Jephthah, Cecil, & Three Instruments in Hamlet

There are three occurrences of the word "instrument" in Shakespeare's Hamlet, one on the lips of Claudius, a second from Prince Hamlet, and a third from a dying Laertes. Each of these, considered in their contexts in the play as well as together, may strengthen the argument for Polonius being based at least in part on William Cecil, Lord Burghley, and the Jephthah allusion as pointing at least in part to what scholars usually call The Bond of Association (full text of which is provided below, near the end of this blog post, with some highlights for emphasis). 

I have blogged recently about Polonius and Cecil, on November 24 of this year, and also on December 8. This connection between Polonius and Cecil is not new or original with me, as many other scholars have noted the same thing for many years since at least 1869 when George Russell French suggested it (as noted by Connie Beane).[1] Scholars have also long associated the swearing of vows in the play (and in its allusions) with the Bond of Association: Jephthah makes an unwise, desperate, and overly ambitious vow that results in his sacrificing his own daughter, and people in Shakespeare's Hamlet similarly make what we might consider rash and unwise vows.

If one looks up occurrences of the words "bond" or "association" in the play (using a search engine such as the one at OpenSourceShakespeare-dot-org), one finds no occurrences of those words (but one does find a few interesting occurrences of the word "bound" - which may be a topic for a future post).

Yet the original title of the document was not The Bond of Association. In fact, the full title was:
The Instrument of an Association for the Preservation of Her Majesty’s Royal Person.
And except for the initial article "The," the first noun in the title is "Instrument."

If one searches for occurrences of the word "instrument" in the play, one finds only three. They do not seem random, and in fact may each reflect in different ways on what is now usually called "The Bond of Association.” Here they are in context:

CLAUSIUS' USE OF THE WORD "INSTRUMENT":
The first comes in Act 1, scene 2, lines 222-230 (bold emphasis mine):

CLAUDIUS: And now, Laertes, what's the news with you?
You told us of some suit. What is't, Laertes?
You cannot speak of reason to the Dane
And lose your voice. What wouldst thou beg, Laertes,
That shall not be my offer, not thy asking?
The head is not more native to the heart,
The hand more instrumental to the mouth,
Than is the throne of Denmark to thy father.
What wouldst thou have, Laertes?

In a previous blog pot (on 10/22/18) I have discussed this passage as presenting Claudius as echoing Herod Antipas, telling Salome to ask whatever she would wish, up to half of his kingdom, to express his gratitude for her dance; Salome asks for the head of John the Baptist, who had condemned the "incestuous" marriage of Herod Antipas to the divorced wife of his brother. Laertes for the time will ask only permission to return to France, but later, he will ask for the life of Hamlet, saying he would slit his throat in the church (a probable reference to the Pazzi Conspiracy, noted in a previous blog post on 5/1/17).

These are still valid connections, but as my fresh realization here has to do with the occurrences of "instrument" in the play, we should consider how this may also point to he Bond of Association:

Claudius seems to be trying to say that Polonius has been helpful and "instrumental" to him. William Cecil was similarly helpful and instrumental to Elizabeth.

But notice that Claudius gets the words mixed, so that he is saying the throne has been instrumental to Polonius, instead of Polonius as being instrumental to the throne. A curious mistake?

In fact, some people in England believed that Elizabeth was not as strong a figure as William Cecil, and that she was instrumental to him, enacting his preferred policies and projects, because in the eyes of some, he was the most powerful person in England at the time.

Historians agree that William Cecil was the main force behind, and author of, The Bond of Association. By drawing it up and promoting that it be signed by all members of the privy council as well as others, one might say that Cecil was being helpful and instrumental to Elizabeth and to a continuity of government in England.

But one might also say that, if Elizabeth had been assassinated, and if all of the signers had not been recruited to support it, such an assassination may have been followed by more social and political chaos, and William Cecil may have found himself among those whose lives could easily be at risk in a hostile change of monarchs.

So in that sense, The Bond of Association was as instrumental to protecting Cecil as it was to protecting Elizabeth. 

If Claudius fumblingly tries to say that no one has been more helpful or instrumental to his throne than Polonius, we can observe that Elizabeth may have said exactly the same thing about William Cecil, main author of "The Instrument...."

HAMLET'S USE OF THE WORD "INSTRUMENT":

              [David Tennant as Hamlet in a 2009 BBC production directed by Gregory Doran. Image cropped from screen shot via Youtube. Fair use.]

The second instance of the word "instrument" comes in Act 3, scene 2 (2234-42). Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, who have been employed by Claudius to help Hamlet recover his wits, or to get information from Hamlet regarding the true cause of his madness. Euphoric after the performance of "The Murder of Gonzago," which Hamlet calls "The Mousetrap," Hamlet confronts his former friends and pressures Guildenstern to play the recorder (bold emphasis mine):

HAMLET: 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 played
on than a pipe? Call me what instrument you will, though you can fret
me, you cannot play upon me. 

Hamlet is in an interesting situation by this point in the play: He has sworn to the ghost (which he assumes to be he father) that he will avenge his father's murder, but until this point in the play, he has had doubts about whether to trust the ghost, or if the ghost is truthful, whether to risk his life at revenge.

It may be that Claudius' use of Hamlet's former school friends as spies pushes the prince by this point toward more certain conviction that he must revenge his father's death, or else this uncle who is turning his friends against him and spying on him may very well take his life.

Hamlet makes a little musical joke: "you can fret me"  means not only that he compares himself perhaps to a lute or viola da gamba (viol) - both popular fretted instruments in Shakespeare's England - but also includes another meaning, that his former friends can trouble or worry him, to "fret" him in another sense of the word.

                  [Image via Folger Shakespeare Library's Folgerpedia. Photo (c) Julie Ainsworth, used via Creative Commons (CC).]

But in addition to that, Shakespeare has Hamlet use the word "instrument" here, and some among the first audiences of the play in Shakespeare's time may likely have been aware of gossip about the Bond of Association ("The Instrument..."). They may have heard in Hamlet's resistance to being used by spies of the throne an echo of those who were resistant to pressure that they agree to a vow of revenge, considering that the church forbade it, and that agreeing to an unholy vow, in their minds, may have simply been wrong on religious grounds, and/or may likely lead to their damnation, a fear of "what dreams may come" in the "undiscovered country" after death, as Hamlet puts it (3.1.1720-34).

The writers of "The Instrument" wanted to use people as tools for revenge and to maintain control over the monarchy and their positions in it. But Prince Hamlet seems to counter the name of the document by saying: No, I am my own instrument, and you will not use me as an instrument of Claudius.

Sadly, by vowing to avenge his father's murder, he has already become an instrument of another's plans for revenge, just as The Bond of Association ("The Instrument...") intended. He had doubts about the ghost earlier in the play, but after "The Mousetrap" in 3.2, he feels more certain that the ghost is "honest" and that heaven and hell have given him a duty to revenge.

LAERTES' USE OF THE WORD "INSTRUMENT":
In Act 5, scene 2, Laertes has scratched Hamlet with the poison blade that is "unbaited," meaning it has no protective tip to prevent it from wounding one's opponent in a friendlier game of fencing. Hamlet knows immediately after being scratched that Laertes has acted unfairly and dishonorably in using an unbaited blade and scratching him. After a scuffle, Hamlet obtains the unbaited blade, which he doesn't know is poisoned, and gives Laertes a taste of his own medicine, as the phrase goes.

We should recall that not too much earlier in the same scene, Hamlet before the duel had attempted an apology to Laertes, not only because of how he acted at Ophelia's grave, but also for unintentionally killing Polonius. So we should recognize that Hamlet, scratching Laertes back, has shifted back too quickly from apology to the impulse to revenge, an eye for an eye, a scratch for a scratch.

Laertes at this point is the only one who knows Hamlet will soon die, and that he, Laertes, will too, having been scratched by the same poison blade. Laertes, having witnessed the king refuse to save Gertrude from drinking the poison cup intended for Hamlet (for fear of being exposed as the poisoner) now realizes as he faces death that he must confess, or perhaps be damned. He confesses not only his own role, but also exposes the king:

QUEEN: No, no, the drink, the drink, O my dear Hamlet,
The drink, the drink! I am poisoned. [She dies.]

HAMLET: Oh, villainy! Ho! Let the door be locked.
Treachery! Seek it out.

LAERTES: It is here, Hamlet.
Hamlet, thou art slain.
No med'cine in the world can do thee good;
In thee there is not half an hour of life.
The treacherous instrument is in thy hand,
Unbated and envenomed. The foul practice
Hath turned itself on me. Lo, here I lie
Never to rise again. Thy mother's poisoned.
I can no more. The King, the King's to blame. (3788-3801)

Notice that it's not the king who confesses, not Claudius who was the initiator of the villainy by killing his brother and later misleading Laertes to kill Hamlet for him. Instead, it's Laertes who confesses, Laertes who had agreed to the treachery of Claudius, and Laertes who realizes he now will die for his own willing part in that treachery.

Notice also the similarity of this situation to the Bond of Association ("The Instrument..."): Laertes has been mislead by Claudius to avenge the death of his father Polonius, and to protect Claudius by conspiring and eventually killing Hamlet. The Bond involved a vow of avenging the death of Elizabeth by killing those who conspired against her.

But now Laertes, who agreed with the monarch to a path of vengeance, accepts that he is dying because of his own vengeful choices.

If this is commentary on The Bond, it seems to be saying that those who swear to avenge, and then keep those oaths, may receive death as their payment.

ON THE OTHER HAND
And yet another way to look at it would be to observe that in Shakespeare's Hamlet, every person who either kills a monarch, or an heir apparent, or conspires with or helps those killers, dies in the end:

Polonius, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern willingly helped Claudius in his schemes, whether they knew their true nature or not, and Claudius had killed his brother, the king, so by the logic of The Bond of Association, the signers would be justified in killing even those who aided the murderers of the monarch. 

Ophelia helped Claudius and Polonius to spy on Hamlet, who (some might argue) was the rightful king. So if the Bond of Association were to be strictly enforced to the letter, those who signed it might be keeping their vows if they killed her, too.

Claudius dies in the end for having killed his brother and wife, as well as for plotting against Hamlet, and it seems he is executed more than once for the multiple murders: First, he is poisoned by at least a scratch from Laertes' sword in the hand of Hamlet (Claudius says, "Oh, yet defend me, friends, I am but hurt," hinting that perhaps he was not run through the chest). Next, Hamlet either forces down his throat what is left of the poison cup ("Follow my mother" Hamlet says), or perhaps, as in some productions, he drinks the rest of the poison of his own accord, accepting the role of being his own executioner (and if so, perhaps this is one of the most honest acts of Claudius).

Laertes dies for having conspired with the murderous usurper Claudius, and for having poisoned Hamlet.

Hamlet dies for having killed Polonius (he expects some dire consequence for that),
- perhaps also for ordering the deaths of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, and
- for killing Claudius, who, even if a usurper, was still king (and some in England would argue that even unjust kings are to be obeyed).
- Furthermore, perhaps his death is also deserved because he reverted to an impulse of vengeful action after Laertes scratched him with the poison sword (in scratching Laertes back with Laertes' own sword, he doesn't know he is poisoning Laertes, but neither did he know he was killing Polonius; so Hamlet contributes to two deaths through igorance).

If one writes a play in Shakespeare's England about killing a monarch, it has to be done carefully, and if possible, it helps if the monarch-killer dies as a consequence.

So in that sense, all the people who die in Hamlet might have been killed anyway under the Bond of Association if it happened in the England of Shakespeare's time, and not Denmark of old. This is certainly not the only possible way to read the play, but I think it's a helpful one to consider.

HAS ALL THIS ALREADY BEEN SAID BY OTHERS?
I would prefer to believe that, at some point in the centuries since Shakespeare's death, some scholar probably noted the three occurrences of the word "instrument" in the play, and made these connections. There is so much that has been published about the play, I would not have read it all by now even if I had started very young, and in fact I started in earnest relatively late in life. If any of my regular blog readers know of any such writing that makes these connections, please to let me know in the comments.

NOTES
[1] "Reconsidering the Jephthah Allusion in Hamlet," by Connie J. Beane, from The Oxfordian, Volume 18, 2016 (23-40).  Beane believes (as an Oxfordian) that it would have been too dangerous for Will Shakespeare of Stratford-Upon-Avon to write a play about revenge vows with a character like Polonius who resembles William Cecil too much. She assumes that the Earl of Oxford, who had been a ward of the Cecil family, and who later married William Cecil's daughter Anne, could have risked a caricature of William Cecil in the figure of Polonius, writing under the pseudonym of William Shakespeare, and that an otherwise controversial play that the censors would prohibit, would for some reason be allowed if it were actually written by Oxford, whose authorship would perhaps be known to the Cecil family by this logic. She believes Oxford would have been able to avoid censure and imprisonment, because of his connections. I find this very unconvincing, and to the contrary, think that if there was anything so offensive in the play as to make it otherwise a target of censorship, it would have been censored regardless of the playwright. But I appreciate the other scholarship Beane includes earlier in her essay.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Although I don't quote other scholars in this blog post, I have been reading the work of a number of scholars on Jephthah and Polonius lately, and those certainly stimulate and inspire my thinking. These have lately included Connie Beane's essay noted above and also the following:

- The chapter on Hamlet (127-161) in Mary Jo Kietzman's book, The Biblical Covenant in Shakespeare:
Palgrave Macmillan, 2018.
- James G. McManaway's essay, "Ophelia and Jephtha's Daughter," in Shakespeare Quarterly Vol: 21 (No: 2, 1970 Pages: 198-200).
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FULL TEXT OF "THE BOND..."
The full text of "The Bond of Association" is reproduced below, with a few words and phrases emphasized (by me) in bold (to highlight references to God and religion, as well as terms like vengeance and revenge, and the idea of being willingly bound, and consequences of failure).

This is from the website TudorPlace, "From the Calendar of State Papers, Domestic Series, of the Reign of Elizabeth, 1581-1590 (Spelling is modernised)":
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The Instrument of an Association for the Preservation of Her Majesty’s Royal Person

Forasmuch as Almighty God hath ordained kings, queens, and princes to have dominion and rule over all their subjects, and to preserve them in the possession and observation of the true Christian religion, according to His holy Word and commandment; and in like sort, that all subjects should love, fear, and obey their sovereign princes, being kings or queens, to the utmost of their power; at all times to withstand, pursue, and suppress all manner of persons, that shall by any means intend and attempt any thing dangerous or hurtful to the honour, state, or persons of their sovereigns.

Therefore we whose names are or shall be subscribed to this writing, being natural-born subjects of this realm of England; and having so gracious a lady, our sovereign Elizabeth, by the ordinance of God, our most rightful Queen, reigning over us these many years with great felicity, to our inestimable comfort, and finding lately by divers depositions, confessions, and sundry advertisements out of foreign parts, from credible persons well known to Her Majesty's Council, and to divers others, that for the furtherance and advancement of some pretended title to the crown, it hath been manifested, that the life of our gracious sovereign Queen Elizabeth hath been most dangerously designed against, to the peril of her person, if Almighty God, her perpetual Defender, of His Mercy had not revealed and withstood the same; by whose life, we, and all other Her Majesty's true and loyal subjects, do enjoy all inestimable benefit of peace in this land: do for these reasons and causes before alleged, not only acknowledge ourselves most justly bound with our lives and goods for her defence, and in her safety to prosecute, suppress and withstand all such intenders, and all other her enemies, of what nation, condition or degree soever they shall be, or by what counsel or title they shall pretend to be her enemies, or to attempt any harm upon her person; but do further think it our bounden duties, for the great benefit of peace, wealth, and godly government, we have more plentifully received these many years under Her Majesty's government, than any of our forefathers have done in any longer time of any of her progenitors, kings of this realm; to declare, and by this writing make manifest our bounden duties to our sovereign lady for her safety.

And to that end, we and every of us, first calling to witness the Name of Almighty God, do voluntarily and most willingly bind our selves, every one of us to the other, jointly and severally in the band of one firm and loyal society; and do hereby vow and promise by the Majesty of Almighty God, that with our whole powers, bodies, lives and goods, and with our children and servants, we and every of us will faithfully serve, and humbly obey our said sovereign lady Queen Elizabeth, against all states, dignities and earthly powers whatsoever; and will as well with our joint and particular forces during our lives withstand, pursue and offend, as well by force of arms, as by all other means of revenge, all manner of persons, of whatsoever state they shall be, and their abettors, that shall attempt any act, or counsel or consent to any thing that shall tend to the harm of Her Majesty's royal person; and will never desist from all manner of forcible pursuit against such persons, to the utter extermination of them, their counsellors, aiders and abettors.

And if any such wicked attempt against her most royal person shall be taken in hand, or procured, whereby any that have, may or shall pretend title to come to this crown by the untimely death of Her Majesty so wickedly procured (which God of His Mercy forbid!) that the same may be avenged, we do not only bind our selves both jointly and severally never to allow, accept or favour any such pretended successor, by whom or for whom any such detestable act shall be attempted or committed, as unworthy of all government in any Christian realm or civil state:

But do also further vow and protest, as we are most bound, and that in the Presence of the eternal and everlasting God, to prosecute such person or persons to death, with our joint and several forces, and to act the utmost revenge upon them, that by any means we or any of us can devise and do, or cause to be devised and done for their utter overthrow and extirpation.

And to the better corroboration of this our Loyal Bond and Association, we do also testify by this writing, that we do confirm the contents hereof by our oaths corporally taken upon the Holy Evangelists, with this express condition, that no one of us shall for any respect of person or causes, or for fear or reward, separate ourselves from this Association, or fail in the prosecution thereof during our lives, upon pain of being by the rest of us prosecuted and supprest as perjured persons, and as public enemies to God, our Queen, and to our native country; to which punishment and pains we do voluntarily submit ourselves, and every of us, without benefit of colour and pretence.

In witness of all which premises to be inviolably kept, we do to this writing put our hands and seals; and shall be most ready to accept and admit any others hereafter to this Society and Association.

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Hamlet quotes: All quotes from Hamlet are taken from the Modern (spelling), Editor's Version at InternetShakespeare via the University of Victoria in Canada. They are often first identified by way of the advanced search feature at OpenSourceShakespeare.org.

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RECENT BLOG POSTS ABOUT POLONIUS & JEPHTHAH:

October 6, 2020: Power-Broker Polonius, Ungenerous Jephthah
https://pauladrianfried.blogspot.com/2020/10/powerbroker-polonius-ungenerous-jephthah.html

November 24, 2020: Is Hamlet's Jephthah remark in part about Cecil & the Bond of Association?
https://pauladrianfried.blogspot.com/2020/11/hamlet-jephthah-cecil-bond-assn.html

December 1, 2020: Polonius, Apuleius, Golden Ass, Arras, & Hidden Lovers
https://pauladrianfried.blogspot.com/2020/12/polonius-apuleius-golden-ass-arras.html

December 8, 2020: William Cecil: Top Among 12 Polonius Satire/inspiration Candidates
https://pauladrianfried.blogspot.com/2020/12/william-cecil-top-among-12-polonius.html

December 15, 2020: Jephthah-Figures in Hamlet: Ambitious, Desperate, Traumatized Outsiders?
https://pauladrianfried.blogspot.com/2020/12/jephthah-polonius-cecil-ambitious.html

December 22, 2020: Jephthah, Cecil, & Three Instruments in Hamlet
https://pauladrianfried.blogspot.com/2020/12/jephthah-cecil-three-instruments-in.html

December 29, 2020: J.G. McManaway: Ophelia & Jephtha's Daughter
https://pauladrianfried.blogspot.com/2020/12/jg-mcmanaway-ophelia-jephthas-daughter.html

January 5, 2021:  What Art Might Remind Us About Jephthah, Polonius, & Ophelia
https://pauladrianfried.blogspot.com/2021/01/what-art-might-remind-us-about-jephthah.html

January 12, 2021: Jephthah & Polonius: What’s prostitution got to do with it?
https://pauladrianfried.blogspot.com/2021/01/jephthah-polonius-whats-prostitution.html

January 19, 2021: What's Jephthah to Hecuba, or She to Him?
https://pauladrianfried.blogspot.com/2021/01/whats-jephthah-to-hecuba-or-she-to-him.html
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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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