Hamlet & the Beggar-Thief-Rioter-Revolutionary Continuum (Part 9)
So already we have broadened our scope from rich men and beggars, to kings, thieves and usurpers: The king seems to play the role of the rich man, and Claudius may have been like one of the beggars neglected too long, and who finally turned thief and murderer.
I also considered how the theft of the commons created more poverty, more beggars, the criminalization of beggars and vagabonds created more hardships, and how Shakespeare was familiar with bread riots, and included such things in his plays.
The more hunger increases as a problem in a nation or community, the more likely that beggars turn to thieves, and thieves to rioters and revolutionaries.
Conditions in the USA and many other places might convince some (like me) to observe that the tale of the beggar Lazarus and the rich man is not simply about an isolated rich man who happens to be greedy and neglects a beggar at his door, but may seem in fact like a central story about Western culture and its influence upon humanity in capitalistic societies.
I began to consider how, by analogy, the players were like beggars, and Polonius like the ungenerous rich man. I explored how Ophelia is yet another Lazarus figure, and her brother Laertes and father Polonius are rich in power and opportunity, but withhold these from her.
Among other considerations, reflected on how Shakespeare would have heard the story of Lazarus and the rich man at regular intervals in his required church attendance, and also in the officially approved homilies by Thomas Cranmer and John Jewell; it turns out that three of these homilies refer to the story, and one, "An Exhortation Against the Fear of Death, in Three Parts," uses Lazarus and the Good Thief as examples.
With this particular homily by Cranmer, we were back to beggars and thieves. But as I noted in a previous post, modern translations frequently claim that the so-called thief was in fact an anti-Roman revolutionary or insurrectionist. In the gospels, the disciples gathered around Jesus included not only fishermen, but also Zealots, revolutionaries who opposed the Roman occupation. That occupation caused economic upheaval and a replacement of the high priest in Jerusalem with someone who would be willing to do the bidding of Rome. Economic upheaval to serve the needs of the occupying Roman bureaucrats resulted in more poverty, more beggars, and revolutionaries as well. In the Denmark of Hamlet as well as in the time of Jesus, the state suffered corruption.
So now our circle includes rich men, kings, beggars, thieves, usurpers, insurrectionists, and revolutionaries. And it is a strange coincidence to be writing about such things at this time in history, and from my own particular place on the map.
A VIEW FROM MINNESOTA, USA
I live in Minnesota, and as I write this, the trial of Derek Chauvin is still underway: Chauvin is the police officer accused of murder when he knelt on the neck and back of George Floyd for and a half nine minutes on May 25, 2020, at a location about 45 minutes from our home. Riots broke out across the country.
[Daunte Wright and son: Image via Heavy.com, via Facebook. Fair use.]
At about 2 p.m. last Sunday, April 11, Daunte Wright was shot by police officer Kimberly Potter in Brooklyn Center, less than an hour from our home. Again, riots broke out, and last night, four nearby counties were under curfew. As it turns out, the officer had intended to reach for her taser, and on the police body cam, she said "Taser!" repeatedly, but mistakenly reached for and used her pistol instead.
(My blog readers in other countries may wonder: Why are so many police officers in the US armed with guns and tasers? A good question.)
Of all the richest and most developed nations, the US has more guns per capita than any other. And unlike many other nations with less gun violence, police in the US are usually armed, and often have access to military-style hardware and transport, all of which translates to nice profits for gun makers and military industries.
Unlike many US citizens (most of them white), George Floyd and Daunte Wright were unarmed, and Floyd was killed by an officer kneeling on him instead of by a gun.
There are more police shootings of citizens in the US than in all the other most developed nations combined, and shootings of black citizens represent a disproportionately large share. Black and Latino defendants in court cases are more likely to receive longer prison sentences than whites, and so they represent a disproportionate share of prisoners in the US.
Also in the US, the gap between rich and poor is widest of any developed nation, and this wealth gap hits black and Latino citizens the hardest. More than other nations, CEOs of US corporations make an income that is many more times that of their lowest paid workers, as compared to most of their international counterparts.
The COVID-19 pandemic has only made these economic disparities worse: BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and People of Color) have been hit harder financially by the pandemic, while the richest Americans have gotten much more wealthy during the same time frame.
Since the death of George Floyd, various studies have shown that police
in the US are more likely to be racist, and also more likely to have voted for Donald Trump. So if blacks are much more likely to be shot by police in the US than whites, besides needing to radically rethink our economy, it would seem the US might need to replace many or most of its officers if they can't successfully be retrained.
In that context, it's no wonder that police in the US are armed with guns and tasers: It is as if they are charged not only with protecting the extreme wealth of the rich, but also with keeping public order in a nation that might otherwise be inclined to revolution.
HAMLET, BEGGARS, RIOTS, & REVOLUTION
In Hamlet, we find not only the Lazarus allusion in 1.5, as well as multiple other analogous situations of rich men & beggars, but upon the return of Laertes from France after his father's death, we also find what seems to be a riot or insurrection in progress, or at least nearly so.
"A riot is the languageLast year, after the death of George Floyd, and also in the last two days since the death of Daunte Wright, my state of Minnesota has experienced riots. The Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., often spoke out against riots, but he frequently said that "a riot is the language of the unheard."
of the unheard."
- Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr.
"Those who make peaceful revolution impossibleIn a similar vein, John F. Kennedy made an interesting assertion in his remarks on the first anniversary of the Alliance for Progress, 13 March 1962: He said, "Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable."
will make violent revolution inevitable."
- John F. Kennedy
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[9/24/2023 note: Laertes also is a kind of beggar after his father's death, begging to see his father, begging for an explanation, and before that, acting like a revolutionary or insurrectionist:
CLAUDIUS:
Her brother is in secret come from France,
Feeds on his wonder, keeps himself in clouds,
And wants not buzzers to infect his ear
With pestilent speeches of his father’s death,
Wherein necessity, of matter beggared,
Will nothing stick our person to arraign
In ear and ear. (4.5.95-101)
Claudius believes Laertes lacks "matter," is poor for true grounds, doesn't have real cause for any complaint against Claudius because Claudius did not personally kill Polonius. In this, we see Claudius resisting making any connection between his having killed his brother, and Hamlet having killed Polonius. Claudius is being too literal, to legalistic, to differentiate in this way rather than viewing his own actions and those of Hamlet in a web of contingencies.]
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Note that in Hamlet, the supporters of Laertes don't riot or revolt merely because of the unexpected death of one advisor to a king, and perhaps not even because they are especially fond of Laertes (though they may prefer him over Claudius if given a chance for a change).
Even in the first scene of the play, we learn how preparations for war have made laborers work days and nights, also violating the sabbath, all so that Denmark can continue to resist the claims Norway made regarding land rights. The soldiers are concerned at the appearance of the ghost of the dead king, and suspect that it might have something to do with his having killed the Norwegian leader, Old Fortinbras. This impending war is not about anything the common people have done, but about the ambition and overreach of kings. The death of Polonius and the return of Laertes for revenge might be viewed more as a triggering event for an already discontented populace.
HOW CLAUDIUS AVOIDED REVOLUTION:
SET HAMLET & LAERTES AGAINST ONE ANOTHER
When Laertes returns home with a crowd of supporters crying out for him to be made king, Claudius quickly strives to comfort and befriend him, and to reassure him that the fault lies with Prince Hamlet. Claudius knows that Hamlet was trying to kill him, and not Polonius, but he doesn't share this information with Laertes. Hamlet was trying to avenge the death of his father, murdered by Claudius. Now Laertes wants revenge; so if only Claudius can get Laertes to fight Hamlet, he thinks he might be safe.
In this way, Claudius is like the contemporary cartoon about the king, looking down from his castle upon a crowd of people with pitchforks and torches, and listening to the reassurances of his advisor:
[Image via Twitter. Fair use.]
Claudius is in this way also like the political cartoon in a more modern setting, which depicts media mogul Ropert Murdoch, distracting the working class by encouraging them to be suspicious of foreigners, when in fact rich people like Murdoch himself may be the real problem, like the rich man in the gospel story of Lazarus:
Just as Claudius sets Laertes and Hamlet against one another to distract further from his own misdeeds and delay his own reckoning, it seems that many in the world have already set the relatively minor players against one another, at the risk of distracting from larger issues and causes of oppression.
I do hope that Derek Chauvin is held responsible for the death of George Floyd. If not, we are likely to see a great deal more violence.
But even if he is found guilty of murder in some degree, or manslaughter, even if officer Kimberly Potter is charged at least with negligence or manslaughter in the accidental shooting death of Daunte Wright and found guilty, these things alone will not fix the violence of the disparities in the economy and in the prison system, will not address the problem of too many guns in the US, or reform racist, armed and militarized police forces.
Instructing BIPOCs to act more carefully when confronted by the police will not fix the problem. Finding individual police officers guilty will not eliminate the corrupt vision of policing in the US, and of how police and the poor are often set against one another, like those with the torches and the pitchforks, or those being encouraged to argue over the last cookie.
IS THERE ANY HOPE? WHAT CAN BE DONE?
Certainly at the level of both individuals and groups, people can protest, they can pressure elected officials to make changes, and if those are unsuccessful, they can work to elect others.
But even at the more personal level, Carl Jung has some helpful advice about coming to terms with the greedy self and beggar within each of us, so that we can perhaps be of more use, both to ourselves and to our neighbors, whether they be racist police or needy beggars:
Perhaps this sounds very simple, but simple things are always the most difficult. In actual life it requires the greatest art to be simple, and so acceptance of oneself is the essence of the moral problem and the acid test of one’s whole outlook on life.If conservatives point at rioters and condemn them for destruction of property without realizing how their own conservative economic ideologies have been a destructive force in the lives of the poor and of people of color - without coming to terms with their own destructive selves - then progress will be much more difficult.
That I feed the beggar, that I forgive an insult, that I love my enemy in the name of Christ, all these are undoubtedly great virtues. What I do unto the least o’ my brethren, that I do unto Christ.
But what if I should discover that the least amongst them all, the poorest of all beggars, the most impudent of all offenders, yeah, the very fiend himself, that these are within me, and that I myself stand in need of the alms of my own kindness, that I myself am the enemy who must be loved. What then?
Then, as a rule, the whole truth of Christianity is reversed: there is then no more talk of love and long-suffering; we say to the brother within us “Raca,” and condemn and rage against ourselves. We hide him from the world, we deny ever having met this least among the lowly in ourselves, and had it been God himself who drew near to us in this despicable form, we should have denied him a thousand times before a single cock had crowed.
Anyone who uses modern psychology to look behind the scene not only of his patients’ lives, but more especially of his own life—and the modern psychotherapist must do this if he is not to be merely an unconscious fraud—will admit that to accept himself in all his wretchedness is the hardest of tasks, and one which it is almost impossible to fulfill.
The very thought can make us sweat with fear. We are therefore only too delighted to choose, without a moment’s hesitation, the complicated course of remaining in ignorance about ourselves while busying ourselves with other people and their troubles and sins. This activity lends us a perceptible air of virtue, by means of which we benevolently deceive ourselves and others. God be praised, we have escaped from ourselves at last!
There are countless people who can do this with impunity, but not everyone can, and these few break down on the road to their Damascus and succumb to a neurosis. How can I help these people if I myself am a fugitive, and perhaps also suffer from the morbus sacer ["holy disease"] of a neurosis?
- Carl Jung, from Modern Man in Search of a Soul (1933),
chapter 11, "Psychotherapists or Clergy" (235-6)
If, as a comfortable, older, middle-class white male, I point in blame at the violence of the police like Derek Chauvin and Kim Potter, and the system in which they work, without recognizing how I have been a beneficiary of that corrupt system and economy, then it will greatly limit my ability to be much help in bringing about change.
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INDEX OF POSTS IN THIS SERIES ON THE RICH MAN AND LAZARUS:
See this link:
https://pauladrianfried.blogspot.com/2021/02/index-series-on-rich-man-and-beggar.html
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Hamlet quotes: All quotes from Hamlet (in this particular series on The Rich Man and Lazarus in Hamlet) are taken from the Modern (spelling), Editor's Version at InternetShakespeare via the University of Victoria in Canada.
- To find them in the first place, I often use the advanced search feature at OpenSourceShakespeare.org.
Bible quotes from the Geneva translation, widely available to people of Shakespeare's time, are taken from an internet source somewhat close to their original spelling, from studybible.info, and in a modern spelling, from biblegateway.com.
- Quotes from the Bishop's bible, also available in Shakespeare's lifetime and read in church, are taken from studybible.info.
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Disclaimer: If and when I quote or paraphrase bible passages or mention religion in many of my blog posts, I do not intend to promote any religion over another, nor am I attempting to promote religious belief in general; only to explore how the Bible and religion influenced Shakespeare, his plays, and his age.
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Thanks for reading!
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