Where's the body? Kings, Beggars, Worms, Excrement, Eucharist, Buddha Bunny, and Lazarus in Hamlet 4.3 (part 17)
The dialogue sounds a bit like a "Who's on First?" comic skit by Abbott and Costello:
King: Now Hamlet, where's Polonius?
Hamlet: t supper.
King: At supper? Where?
Hamlet: Not where he eats, but where 'a is eaten.
A certain convocation of politic worms are e'en at him.
Your worm is your only emperor for diet.
We fat all creatures else to fat us,
and we fat ourselves for maggots.
Your fat king and your lean beggar is but variable service:
two dishes but to one table. That's the end.
King: Alas, alas!
Hamlet: A man may fish with the worm that hath eat of a king, and eat of the fish that hath fed of that worm.
King: What dost thou mean by this?
Hamlet: Nothing but to show you how a king may go a progress
through the guts of a beggar.
We saw in a recent post on this blog how this sort of thinking about human corpses as meals for worms was present even in the official homilies of the reformed English Church (such as Homily VI of book 2, discussed here a few weeks ago).
Some aspects of this dialogue in 4.3 sound and feel very similar to the story of the rich man and Lazarus in Luke 16:19-31, alluded to by the ghost in Hamlet 1.5: In that tale, a rich man lacks compassion for the beggar Lazarus, so when they both die, Lazarus goes to heaven and the rich man to hell. Rich men and kings may discriminate regarding whether they will feed beggars and resist compassion or a feeling that they share a common humanity, but worms don't discriminate.
So if you are a rich man or king who is tempted to discriminate, or to lack compassion for the beggars, remember: If you don't feed the beggar today, then after you die, with the help of worms (and fish), you may be a meal for beggars anyway. The limited perspective of the rich man draws distinctions between what is mine and what is the beggar's, but the larger, ultimate perspective is that we are all part of one another.
RICH MEN OR KINGS?
Some may protest: The gospel tale is about a rich man and a beggar, not about a king and a beggar. They may complain: Why claim there is a connection between what could be an apolitical tale of a rich man, and a more political discussion about a king?
In fact (as discussed in a previous post in this series, here), biblical exegesis has long recognized that the tale of the rich man and Lazarus was always a tale with a political dimension: The rich man with brothers to warn stood for the high priest in Jerusalem, and a priesthood corrupted by the Roman occupation. So for Hamlet to change the terms from rich man/beggar to king/beggar is not a stretch at all.
TO GIVE WILLINGLY, OR TO RESIST THE INEVITABILITY OF WORMS?
In both the Luke 16 tale, and also implied in Hamlet's banter with Claudius, there is a question of whether a rich man or king might have compassion for beggar and feed him or her. In the gospel tale, the rich man refuses to be compassionate, but Lazarus who was refused the gifts of the rich man is given the gifts of heaven. In that way, the story claims there is a kind of inevitability about the beggar's ultimate fate: If he is not fed by the rich man in this life, he will be figuratively fed in heaven, sometimes described as a heavenly banquet. Note that in Hamlet's banter with Claudius, there is a similar inevitability: Even if the king lacks compassion and fails to feed beggars, after the king dies, worms will eat his corpse, and these worms can be used to catch fish, so the beggar can eat of the fish that ate of the king, and the ending is still the same: It is inevitable that the rich man or king will be food for beggars, so why not begin sooner, rather than later?
[Fool tarot card image: by Pamela Colman Smith, 1909, via Wikipedia.]
KARMA, JESTER HAMLET, AND A SECULAR VERSION OF THE LAZARUS TALE
What goes around comes around, whether the king or the rich man likes it or not. The rich people and monarchs can give to the beggar willingly now, or they will be forced to give later when the meek and the beggars inherit the earth, the worms, and the fish.
Hamlet is playing the jester here (some scholars have noted that the Danish throne has perhaps lacked a fool or jester since the death of Yorick, but that Hamlet is in a way Yorick's kindred spirit and embodiment.
Hamlet's tale of kings, worms, and beggars seems to re-tell the story of Lazarus and the rich man, in a manner accessible even to those who do not believe in heaven or hell or a god: Even if the gospel tail does not appeal to you because you do not believe in an afterlife, you will still, be worms' meat. If you don't feed the beggars now, then courtesy of the worms and the fish, you may be food for them later.
WAYS OF READING HAMLET'S PUNCH LINE ABOUT KINGS THROUGH THE GUTS OF BEGGARS:
AS DEATH THREAT:
In his book, Hamlet in Purgatory, Stephen Greenblatt (1) discusses this passage and its possible meanings and resonances in the historical context of Shakespeare's lifetime and its religious disputes. One possibility that Greenblatt notes is that Hamlet's remarks are a death threat: I wish for you to be dead, and a meal for worms.
This could be seen as an improvisation on the Hamlet source tale from Saxo Grammaticus, which claims that after the prince kills the king's counselor (a character like Polonius), Amleth (Hamlet) feeds the corpse to pigs, so in fact, the body goes missing.
INSULT/THREAT: YOU WILL BE EATEN AND SHIT OUT BY BEGGARS:
The dialogue (showing, as Hamlet says, how a king may go a progress through the guts of a beggar) might also be read as among the harshest possible insults Hamlet could offer to his uncle: Claudius, you are so worthless that your only value is to be a meal for worms, and later, beggars will shit you from their bowels after they digest the fish they catch with the worms that eat you.
There is a similar passage in the book of Revelation, chapter 3, verses 15-17, but instead of eating and shitting, the passage is about Jesus spitting the "lukewarm" from his mouth. Here is the passage, from the 1599 Geneva translation:
15 I know thy works, that thou art neither cold nor hot: I would thou werest cold or hot.
16 Therefore because thou art lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, it will come to pass, that I shall spew thee out of my mouth.
17 For thou sayest, I am rich, and increased with goods, and have need of nothing, and knowest not how thou art wretched and miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked.
The idea here is related, but in this case, it is Jesus who wishes for his disciples to be hot or cold, passionate to one extreme or another, but instead, like the rich man who lacked compassion for the beggar Lazarus, they are lukewarm. The passage claims that Jesus has had some exchanges with them, figuratively taken them into his mouth, but he spews or spits them out. For good or ill, we have exchanges with one another, we are part of one another. But the rich who boast of their riches and their "need of nothing," he spits them from his mouth.
One might wonder: But were people in Shakespeare's time really familiar with this and other passages of the Bible? Well, yes, many of them were. Not only did they hear the Bible in church, but reading the Bible was popular, and English translations of the Bible were best-sellers in Shakespeare's lifetime. So although some in England may not have been familiar with this passage, many would have been, or would have at least heard of it second-hand from neighbors and family members and in church preaching.
ADDING TO THE SOURCE TALE AN ECHO OF JOHN 20:13-15, "WHERE HAVE THEY TAKEN HIM?"
Shakespeare adds to the source tale a question on the lips of Claudius: Where is the body? He wants to know where Hamlet has hidden the body of Polonius. This is similar to the question of the women at the tomb in the gospel story and its lines in John 20:13-15 about the missing body of Jesus. The Geneva Bible translation renders it this way:
13 And they said unto her, Woman, why weepest thou?
She said unto them,
They have taken away my Lord, and I know not where they have laid him.
14 When she had thus said, she turned herself back, and saw Jesus standing,
and knew not that it was Jesus.
15 Jesus saith unto her, Woman, why weepest thou? whom seekest thou?
She, supposing that he had been the gardener, said unto him,
Sir, if thou hast borne him hence, tell me where thou hast laid him, and I will take him away.
EUCHARISTIC ECHOES AND APPARENT CONTRADICTIONS
Shakespeare also adds to the source tale a food chain (corpse/worms/fish/beggar) that more explicitly connects the missing body of the counselor to something Greenblatt describes as being similar to the idea of Eucharist (240-244). Greenblatt makes the connection by noting that, during the reformation, some of the polemics denying the real presence of Jesus in the Eucharist (or transubstantiation) noted that if a crumb of the communion wafer were eaten by a mouse, this would seem sacrilegious.
Even in our time, there are conservative Roman Catholics who insist upon the truth of transubstantiation, but who insist that as soon as the communion waver dissolves and breaks down in the digestive system, it is no longer Jesus, no longer the second person of the Trinity, no longer God. In this way, by their own logical hair-splitting, God is saved from the indignity of being digested and excreted from humans into toilets and sewage systems.
But other theologians might note that this is part the incarnation, that God is present on earth as a human being with all of the human bodily functions: When Jesus says the bread is his body, "take and eat," and the wine is his blood, "take and drink," even the digestive system, the excrement, the toilet, the sewage system, are all blessed, saved, redeemed. This is part of the radical generosity of an incarnate God.
So in one (Eucharistic) sense, as Greenblatt notes, it would seem that Christ the King, in Eucharist, is an example of one who can "go a progress through the guts of a beggar." We might note that this reading is at odds with the same lines as a death threat to Claudius, but then Shakespeare sometimes wrote things that had a variety of meanings, sometimes in apparent contradiction of other meanings.
CHRISTIANITY AND BUDDHISM ON ALMS FOR BEGGARS
Some of this discussion of Eucharist and corpses eaten by worms, eaten by fish, eaten by beggars, may be strange and off-putting. Even among Early Modern historians and literature scholars, it may be easy to get caught up in Protestant claims that there is no such thing as transubstantiation, or in Roman Catholic counter-claims that it has nothing to do with cannibalism.
It may help here to consider Lewis Hyde's consideration of Eucharist and of a particular story from a Buddhist tradition that seems to be about volunteering for cannibalism, but is actually about giving alms to help feed others.
In the context of a larger consideration of gift exchange and its social, psychological, and spiritual dimensions, here is Hyde, writing in 1979 (before inclusive pronouns were more widely accepted):
[....]Gift exchange is the preferred interior commerce at those times when the psyche is in need of integration.
Our gifts may connect us to the gods as well. Sacrifice turns the face of the god toward man. We have already discussed the rites of the first fruit, a return gift that seeks to maintain relationship with the spiritual world. On the other side, the side of the gods, there are compassionate deities who approach us with gifts. The special case I want to consider here are the gods who become incarnate and then offer their own bodies as the gift that establishes the bond between man and the spiritual state to which the god pretends. In some of these cases the gift makes amends for an earlier separation. “Christ gave his body to atone for our sins, so that we might be made one with God.” “Sin” here is a falling away, a splitting apart: a man who sins acts so as to divide himself, internally or from his fellows or from God. “To atone” is to reunite, to make “at one.” There was a time when a criminal was allowed—and expected—to atone for his crime with a gift, the synthetic power of which would reestablish the broken bond and rein-corporate him into the body of the group. Spiritual systems call for atonement when a particular person or mankind as a whole is seen as having fallen away from an original unity with the gods. The Christian story is well known. In the Crucifixion or in the “Take, eat: this is my body,” Christ’s body becomes the gift, the vehicle of atonement, which establishes a new covenant between man and God.
In the West and among those raised as Christians, these ideas are fairly commonplace, but Hyde re-states them here in a helpful way. Next, he transitions and introduces the idea of alms in a Buddhist tale:
In other spiritual systems an incarnate spirit makes a gift of the body, though not in atonement, for no fall has preceded. There are higher states to which the race might aspire, and the spirit that has attained to them gives its body to open a path and establish a connection for others who would follow. Such a gift potentially revalues or redeems mankind. Again, this aspect of the Christian story is well known. Among the stories that are told about the Buddha there is another such tale of giving up the body. Tradition holds that the giving of alms is the first of the ten perfections required of a future Buddha. The JĀtaka, the Pali collection of accounts of the Buddha’s former lives, tells us that there was no limit to the number of existences in which Gautama Buddha became perfect in almsgiving, but the height of his perfection was reached during a lifetime in which he was a rabbit, the Wise Hare. Being a Future Buddha, this hare was naturally a rather special animal, one who not only gave alms but kept the precepts and observed the fast days.
And then he retells the tale:
The story goes like this. On one particular fast day the Wise Hare lay in his thicket, thinking to himself that he would go out and eat some dabba-grass when the time came to break his fast. Now, as the giving of alms while fasting brings great reward, and as any beggar who came before him might not want to eat grass, the hare thought to himself, If any supplicant comes, I will give him my own flesh. Such fiery spiritual zeal heated up the marble throne of Sakka, the ruler of the heaven of sensual pleasure. Peering down toward the earth, he spied the cause of this heat, and resolved to test the hare. He disguised himself as a Brahman and appeared before the Future Buddha.
“Brahman, why are you standing there?” asked the hare.
“Pandit, if I could only get something to eat, I would keep the fast-day vows and perform the duties of a monk.”
When Sakka heard this speech, he made a heap of live coals by using his superhuman power, and came and told the Future Buddha, who then rose from his couch of dabba-grass and went to the spot. He shook himself three times, saying, “If there are any insects in my fur, I must not let them die.” Then “throwing his whole body into the jaws of his generosity” (as the Sutra puts it), he jumped into the bed of coals, as delighted in mind as a royal flamingo when it alights in a cluster of lotus blossoms.
The fire, however, was unable to burn even a hair-pore of the Future Buddha’s body. “Brahman,” said the hare, “the fire you have made is exceedingly cold. What does it mean?”
“Pandit, I am no Brahman. I am Sakka, come to try you.””
“Sakka, your efforts are useless, for if all the beings who dwell in the world were to try me in respect to my generosity, they would not find in me any unwillingness to give.”
It may seem as if the Future Buddha is boasting of his generosity, but in fact he lacks any false or feigned humility, and he is simply being honest, voicing sincere self-knowledge. But the tale concludes:
“Wise Hare,” said Sakka, “let your virtue be proclaimed to the end of this world-cycle.” And taking a mountain in his hand, he squeezed it and, with the juice, drew the outline of a hare on the disk of the moon.
Hyde then reflects:
The JĀtaka records 550 stories of the Buddha’s anterior lives; the point of these stories is to record the helical development of Gautama Buddha through the cycles of birth and rebirth. Almsgiving is always a part of the preparation for incorporation into a higher level, and the story of the Wise Hare is, says the JĀtaka, “the acme of almsgiving.” It is a Buddhist version of “Take, eat: this is my body,” the highest gift of the incarnate spirit. It is not a tale of atonement because the gift follows no previous alienation from the spirit world. But the gift connects the Buddha—and any who would follow his spirit—to a higher state. We must all give up the body, but saints and incarnate deities intend that gift, and, through it, establish bonds between man and the spiritual world.
I might tend to disagree with Hyde on this detail: The presence of beggars may be evidence that there is, in fact, always some larger social injustice or wound in need of healing or atonement. While it may be possible in the abstract that there are saints or deities whose almsgiving is somehow pure and not intended to address a need for atonement, and while it may be of some benefit to contemplate the possibility of such purity and generosity, in practice, it would seem that atonement is always a factor. But this is a small point. Hyde may in fact be addressing the difference between labors of gratitude on the one hand, in response to gifts, and labors of regret in regard to some offense. (This is an idea that I explored in a previous 15-part series that concluded with the post at this link, and which contains links at the end to all posts in that series.)
THE IMPORTANCE OF NOT TAKING THINGS TOO LITERALLY
Some readers or listeners to the story of the Wise Hare (the Future Buddha) might think: I could never be so generous as to volunteer my body to be eaten like the hare did! My meager efforts all pale in comparison.
But there is a less literal way to approach the story: We say that various activities "eat up" our time. Parents often go out of their way to help and provide for their children, or to care for elderly parents, to cheer neighbors who have lost a loved one, to help friends struggling with serious or life-threatening illness. Our lives are made up of moments, bits of time, and when we do things for others, we are, in our own way, letting others feed off of our lives. Someone in my family was recently diagnosed with cancer and underwent surgery, and sure enough, many people came forward to offer gifts to cheer and support. It is like a feast, and we eat up one another's time, and are part of a larger shared life, even if we don't think of ourselves as like the Wise Hare who is ready to jump in hot coals to roast our bodies so that a beggar can eat.
WHAT COULD THIS HAVE TO DO WITH LAZARUS AND THE DIALOGUE IN HAMLET 4.3?
Hyde notes, "We must all give up the body, but saints and incarnate deities intend that gift...." The rich man in the Lazarus tale must give up the body, but because he lacked compassion for the beggar Lazarus, the tale says he went to hell. The gospel tale does not record him as having intended any gift for the beggar.
The king whose corpse is eaten by worms must give up the body. But even if he does not intend the gift, the worms may be used to catch fish that beggars will eat. By refusing or resisting compassion, he is resisting the ultimate order of things, in which we are all bound up with one another in a kind of communion.
CONSERVATIVE IRONIES AND WORM EXCREMENT
There are ironic aspects of Protestant and Roman Catholic conservatism about Eucharist, as well as of the economic conservatism of rich men, monarchs, and political leaders who resist compassion for the poor. And it seems these are connected:
Economic conservatives may resist compassion for the poor, but the dialogue in Hamlet 4.3 suggests that later they will be food for worms, then fish, then beggars. And even the excrement of these creatures may prove rich fertilizer that sustains life.
Religious conservatives may wish to save God from the indignity of being eaten by mice and worms, or eaten and excreted by humans who take communion in Christian worship services. But again, that excrement may be richer than their sense of squeamishness and shame allows, and the radical generosity of the incarnation may redeem and be present even in excrement.
There is an element of panentheism in Christianity: Acts 17:28 claims regarding the divine, "For in him we live, and move, and have our being" (Geneva), a passage still used frequently in Catholic liturgy and in the 1979 Book of Common Prayer. Jesus in the Gospel of Matthew is quoted as saying that whatever we do to "the least of these," we do unto him. That could be interpreted to include not only beggars, but also mice, worms, and fish.
NEARING THE END OF THE SERIES
Next week I will probably conclude my series on the beggar Lazarus allusion in Hamlet and its various incarnations and echoes in the plot of the play and its characters. There may always be more to explore, especially for those more familiar with Early Modern English history, politics, and the economics regarding who was literally or figuratively rich or poor. It has been an interesting and helpful adventure. Thanks to all of those who have followed the series this far.
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NOTES:
(1) Hamlet in Purgatory, Stephen Greenblatt. 2001, Princeton University Press. 240-244.
(2) The Gift: Imagination and the Erotic Life of Property, Lewis Hyde. 1983, Vintage Books. 58-60. For now, a 2007 version of this book can be found online via PDF at the following web address:
https://newsgrist.typepad.com/files/hyde-the-gift-creativity-and-the-artist-in-the-modern-world-2007.pdf
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MORE TO COME: This is part 17 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, scenes, themes, and plot elements. There are a variety of beggar Lazarus figures, and people who are beggars in one scene might be something else in another.
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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.
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https://pauladrianfried.blogspot.com/2019/12/top-20-hamlet-bible-posts.html
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