"They know not what they do": Hamlet as Crucifier in Gertrude's Closet

In Act 3, scene 4, Hamlet kills Polonius behind the arras, thinking he is stabbing Claudius. This exchange follows (emphasis mine):

Polonius:
[Behind the arras] Oh, I am slain!
Queen:
Oh, me, what hast thou done?
Hamlet:
Nay I know not. Is it the King?
3.4.2405-2407

For English audiences in Shakespeare's lifetime, required to attend church each Sunday and on Holy Days, the combination of Gertrude's question about what Hamlet has done, followed by Hamlet's reply, "I know not," may have sounded quite familiar. If there is any Biblical passage those audiences would have found echoed in the exchange, it would have been from the Gospel of Luke (23:34), with this passage included in a larger section from Luke chapter 23, read every year on Holy Thursday (emphasis mine):

"Then said Jesus, Father, forgive them: for they know not what they do."

["The Crucifixion" - 1616 (the year of Shakespeare's death), by Pieter Lastman, oil on canvas. Museum Rembrandthuis, Amsterdam.]

They know not what they do, says Jesus.

Gertrude: ...what hast thou done?
Hamlet: ...I know not.

I know not what I've done, says Hamlet.

HAMLET AS CRUCIFIER
If we accept that this is most probably a biblical allusion in a play that contains so many of them (perhaps more than any other Shakespeare play), then we need to admit that this allusion to Luke 23:34 places Hamlet among the crucifiers, at least at this moment of the play.

SHAKESPEARE'S ALLUSIVE PRACTICE
This doesn't mean Polonius is a Christ-figure. He's actually a bit of a meddling, spying fool, in Hamlet's mind. It seems that Shakespeare might set up a character to appear at first glace to be a Christ-figure, only to change analogies, like the ghost in 1.1 and 1.4-5, only to show us that he's a sinner in purgatory or a demon in disguise. Shakespeare's allusive practice seems to show he's willing to take up this or that allusion or analogy, only to discard it shortly, or replace it with some other. That forces us to be somewhat flexible - or transcendental - in our experience of the play. 

LARGER CONTEXTS
Later in the same scene, Hamlet makes some important observations about having killed Polonius. First, after moving the arras to discover who it was he stabbed blindly (quoted below from the First Folio, 3.4.2413-15), he says,

"Thou wretched, rash, intruding fool, farewell!
I took thee for thy betters. Take thy fortune.
Thou find'st to be too busy is some danger."

Hamlet had assumed he was stabbing Claudius, so he observes here that it's because Polonius was a "rash, intruding fool" and "too busy" that he was discovered after crying out, and stabbed. Shakespeare the playwright seems to want to direct the audience to believe the death of Polonius was at least in part his own fault.

Later in this scene (still 3.4), after scolding his mother for her sins (perhaps to help save her from a fate in purgatory that his father seems to have received), and after the ghost appears to Hamlet but not to Gertrude, Hamlet makes a quite loaded statement about his having killed Polonius by mistake. We find this at 3.4.2546-55 (emphasis mine):

Once more good night,
And when you are desirous to be blest,
I'll blessing beg of you. For this same lord,
I do repent; but heaven hath pleased it so
To punish me with this, and this with me,
That I must be their scourge and minister.
I will bestow him and will answer well
The death I gave him. So, again, good night.
I must be cruel only to be kind.
Thus bad begins, and worse remains behind.

So let's note some things about the parts of Hamlet's statement here:

1. Hamlet says he "repents" of having killed Polonius. This means he recognizes that he has made a mistake and means to avoid similar mistakes in the future, but it could be argued that he will make a similar mistake in sending Rosencrantz and Guildenstern to their deaths.

2. Hamlet says he believes that heaven is pleased to punish him with having killed Polonius. This is a strange faith that comes perhaps from having had a very strict and punishing father (now the ghost, who wants Hamlet to risk his own life in avenging the father's death).

3. Hamlet says heaven is also pleased to have punished Polonius for his sins (being a rash, intruding fool, being too busy interfering in dangerous matters of others), and that Hamlet believes heaven used Hamlet to deliver this punishment to Polonius through Hamlet's mistaking him for Claudius behind the arras. This is a strangely confident claim of Hamlet's faith, to say he believes heaven used Hamlet's mistake to punish Polonius. But let's recall that Hamlet has spoken with an apparition, either a ghost from beyond the grave, or a demon in disguise, so he is ready to believe supernatural forces are involved in his life in these ways.

4. Hamlet says heaven has made him heaven's "scourge and minister." Many scholars have pondered the meaning and significance of these words. In short, a "scourge" in the Bible was sometimes a name for a foreign leader whose violent actions against Israel seemed to have been used by God to punish Israel for their sins. "Scourge" can also be a word describing how Jesus was whipped, given 40 lashes. "Minister" might indicate that Hamlet believes he is God's minister of justice, to set right what is rotten (as Marcellus says in 1.1) and out of joint in Denmark (as Hamlet says in 1.5), but a minister can also be one who attends a sick person, as Hamlet believes he must minister to a sick nation by removing the infection or "canker of our nature" (5.2) which is Claudius.

The idea of ministering to a sick body by lancing or removing a canker is also an analogy famously used by St. Catherine of Siena (1347-1380) in her letters to Pope Gregory XI, where she admonished him to reform the church and move the papacy from Avignon back to Rome. In one such letter, she appealed to his manhood, asking him to be brave and a "manly man," and wrote in part,

"When the boil has come to a head it must be cut with the lance and burned with fire and if that is not done, and only a plaster is put on it the corruption will spread and that is often worse than death."

We might note that, like Hamlet, some people in the 1300s and today would consider Catherine to have been mad, crazy, suffering lunacy rather than being under divine influence.

5. Hamlet says, "I must be cruel only to be kind. / Thus bad begins, and worse remains behind." By this he means, he must seem cruel to his mother to scold her about repenting of her sins, but this is a kindness to save her later from the pains of hell or purgatory. Similarly, Catherine of Siena seems to have been saying to the Pope that he must be cruel in lancing the boil of corruption to save the patient, the church.

Hamlet might also be saying that he believes he must do things for the future of Denmark that may seem cruel, but that these actions are in fact (in his mind) a form of kindness that may save Denmark future grief.

It is important to note that, so soon after making the mistake of killing Polonius, Hamlet quickly places that action in an intriguing context of his faith in God and his faith in his role as God's "scourge and minister."

LUKE 23:34
Next, we might turn our attention to Luke 23:34: Interestingly, this biblical verse alluded to by Shakespeare, on the lips of Gertrude and Hamlet, also takes the idea of sinners not knowing what they are doing and places it in the context of grace and forgiveness: Jesus asks his father in heaven to forgive those who crucified him, demonstrating the lengths to which divine grace will go, forgiving even killers, even killers of prophets or of a Son of God.

We know that Hamlet will later embark on a sea-voyage to England and away from Denmark where destiny lies, a journey that I've compared to Jonah's sea-voyage; although Jonah is running from God's call for him to prophesy, and although Hamlet is a murderer, they both later believe they are recipients of forgiveness and grace: Jonah, swallowed by a fish and spit back up alive to live and go do the will of God, and Hamlet, swallowed by a pirate ship, but spared by the "thieves of mercy" so that he can go back to Denmark and finish whatever he must do (rough-hew it as he will). 

Hamlet later has an Emmaus-like encounter with a gravedigger-clown and a skull that had belonged to his beloved jester/fool, Yorick, a moment that dances at the border between what some might call natural or supernatural grace.

WHY IT'S BETTER TO ADMIT THE DESCENT
If we don't admit that the language of the scene after Hamlet kills Polonius associates him with the crucifiers in the line of Jesus from Luke, "Forgive them, they know not what they do," (and perhaps in other harsh moments in the play), then we might risk idolizing Hamlet as a hero or Christ-victim, without fully recognizing him also in this scene as victimizer. Then we might think the play is merely a revenge play, and not a kind of redemption story about a spiritual descent into evil followed by a re-ascension.

And yet many famous critics and literary figures through the ages have idolized Hamlet as a sensitive and melancholic philosopher-prince, but prefer to ignore or gloss over his worst actions. In his book, Murder Most Foul, David Bevington explains that there were even long periods in history when some of Hamlet's worst mistakes were edited out of the play.

"I KNOW NOT" IN OTHER CONTEXTS OF THE PLAY
There may be some who are unconvinced, who might say that the line, "I know not" is too common, and can't really be associated with any Bible verse. In fact, that same string of four words occurs a total of six times in the play in the Second Quarto (Q2), the First Folio (F1), and the Editor's (combined) edition as found on Internet Shakespeare from the University of Victoria in Canada, as edited by David Bevington, but only once is it associated with the verb "do/done." (Emphasis mine in all the examples below):

1. The first time is on the lips of Horatio, after he sees the ghost for the first time in 1.1. This is the only one of the six found in the first ("bad") quarto. In each edition, this is at lines 83-85:
Editor's version, 1.1.83-85
Horatio: In what particular thought to work I know not, But in the gross and scope of mine opinion This bodes some strange eruption to our state.

All other occasions of the statement are on the lips of Hamlet in various contexts.

2. The second is in 1.2.254-7 in each edition:
Hamlet: Ay, madam, it is common.
Queen:If it be, Why seems it so particular with thee?
Hamlet: "Seems," madam? Nay, it is, I know not "seems."

3. The third is in 2.2, where Guildenstern confesses they were sent for, and Hamlet claims to Rosencrantz and Guildenstern that he doesn't know why life no longer seems pleasurable to him. This is at 2.2.1339-1345 in Q2, and 1339-1346 in F1, shown here:
Guildenstern:My lord, we were sent for.
Hamlet: I will tell you why; so shall my anticipation prevent your discovery, and your secrecy to the King and Queen molt no feather. I have of late, but wherefore I know not, lost all my mirth, forgone all custom of exercise; and indeed it goes so heavily with my disposition that this goodly frame, the earth, seems to me a sterile promontory.

4. The fourth instance comes in 3.4, as mentioned above, in his interchange with Gertrude in the closet scene. In Q2, F1, and the editor's edition, these are lines 2405-2407.

The fifth and sixth instances both come in 5.1:

5. The fifth comes when Hamlet asks the gravedigger if he knows whose skull he is holding, and the gravedigger turns the question back on Hamlet. Here it is in Q2 at 5.1.3359-69:
Clown: Why, sir, his hide is so tanned with his trade that 'a will keep out water a great while; and your water is a sore decayer of your whoreson dead body.
[He picks up a skull.] Here's a skull now hath lyen you i'th'earth 23 years.
Hamlet: Whose was it?
Clown: A whoreson mad fellow's it was. Whose do you think it was?
Hamlet: Nay, I know not.
Clown: A pestilence on him for a mad rogue! 'A poured a flagon of Rhenish on my head once. This same skull, sir, was, sir, Yorick's skull, the King's jester.

6. The sixth comes shortly thereafter, when Hamlet reflects on his memories of Yorick. It's found at 5.1.3372-76 in both Q2 and F1. Here it is from the Folio:
Hamlet: Let me see. [He takes the skull.]
Alas, poor Yorick! I knew him, Horatio, a fellow of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy. He hath borne me on his back a thousand times; and how abhorred my imagination is! My gorge rises at it. Here hung those lips that I have kissed I know not how oft.

The only instance in which the statement, "I know not" is associated with what someone has done or will do is the fourth example, at 3.4. 2405-2407, after killing Polonius.

In the gospel story, when Jesus in Luke 23:34 says, "Father, forgive them: for they know not what they do," not-knowing is associated both with "do" and with killing (in this case, killing Jesus by crucifixion, although the verse has broader implications as well).

In Hamlet, when Gertrude asks Hamlet what he has done, and Hamlet responds, "I know not," again the words are associated with a form of "do" and with killing.

THE BEGINNING OF WISDOM: "I KNOW NOT"?
According to Plato, Socrates said "I know that I know not," and this is the beginning of wisdom.

In the Judeo-Christian tradition, we find in the Hebrew scriptures Isaiah 55:8-9 (given here in the 1599 Geneva translation):

8 For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith the Lord.
9 For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts above your thoughts.

Hamlet tells Rosencrantz and Guildenstern after the play-within-the-play (3.2), The Mousetrap,

Why, look you now, how unworthy a thing you make of me! You
would play upon me; you would seem to know my stops; you would
pluck out the heart of my mystery; you would sound me from my
lowest note to the top of my compass; and there is much music,
excellent voice, in this little organ, yet cannot you make it
speak. 'Sblood, do you think I am easier to be play'd on than a
pipe? Call me what instrument you will, though you can fret me,
you cannot play upon me.

Some have speculated that this may refer in part to the efforts of spies and torturers to extract mysteries and confessions from their victims. But more basically, we live in a context of mystery, of not knowing much more than we know. Some of that context of not-knowing might be said by some to be the presence of God, a local habitation of the divine (to borrow a phrase from Midsummer Night's Dream).

Hamlet doesn't always respect the mystery around him or the mystery that others (like Ophelia!) embody, but the occurrences of the words "I know not" on his lips increase as the play advances, perhaps indicating that he allows himself to begin the path to wisdom by admitting what he doesn't know, or even respecting the presence of mystery within and around himself (rather than assuming he can pluck its heart).

IT COULD HAVE BEEN OTHERWISE
Shakespeare could have written the play in such a way that, when Gertrude asks what he's done, he mistakenly says, "Killed a murderous king?" But that would not give us the Biblical allusion. Instead, the playwright has structured the lines so that it reminds theatergoers (and later, readers) of what Jesus says from the cross to his heavenly father.

So Hamlet says, "I know not. Is it the king?" No, it's Polonius, and yes, he didn't know what he was doing, like the crucifiers in Jesus' statement from the cross.

DON'T MISS OUT
If we ignore Biblical allusions such as these, we might miss out on signals that theatergoers in Shakespeare's lifetime could have caught.

This doesn't mean we all must interpret the play in such a way as to conclude that Hamlet has a descent into evil, marked by such things as this allusion, and that his character arc later bends toward redemption, with Hamlet himself becoming a kind of Christ-figure, and with Gertrude wiping his face during the duel in 5.2 even as Veronica (in the ubiquitous images in religious paintings) wiped the face of Jesus on his way to crucifixion.

Different viewers and readers will experience the play in different ways; some will notice more allusions than others; and even those who notice the same allusions may disagree on their meaning. If I'm a violent revolutionary, I might note that Hamlet has the best chance of killing Claudius and taking the throne when he is thinking his most bloody thoughts, and perhaps he only dies because he snaps out of his bloody thoughts for a while in the last two scenes.

Or I may notice all the biblical allusions and claim that Shakespeare used many of them only to parody religious and Biblical ideas, and that Hamlet is truly crazy to believe the hand of God was working through the actions of the pirates to save him so that he could come back and kill Claudius. Only crazy people believe such things, I might say.

But then again, many people in Shakespeare's time believed such things, and attended church regularly to hear such things, and believed their monarch was a representative of God to them on earth. If someone in my neighborhood knocked on my door and said they believed they were sent by God to kill me and avenge some wrong, I would think they were crazy, and the courts would probably agree.

We never notice everything in a play when we see or read it one or another time. (I tend to think we notice especially what we need to, or sometimes deeply want to, at that moment in our lives.)

But when it comes to Hamlet killing Polonius, I think the lines of Gertrude and Hamlet offer us evidence that Shakespeare wanted us (or at least churchgoing English Elizabethan audiences) to associate what Hamlet did to Polonius with Luke 23:34.

That's my best guess. Hamlet is in a spiritual descent.

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Disclaimer: If and when I quote or paraphrase 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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