Jephthah & Polonius: What’s prostitution got to do with it?
In our case, we might ask: What's prostitution got to do with it?
At least one way of viewing prostitution is that it takes what may be at best relationships of mutual and reciprocal gift-giving, and corrupts them by reducing them to market transactions, this-for-that, without nurturing ongoing and transcendent bonds on which communities depend if they are to have a future.
Some may view this reading of prostitution as moralistic and oppressive, as if to assert that sex belongs only in marriage, and that perhaps all transactions of the marketplace are evil, whereas only gift-exchange that builds community is good. That is not my objective here, as I hope will become more clear in my reading of the dynamics of the Jephthah tale and how similar dynamics play out in Hamlet. The marketplace is good at certain things and not others; gift relationships, similarly, can accomplish things the marketplace cannot.
In this blog post, I would like to look closely at the harlot theme in Jephthah's tale from Judges 11, and then closely at how Polonius treats Ophelia early in Shakespeare's Hamlet. Later, I will look briefly at uses of words in the play like strumpet, harlot, fishmonger, and whore.
THREE INSTANCES OF THE PROSTITUTE THEME IN JUDGES 11
As a first step, consider the theme of the prostitute in the Jephthah tale from Judges 11. There are at least three manifestations of this theme in the Jephthah tale, starting with Jephthah's mother as a harlot or prostitute. We get the literal prostitute first, and later, metaphorical variations on the theme of prostitution. Here's how it plays out:
1. Jephthah’s mother was a harlot, doing for pay what many value systems believe is best done as a gift. Usually we might think that the children of harlots are raised by harlots, because it would be hard to tell who was the father. Yet the fact that Jephthah was initially raised in his father's house indicates that his father Gideon was going beyond the economic transaction of prostitution, pay for sex, and offering something extra that seems to be a gift, transcending the market transaction. Perhaps the harlot/mother died in childbirth (not uncommon), and perhaps Gideon used her services often and felt some love for her that motivated this gift of accepting the harlot's child into his home.
But something goes wrong with this gift-bond, and Gideon marries, and the children of this marriage (Jephthah's half-siblings) drive Jephthah out, claiming that, as the child of a harlot, he does not deserve any part of their father's inheritance. This is an injustice in the story and unhealthy in the social unit of the family as well as in the psychology of its individuals, and it will be overturned later when Jephthah becomes leader of the people of Gideon, yet not without a great cost.
2. Figuratively, Jephthah is later a kind of prostitute, approached by the leaders of Gideon to do something for pay that might better be done as gift: They want him to defend his people (who had rejected him as the son of a harlot) against an Ammonite invasion.
- If he had not been rejected by his family and town, he may have come to their defense for free, out of a sense of obligation to his people. But because he was rejected, the offer requires sufficient incentive, not really to heal the wound of Jephthah's having been rejected, but to overcome the resistance that undoubtedly came of that wound: Why should I help you, since you people rejected me?
- The payment they offer is that, if he is victorious, they will make him their leader, even though his mother was a harlot, even though he had been rejected for this, and even though he took up with "idle men" or thieves after he was driven away.
- It is clearly not an ideal situation, so the incentive they offer is extreme: Jephthah, like "the stone the builders rejected" might become "the cornerstone," leader of his people, as the psalm will later say (Ps 118:22, attributed to David, but later used by Christians to describe how Jesus, rejected by many leaders of the Jews, became the cornerstone of the new Christian group).
3. Jephthah then makes an offer to God, offering to sacrifice to God the first thing that comes across his threshold if God would only grant him victory.
- In this case, it is as if Jephthah believes he can treat God as his harlot, as one who would do this favor for pay in the form of sacrifice.
- It is also a sort of gamble, because Jephthah doesn't know what will cross his threshold. This turns out to be his daughter.
- (In this way, the gamble resembles another gamble story, that of Herod Antipas and his step-daughter, Salome, who dances pleasingly for Herod. In return, Herod grants her a wish, anything up to half of his kindgom. She asks for the head of John the Baptist, who had condemned the marriage of Herod Antipas to the divorced wife of his brother, who is also the mother of Salome.)
Each of these three moments in the Jephthah tale illustrate social breakdown, where something is requested or done for some form of payment, a favor which would have been better done as a gift, springing from happy bonds of mutual affection (in marriage), mutual indebtedness (in a healthy community), or transcendent covenant (in a religious sense).
Gift-bonds have broken down or been dishonored:
- Gideon fathered Jephthah by a harlot;
- Jephthah was at first welcomed as family but later rejected as son of a harlot;
- the leaders approached Jephthah with a deal (that if he were victorious, he'd be made their leader) in payment for his warrior-services, because Jephthah would be unlikely to offer these services as a gift;
- Jephthah offered God a vow of sacrifice in payment if God would grant the favor of victory.
In each of these instances, gift-communities and gift-bonds have broken down and been corrupted by something like market exchange: Something is rotten in the land of Gideon.
["Jephthae's Daughter" (1640-50), Pieter van Lint (1609-1690). Public domain. Reproduced for postal stamp, Maldives MLD, for the 250th anniversary of the Hermitage Museum. Image via Wikimedia.org, Wikipedia Commons.]Three Things to Note About Jephthah:
a. Pay Harlots Their Due: An Ethical System?
It would seem wrong, in the ethical system of harlots and their offspring, to promise to pay a harlot for sex, and then not pay. So perhaps Jephthah, by this logic, feels he must keep his word and pay his God-harlot the sacrifice he promised for the favor of victory. He is doing unto his harlot-God what he feels all people should do unto harlots, and treating God the way he would want to be treated if someone made him a promise. (We might also note that Jephthah might have learned better than to treat God this way if he had not been rejected by his family.)
b. Jephthah is No Abraham
Many Bible scholars and commentaries have noted: God asked Abraham to offer the gift-sacrifice of his son, and then stopped him, saying it was only a test. This was still a gift request, and it was both initiated and stopped by God, not Abraham. But in the case of Jephthah, it is Jephthah who initiates the offer of sacrifice as promised payment for the favor of victory. And Jephthah doesn't stop it.
c. An Eye for an Eye: Jephthah Treats His Daughter as He was Treated
Note that Jephthah is rejected by his family, something that must have been very painful for Jephthah personally, a kind of social death, being cast out and lost among "idle" men and thieves. But it may have been difficult for at least some of his half-siblings as well, but perhaps accepted with the attitude that rejecting their half-brother Jephthah, son of a harlot, was a necessary sacrifice to save the rest of the family. Better to thrown one man overboard to save the rest of the passengers on the lifeboat. So Jephthah sacrifices his daughter, perhaps, because the way he was treated by his own family taught him that this is what you do with family: Individual members sometimes have to be sacrificed to serve a larger cause.
This "eye for an eye" attitude is typical of revenge, and it assumes that revenge is only fair, like a fair market transaction. But it carries nothing of the spirit of gifts, which have the potential to heal social wounds and save unfairly condemned prisoners or sacrificial victims. Jephthah might have been saved if his family had not rejected him. His daughter might have been saved, if Jephthah had experienced the transcendent potential of happy mutual feelings of indebtedness that result from gift-bonds in healthy family life. Jephthah was denied this, so he treats his daughter in exactly the only way he learned to be in family: People have to be sacrificed.
I explored gift-dynamics in a multi-part series last year, ending with this post (which includes near the end a list of links to all the earlier parts in the series). I had not at that time done this current research on Jephthah, so I was not aware how relevant these dynamics in the Jephthah tale might be. If you are interested in this approach, you may enjoy checking it out.
Did Early Moderns Note Such Things Explicitly, or in Other Terminology?
Did Early Modern sermons and published commentary on the Jephthah tale explore and emphasize such gift dynamics as mentioned above, and prostitution (literal or metaphorical) as a violation of such gift dynamics? Perhaps not using words like mine, but in other words? That's a good question, which perhaps some industrious doctoral student may some day research.
But clearly, Elizabethan England was very interested in the Jephthah story because they regularly heard sermons on the topic related to rash or unwise vows. Even if they did not explicitly note the violations of gift-bonds and transcendent covenant-bonds, they may have soaked up these ideas from the tale.
A Note on Sexual Shaming & Prostitution as Symptoms of Deeper Social Problems
We might also note that social problems associated with prostitution have for too long been blamed on the prostitute who becomes the target of sexually shaming, but who is often being exploited by men such as the pimps or fleshmongers who have long profited from them, as well as by the Johns or customers who use them. (This is demonstrated powerfully in Victor Hugo's Les Miserables, two good film versions of which have been made in the last 25 years: In 1998, a non-musical version directed by Bille August; and in 2012, a musical version directed by Tom Hopper (based on an earlier French and later English-translated stage musical from the 1980s).
HOW DOES THE PROSTITUTION THEME RELATE TO POLONIUS?
In 1.3 (565-602), Polonius treats his daughter Ophelia as a kind of prostitute who must raise her rates, and in his view, only offer her affections and commitment in exchange for something of greater worth, for "sterling," and not merely for "tender" words and vows, which he compares to paper money or legal tender. He wants her to charge a higher rate for her affections (emphasis mine):
~~~
Polonius
Ophelia:
He hath, my lord, of late made many tenders
Of his affection to me.
Polonius
Affection? Pooh, you speak like a green girl,
Unsifted in such perilous circumstance.
Do you believe his "tenders," as you call them?
Ophelia
I do not know, my lord, what I should think.
Polonius
Marry, I'll teach you. Think yourself a baby
That you have ta'en his tenders for true pay
Which are not sterling. Tender yourself more dearly,
Or--not to crack the wind of the poor phrase
Running it thus--you'll tender me a fool.
Ophelia
My lord, he hath importuned me with love
In honorable fashion.
Polonius
Ay, fashion you may call it. Go to, go to.
Ophelia
And hath given countenance to his speech, my lord,
With almost all the holy vows of heaven.
Polonius
Ay, springes to catch woodcocks. I do know
When the blood burns, how prodigal the soul
Lends the tongue vows. These blazes, daughter,
Giving more light than heat, extinct in both
Even in their promise as it is a-making,
You must not take for fire. From this time, daughter,
Be something scanter of your maiden presence.
Set your entreatments at a higher rate
Than a command to parley. For Lord Hamlet,
Believe so much in him that he is young,
And with a larger tether may he walk
Than may be given you. In few, Ophelia,
Do not believe his vows, for they are brokers
Not of that dye which their investments show,
But mere implorators of unholy suits,
Breathing like sanctified and pious bawds
The better to beguile. This is for all:
I would not, in plain terms, from this time forth
Have you so slander any moment leisure
As to give words or talk with the Lord Hamlet.
Look to't, I charge you. Come your ways.
Ophelia
I shall obey, my lord.
~~~
Ophelia and Hamlet had been generous with one another in their attention and expressions of affection, Ophelia "most free and bounteous." But her father views Hamlet as dishonest (like himself) and assumes he intends only to use her (as Polonius might have done to young women when he was young, as Polonius hints).
Polonius insists that she must treat her relationship with Hamlet and her affections and attention for him as a thing Hamlet must purchase from her, a transaction for which Hamlet must pay in advance, not as a gift-exchange in which Ophelia is “most bounteous,” but perhaps only in the form of "true sterling," such as a public marriage proposal approved by the throne.
IN THE SAME WAY that the story of Jephthah is marked by social breakdown (where what would be best as gift is corrupted when treated as something more like market exchange), Polonius is very much a Jephthah and displays similar corruptions:
- His advice to both of his children is based in large part on selfishness and distrust.
- He wants Ophelia to treat her relationship with Hamlet as a market-exchange, not a gift-relationship.
- He asserts strong power and authority over a daughter he might do much better to trust; he is harsh to her in this way, even as Jephthah was harsh to his own daughter by sacrificing her.
- Even Polonius' attitude about lodgings for the players demonstrates his selfish, judgemental tendencies: Hamlet asks him to see to it that the players are "Well bestowed" (2.2.1653), but Polonius has other plans (emphasis mine):
Hamlet [To Polonius]
Good my lord, will you see the players well bestowed? Do ye hear, let them be well used, for they are the abstracts and brief chronicles of the time. After your death you were better have a
bad epitaph than their ill report while you live.
Polonius
My lord, I will use them according to their desert.
Hamlet
God's bodykins, man, much better. Use every man after his
desert and who should scape whipping? Use them after your own honor and dignity; the less they deserve, the more merit is in your bounty. Take them in.
Hamlet here speaks the language of gifts and generosity: The less the recipient of one's gifts deserve, the better it is ("more merit") to be generous. This is consistent with a certain widespread (but not universally held) Elizabethan religious and Biblical understanding, that because God is the source of all gifts, we should be generous with others because God has been generous with us.
The competing worldview at the time (and still in our own time) was the assumption that the rich have their riches because they are being rewarded by God for their worthiness or for having been among the chosen, while the poor suffer because they are unworthy, undeserving, and are being punished. Hamlet is operating in a gift-economy toward the players, while Polonius assumes that he can judge who is or is not worthy of being well-bestowed.
One might take this a step further and say perhaps Hamlet is more Roman Catholic in this moment, believing people might be saved in part by their generous works, while Polonius is more like a Calvinist who believes not only in double-predestination regarding the elect and the damned, but that it is obvious to Polonius who is just and deserving, and who is not.
Jephthah and Polonius Sacrificing Daughters
The power Jephthah asserts over his own daughter kills her. The power Polonius asserts over Ophelia in the above scene (1.3) kills almost any chance of love to blossom between her and the prince.
Polonius mistrusts Hamlet because he believes Hamlet to be as much of a deceitful scoundrel as he is himself. In 1.3.581-3 he says that he knows (perhaps from his own youth):
Polonius
I do know
When the blood burns, how prodigal the soul
Lends the tongue vows.
To Polonius, perhaps consistent with an extreme Protestant view, all people are fallen, so vows spoken between lovers in private "when the blood burns" must be sinful, lustful, and ill-intentioned. In such a sinful world, only the most suspicious can survive by assuming the worst of others, that people like Hamlet are probably being selfish. In Polonius' mind, what his daughter must do in such a sinful context is to be just as selfish as he assumes Hamlet to be, but more clever in securing from him something like a marriage proposal, which would be, to Polonius, more like true sterling, and less like mere paper money or a promissory note.
Polonius cannot know for certain whether Hamlet is sincere, or being deceptive merely to take advantage of Ophelia (as some princes and kings certainly did, and as the life of Henry VIII vividly demonstrates). Yet he assumes it is certain that Hamlet is only being deceptive, because he knows perhaps first-hand how his own burning blood made him inclined to make insincere vows to young women so as to take advantage of them.
Hamlet Also Corrupted by Suspicion
To be sure, we must observe that, if Polonius and Ophelia are corrupted by the extreme suspicions of Polonius, then we must admit that Hamlet is corrupted by similar suspicions after speaking with the ghost. If Claudius poisoned Hamlet's father, did Gertrude help? Did Polonius? Who can Hamlet trust? Can he trust Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, after he discovers that the sealed letter they carry on the ship to England is a command for Hamlet to be put to death? At first after speaking with the Ghost, Hamlet observes, "The time is out of joint. Oh, cursèd spite, / That ever I was born to set it right!" (1.5.885-6). But Hamlet himself becomes more and more corrupted, especially in his harsh treatment of Ophelia, his playing God by sparing Claudius until a later time when he can be damned, and in his accidental killing of Polonius, as well as his hasty decision to send his former friends to their deaths.
If Hamlet is to set right what is corrupted and out of joint in Denmark, he may have to begin with himself.
Judging and Excluding: Polonius and Jephthah's Half-Siblings
The selfishness of Polonius in judging and excluding Hamlet from his daughter is very similar to the selfishness of Jephthah's half-siblings in judging and excluding Jephthah. The half-siblings of Jephthah judged him as being unworthy of his father's inheritance, so they drive him out of the household. For Jephthah to take refuge then with "idle" men and thieves might seem like a kind of descent into madness that finds echoes in Hamlet's descent.
Something was rotten in the land of Gideon, and something is rotten in Polonius as well.
Jephthah's Daughter & Ophelia: Merely Tools to Achieve Their Father's Ends
Later, when Polonius uses Ophelia as bait for his eavesdropping, it is hard to imagine much future for Ophelia. Polonius apologizes to Ophelia for distrusting Hamlet in 2.1; Polonius might have liked to see her become the next queen of Denmark, but to him, she has only been a potential source of shame, and then a tool for his ambition.
When Jephthah sacrificed his daughter, he viewed her as a necessary tool to achieve his ambitions. He had promised God a sacrifice, so he must deliver on his promise. When Polonius uses his daughter as bait for eavesdropping, he does not ask her in advance if such a plan is acceptable to her. He commits his daughter to the plan without her consent (2.2.1196: "I'll loose my daughter to him"). He views her as merely a tool, and serves only Claudius and his own ambitions for his daughter's future.
This ambition does not include respect and compassion and care for his daughter Ophelia in the here-and-now, but merely ambition for some future that may be unobtainable, and that in fact never comes. His greed for the future corrupts his actions in the present, and then he dies. The life and death of Polonius, or at least what we learn of it in the play, are quite tragic in this way.
HOW THE PROSTITUTION THEME MIGHT RELATE TO HAMLET
Besides the ways that Hamlet uses words like "whore," we might note at least two things about Hamlet's relationship to the ghost (which he believes to be his father) and to Claudius:
1. Market-Exchange and the Prospect of Killing Claudius at Prayer
When Hamlet catches Claudius at prayer after The Mousetrap in 3.3, he realizes that the ghost has asked him to avenge his murder, but if he kills Claudius while he is purging his soul, perhaps confessing his sins to God, then this is not really revenge, but instead "hire and salary" (2355).
This phrase appears in the first folio and may be a correction or revision and improvement by the playwright. Hamlet seems to be saying that, instead of avenging his father's death, it would be as if Claudius had hired Hamlet to kill him at a moment when he might be most likely to go to heaven, unlike the brother, King Hamlet whom he killed, who suffers in purgatory.
Instead of Prince Hamlet benefiting from such an action, only Claudius would benefit. This use of "hire and salary" (3.3.2355) might remind us of Jephthah and the breakdown of gift-relationships, corrupted by something like market exchange or payment for services: Quid pro quo, or this for that:
Hamlet
And now I'll do't. [He draws his sword.]
And so 'a goes to heaven,
And so am I revenged. That would be scanned:
A villain kills my father, and for that,
I, his sole son, do this same villain send
To heaven.
Why, this is hire and salary, not revenge. (3.3.2351-5)
The same Hamlet who was drawn to generosity in relationships of gift exchange, such as in his letters to Ophelia, or in his insistence about generous lodging arrangements for the players, is here repulsed: Killing Claudius at prayer would seem to be "hire and salary," a type of market exchange that, at least in this context, Hamlet finds repugnant.
2. The Ghost as Exploitative Pimp, and Hamlet as Whore?
In her book, The Biblical Covenant in Shakespeare, Mary Jo Kietzman notes about the ghost:
...what differentiates this messenger [the ghost] from biblical messengers is that he makes no promises. The promise was a crucial component of covenant for Reformation thinkers--the promise to make Abraham a great nation, the promise to be with Jacob wherever he goes, the promise to be with Moses' mouth when he speaks to Pharaoh. God promises a bright future, a happy life; but, most importantly, he promises to support his partners. that supportive bond is the essence of covenant for the biblical writer and for reformers like Calvin, Tyndale, and Bullinger; but Hamlet receives no promises of support. This is what makes the encounter truly strange and warrants Hamlet's skepticism. (142)
What Kietzman describes is that the Biblical covenant relationship with God is a gift relationship marked by God's generosity. This gift aspect is absent in the ghost.
In this way, it seems as if the ghost's interests are mostly selfish, to exploit his son so as to preserve the honor of Denmark's monarchy, and the honor of the father. All the risk, even to the eternal fate of Prince Hamlet's soul, is borne by the son, and none by the ghost who claims he has already been judged and is in purgatory, suffering punishment for "foul crimes" done while he was alive (1.5.697).
It is as if Prince Hamlet may feel at some level that the ghost (of his father?) is like a pimp, merely using his son as a whore for the father's profit. The whore doesn't have to enjoy the work, and in fact may despise the work, but the pimp must be satisfied by the whore doing the required work, for in that way, the pimp will profit.
Gift and covenant dynamics offer something better than this. They result in happy debts of mutual gratitude that feed the spirit and future of relationships and community.
Regret can operate by similar dynamics: If we harm someone and regret it, we feel we are in the debt of the person we harmed, and must somehow make it up to them. If we make an effort to repair the damage we've done, and if our efforts are accepted, then the gift-relationship is restored.
Forgiveness has a similar dynamic, but with a difference: If someone has harmed us and we forgive them, the gift of our forgiveness may or may not heal the relationship. Unless the person doing the harm realizes and repents of their harmful actions, they might be forgiven merely so that the person harmed can let go of resentment and live in peace, but the harmful person's place in a gift-community might be forever damaged. Other times, the person forgiven may come to recognize their mistake and make amends.
Revenge and its dynamics are very different: With revenge, I feel I have been slighted, harmed, or wronged; whether the other party has recognized and apologized for their offense or not, I decide that I am entitled to some kind of payback, which I will exact or inflict upon the other. In that way, revenge attempts to compel, sometimes by violence, sometimes by inconvenience or public embarrassment, a repayment to re-balance the perceived scales of justice. When gift-relationships break down or fail our expectations, sometimes revenge replaces the healthy relationship of mutual gratitude and happy debts with a corrupted version of re-balancing, marked by scarcity instead of the overflow of spiritual and social abundance that characterizes gift-communities.
The ghost offers Hamlet no gifts, no reward, no support. The ghost only calls for revenge.
I believe this is why Hamlet is so changed by his sea-voyage, when he feels that it was the will of Providence (like a better and more generous and father-figure) that his life should be saved by pirates, "thieves of mercy" (4.6.2993), and similarly changed by the memory of Yorick, "fellow of infinite jest" (5.1.3373) and source of many affectionate gifts, in stark contrast to the ghost.
Hamlet need not play the exploited prostitute to the ghost as harsh pimp: He can be an ambassador of a merciful providence and a more affectionate fool, and still be a prince and heir who brings a murderous usurper to justice.
STRUMPETS, FISHMONGERS, WHORES, DRABS, HARLOTS, & NUNNERIES
There are a number of words whose use we should examine before we are finished with the theme of Prostitution: These include strumpet, fishmonger, whore, drab, harlot, and nunnery:
Strumpets
We should differentiate the "strumpet, Fortune" from
whores, drabs, or harlots: Fortune does not accept payment or bribes.
She simply destroys or (figuratively) sleeps with whomever her wheel
randomly determines. So at least for now, we may rule out 2.2.1273-1280,
where Hamlet, speaking to Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, exchange some
bawdy banter about Fortune, with Shakespeare comparing her to a
strumpet.
We might also do well to rule out the reference by the
first player in the same scene (2.2.1527-37), who similarly refers to
Fortune as a strumpet when Pyrrhus ends his pause before killing King
Priam, and the narrator says the gods should take away Fortune's power
and roll her wheel down Mount Olympus all the way to hell, mixing
classical and Christian imagery. It is perhaps an interesting reference
theologically for future discussion, but doesn't relate to the topic of whores or prostitutes
who accept payment for favors.
Fishmonger
In 2.2, Polonius asks Hamlet if he knows him; in reply (1211) Hamlet says, "Excellent, excellent well. You're a fishmonger." Besides the literal meaning, a seller of fish, the word is said to be slang for pimp or flesh-monger. This is appropriate, given how Polonius has treated his daughter (in 1.3.565-602) like a prostitute who should charge more of Hamlet, in advance, for what she is selling.
Whore, Drab, Scullion
Later in the same scene (2.2.1623-1628), Hamlet compares himself to a whore, a drab (another term for whore or harlot, or for one who consorts with them), and a scullion (or pot-scrubbing kitchen-servant) : Both whore and scullion might be prone to swearing, "unpacking" their "heart with words" when they can't or would rather not take action on their anger (emphasis mine):
Hamlet
Why, what an ass am I! This is most brave,
That I, the son of a dear father murdered,
Prompted to my revenge by heaven and hell,
Must like a whore unpack my heart with words,
And fall a-cursing like a very drab,
A scullion.
After watching and hearing the player come to tears, moved by the emotion of the Hecuba tale, Hamlet scolds himself for having much more reason to be emotional, but not acting yet on the ghost's command to revenge, and instead, unpacking his heart in soliloquies and speeches. For feeling powerless and resorting to angry words when actions might be better, he compares himself to a whore, a drab, and a scullion, all people who we might imagine complaining and swearing in frustration at their job.
Claudius and the Harlot's Cheek
The next reference is by Claudius to a harlot. He knows that he is only pretending to mourn the death of his brother, so he compares his deceptive games that conceal his murder of his brother and king to the thick makeup worn by a prostitute.
This occurs in 3.1.1697-1706, right after Polonius prepares Ophelia to act as bait for eavesdropping on Hamlet: He asks her to read a book, probably a prayer book, so that she will appear like Mary at the Annunciation. He realizes that asking Ophelia to do this is a deception, a kind of sugaring over the devil (emphasis mine):
Polonius
We are oft to blame in this,
'Tis too much proved, that with devotion's visage
And pious action we do sugar o'er
The devil himself.
King [Aside]
Oh, 'tis too true!
How smart a lash that speech doth give my conscience!
The harlot's cheek, beautied with plast'ring art,
Is not more ugly to the thing that helps it
Than is my deed to my most painted word.
Oh, heavy burden!
Later we will learn more fully to what Claudius is referring: He has murdered his brother, and he thinks he is the only one who knows the secret. Claudius uses the image of a harlot in heavy make-up as an analogy for his deception, his "most painted word."
A NUNNERY CONUNDRUM
Scholars are split on Hamlet's intentions in telling Ophelia (five times!) to get herself to, or go her ways to, a nunnery. Frequent commentary observes that, like "fishmonger," nunnery has another slang meaning of brothel. Many observe that not only is Hamlet mad at his mother, but seems to transfer a great deal of that anger (and misogyny) to Ophelia. Some claim that to Hamlet, there are only two kinds of women: Madonna or whore. (There is even a Madonna-whore complex). But perhaps at least some of these critics pay too little attention to a variety of things:
1. Hamlet is quite harsh early on when he tells Ophelia,
the power of beauty will sooner transform
honesty from what it is to a bawd than the force of honesty can
translate beauty into his likeness. This was sometime a paradox, but now the time
gives it proof. I did love you once. (3.1.1766-69)
But perhaps we should be careful not to be too quick to assume Hamlet is saying that Ophelia is literally a whore or a woman in charge of a brothel: Instead, it's possible that he is saying she used to be honest with him, and they were in love, in a gift-relationship, but now her father has withdrawn her from him like a pimp requiring a higher price for his prostitute, exactly the dynamics we saw at the end of 1.3.
2. Ophelia is being used as bait by her father to eavesdrop on Hamlet, and many critics believe he may suspect this, perhaps early on (in which case his whole "To be" soliloquy is feigned for their benefit), or at least at a later point in the scene (3.1.1784: "Where's your father?") after which his words with Ophelia become more harsh.
As such, instead of being a willing participant in a healthy gift-relationship, she is being used to exact something from him against his will, one version of the opposite of a gift-relationship.
3. Hamlet believes he has spoken with a ghost from the afterlife who says he is Hamlet's father, being punished severely in purgatory for "foul crimes" committed while he was alive. Hamlet seems to fear coming to a similar fate: He confesses a significant list of sins to Ophelia, and he seems to be similarly concerned for Ophelia's eternal fate.
In other words, it's not just a tale of an atheistic youth, disappointed in his mother, taking out his frustration on his girlfriend. It's a youth who feels he has experienced, first-hand, a messenger from the afterlife, and who has been charged to fix things that have been corrupted in Denmark. He hints by his confession that he would like to fix things in his own soul, and in his harshness with Ophelia, that he would like for her to inherit a heavenly reward as well. Harsh invective in sermons to accomplish this were not uncommon in Shakespeare's time.
Other critics, including the editors of the Arden edition, believe that, while it's true that "nunnery" had a double meaning, Hamlet seems to be sincere in encouraging Ophelia to go to an actual (literal) nunnery, not a brothel. (Arden explains this briefly in a footnote and at greater length in an endnote.) It is not unusual in Shakespeare plays, for members of royalty (king and queen, for example, in Richard II) to speak openly of sending the important female in question away to a nunnery for sanctuary and safety, not only for her own safety, but also for the safety of the state, if she might become pregnant and there might therefore arise some dispute about the rightful heir to the throne.
I would venture to guess that at least some critics who believe Hamlet is sending her to a brothel are speaking without this other possibility in mind.
This is not to say that the word means only one thing in the scene: The accusation from Hamlet that Ophelia seems to be involved with something at least figuratively like prostitution is certainly present, but it's not the only meaning, and perhaps not the main meaning, regarding where Hamlet desires for Ophelia to go.
A Vengeful, Fearful Laertes, Fearing the Whore-Mother
The next reference to a harlot comes in 4.5.2860-4 from Laertes, who has learned of his father's death and returned to confront Claudius (emphasis mine):
Laertes
That drop of blood that's calm proclaims me bastard,
Cries "Cuckold!" to my father, brands the harlot
Even here between the chaste unsmirchèd brow
Of my true mother.
Laertes is basically saying that if any drop of blood in him is calm instead of vengeful about the death of his father, that drop proclaims him a bastard, because instead of being truly a son of his father, his mother must have had an affair with another man by whom Laertes was conceived instead of by Laertes, making his mother a kind of harlot and his father a cuckold. Here, "harlot" is close in meaning to "strumpet," perhaps indicating a woman who is too free sexually rather than one who takes pay for sex, but the idea is still one of unfaithfulness to marriage, as may have been the case with Jephthah as well.
Whoreson Yorick and a Whor'd Verb, or a Verbed Whore?
The last three references in the play to whores (or harlots) include two uses of "whoreson" by the gravedigger-clown in 5.1, and one reference by Hamlet in 5.2.
In 5.1, the gravedigger is exchanging witty repartee with Hamlet and comments on some of the bones and skulls he's handling. In one case (5.1.3360-1), he mentions the general effects of water on a corpse (emphasis mine):
First Clown
...your water is a sore decayer of your whoreson dead body.
But then he picks up another skull and soon asks Hamlet (not knowing he is the prince) if he can guess whose skull it is:
First Clown
Here's a skull
now: this skull hath lain you i'th' earth three-and-twenty 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 Yorick's skull, the King's jester.
What is especially fascinating about this reference is that, after all the other pejorative references to whores and harlots, now we have Yorick, the beloved court jester and emotional surrogate father of Hamlet, being named "whoreson," which is exactly what Jephthah was: The son of a whore. If a beloved Yorick of infinite jest can be son of a whore, it would seem that sons of whores can in fact be redeemed.
Claudius "Whor'd" Hamlet's Mother
And in the final scene, Hamlet says to Horatio that Claudius killed his father and "whor'd" his mother. As Stephen Greenblatt has noted in his book, Hamlet in Purgatory, Hamlet seems to mean that, like a prostitute who easily shifts from one customer to the next, Gertrude has been seduced by Claudius into forgetting her first husband and, in doing so, being unfaithful to his memory, to marry so soon after his death, and to marry the brother of her dead husband, a scandalous (and biblically "incestuous") marriage.
David Kaula has claimed that Gertrude is an allegory for the "whore of Babylon" (a popular Reformation English nickname for the Catholic Church) and Claudius an allegory for Satan. But the play actually resists such allegory, because as Kaula notes elsewhere, Gertrude also wipes the face of Hamlet as Veronica wiped the face of Christ on his way to the crucifixion; I have argued that Gertrude is a dynamic character who changes in the course of the play.
So in this way, if the whoreson Yorick can be redeemed and function for Hamlet as a catalyst for redemption, perhaps Hamlet and Gertrude can be redeemed as well?
A BROADER VIEW THAT GLANCES AT OTHER WORKS OF SHAKESPEARE
In Hamlet, the Jephthah allusion points to a daughter who was sacrificed, and the play hints that daughter Ophelia is similarly sacrificed to the ambitions of her father. References to Polonius as "fishmonger" and to bawd/whore/harlot/nunnery also link to the theme of prostitution.
But this is not the only Shakespeare play in which the freedom or best interests of a daughter are sacrificed by a father. Other such plays might include The Taming of the Shrew, for example.
It is also a theme in Troilus and Cressida, which also intersects in an interesting way with the theme of strumpet/hardot/whore/wanton/prostitute:
Cressida and Troilus declare their love and faithfulness, but it is decided that Cressida should be exchanged to the Greek camp for a prisoner of war, and Cressida's father agrees to this, a kind of sacrifice of a daughter (a sacrifice that is figurative, not literal as in the Jephthah tale).
Near the start of Act 4, scene 5 in that play, Cressida is exchanged, and after her arrival, Ulysses suggests that all the men in the scene should each, generally, greet her with a kiss. They begin to do so, but as the scene develops, it becomes apparent that some are more interested in what they receive in the occasion of that kiss than they are in the greeting they give, and she comments on this.
Ulysses waits until last, and asks if he might have a kiss. Cressida, who has endured this ritual to this point, says that he may beg. He says he will do that when Helen is a maid again, or in other words, "never." She exits, and then Ulysses refers to her as "wanton" and "sluttish."
But in fact it was the kissing ritual of greeting, which Ulysses initiated, and which got out of hand, that created the conditions in which he would perceive her wanton or sluttish, so his dismissal of her as such is like saying that the fruit that is too high to reach must have been rotten anyway:
ULYSSES: Fie, fie upon her.
There's a language in her eye, her cheek, her lip;
Nay, her foot speaks; her wanton spirits look out
At every joint and motive of her body.
Oh, these encounterers, so glib of tongue,
That give a coasting welcome ere it comes
And wide unclasp the tables of their thoughts
To every tickling reader, set them down
For sluttish spoils of opportunity
And daughters of the game. (2611-2620)
This play was written not long after Hamlet (or not long after Hamlet was perhaps revised or re-written by Shakespeare from an earlier play). The playwright's awareness of the sexual dynamics (and the use of "sluttish" by men unfairly to discredit and shame women who are beyond their reach) helps us see: If Prince Hamlet is guilty of a similar dismissal of Ophelia because of Gertrude's hasty marriage, and because the decision of Polonius forbade Ophelia access to him, it may reflect much more on what Hamlet is doing in his interactions with Ophelia than it does on the attitudes or assumptions of the playwright.
This is a small distinction, but perhaps important for those who might be likely to confuse the attitudes and motivations of the fictional characters with those of the author.
NEXT WEEK:
What's Jephthah to Hecuba, or She to Him?
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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.
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