Gertrude, Ghost, & Claudius on a Long List of Jephthah Figures in Hamlet

My readers might paraphrase Polonius and ask: "Still harping on Jephthah?"

I am approaching the end of a series of blog posts on Polonius and Jephthah, and for those of you who have tolerated all of my posts in this series, I am most grateful for your interest and patience.

I have noted in other posts of this series that consideration of the Jephthah allusion is too often limited mostly to Polonius and his willingness to sacrifice his daughter's interests to his ambitions, or to the idea of hasty and unwise vows. Sometimes this is expanded to include Hamlet's vow to avenge his father, and Laertes'. Sometimes it is expanded to include the Bond of Association.

But in general, we do well to consider even more ways that the Jephthah story resonates with Hamlet.

IN BRIEF:
This week I will focus briefly on four things:

1. Gertrude can be seen as a Jephthah for being too hasty and unwise in making new marriage vows after her husband's death, and perhaps sacrificing the best interests of her son.

2. The ghost is a Jephthah figure for his willingness to sacrifice his son, Hamlet, on the altar of his ambition to avenge his "his foul and most unnatural" murder.

3. Claudius can be viewed as an especially villainous Jephthah for sacrificing Gertrude when she drinks from the poison cup.

4. Jephthah expelled from his father's house by his half-siblings resembles Adam and his expulsion from Eden into the "unweeded garden" of the larger, imperfect world, as Hamlet has been said to resemble Adam in the unweeded garden of a a corrupted Denmark.

THE LIST SO FAR:
Regarding points 1-3, Gertrude, the ghost, and Claudius can be added to the list of other Jephthah figures to consider in the play:
a. Polonius is a Jephthah for the way he sacrifices his daughter's interests to his ambition.
b. Hamlet is a Jephthah for having made a rash vow (to the ghost) to avenge his father's death.
c. Laertes similarly makes rash vows of revenge that he later regrets, and in that way is a Jephthah.
d. Fortinbras is a Jephthah in that, like Jephthah, he loses access to a chance at inheritance through his father (like Jephthah), takes up with a group of lawless resolutes (like Jephthah), attempts diplomacy by letters to resolve the land dispute before resorting to force (like Jephthah), and he prevails in the end as Jephthah does. (Fortinbras as a Jephthah figure is a topic I explored in a previous blog post). Instead of sacrificing a daughter, Fortinbras as a military leader is willing to sacrifice the lives of many soldiers over a seemingly worthless piece of land.
e. Gertrude's marriage vows are hasty, and because of them she sacrifices her son's chance at the throne (and unknowingly puts his life at risk), so in those ways, she is like Jephthah.
f. The ghost is ambitious and willing to sacrifice his son to achieve his goals.
g. Claudius is willing to sacrifice Gertrude when she drinks from the poison cup, as Jephthah was willing to sacrifice his daughter. When Jephthah returned home from battle and saw his daughter cross his threshold, he felt regret and tore his clothing, but he did not repent of his plan to sacrifice her. Similarly, when Claudius sees Gertrude take the poison cup, he feels regret, but he does not repent of his plan, and does not take extraordinary measures to stop her by publicly admitting that the cup is poisoned.

Inasmuch as many scholars view the play as pointing toward unholy vows in Shakespeare's England, we might add yet another Jephthah figure: William Cecil, author of The Bond of Association:
h. William Cecil, in writing the Bond, designed an unholy and vengeful vow that was, in the minds of some, in conflict with Christian teaching:
"Love your enemies: bless them that curse you: do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which hurt you, and persecute you" (Matt 5:44);
"Vengeance is mine: I will repay, saith the Lord." (Romans 12:19)
"Vengeance and recompense are mine: their foot shall slide in due time: for the day of their destruction is at hand..." (Deut 32:35)

Regarding other parallels to the Jephthah tale, we should consider how Ophelia and Gertrude are women sacrificed like Jephthah's daughter, and Ophelia's madness and bawdy songs parallels Jephthah's daughter bewailing her virginity, as J.G. McManaway has noted.

Horatio might look at such a list and say: "'Twere to consider too curiously to consider so," to which we might respond by paraphrasing Hamlet: "No, faith, not a jot." (5.1.3393-4)

(Some may be tempted to react:
Maybe Jephthah is *the key* allusion that unlocks the whole play!
Me: Nah. There are plenty of other such allusions and "keys."
It's fun to find these correspondences.  But maybe what matters most isn't unlocking doors to other rooms, but what we do when we get there?)

JEPHTHAH EXPELLED LIKE ADAM & EVE FROM EDEN

["The Expulsion from Paradise with an Angel wielding a sword behind Adam and Eve," engraving by Cherubino Alberti (Zaccaria Mattia), (1499–1543). Date: between 1570 and 1615. Metropolitan Museum of Art. Creative Commons/Public Domain via Wikimedia.]

 
The expulsion of Jephthah from his father’s house bears some resemblances to Adam and Eve’s expulsion from Eden (which happens to be another Hamlet theme):
- Both were kicked out of a more favorable arrangement.
- Both were expelled due to some issue of sin/shame/temptation involving a woman:
- In Adam's case, Eve is tempted by the serpent, and she convinces Adam, who blames her. 
- In Jephthah's case, Gilead was tempted by a harlot, so Jephthah's half-siblings his mother, a harlot.
- These may have held some fascination for Shakespeare and Early Modern audiences, as when Hamlet says in 1.2, "frailty, thy name is woman!" or complains about women to Ophelia in the nunnery scene (3.1).

Consequences:
Adam has to toil in order to live, and must do so in a world of potentially hostile people.
Jephthah is also expelled into a harsher world, turning to fighting and thievery among idle men & thieves.

I would assume that these kinds of observations must have been noticed long ago by commentators on the Biblical story. It also seems like the sort of thing that Robert Alter (The Art of Biblical Narrative) might identify as a variation on an earlier theme.

FURTHER READING ON ADAM/EVE/GARDEN/SHAKESPEARE:
For those interested in more reading on the Adam connection in Hamlet (which I may blog about at a future date) there are many things written on this topic, but here are just two for starters:

Book:
Shakespeare & the Loss of Eden: The Construction of Family Values in Early Modern Culture
(2001) by Catherine Belsey

Journal article:
"Shakespeare in the Garden of Eden,"
by Robert Adger Law
Studies in English
No. 21 (1941), pp. 24-38 (15 pages)
University of Texas Press

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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

January 26, 2021: Gertrude & Ghost as Jephthahs, & Loss of Eden
https://pauladrianfried.blogspot.com/2021/01/gertrude-ghost-as-jephthahs-loss-of-eden.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

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