What Might Art Remind Us About Jephthah, Polonius, & Ophelia?

Many sources explain Hamlet calling Polonius a "Jephthah" by noting that, like Jephthah, Polonius is willing to sacrifice his daughter on the altar of his ambition, as if to fulfill an unwise vow.

Some also note that, after fear of assassination plots against Elizabeth, members of the Privy Council and members of the nobility signed, or were pressured to sign, The Bond of Association, vowing to avenge if Elizabeth were killed or conspired against. This later passed into English law in only slightly modified form.

But just as many US citizens opposed torture and the war in Iraq, many in England may have at least secretly opposed the Bond of Association as an unwise vow like Jephthah's, given that the English church preached against vengeance and unwise vows.

While this type of explanation may offer valid insight, it also oversimplifies the potential of the Jephthah metaphor. Paintings, engravings, and tapestries from before, during, and after Shakespeare's time highlight other aspects of the Jephthah tale besides vows and ambition, drawing our attention to important details in Judges 11, and such paintings may help us to recover additional ways that the tale resonates with aspects of the play.

When textbooks and scholars sometimes sound like an echo-chamber, why not look to paintings for a fresh approach? The goal would not be to bring strict and exacting Biblical scholarship to bear, but merely to use artwork as a kind of springboard for insight. Where that might lead is anyone's guess.

A JOYFUL, CELEBRATING DAUGHTER 
Jephthah's daughter is usually depicted as celebrating, with music, the safe and victorious return of her father from battle with the Ammonites. Often she appears to be dancing, with a timbrel in one hand, and sometimes her female friends are celebrating with her as well, sometimes a friend holding the timbrel. (In the Geneva translation of Judges 11:34, it reads, "Nowe when Jephtah came to Mizpeh vnto his house, beholde, his daughter came out to meete him with timbrels and daunces, which was his onely childe: he had none other sonne, nor daughter.") This sort of depiction of Jephthah's daughter with friends and musical instruments continued long after Shakespeare's lifetime.

[Jephthah's Daughter c. 1560-80. Oil on panel. RCIN 406897. King's Closet, Windsor Castle. Royal Collection Trust.] 
The above painting may have been spared destruction during the iconoclastic times of the English Reformation (which saw the destruction of paintings, murals, and stained glass), or having been created within a few years after Elizabeth's coronation, it may have been commissioned in spite of that iconoclasm. Jephthah is in the center, his daughter to the right, coming from the house to greet him. Earlier aspects of the plot are to the far left, and to the far right in the distance, the eventual sacrifice.

We might note that there is no attempt to portray the scene in a historic setting associated with the Holy Land: To the earliest viewers, this painting portrayed the tale of Jephthah and his daughter as if they were English contemporaries, perhaps living down the road.

["The Meeting of Jephthah and his Daughter," Benvenuto di Giovanni (1436-1509). Public domain.]
Here, Jephthah (right of center, preceded by soldiers) rides a black horse and wears a crown, like a king. His daughter and her friends carry various musical instruments, including a harp and perhaps a lute, with the daughter holding a small percussive instrument in her right hand.

[Tapestry (1650-75?). Image from The Met. Fair use.]
The tapestry above depicts Jephthah's daughter and her friends (left) with musical instruments, greeting her father (center), who has hands folded as if in prayer (or wringing hands?). Detail below, with Jephthah at the far right:

In each of these images, with female friends of Jephthah's daughter helping to celebrate her father's safe and victorious return, it is implied that these may very well be the same friends with whom she would withdraw from society for two months to bewail her virginity (to mourn never having married and borne children) before her father sacrifices her in fulfillment of his vow.


How the Celebration of Jephthah's Daughter Might Relate to Ophelia
Ophelia is clearly happy that she has attracted the affection of Prince Hamlet, affection which he has expressed with "almost all the holy vows of heaven" (1.3.580). This may indeed be something well worth celebrating, as it hints that Ophelia may be the next queen of Denmark.

But Ophelia doesn't trust her father enough to share too much about Hamlet, or about her brother's warnings, because she seems to know well how prying and controlling her father can be. She only discloses more details about her relationship with Hamlet as required by her father's demands.

Jephthah's daughter and Ophelia both seem open to, and trusting of, the gifts that life offers them. Jephthah and Polonius are far more distrustful, feeling a need to exert control over outcomes with certain of their choices, Jephthah with his vow, and Polonius with his scheming and eavesdropping.

Ophelia speaks to her father about "tenders" of Hamlet's affection (1.3.565); Polonius makes fun of her use of the word "tenders" and changes its meaning to that of legal tender.

We might imagine Polonius saying to the celebrating daughter of Jephthah: You green girl. I will teach you about legal tender, and true costs, and what you will pay for someone's vows, just as I will teach my daughter what she should charge for her affection. 

In the case of both Jephthah's daughter and Ophelia, each young woman has good reason to celebrate, but their fathers spoil their celebrations.
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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).]
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2. A SHOCKED AND DEEPLY REGRETFUL FATHER 
Jephthah is often depicted as shocked to see that it is his daughter who steps first across his threshold, his daughter whom he must sacrifice if he is to keep his unwise vow. Sometimes he is shown rending his garments, or in other words, tearing his shirt from extreme grief. This is in the text of the tale in Judges 11:35 (here from the Geneva translation): "And when hee sawe her, hee rent his clothes, and saide, Alas my daughter, thou hast brought me lowe, and art of them that trouble me: for I haue opened my mouth vnto the Lord, and can not goe backe."

["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.]

In the Pieter van Lint painting above, Jephthah is on a white horse (left), looking up to the heavens, tearing his garment to expose his bare skin. His daughter holds a timbrel on the right; a friend behind her holds and plays a triangle.

These images of Jephthah and his daughter are meant to be in stark contrast: The joyful and celebrating daughter, contrasted with the shocked and suddenly regretful father, who will not heed his regret, who will not repent of his foolish vow, but will sacrifice her anyway.

How might the unrepentant regret of Jephthah relate to Polonius?
Jephthah obviously feels regret to discover that the price for keeping his vow will be his daughter's life. He refuses to pivot on that regret and repent of his unwise (and unholy) vow.

Does Polonius show any similar regret, and refuse to repent of it in some way?

In fact he does (and I have blogged about it before, here, in a 16-part series about "Labors of Gratitude and Regret" that explored the character arcs of multiple characters in Hamlet, including Polonius.)

If the ambitious Polonius had a bit more trust in the (possibly honorable) intentions of Hamlet, instead of judging him according to his own less-than-honorable vows to women in his youth, Polonius might have considered the evolving match between Ophelia and Hamlet to be a great victory, something he should celebrate as his daughter seems inclined to, because it would make his daughter the next queen of Denmark.

In fact, later in the play, after Ophelia is visited in her closet by Hamlet, Polonius realizes in 2.1 that perhaps Hamlet was sincere in his love for Ophelia, and perhaps he is mad for love. Polonius feels regret and apologizes twice to Ophelia, saying he is sorry.

His second apology is quite explicit, an apology for misjudging Hamlet:

POLONIUS: I am sorry that with better heed and judgment
I had not quoted him. I feared he did but trifle
And meant to wrack thee; but beshrew my jealousy!
By heaven, it is as proper to our age
To cast beyond ourselves in our opinions
As it is common for the younger sort
To lack discretion. Come, go we to the King.
This must be known, which, being kept close, might move
More grief to hide than hate to utter love. (2.1.1009-17)

When Polonius says, "This must be known, which, being kept close, might move / More grief to hide than hate to utter love," he means that hiding this realization - that Hamlet's madness might have been caused by the withholding of Ophelia's attention and affection - hiding this might cause Polonius and Ophelia more grief, than it would inspire hate from Claudius and Gertrude, for daring to say that the prince seems to have fallen in love with Ophelia.

So Polonius wants to go to Claudius and Gertrude right away, and not to Hamlet to apologize, because Polonius is a slave to his ambition.

He never apologizes to Hamlet for misjudging him. If Polonius regrets having misjudged Hamlet, and in fact perhaps having harmed him by causing or contributing to his madness, then the next step for Polonius would be to apologize, and to attempt some kind of reparations: To try to make it up to Hamlet.

But instead, he becomes committed to a new and ambitious course of action, one that might be doomed to fail: He is determined to convince Claudius and Gertrude that Hamlet's madness was caused by the loss of Ophelia's love.

Even if it was caused instead by something else, like a conversation with a ghost.

Gertrude thinks that her son's madness has another cause:

GERTRUDE:  I doubt it is no other but the main:
His father's death, and our o'erhasty marriage. (2.2.1080-1)

But she is soon happy to consider the possibility that restoring to Hamlet the attention and affections of Ophelia might restore her son's sanity. Why not an easy cure? 

GERTRUDE: And for your part, Ophelia, I do wish
That your good beauties be the happy cause
Of Hamlet's wildness. So shall I hope your virtues
Will bring him to his wonted way again,
To both your honors. (3.1.1688-92)

What more could Polonius hope for, than to have his daughter restore the sanity of the prince, and perhaps marry him as well?

If only he could apologize to Hamlet. But his ambition for his daughter, and for serving and pleasing the throne, blind him from considering apology and reparations to the prince.

He regrets, but doesn't take basic steps necessary to repair the harms he caused.

And in that way, he is like Jephthah, who regrets, but doesn't repent of his bad vow so as to avoid the harm he will cause his daughter.
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3. A FATHER WHO PERSONALLY KILLS HIS DAUGHTER FOR SACRIFICE
Images of Jephthah's daughter greeting him on his safe and victorious return from battle are more common than images of Jephthah sacrificing his daughter, and far more common than attempts to portray Jephthah making his vow to God: Far easier to show the moment of recognition on his return, which implies the consequences, and the celebration of the joyful daughter, contrasted with the father tearing his garment (or about to).

And yet there certainly have been efforts to portray the actual moment of sacrifice. Here are two, the first from The Morgan Bible:

["Jephthah's Sacrifice," Morgan Bible (France, ca 1250). Image public domain via Wikimedia Commons.]

In the Morgan Bible, Jephthah is careful to keep his daughter's hair out of the way, perhaps so that he can get a clean and fast cut the first time. It is a beheading, an execution, as much or more than it is a sacrifice for a burnt offering. And in 1250, we might assume that such beheadings were relatively commonplace (and sometimes public spectacle), so it is easier for readers to relate. Moving the hair out of the way with one hand leaves only the other hand for the death-stroke, which may defeat the purpose of moving the hair. What is the point? To preserve the hair so that the severed head can be a more attractive souvenir?

In the next painting by Pietro della Vecchia, there is an unsettling intimacy between the clothed father and the naked daughter. Jephthah holding the knife at his crotch should made Freudians (and others) suspect that this image suggests a dysfunctional family plagued not only by violence toward the daughter, but perhaps by incest.

["Sacrifice of Jephthah's Daughter" (1650), Pietro della Vecchia (1602/1603–1678). Palmer Museum of Art. Public domain. Image via Wikimedia Commons.]

To me, the Jephthah story is repulsive for how it offers us an abusive father and a totally submissive daughter who only asks a little time, two months to mourn that she has not fully lived, has not known marriage, childbirth and child-raising.

In Shakespeare's time, many believed that children were obligated to honor and obey their fathers, even when their fathers were in the wrong. These same sorts of people held similar beliefs about monarchs: Even if one had a bad monarch, one was obligated to honor and obey. The monarch was a representative of God on earth, and chapter 13:1-7 of Paul's letter to the Romans was used to support the idea of obedience to authorities.

So out of one side of their mouths, Elizabethan preachers used the example of Jephthah to teach the faithful about not making rash and unwise vows. But out of the other side, they affirmed that Jephthah's daughter was still obligated to honor and obey her father, maker of such rash and unwise vows, and that all citizens should likewise strive to honor and obey their monarchs, even if they proved to be as rash and unwise in their decisions as Jephthah.

I suspect many others find the story outdated and repulsive as well. And yet it is possible today to buy images of Jephthah and his daughter on mugs, T-shirts, and shower curtains. It would seem the story still has many fans among those who like patriarchy.

Christianity's Jephthah-God
Many Christians and Christian theologians reject the idea that the father-God sends his beloved son to die as a ransom for humanity's sins. But many others still cling to the idea and to the language of ransom, and of a father-God sacrificing his own son in order to establish a new covenant.

In the logic of these Christians, God knows that humanity cannot afford the ransom for its own many sins, so the only way for the ransom to be paid is with the price of death. The idea, popular especially with some Protestant evangelicals, is that all humanity is corrupted by the sin of Adam, and so all humanity deserves death. Yet this God wants to spare humanity from death (what a nice and generous guy!) so that we can be joined to this god forever.

Therefore, someone else will have to die for the sins of humanity, a substitute willing to die, a substitute whose value in the eyes of the father-god is so great, that his death as a ransom for humanity's sins will somehow outweigh the that sin's great stain.

The sacrificial victim has to be himself a God, or a son of this God. Such a death will pay the ransom, and then humanity can have eternal life.

Christianity teaches that this god is all-knowing, and all-powerful. He knows his son will die at the hands of humanity. He has the power to save his beloved son. But this God is so committed to paying this ransom (like Jephthah is committed to keeping his oath), that he will not save his beloved son, Jesus.

It is a twisted tale, this ransom-paying father who sacrifices his own son. Christianity's god is uncomfortably similar to Jephthah, firmly committed to sacrificing his own child. Sort of an abusive parent-god.

This God, through history, has a long record of using the armies of other nations to collectively chastise his chosen people for their sins, in this way of thinking.

Imagine: If this father-God is so committed to paying this ransom by sending his son to suffer and die, think how much more he would punish those who stray from the path and, by sin, reject the great gift of this ransom.

Who would want to have a god like that?

Jephthah and Abraham: Responsibility lies in Jephthah's hands
Art that depicts the scene of sacrifice usually shows Jephthah personally wielding the knife or sword that kills his daughter for the burnt offering sacrifice. This is not an act in which the father is cleansed somehow of personal responsibility by handing off his daughter to temple officials who do the deed of killing for the father.

Robert Alter's good book, The Art of Biblical Narrative, shows how the many books that make up the Bible repeated motifs and type-scenes and explored variations on earlier themes. In this way, one can read the Jephthah tale in Judges 11 as a variation of the story of Abraham and Isaac.

In the tale of Abraham and Isaac, it was God who tested Abraham by calling him to sacrifice his son, but God sent an angel at the last minute to stop the sacrifice and to tell Abraham he had passed the test. Jephthah seems to be trying to force the hand of God by initiating the process through his own vow, rather than waiting for the gift of God's initiative.

What made Jephthah do it?
What might have moved Jephthah to sacrifice his own daughter, and stubbornly cling to the idea that he must honor a bad vow he made to God? Perhaps there are at least four possibilities (not an exhaustive list):

1. Pride
Jephthah is perhaps too proud about having made even a bad vow. To maintain his own masculine sense of honor, he must fulfill even a bad vow, even one that costs his daughter her life.

2. Integrity
Perhaps the only positive twist to Jephthah is that one might say he has integrity, perhaps to make a vow to God in secret, and then to be determined not to go back on his word. If he had made the vow in secret and then violated it, one might accuse him of acting as if his faith in God was merely a fiction he could abandon as soon as his prayers for victory were answered. Especially in an oral culture where one's word is highly valued, keeping one's word contributes to one's good name, and violating one's word gives a person a bad name. Jephthah has a kind of integrity, to be determined to keep his vow, although it may not have been a public pledge.

3. Distrust combined with a compulsion to control
It is not enough to Jephthah that the "spirit of the Lord" comes upon him (Judges 11:29); he seems to think that, by making an extreme vow to sacrifice whatever crosses his threshold, should he return victorious, this might coerce the God of heaven into granting his prayer.

Similarly, Polonius doesn't trust Hamlet's intentions, nor does he trust his daughter, so he feels he must force himself into the process to control the outcome.

For both Jephthah and Polonius, controlling the outcome is very important. This is in contrast with Hamlet's "let be" and "the readiness is all," which trusts the rest to the wisdom and guidance of providence, while humans can only "rough-hew" their influence upon unfolding events (5.2).

4. Control as Violence 
We should note that, both in the case of Jephthah and in the case of Polonius, there is a common theme of violence.
- Jephthah is literally a warrior, and he kills his own daughter, like a soldier suffering PTSD who brings his warrior-violence home.
- Polonius is repeatedly figuratively violent to Ophelia in 1.3: He overhears the end of her conversation with her brother, when she tells Laertes that she will keep secret their conversation about Hamlet. Polonius, on hearing that Ophelia and Laertes have a secret, is immediately determined to violate the secrets his children are keeping from him. He says she lacks the kind of self-understanding necessary for her to act as her honor would require (562-3); he pries to get more information about Ophelia and Hamlet (564), and then he berates her for being naive, a "green girl" (567) and calls her a "baby" (571) who has been deceived (572-3). Ophelia defends herself and Hamlet, claiming that Hamlet has acted honorably (576-7) and explaining that Hamlet has made to her "almost all the holy vows of heaven" (580), but Polonius dismisses all that, claiming that Hamlet merely wishes to deceive and use her, and forbids her to spend any more time with him (581-601). This is all extreme on Polonius' part, especially given that he soon realizes and admits that he was wrong in his judgment of Hamlet.

5. Treating gifts as transactions-for-pay
Instead of treating a possible victory against the Ammonites as a gift from God in answer to prayer, Jephthah treats that gift as if it has resulted by his own control, from his unwise vow: He may believe he was successful in coercing God, by way of his vow, to do his bidding. His vow is an offer of a transaction, for which he will pay with whatever crosses his threshold.

Polonius has the same transactional attitude about love when he lectures Ophelia about what a green girl she is in trusting Hamlet's statements of his affection, and his vows to her (1.3.580).

Jephthah's vow might also be seen as a kind of gamble with a transcendent mystery: He had no way of knowing what might cross his threshold first upon his return. But he gambled that mystery as payment for victory, something like plucking the heart of a mystery, to paraphrase Hamlet. Scripture says do not put God to the test, but in gambling that mystery, he was putting God to the test.

When one makes a gamble like that, blindly agreeing to sacrifice whatever crosses one's threshold, one should be ready to imagine that anything could cross the threshold, including one's only daughter.

Another way to think of Jephthah's vow is to imagine him making a mental list of all the possible animals, neighbors, strangers, and family members who might cross his threshold, and playing Russian roulette with them. There is only one bullet in the chamber, so only one person or animal will die, not all of them. But it might be one most precious to him. Jephthah should know this is the risk.

But Jephthah is a bit of a gambling man as an ambitious warrior: When the elders of Gilead approach him to ask that he lead a battle against the Ammonites, they offer that if he succeeds, they will make him their leader. This is a gamble in itself: He may not return alive, but he is willing to risk his own life, to take that gamble, for the chance of obtaining the prize he covets. may not win the prize of becoming their new leader. He risks his own life

Jephthah feels that his victory was a result of his vow, as if his vow was a promissory note. He feels he must pay the agreed-upon price, although he learns that this requires sacrificing his daughter. It was a transaction, and a gamble, and honorable men pay their gambling debts.

To Gamble, or Not to Gamble?
Jephthah's gamble - both to lead the battle against the Ammonites, risking his life, and also his vow to sacrifice what crosses his threshold - also resembles a "to be or not to be" formulation:
- It says that winning and becoming leader of the people in Gilead might be more important to him life itself. He might rather risk his life to be victorious both in battle and over those who had previously rejected him as the son of a prostitute, than go on living without achieving those ambitions.
- In that way, Jephthah's choice sounds a bit like Hamlet's question: To be or not to be?

Polonius also gambles with his life in a similar way: In Act 2, scene 2, Polonius is positively certain that Hamlet's madness was caused by Polonius requiring Ophelia to avoid him. He asks Claudius if the king knows of any time when Polonius has been certain, and proved to be wrong:

POLONIUS: Hath there been such a time--I'd fain know that--
That I have positively said "'Tis so"
When it proved otherwise?

CLAUDIUS: Not that I know.

POLONIUS: Take this from this, if this be otherwise. (2.2.1183-1187)

"Take this from this" has traditionally been enacted with Polonius first pointing to his head, then his shoulders or neck.

This is a great gamble for Polonius, who is saying here: You can have me beheaded if I am wrong about Hamlet's madness being caused by disappointed love.

In other words, Polonius is saying, like Jephthah, that he'd rather achieve his ambitions (for his daughter) by proving to be right, or die if he is wrong. To be, or not?

This determination to prove himself right, and to prove Hamlet's love for his daughter, later compels Polonius to hide behind the arras in Gertrude's closet so that he can eavesdrop on her conversation with her son. And as it turns out, Polonius is wrong at least in part about Hamlet's madness, and he pays with his life. 

MIGHT WE BE SUSPICIOUS OF JEPHTHAH'S HONESTY AND MOTIVATION?
There are many novels and films that revise and retell old tales. Countless romantic comedies are based at least in part on the Cinderella tale. John Gardner's Grendel retells the story of Beowulf from the perspective of the monster. Pat Barker's The Silence of the Girls retells the story of Achilles and Patroclus from the perspective of women. Madeline Miller's The Song of Achilles and Cierce retell various Greek tales, with Cierce offering, from a female perspective, tales we are more often told from male perspectives. In fact, Shakespeare was revising older tales in his Hamlet, and many books and films have retold the tale again (some listed here, and here, but also including John Updike's Gertrude and Claudius). Feminist retellings of Biblical tales are also popular (a book-length collection of tales here, and a list of five other books or series here).

Some authors and scholars have explored alternative ways of understanding the Jephthah tale (one example of a scholarly view of literary retellings, from Mikael Sjöberg here; and another from Esther Fuchs here).

There are many reasons why the Jephthah tale may warrant our suspicion and be due for yet more revisionist retellings. The tale is not told, for example, from the point of view of Jephthah's mother, a prostitute or "stranger" or "harlot." It is not told from the point of view of the daughter, or of her friends who spend her last two months of life with her apart from society.

The tale asks us to believe that Jephthah made the vow in the first place. But it doesn't tell us that he announced this vow publicly. Jephthah had been rejected by his half-siblings and driven out of his father's house, perhaps because they didn't wish to share the inheritance of their father, Gilead, with the son of a prostitute. Can we trust his word, simply because he is a victim and underdog?

We can imagine that perhaps family bonds have been more a source of pain to Jephthah than joy or nurture. So it would make sense to assume that he might not value his daughter's life very highly, considering that his own father, Gilead, did not overrule his children, the half-siblings who drove Jephthah away - did not value Jephthah as a son enough to overrule them.

- So first, we might do well to suspect that Jephthah may never have made the vow to God that he later claims to have made.
- We can't trust that he is sincere in the regret he claims to feel, which supposedly makes him tear his garment upon seeing his only child, his daughter, cross the threshold on his return.

So as a thought-experiment, let's consider a different version of the tale:
- Jephthah's claim that he has made a vow to God, and that he must therefore fulfill it, is a fiction.
- Jephthah does not value family bonds and cares little if his daughter lives or dies. Perhaps the daughter was simply convenient as a housemaid before the battle with the Ammonites; but after his victory, when he becomes the leader of the people of Gilead, Jephthah can have plenty of housemaids.
- As a man who was driven out and took refuge in the company of men described in Early Modern translations variously as "idle," "poor," "thieves" or "robbers," we might wonder how helpful these may have been in fostering in Jephthah the kinds of virtues that might make him a good father.
- We are never told the identity of a wife of Jephthah, or of the girl's mother; was she also "idle," a thief or robber? Where do outcast men meet up with women who will make good mothers to their daughters?
- So let's assume Jephthah's claim of a vow to God is simply a good excuse for getting rid of a daughter who has become a hindrance to his ambitions.
- He grants her wish to enjoy two months away with her friends before he will keep the vow he has pretended to make. The claim of a vow, and the generosity of a father granting his only child's wish, all make for good political theater: Wow, that Jephthah is really a man of his word, even willing to sacrifice his own daughter to God to keep his vow. What a holy and true man. Let's all vote for him to be a presidential candidate in 2024, shall we?

I believe it is acceptable, and perhaps necessary, to be suspicious of Jephthah.

And I believe we would do well to be suspicious of Polonius as well. He puts on a show of claiming he has figured out the true cause of Hamlet's madness, and he bets his life on it. But his true ambition may very well be to become the father of the next queen of Denmark.
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Below are a few additional artistic representations of the Jephthah story, which Mikael Sjöberg claims number "approximately five hundred artistic treatments throughout history." Here are just a few more.
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["Jephthah sees his daughter," Giovanni Francesco Romanelli (c.1610/11-1662). Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna.]
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["Jephthah meets his daughter" (by 1661). Hieronymous Francken III (1611–after 1661 ). Public Domain. Via Wikicommons.]

Background detail, showing Jephthah's sacrifice of his daughter:

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["Jephthah and his Daughter," c.1710, Sebastiano Ricci (1659-1734). Public Domain. Kress Foundation.]
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["Jephthah and his Daughter" (1708-13), Giovanni Antonio Pellegrini (1675-1741). Scottish National Gallery. Photographer: Antonia Reeve. Image CC (Creative Commons).]
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[Engraving: Jephthah and his Daughter. From book: Die Bibel in Bildern / von Julius Schnorr von Carolsfeld. Author: Schnorr von Carolsfeld, Julius, 1794-1872. Image via Emory University. Fair use.]

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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.