J.G. McManaway: Ophelia & Jephtha's Daughter

Those teaching Hamlet know that many students today are unfamiliar with the story of Jephthah and his daughter in Judges 11, or why Hamlet would call Polonius Jephthah - or in a broader sense, what Jephthah might have to do with the play. Besides assigning students to read Judges 11, what brief readings might be helpful?

[Pietro della Vecchia, 1650. Palmer Museum of Art, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons]

James G. McManaway's 1970 essay, "Ophelia and Jephthah's Daughter" * is a great place to start, in part because pondering the character of Ophelia is often popular among many students, and in part because McManaway's essay is brief and accessible in illuminating aspects of the Jephthah allusion that might otherwise be difficult to grasp, especially certain similarities between Jephthah's daughter and Ophelia that might be easy to overlook.
* Shakespeare Quarterly, Vol. 21, No. 2 (Spring, 1970), pp. 198-200 (3 pages).

Among the many things McManaway's essay does well is that he places the allusion in a larger context in the play, beginning with Ophelia's report to her father, Polonius, that Hamlet frightened her when she was sewing in her closet. This convinces Polonius that Hamlet is mad for the loss of Ophelia's attentions, which Polonius demanded that he withhold from him.

This sets in motion the plan of Polonius and Claudius to observe Hamlet, with Polonius "loosing his daughter" to him as bait for the eavesdropping.

Later, Hamlet asks Polonius if he has a daughter, and warns her that she should not walk in the sun, or she might conceive. (This is the same Hamlet who, in 1.2, told Claudius he was too much in the sun - considered too much a son by his uncle).

Polonius exits, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern enter, and when Polonius enters again, Hamlet then brings up Jephthah, which McManaway quotes as follows from his edition:

(McManaway doesn't mention that, before asking if Polonius has a daughter, Hamlet says that Polonius is a "fishmonger," often viewed as having a second meaning of "fleshmonger" or pimp. This is another possible link between Polonius and Ophelia, on the one hand, and Jephthah and his daughter on the other, because Jephthah was the son of a prostitute: Although the play doesn't suggest Polonius' mother was a prostitute, the common theme is present.)

McManaway goes on to mention John Dover Wilson, who noted another play of the period, performed by The Admiral's Men, based on Jephthah, suggesting that this allusion would therefore likely have been familiar to some among the play's original audiences (besides familiarity from Bible reading, church attendance, and sermons, as others have noted).

Next, McManaway mentions that scholars have speculated about Hamlet possibly fearing that, because Claudius seems to have been unable to control his lust for Gertrude, Claudius might make Ophelia a target for sexual exploitation, hence giving another reason for Hamlet to urge Ophelia to get to a nunnery (so as to avoid Claudius, who Hamlet calls a "satyr" in 1.2.324). It is fine to observe this trend among scholars, but we should also note that the text of the play gives us no hint that Ophelia is ever a sexual interest for Claudius.

(Some have observed that perhaps Gertrude conspires to arrange for Ophelia's drowning because Gertrude knows Ophelia is pregnant with Claudius' child, but again, I believe this imposes far more intrigue than the text of the play itself suggests. Inasmuch as Shakespeare was retelling - and changing - the source tale from Saxo Grammaticus, it's fine for contemporary writers to reimagine and retell the play in new ways, exploring new possibilities like this. But it is likely a mistake for scholars to claim that the Shakespeare text justifies reading Gertrude as conspiring to drown Ophelia so as to cover up the infidelity of Claudius.)

The final important connection that McManaway makes is between Jephthah's daughter bewailing her virginity, and Ophelia's sexually suggestive songs:

Jephthah had promised God that, if God would help him achieve victory against the Ammonites, Jephthah would sacrifice to God the first thing that crossed his threshold on his victorious return. That first thing was his daughter. She agrees to be sacrificed, but asks her father to give her two months to grieve for her virginity, or in other words, grieve for never having experienced the fulfillment of marriage and motherhood.

Ophelia's sexually suggestive songs play a similar role, McManaway asserts: They express how she lacked sexual fulfillment. He does not provide the quote, but this passage demonstrates the theme:

By Gis [Jesus] and by Saint Charity,
Alack, and fie for shame!
Young men will do't if they come to't;
By Cock, they are to blame.
Quoth she, "Before you tumbled me,
You promised me to wed."
He answers,
"So would I ha' done, by yonder sun,
An thou hadst not come to my bed." (4.5.2796-2803)

So the daughter of Jephthah "bewails" her virginity, mourns her never having known marriage and motherhood; Ophelia sings a song that suggests something similar.

McManaway ends (200):

Perhaps "all women of the East" is too great a claim, even if it was clearly the trend in patriarchal cultures, because many cultures still make room for exceptions (as the Biblical tale of Judith demonstrates), so this is a small example of overreach on McManaway's part. 

McManaway's essay makes a number of important connections; it is very understandable, and less than 2.5 pages in length. I highly recommend it.
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[Addendum/P.S.: I'm grateful to Saoirse Laaraichi, a doctoral student in the Shakespeare Institute at University of Birmingham in the UK, for noticing and mentioning the Q1 stage direction, "Enter Ofelia playing on a Lute, and her haire downe singing" (2766.1) which in later editions would be the equivalent of 4.5. This may have portrayed Ophelia in a manner consistent with artistic renderings of Jephthah's daughter and her friends, playing musical instruments to greet her father's return, or with their hair down, accompanying Jephthah's daughter to spend two months in the mountains "bewailing" her virginity (mourning that she had never known marriage and motherhood).]
 
BEYOND McMANAWAY'S ARTICLE: DIFFERENCES?
Beyond the scope of McManaway's article, which dwells mostly on similarities or connections between Ophelia and Jephthah's daughter, we might also note some important differences:
- The story in Judges II says nothing of Jephthah's daughter having a suitor, let alone a suitor who was a prince.
- In Ophelia's story, she did have a suitor, and that suitor was a prince: she tells her father that Hamlet made to her "almost all the holy vows of heaven" (1.3.580).
- Polonius at first forbids Ophelia to see Hamlet because he believes the prince only wants to use her for sex, and it would also make very problematic the relationship of Polonius to his employers, Claudius and Gertrude, if Ophelia were to become pregnant. But after Hamlet frightens Ophelia with a visit to her closet while she is sewing, Polonius realizes perhaps Hamlet is mad for love, and perhaps denying Ophelia access to Hamlet will also be a problem with his employers; so then Polonius apologizes to Ophelia, and sets himself on a mission to prove to Gertrude and Claudius that Hamlet is mad for love (which may also result in his daughter becoming the future queen of Denmark, an outcome Polonius would not mind at all, especially if he can arrange it, and Gertrude approves it). Gertrude says at Ophelia's grave that she had hoped Ophelia would have been Hamlet's bride, so ironically, Polonius may have been successful in convincing Gertrude.
- None of this is present in the Biblical Jephthah narrative from Judges 11.
- Ophelia in her apparent madness speaks of how "they say the owl was a baker's daughter," a reference to a folk tale that is like a retelling of the gospel parable of the Rich Man ("Dives" in Latin) and Lazarus, an important theme in the play. This theme is absent from the Jephthah tale.
- Ophelia, also in her apparent madness, speaks of how "It is the false steward, that stole his master's daughter" (4.5.2925), which some scholars have identified as an allusion to a Ben Jonson play subplot (or a more general theme in much older literature, involving changelings and "worthiness" for marriage to royalty). This raises the question of what makes for true parentage, or true inheritance: Biology alone, or something deeper, richer, or more complex? This theme is also absent from the Jephthah tale in Judges 11, although it may be more present in later rabbinical commentary on the Judges text.

Some speculate that Ophelia and Hamlet had a sexual relationship; McManaway believes that the way Hamlet speaks of Ophelia in the nunnery scene ("be thou as chaste as ice, as pure as snow, thou shalt not escape calumny. Get thee to a nunnery" 3.1.1791-3) suggests that they have not. But this can be (and has long been) debated.

Either way, Ophelia's bawdy songs suggest a specific object, the love of the prince denied her by her father, who then used her as bait to eavesdrop on Hamlet. Jephthah's daughter bewailing her virginity (at least in the version of the tale we are given in Judges 11) does not have so specific a focus.

A NOTE ABOUT ACCESS TO McMANAWAY'S ARTICLE:
Many students and instructors have easy access to articles through JSTOR and other sources, but independent researchers sometimes have a harder time accessing articles. I am fortunate, for now as an independent researcher, to live in the state of Minnesota, where the local public library has access to many of the state's university libraries as well. I can request almost any book or article except some of the very most recent books, and in the case of articles, they often arrive in a day.

Here is the information again for the James McManaway article, and some links for access:

James G. McManaway

Shakespeare Quarterly

Vol. 21, No. 2 (Spring, 1970), pp. 198-200 (3 pages)

Published By: Oxford University Press

https://doi.org/10.2307/2868844

https://www.jstor.org/stable/2868844

 

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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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