Polonius, Apuleius, Will Kempe, & Hidden Lovers
My blog entry last week dealt with Polonius, Jephthah, William Cecil, the Elizabethan Bond of Association, and the theme of bad vows in the Biblical Jephthah tale.
This week I continue exploring ideas related to the character of Polonius: possible connections to Apuleius, author of The Golden Ass, a rambling tale (what some in the U.S. might characterize as a "shaggy dog tale") containing many diversions,
perhaps resembling the verbal style of the royal counselor.
Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream especially shows familiarity with
The Golden Ass, which is in part about a man changed into a donkey.
[Lucius takes human form, in a 1345 illustration of the Metamorphoses (ms. Vat. Lat. 2194, Vatican Library). Public domain.]
The Golden Ass had been translated into English by the time Shakespeare
was still very young.
The Golden Ass has a frame narrative and then other tales told in its
various sections. These include stories of unfaithful wives, hidden
lovers, and jealous husbands ("Tale of the Wife's Tub," "Tale of the
Jealous Husband," "Tale of the Fuller's Wife").
It could be that Shakespeare viewed elements of Hamlet as falling very much within the realm of older tales, in that the ghost is a jealous husband, and Claudius the new lover of an unfaithful wife, Gertrude.
In Gertrude's closet, it's clear that Hamlet is standing up for his jealous father, and believes that the new lover/husband is hiding behind the arras, as the wife's lover in "Tale of the Wife's Tub" is hiding in a tub (like Falstaff in a laundry basket in The Merry Wives of Windsor) and the lover in "Tale of the Fuller's wife" hides in a drying cage high in the ceiling.
[Mistress Ford (Heidi Kettenring) and Mistress Page (Kelli Fox) conceal Sir John Falstaff (Scott Jaeck) in a basket of dirty laundry in Chicago Shakespeare Theater’s production of The Merry Wives of Windsor, directed by Artistic Director Barbara Gaines, 2014 in CST’s Courtyard Theater. Photo by Liz Lauren. Image via Chicago Shakespeare Theater.]
Shakespeare
is playing upon his audience's familiarity with this convention when he
has Polonius hide behind the arras, and Hamlet, on behalf of the
jealous ghost, believing he stabs his mother's lover. And perhaps he is also playing on his regular audience having been familiar with roles played by William Kemp as well.
INTERMISSION: A NOTE ABOUT THIS SCENE AS FREUDIAN TRIGGER
Such talk of Hamlet thinking he is killing his mother's lover behind the arras, and Hamlet killing the father of his love, Ophelia, can "trigger" (inspire, prompt) Freudians to reflections about Freud's theories and the claim that Hamlet wants to possess/control/have sex with his mother, and perhaps that his chastizing of his mother for her adulterous marriage and unfaithfulness to his father are a form of religious/spiritual rape.
One might note that applying Freud's theories to Hamlet is anachronistic: Freud came centuries after Shakespeare.
One might also note that Freud has many critics who have noted his misogynistic and patriarchal views.
In the case of Freud's ideas about Oedipus, I have mentioned before (drawing on the work of Tamara Hammond and Julia Kristeva) that Freud neglects the back-story of Oedipus and his father, Laius: When Laius was younger, he sought sanctuary with a neighboring king, but violated all the rules of hospitality when he kidnapped and raped that king's son. Hammond has noted that Freud - and perhaps Sophocles as well - take the crimes and sins of the father, who abandoned his son Oedipus to die in the wild, and displaces the blame onto a sexually shamed son.
Yet such observations will not deter some Freudians, whose commitment to his theories may seem to approach a kind of religious devotion.
One might also note that the ghost asks Hamlet to leave his mother to heaven:
"...Taint not thy mind, nor let thy soul contrive
Against thy mother aught. Leave her to heaven,
And to those thorns that in her bosom lodge
To prick and sting her." (1.5)
Strange advice from a ghost who claims he is in purgatory, but who seems to want his wife to suffer in what she has left of her life, or thereafter, as much as the ghost is suffering in purgatory.
Hamlet ignores the ghost's advice on this point and seems to want to help save his mother from purgatory, perhaps by being an instrument of heaven and awakening her conscience to the thorns of her sins that she may be ignoring.
A Hamlet who doesn't wish to possess his mother sexually, but rather, wishes to save her from purgatory, doesn't fit the Freudian pattern, so Freudians might say that Hamlet doesn't really wish to save his mother from purgatory, because the ultimate truth is always Freud's truth, so regardless of what we find in the dramatic text, it has to be twisted to conform to Freud.
All of his needs to be said, or else the lack of comment about Freud in relation to Gertrude's closet scene becomes a distraction.
But that's not what this particular blog post is about: The topic here is merely the associations between Shakespeare's Hamlet and Apuleius' The Golden Ass, and especially with Polonius, his verbosity, and his hiding behind the arras like a lover.
Dear Reader: If you are a Freudian, please control yourself at this time. Thank you.
WILLIAM KEMP IN THE LAUNDRY BASKET & BEHIND THE ARRAS
It has been thought that William Kemp played the role of Falstaff in Henry IV part 1 (1597?), Henry IV part 2 (1596-9?) and The Merry Wives of Windsor (written perhaps as early as 1597, though not published until 1602).
In 1940, George Ian Duthie speculated that William Kemp played the role of Corambis, a character name later changed to Polonius after Kemp left the company.
Even after Kemp left the company in 1599, there would still have been an association between the comic lover hiding in the tub, and Hamlet's suspicion that the new lover of an unfaithful Gertrude was hiding behind the arras.
[Unnamed drummer &Will Kempe, Elizabethan clown. Not an exact likeness. "English Elizabethan clown Will Kempe dancing a jig from Norwich to London in 1600." Source: "Kempes Nine Daies Wonder," 1600. Artist unknown. Public domain.]
Hamlet describes Polonius at least four times in the play as "fool," and Polonius fears that if Ophelia is not more careful (to avoid getting pregnant), she may "tender [him] a fool."
See Abraham Samuel Shiff, "Transition from Corambis to Polonius...,"page 50, item 28:
“1940. George Ian Duthie reviews a great variety of explanations for the change in name.One novel speculation Duthie considers is that the original actor of the Lord Chamberlain character was the comedian William Kemp, who played the buffoonish character Corambis. Thestage character became so associated with Kemp, that when he left the troop in 1599, Duthie hypothesizes, Shakespeare changed the name to Polonius.”
I have not done any concerted formal research on connections between Polonius, Apuleius, The Golden Ass, and its tales of unfaithful wives and jealous husbands, but the Duthie remark about Kempe as Corambis inspired me to make the further connections to Falstaff, the tub, and the hidden lovers.
I would love to think that other scholars have made similar connections in the last four centuries, so if you know of any such scholarship, please feel free to leave it in comments.
On a quick web search for <Polonius Apuleius>, I do find them mentioned in the same sentence:
In a 1973 note in Classical Philology, [Vol. 68, No. 3 (Jul., 1973), pp. 217-219], Constance S. Wright begins, “It is perhaps a safer generalization than most that, when dealing with an Asiatic or mannerist rhetorician, such as Polonius or Apuleius, one should believe only what he does and not at all what he says he is doing.”
Wright connects Polonius and Apuleius here in the same sentence, but does not speculate about Apuleius as possible inspiration for Polonius, an idea that is otherwise outside the topic of her note.
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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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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
I post every week, so please visit as often as you like and consider subscribing.
The Golden Ass is terrific, and these familiar tropes (like the hidden lover) also make it seem familiar, as you say. Thanks for this!
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