Beggars and Rich Men at Ophelia's Grave (part 13, Lazarus & Hamlet)
In Ophelia’s parallels with the beggar Lazarus tale in Shakespeare’s Hamlet, she had been rich in prospects and generous in love;
then impoverished, love quashed by brother and father;
rejected Hamlet in obedience to her father;
treated harshly by Hamlet;
a beggar to heaven ("O heavenly powers, restore him!" 3.1.1797);
but in her madness, rich in humility, she sees herself in the folktale of a baker’s daughter,
and then perhaps redeemed when she sees herself in a tale about a persecuted young woman who had been stolen as a girl by a false steward, denied the chance to marry her beloved, but later discovers her true parentage that makes her worthy.
Ophelia's journey in light of the Lazarus tale might move us to consider who is figuratively rich, and generous or not, and who is figuratively poor, beggar or not.
LAERTES AT OPHELIA'S GRAVE, IMAGINING HIS SISTER AS THE BEGGAR LAZARUS IN HEAVEN
At her grave, her brother Laertes appears to be a sort of disgruntled beggar:
He tells the priest who refuses full burial rites due to her suspected suicide,
...churlish priest,
A minist'ring angel shall my sister be
When thou liest howling. (5.1.3431-3)
To Laertes, Ophelia is like the beggar Lazarus in heaven;
the "churlish priest," like the ungenerous rich man in hell:
In Luke 16, the rich man suffers in hell (howling)
while beggar Lazarus is taken to Abraham’s bosom (heaven).
Not knowing that Claudius murdered his brother and usurped the throne, not knowing that Hamlet intended to kill Claudius, Laertes curses the unnamed Hamlet who caused his father's death and, in his mind, inspired his sister's suicide:
LAERTES: Oh, treble woe
Fall ten times treble on that cursèd head
Whose wicked deed thy most ingenious sense
Deprived thee of! (3439-42)
[From Hamlet, Classics Illustrated, 1952. Fair use. Image via Hyperion2satyr]
Another metaphorically rich man in the scene: Hamlet imagines himself exponentially rich in love for Ophelia. Listening and observing unseen, he soon emerges to proclaim,
I loved Ophelia. Forty thousand brothers
Could not with all their quantity of love
Make up my sum. (5.1.3466-8)
This scene is packed with things unspoken, including English feelings about how the reformed church dealt with suicides and abbreviated Christian burials (as noted by Stephen Greenblatt in his book, Hamlet in Purgatory).
Gertrude knows nothing of Laertes conspiring with Claudius to poison her son.
Laertes may believe Hamlet killed his father for denying him access to Ophelia.
He doesn’t know that Hamlet intended to kill Claudius.
Nor does he know that Claudius is a murderous usurper.
Nor did he know, until Gertrude mentions it at the grave, that the queen had hoped Ophelia would be her son's bride; he had counseled Ophelia to keep her distance, assuming such a match could never be.
He was wrong.
Hamlet knows nothing of Laertes’ advice to Ophelia, to keep Hamlet at a distance.
Hamlet later asks Laertes,
Hear you, sir,
What is the reason that you use me thus?
I loved you ever. (3487-9)
Secrecy and conspiracies impoverish all of these characters.
What to make of all of this?
Let's consider using the Luke 16 tale of the rich man and the beggar Lazarus as a lens for viewing and striving to understand who is rich, who is generous, who is impoverished.
CONSIDER DIFFERENT AND CONFLICTING POINTS OF VIEW IN THIS SCENE:
Gertrude:
First, consider how Gertrude is impoverished but also generous in this scene:
- She is rich and generous to disclose that she had hoped Ophelia would be her son's bride.
- But she is also impoverished to be unaware of how her new husband, Claudius, had conspired already with Laertes to poison Hamlet. In fact, one could say that it is in part due to the distraction of the Claudius-Laertes poison conspiracy that Ophelia is left unattended, and that she falls in the stream and drowns while they are plotting murder.
Laertes:
As previously noted, Laertes is in the dark, impoverished by many things he doesn't know, or didn't know:
- He doesn't know that Claudius is a murderous usurper, and not really his friend.
- He didn't know or allow for the possibility that Hamlet's intentions toward his sister may have been sincere and honorable.
- He doesn't know until Gertrude says so at the graveside that this match between Hamlet and his sister would have received the Queen's support.
- He didn't know until Gertrude says this that his sister had a chance at becoming the next queen of Denmark.
- He therefore didn't know that he was wrong to assume there was no such chance, and to assume that Hamlet's intentions therefore must have been insincere or dishonorable.
- He doesn't know that Hamlet didn't intend to kill Polonius, but rather, intended to kill Claudius.
- So in essence, Laertes doesn't know he's fighting on the wrong side.
- Laertes at least intended to be rich in his protectiveness toward his sister, a protectiveness that the play's first English audiences would have understood: Elizabeth I had been conceived out of wedlock and was called a "bastard queen," excluded from the line of succession at one point along with her half-sister Mary. Henry VIII had carried on a previous affair with Mary Boleyn, Anne's sister, and numerous other affairs as well. For Laertes to wish to protect his sister like the rich man protecting his riches makes a kind of sense, to a point.
- Laertes in this scene, however, is mostly rich in is his passion for revenge, and it blinds him to the mistake of his bad advice to his sister about Hamlet, and to the possibility that Claudius merely wants to use him to kill Hamlet.
Hamlet:
- Hamlet doesn't know that Laertes has already been conspiring with Claudius against him.
- He assumes that Hamlet and Laertes are both mourning the death of Ophelia, and that Laertes should not be blaming him at Ophelia's grave for her death as well as that of Polonius.
- Hamlet seems surprised that Laertes blames him for all of this; Hamlet knows many truths and intentions that are hidden from Laertes, so he is perhaps too close to his own perspective to see things from Laertes' view, already distorted by Claudius, who of course has blamed Hamlet.
Claudius:
Claudius is blinded by his ambition to keep the throne, and to keep the secret of his having murdered his brother. Just a few scenes earlier (4.5), Claudius had noted regarding Ophelia:
Oh, this is the poison of deep grief! It springs
All from her father's death, and now behold! (2813-4)
He recognizes this easily about Ophelia and her madness, but in 1.2, he resisted the same simple recognition about Prince Hamlet's deep grief, because Hamlet's continued mourning was a reminder to him of his murder of his brother, and therefore a threat to his secret about a death he would have preferred quickly forgotten.
DIVIDED FROM THEMSELVES BY MADNESS SHROUDED IN HOARDED SECRETS:
One could say that all of these characters are divided from themselves and one another, and their better judgment, because Claudius is hoarding the secret of his murder of his brother, King Hamlet, like a rich man unwilling to give up his riches while others around him are impoverished. To a lesser extent this is also true of Laertes and Polonius' over-protectiveness toward Ophelia regarding Hamlet. Claudius puts it this way regarding Ophelia, but it could be applied to others as well:
. . . poor Ophelia
Divided from herself and her fair judgment,
Without the which we are pictures or mere beasts... (4.52821-3)
OPHELIA'S ROLLER-COASTER RIDE, FROM RICHES TO BEGGARY AND BACK:
By the time we arrive at Ophelia's grave, Ophelia has been rich in many ways, and impoverished or begging in others:
- In 1.3, she is rich in prospects and generous in giving her time and attention to Prince Hamlet, who we soon learn has acted honorably (557) and sworn his love to Ophelia with "almost all he holy vows of heaven" (580). In other words, if Hamlet is honest and his mother and uncle approve, she is on track to being the next queen of Denmark, as long as revenge and poison don't intervene. In her generosity toward Hamlet, who begs humbly for her love, she is unlike the ungenerous rich man who neglects the beggar at her door.
- She may beg for the affirmation and approval of her brother and her father, but they have heard of the time she has spent with Hamlet, and they suspect he may be as dishonorable as Henry VIII, unable to control his sexual urges, and perhaps required to marry some princess to secure a treaty. If Ophelia is a beggar to her brother and father, they leave her impoverished.
- Ophelia's father Polonius requires that she be more like him, ungenerous and suspicious toward Hamlet, unless he makes a public offer of marriage, "true pay" (572) that, to Polonius, would prove his sincerity, rather than confidential love letters. So she obeys her father and becomes more like the ungenerous rich man in the Lazarus tale.
- In obedience to her father, she returns Hamlet's love letters or poems.
Consider this exchange:
OPHELIA: My lord, I have remembrances of yours
That I have longèd long to redeliver.
I pray you now receive them.
HAMLET: No, not I. I never gave you aught.
OPHELIA: My honored lord, you know right well you did,
And with them words of so sweet breath composed
As made these things more rich. Their perfume lost,
Take these again, for to the noble mind
Rich gifts wax poor when givers prove unkind,
There, my lord. (3.1.1748-57)
It seems Hamlet denies that he gave her anything because he's hurt that she returned his gifts; or else he may be saying that the person to whom he gave those gifts was a different incarnation of her, and that since then, she has changed for the worse.
Ophelia seems to claim that while she found his gifts sweet and rich, their perfume is lost because perhaps she believes her father, that Hamlet was only being sweet to deceive her and use her for sex, or that he is being unkind now, to deny he ever gave them to her.
Again, following the advice of her father, she establishes a distance from him, although it's clear that she would prefer otherwise. She is already divided from herself and her better judgment, as Claudius would later put it.
Ophelia claims "to the noble mind" (hers), "Rich gifts wax poor when givers prove unkind." She claims herself to be noble, and his rich gifts poor because of Hamlet's unkindness.
This represents a confusing whirlwind of changes. She and Hamlet were rich and generous in love and in the gift of their time to one another, but now when she returns Hamlet's rich gifts, he denies he ever gave them, and she names those rich gifts now as poor because of Hamlet's unkindness.
BEGGARS IN LOVE
When we are in love, we may often feel ourselves beggars, humbled by the love and affection given by the other, like rich gifts. If love is mutual, then both are beggars, and each views the other as rich in gifts.
The gospel tale of the rich man and the beggar Lazarus portrays a dysfunction: The rich man who has enough to share with the beggar refuses to do so, and therefore, when both of them die, the rich man goes to hell, and the beggar to heaven. It need not be this way, and when Hamlet and Ophelia are in love and sharing their time and tokens of love, the two of them are getting right what the rich man in the gospel had gotten wrong.
But things go wrong:
- Laertes counsels distance and suspicion, as does Polonius who finally requires the relationship ended completely, and that Hamlet must be cut off from Ophelia's time and attention.
- Then Hamlet visits with the ghost of his father, and acts crazy in visiting Ophelia at her sewing. Polonius regrets misjudging Hamlet, but doesn't approve his daughter's renewed attention to Hamlet.
- Then Polonius uses her as bait to spy on Hamlet, hoping to prove that he is mad for her love(!).
- In spite of her father's hope to prove Hamlet is mad for loss of Ophelia's attention, and in spite of the Queen's hope that Ophelia's returned attention and "virtues" might bring Hamlet "to his wonted way again" (3.1.1690-1) she returns Hamlet's gifts(!).
Not only are Hamlet and Ophelia divided from one another at this point, newly disappointed beggars at the table of love, but others around them are divided as well, with Claudius still suspicious that the cause of Hamlet's madness might be something other than disappointed love: In 2.2, Gertrude assumes the source of her son's "distemper":
I doubt it is no other but the main:
His father's death, and our o'erhasty marriage.(1080-1)
Claudius suspects this as well, so he is in disagreement with Polonius that Hamlet is love-mad, and with Gertrude regarding hopes for Ophelia to help restore Hamlet to his sanity; they are therefore divided, as are Hamlet and Ophelia.
So Ophelia's returning of Hamlet's expressions of his love is significant. It is as if she is saying that, in rejecting the tokens of his love, she rejects him and his love as well, although she wishes otherwise.
She and Hamlet need not have been divided, even as the beggar and the rich man need not have been divided in life and in the hereafter.
HAMLET'S CRUELTY TO OPHELIA
Next in 3.1, Hamlet is cruel to Ophelia, questioning her honesty: Was she dishonest previously in accepting her love and perhaps vowing hers in return? Is she dishonest now in saying she had long desired to return his tokens of love? She doesn't seem convinced that she would like to return them.
Hamlet says he did love Ophelia once (1769), and she generously replies that "[he] made [her] believe so." But Hamlet replies,
You should not have believed me, for virtue cannot so
inoculate our old stock but we shall relish of it. I loved you not. (1772-3)
Hamlet seems to be saying that acquiring virtues such as generosity and unselfish love cannot make up for the sin of selfishness that is deeply part of us, as from original sin. But while people falsely hope otherwise, they shall "relish of it," or enjoy their illusions. In this spirit, he seems to confess that what he felt for her was not love, but merely selfishness, sin and lust, perhaps inspired by his visit with the ghost in purgatory to be more harsh than normal in his self-judgment.
Or perhaps he is only claiming here that it was not love, but selfish lust, because he knows after visiting with the ghost that he is a dangerous man, and hopes to push her away for her own safety?
Ophelia replies that she "was the more deceived" (1774). Perhaps she is rich in her insight, and knows more than she realizes: Perhaps she thought he truly did love her, because some part of her knows that this is the truth, and that his claim otherwise is a deception.
Hamlet replies, "Get thee to a nunnery." A nunnery is somewhere that a person like Ophelia, rich in love and humility but misled, might hoard up and withhold her love from the world, perhaps, like the rich man neglecting the beggar Lazarus?
Hamlet follows this with what seems to be a remarkably humble and self-critical confession to Ophelia about how he sees his true self:
Why wouldst thou be a breeder of sinners? I am myself indifferent honest, but yet I could accuse me of such things that it were better my mother had not borne me: I am very proud, revengeful, ambitious, with more offenses at my beck than I have thoughts to put them in, imagination to give them shape, or time to act them in. What should such fellows as I do crawling between heaven and earth? We are arrant knaves, all; believe none of us. Go thy ways to a nunnery. (1776-84)
He seems to be saying here that he is such a sinner, she deserves better, or at least he is not so desirable as she once thought. If he once thought her rich in love, he now implies that he is a sinner and undeserving beggar.
The love that might have saved the rich man if he'd been more generous with the beggar, and perhaps helped the beggar too, seems canceled out here in the harsh Protestant ethic of original sin and the selfishness of faithless works.
HUMILITY IN AND SAVING GRACES IN MADNESS
Many characters in the play seem crazy in one way or another. For Gertrude to marry her dead husband's brother would have been considered crazy, given church teachings at the time. For Claudius to kill his brother, marry his sister-in-law, and take the throne, shrouding it all in lies, can certainly be considered analogous to madness. Laertes seems mad in his quest for revenge. Hamlet is either mad, or pretending.
So in that context, there is something almost refreshing and sane in Ophelia's madness, which Horatio or a gentleman seem to think might be more than madness.
When the king asks how she is, Ophelia replies,
Well God'ield you. They say the owl was a baker's
daughter. Lord, we know what we are, but know not what we may be.
God be at your table! (4.5.2784-86)
I have discussed this passage at length in another post in this series. But if as I argue there, Ophelia sees herself in the baker's daughter, then this may be a moment of humility and contrition for having obeyed her father and rejected Hamlet in his time of need. She may see herself as more like the ungenerous rich man for doing so, and Hamlet as having been like the beggar at the door of the rich man, or the door of the baker in the tale. In the religious system of Shakespeare's time, this might be to Ophelia's advantage, to consider her possible failings and sins.
One of the reasons that the ghost of the dead king is in purgatory is that he didn't have the last rites, which would include a chance to confess his sins and take holy communion. If the way she treated Hamlet is weighing on her conscience, it would be in her favor to come to terms with past mistakes in a spirit of humility.
Ophelia exits, and Laertes enters shortly in this scene; Ophelia enters again, and Laertes witnesses his sister singing songs of mourning. He comments,
Hadst thou thy wits, and didst persuade revenge,
It could not move thus. (4.5.2921-2)
Laertes knows that there is a great difference between Ophelia's mourning songs and revenge: If she had her wits about her and did try to persuade revenge, it would not look at all like her songs. The contrast between Ophelia's songs and Laertes' desire for revenge is significant here.
THE FALSE STEWARD STOLE HIS MASTER'S DAUGHTER:
Ophelia speaks of "how the wheel becomes it!" (2924) - perhaps fortune's wheel, which seems to decide random events as if by a spinning wheel.
And then she says, "It is the false steward that stole his master's daughter" (2924-5). In previous posts (one here and a longer one here), I've mentioned that this alludes to an old tale, present in a Ben Jonson sub-plot but actually much older: A daughter is stolen from her father by a false steward; she grows up and falls in love but is thought to be unworthy of the match, because she doesn't know of her true parentage; she rediscovers her true parentage, and is able to marry as she had hoped. The story of Jesus, apparently son of a carpenter but actually a son of heaven, is a similar tale. So is the tale of St. Francis, disowned son of a rich merchant; he rejects his earthly father in favor of a heavenly one and dedicates his life to helping the poor.
Why does Ophelia mention this particular story? It's possible that she recognizes herself in the young woman who is told she is unworthy of a match, as her brother and father told her to avoid Hamlet. But it's also possible that her imagination is attracted to the tale because of how it affirms the young woman's worthiness by her true parentage. In the English religious worldview, we are all children of heaven, and even the beggars - like St. Francis (and sometimes especially the beggars) - are worthy of being saved or redeemed. She may be working all of this out in her own imagination.
It's possible that she tells her brother to sing "a down, a down," because he is too high on his horse of revenge, too proud.
SALVATION AT THE END OF OPHELIA'S ROLLER-COASTER?
It seems entirely possible that Shakespeare was using these allusions of the baker's daughter and the false steward to hint at a kind of Christian redemption for Ophelia at the end of her roller-coaster ride, from moments of wealth and generosity, to obedience to her father and ungenerous rejection of Hamlet, but also moments of figurative poverty and beggary, as when she is said to be mad. She vacillates between claiming that she possesses a "noble mind" offended by Hamlet's unkindness (3.1, mentioned above), to perhaps seeing herself more humbly as having been ungenerous, like the baker's daughter, or the rich man in the Lazarus tale, and herself therefore as like the rich man, become a beggar in hell. She goes from seeking affirmation and encouragement from her brother and father about her relationship with the prince of Denmark, to losing hope for her love after accepting their advice and obeying her father. And yet in the end, perhaps Shakespeare hints that she came to a saving realization: that her brother and father both acted as false stewards, and as a child of heaven, perhaps she was worthy of any match she desired.
If Ophelia finds peace at the end, it seems the others of the royal court are still left struggling for another final scene, mired in their divisions and strife.
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MORE TO COME: This is part 13 in a multi-part series on how the Lazarus allusion in Hamlet 1.5 can be considered as a mirror held up to the play, or a lens through which to view various characters and scenes. There are a variety of beggar Lazarus figures, and people who are beggars in one scene might be something else in another. Various aspects of how the tale was manifest in Shakespeare's culture are considered. There is more to come.
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POSTS IN THIS SERIES SO FAR:
1. New Series: Lazarus & Dives (the Rich Man) in Hamlet - 16 February, 2021
2. If the Ghost was Like the Rich Man, Who was His Lazarus? - 23 February, 2021
3. Illegal to be Beggar Lazarus in Shakespeare's England - 3 March, 2021
4. Beggars & Players' Ill Report: Polonius Measuring, Being Measured - 9 March, 2021
5. Sleuthing Hamlet's Lazarus Echoes in their Biblical Contexts & Implications - 16 March, 2021
6. Ophelia in 1.3 as the Beggar Lazarus - 23 March, 2021
7. Beggars, Thieves, & Cranmer’s Conflations - 30 March, 2021
8. Welcome Lazarus & Lord Strange's Men, for You Were Once Strangers - 5 April, 2021
9. Lazarus & the Beggar-Thief-Rioter-Revolutionary Continuum - 13 April, 2021
10. Lazarus & other Hamlet-correlations in Cranmer's Homily IX - 20 April, 2021
11. The Beggar Lazarus at the Baker's Door in Hamlet 4.5 - 27 April, 2021
12. Jewell's Homily V & Lazarus-Hamlet-Claudius Correlations - 4 May, 2021
13. Beggars and Rich Men at Ophelia's Grave - 18 May, 2021
14. Hamlet Nunnery Scene Haunted by Homily VI, Book 2 - 25 May, 2021
15. Hamlet, beggar-prince: Horatio's allusion to Lazarus and requiem Mass in 5.2 - 1 June, 2021
16. Monarchs as Beggars’ Shadows: Lazarus in Hamlet 2.2 - 8 June, 2021
17. Kings, Beggars, Worms, Excrement, Eucharist, Buddha Bunny, and Lazarus in Hamlet 4.3 - 14 June, 2021
18. In service of art: How art may have influenced the Lazarus theme in Hamlet - 22 June, 2021
19. Preview: Other instances of Lazarus/lazar/beg/beggar/poor in Shakespeare - 13 July, 2021
20. Lazarus & prodigals in Henry IV, Part I, and in Hamlet - 20 July, 2021
21. Other instances of "lazar" in Shakespeare besides Hamlet - 27 July, 2021
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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.
- 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 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 point out how the Bible may have influenced Shakespeare, his plays, and his age.
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Thanks for reading! My current project is a book tentatively titled Hamlet’s Bible, about biblical allusions and plot echoes in Hamlet.
Below is a link to a list of some of my top posts (“greatest hits”), including a description of my book project (last item on the list):
https://pauladrianfried.blogspot.com/2019/12/top-20-hamlet-bible-posts.html
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