Rossetti. Museum number 1910, 1210.8. Drawn in 1858, the same year that Abraham Lincoln accepted the nomination for president with his "House Divided" speech.]

A HOUSE DIVIDED
I was revisiting some of my old research this week while the US and the world has witnessed protests and uprisings in the name of civil rights and Black Lives Matter after the death of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis Police.

When he accepted the Republican nomination for President in 1858, Abraham Lincoln quoted the Bible:

"'A house divided against itself, cannot stand.' I believe this government cannot endure permanently half slave and half free."

Mark 3:25, the gospel passage Lincoln quotes, was an observation made by Jesus after casting out a demon. Some of the religious authorities who opposed Jesus claimed that only by the power of devils can can one cast out demons, suggesting the healings and exorcisms performed by Jesus were done by the power of the devil.

Jesus responded with a question: How Satan could Satan drive out Satan? By using this passage, Lincoln suggests that slavery is an evil, like a demon that must be cast out.


[Image: Abraham Lincoln in the year of his "House Divided" speech. Wikipedia, Public Domain, File:Abraham Lincoln by Byers, 1858 - crop.jpg]

This came to be known as Lincoln's "House Divided" speech.

And recall that in Hamlet Act 4, scene 5, Claudius observes,

...poor Ophelia
Divided from herself and her fair judgment,
Without the which we are pictures, or mere beasts

It seems that the United States is again a house divided, this time with a majority recognizing the systemic injustices represented by the killing of George Floyd, while a powerful minority deny them (such as Trump and the GOP Senate majority, which hold their seats largely due to gerrymandering, an unjust practice practiced by both major parties but increasingly by the GOP and upheld by the conservative Supreme Court).

The United States, before the Civil War, was similarly divided, with a majority of northern states (with a larger population of voters) opposed to slavery, and slaves in the south who wanted their freedom and equal citizenship, but who were not allowed to vote because of the color of their skin. These together - the population of northern states, plus slaves in the south who sought their freedom - by far outnumbered the white southern population still clinging to the institution of slavery, but taking legal refuge in by old compromise clauses in the US Constitution that guaranteed the rights to own slaves.

This tyranny of a minority in pre-Civil War USA might be said to resemble a religious tyranny of a Protestant minority in England, when Henry VIII broke from Rome essentially to obtain a divorce from his first wife and the ability to marry his mistress; most of England was still Catholic, especially in the north, while Protestant sympathies were on the rise especially in London. It's an imperfect analogy, however, because Catholicism was sometimes oppressive in its own ways and certainly in need of, and resistant to, reform at the time.

SHAKESPEARE'S ENGLAND DIVIDED
The religious divisions in England were still present in Shakespeare's England as Elizabeth approached the end of her life, the time during which Shakespeare seems to have written (or revised from an earlier play) Hamlet: There were Protestants following the English church; Roman Catholics often outwardly conforming but secretly practicing their Catholic faith with the help of disguised and hidden priests; Catholics who were recusants, who refused to attend English church services and/or to take communion in the English church; many other religious factions (including Puritans), as well as some Jews and Muslims, and other varieties of religious opinion, as well as freethinkers and atheists who usually had to keep their opinions to themselves to avoid trouble. (There were also "Goodfellows" who enjoyed their cakes and ale, but had little interest in religious matters; see Shakespeare's Tribe, by Jeffrey Knapp.)

The division between English church Protestants and Catholics was especially strong, in part because the pope had excommunicated Elizabeth I after the Revolt of the Northern Earls in 1569 and Elizabeth's harsh crackdown afterwards, as well as the effects of the Spanish Armada and fear of another invasion. Many English Catholics hoped to be loyal to the crown, but also loyal to their Catholic faith; yet Catholicism was viewed as a threat by Elizabeth and many in her administration, in spite of their toleration of many known Catholics among the upper classes.

Protestants spoke as if Catholicism was an evil that must be rejected, cast out; Catholics spoke of Protestant heresy in similar terms.

DIVIDE & CONQUER
A strategy attributed to Julius Caesar, "Divide and Conquer," seems to have also been the strategy of England against Catholics as Elizabeth I was approaching the end of her life, and some still viewed the prospect of a Catholic succeeding to the English throne as a threat. In the late 1500s, George Blackwell was made by Rome the archpriest of England, with authority over secular clergy (not members of religious orders such as the Franciscans, Cistercians, or Jesuits), and at first, was encouraged to coordinate also with the Jesuits, who saw themselves as having a very assertive role in re-evangelizing England and converting its people back to the Roman Catholic faith.

Many members of the secular clergy and laity were opposed to Jesuit meddling: They wanted to be faithful to the crown while remaining Catholic. Yet others opposed particular oaths of allegiance required by the crown, claiming they were impossible for Catholics to take in good faith. (Jesuits became associated with an art of equivocation when taking these oaths, which the porter jokes about in Macbeth.)

David Kaula’s book, Shakespeare and the Archpriest Controversy (Mouton 1975), notes that Robert Cecil and Elizabeth encouraged a pamplet war between the Jesuits and the seculars regarding the Archpriest Controversy, in an effort to divide and conquer the Catholic opposition and solidify their choice of James VI of Scotland as Elizabeth's successor. (I blogged about this in March of 2019.)

REVERSE-ENGINEERING THE QUESTION
As I thought recently about Francisco and Bernardo, the sentinels who argue briefly about succession - about who is in charge of the watch - as well as of the saints, assassins and Archpriest controversy, I thought more about the contrast between St. Francis and St. Bernard.

Given that English Catholics were divided against one another, some counseling accommodation to the crown, and others willing to risk martyrdom to convert Protestants and the crown to the Catholic faith, I began to think of the problem backwards, sort of like reverse-engineering:

What if we start with the Archpriest controversy and ask if there is evidence of any nod toward it in the play? Is there anything in Hamlet that represents or hints at the kind of Catholic house-divided represented by the Archpriest Controversy?

And of course, the answer is Francisco and Bernardo's namesakes, St. Francis and St. Bernard. Bernard preached in favor of fighting a crusade, while Francisco met with the enemy leader, the Sultan of Egypt, to try to speak of peace. In the play, Francico (whose namesake was born later) ends his watch sick at heart, while Bernardo takes over the watch and speaks of assailing the ears of Horatio, who is like a doubting Thomas, skeptical about ghosts. At the opening of the play and its first scene, Francisco is technically still in charge of the watch, and Bernardo speaks out of turn, asking Francisco, "Who's there?" when it is Francisco who should ask, and Bernardo who should perhaps give a password.

St. Bernard of Clairvaux, by preaching a crusade, a war against Muslims, perhaps spoke out of turn, violating the teachings of Jesus about reconciliation and love of enemies. This is not unrelated to the themes of the play, given that the ghost (claiming to be in purgatory, but perhaps a demon in disguise) asks the prince to revenge his death, when love of enemies might require something other than revenge.

But what about justice? If Hamlet does not avenge his father's death, the usurping murderer, Claudius, would go free, unpunished, and sitting on Denmark's throne. Jesus taught love of enemy, but in the beatitudes, he also said they are blessed who hunger for justice and righteousness. In the Magnificat, (Luke 1:46-55), Mary observes,

46 . . . My soul magnifieth the Lord,
47 And my spirit rejoiceth in God my Savior. [...]
51 He that showed strength with his arm: he hath scattered the proud in the imagination of their hearts.
52 He hath put down the mighty from their seats, and exalted them of low degree.
53 He hath filled the hungry with good things, and sent away the rich empty.
(1599 Geneva translation, modernized spelling)

Does this God never use revolutions, or an avenging prince, to accomplish justice and overturn the rule of the unjust?

WHO IS THE STRONGER, OR BETTER, CHRISTIAN?
Who was the more passionate Christian? Francis, who loved his enemies as Jesus preached to do? Or Bernard, whose moral view was perhaps corrupted, but who was willing to preach violence for his faith?

Does this make Bernard perhaps more a slave to passion, as Hamlet says, lacking key Christian virtues? More sinful, more conforming to the sinful and worldly concerns?

What about Francis, willing to meet with the enemy leader? Was he being too weak, too accommodating, to meet with and listen to an enemy?

(Sadly, this sounds too similar to Trump and certain conservatives in the US who call conciliatory mayors and governors "weak" and insist first on restoring "order" to cities and putting down violence before being willing to listen to the concerns of protesters. Yet many of those who have been violent have been white provocateurs, white-supremacist Boogaloo boys (three recently arrested), and predominantly white cops; why refuse to listen to the peaceful protesters, who have not been violent, unless your real motive is to resist change?)

And similarly, we might ask, what of the Archpriest Controversy? Who was in the right? The Catholics who wished to be loyal both to the crown and to their Roman Catholic faith? Were they the real peacemakers, embodying the love of Jesus that welcomes the stranger and loves the enemy?

Or were they too timid, while the Jesuits were among the courageous heroes on the scene, willing to debate the English church authorities with the goal of turning more citizens and officials back to the Roman Catholicism that England had lost?

If there is one true faith (which the Roman Catholics claimed was theirs), how could there be such stark contrast between their saints? This is the case not only with Bernard of Clairvaux and Francis of Assisi (who never met, Bernard having died before Francis was born), but also of men who sometimes argued and knew each other, such as the older hermit, Jerome, who translated the Bible into Latin, and the younger bishop, Augustine, who argued strongly over divergent interpretations of biblical passages, but who both became saints. It's also true of Pope Gregory XI and Catherine of Siena; she criticized the corruptions of the Avignon papacy and in a famous letter, challenged Gregory to be a man ("man up") and lance the infected boils (analogy) sickening the church.

Arguments over the succession of monarchs, and over religious authority: How do we decide who is right, or whose view is best?

I don't have any final answers to these questions, but raise them because people at the time certainly felt passionately about their own positions, and that may have been reflected in how Shakespeare wrote the play.

Shakespeare himself may have left us a hint of his own opinion in a line from Portia in The Merchant of Venice: "earthly power doth then show likest God's when mercy seasons judgment." This certainly plays out in Hamlet, when the prince apologizes to Laertes, they duel, but after both are poisoned, they reconcile, and Hamlet gives the keys to the kingdom to the son of his father's enemy, Fortinbras. The proud, corrupt and scheming liar, Claudius, is brought down, and the lowly son orphaned by King Hamlet is raised up, problematic and ambiguous, yes, but perhaps in its own way, fulfilling the formula in Mary's Magnificat, and nodding toward the ascension of James to the throne, another orphaned prince whose mother was killed by a monarch, in this case executed under orders from Elizabeth I.

If we take Hamlet as Shakespeare's only advice for our own moment in history, it seems to say that the prince who would reform Denmark is badly in need of reform himself, and makes mistakes that cost many lives. Reconciliation in the light of past mistakes is essential. Mercy should season justice. But perhaps there are some corrupt and unrepentant kings who deserve to die for the deaths they have caused, are causing, and may continue to cause?

After all, isn't Hamlet about the assassination of an assasin-king by a prince who was, or who becomes in the course of the play, more like a rightful king?

Thinking about the US as a "house divided," and imagining England as a similarly divided nation, has helped me imagine what Shakespeare may have had in mind when naming one sentinel after peaceful St. Francis, and another after Crusade-preaching Bernard (and both after assassins as well). Citizens in the US now seem to be coming to a heightened awareness of our deep corruptions, and perhaps people in Shakespeare's time had a similarly heightened awareness of corruptions in the English and Roman churches, and in the English political system.

What do you think?

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BELOW IS A LIST of previous blog posts (many of them quite brief) about Francisco & Bernardo, the Pazzi Conspiracy, and the Archpriest Controversy, in case you might find them helpful. They are definitely not the last word on such topics, but a way of recording some of my own speculations. See what you think:

ARCHPRIEST CONTROVERSY (book by David Kaula):
https://pauladrianfried.blogspot.com/2019/03/hamlet-and-archpriest-controversy.html
5 March, 2019

PAZZI CONSPIRACY - possible allusion noted by C. Elliot Browne in 1876 in the names of Francisco & Bernardo
https://pauladrianfried.blogspot.com/2017/05/c-elliot-browne-wrote-in-1876-that.html
1 May, 2017

SCOURGE AND MINISTER: BERNARD AND FRANCIS https://pauladrianfried.blogspot.com/2018/03/scourge-minister-bernard-francis.html
- March 26, 2018

MIGHT ART LOST IN DISSOLVED MONASTERIES HAVE HELPED CONNECT HAMLET'S FRANCISCO & BERNARDO TO THE SAINTS?
https://pauladrianfried.blogspot.com/2017/04/might-lost-art-in-dissolved-monasteries.html
- April 03, 2017

FATHER ISSUES FOR HAMLET & FRANCISCO
https://pauladrianfried.blogspot.com/2019/01/shakespeares-hamlet-has-father-issues.html
- April 10, 2017

TOP SIX REASONS Shakespeare probably named sentinel Francisco after Francis of Assisi
https://pauladrianfried.blogspot.com/2017/04/top-six-reasons-shakespeare-probably.html
- April 17, 2017

Four Approaches to Francisco & Bernardo in Hamlet
https://pauladrianfried.blogspot.com/2017/04/four-approaches-to-names-of-sentinels.html
- April 24, 2017

MELANCHOLY: LOST DELIGHT IN HAMLET & FRANCIS OF ASSISI
https://pauladrianfried.blogspot.com/2017/07/melancholy-lost-delight-hamlet-francis.html
- July 17, 2017

How Geographical Memory May Have Encouraged the Naming of Two Characters in Hamlet
https://pauladrianfried.blogspot.com/2017/07/how-geographical-memory-may-have.html
- July 24, 2017

SHAKESPEARE'S HAMLET FINDS A FATHER IN PROVIDENCE (not RI)
https://pauladrianfried.blogspot.com/2017/11/shakespeares-hamlet-finds-father-in.html
- November 20, 2017

WHAT DO FRANCISCO & BERNARDO HAVE TO DO WITH SHAKESPEARE & THE BIBLE?
https://pauladrianfried.blogspot.com/2017/12/what-do-francisco-bernardo-have-to-do.html
- December 03, 2017

BERNARDO TALES: LAERTES & HAMLET RECONCILE, as do BERNARD OF CLAIRVAUX & PETER ABELARD
https://pauladrianfried.blogspot.com/2017/12/bernardo-abelard-hamlet-laertes-reconcile.html
- December 04, 2017

CORRUPTED REFORMERS: WHY SOMEONE NAMED AFTER BERNARD OF CLAIRVAUX MIGHT BE FIRST TO SPEAK IN SHAKESPEARE’S HAMLET
https://pauladrianfried.blogspot.com/2019/01/corrupted-reformers-why-someone-named.html
- January 01, 2018

SCOURGE AND MINISTER: BERNARD AND FRANCIS
https://pauladrianfried.blogspot.com/2018/03/scourge-minister-bernard-francis.html
- March 26, 2018
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Disclaimer: By noting bible passages in many of my blog posts, I do not intend to promote any religion over any other, nor am I attempting to promote religious belief in general; only to point out how the Bible may have influenced Shakespeare, his plays, and his age.
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Thanks for reading!
My current project is a book tentatively titled Hamlet’s Bible, about biblical allusions and plot echoes in Hamlet.

Below is a link to a list of some of my top posts (“greatest hits”), including a description of my book project (last item on the list):

https://pauladrianfried.blogspot.com/2019/12/top-20-hamlet-bible-posts.html

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