Hamlet, Footwashing, Maundy Thursday, Hobbits, and Revelation

Echoes of Maundy Thursday in Hamlet (and Hobbits):

[Image: Screen capture from YouTube clip of The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003), directed by Peter Jackson, Warner Bros. based on the book by J.R.R. Tolkien. Fair use.]

Maundy Thursday (or Holy Thursday, April 14 in 2022, and April 6 in 2023) begins what the Roman Catholic Church calls the Triduum (Paschal or Easter Triduum), which includes a ritual remembrance of Jesus washing the feet of his disciples (John 13:1–17).

“Maundy” comes from the Latin word for “command,” so Maundy Thursday gets its name from the Latin words once used at the opening of the Thursday service during Holy Week, and the gospel in which Jesus commands his disciples to love and serve others as he loved and served them. This came to be known as Jesus “New Commandment” to love, an idea used by Christians to differentiate them from the Ten Commandments of Moses. [1]

There are echoes in Hamlet of this passage from John, and related passages from other gospels about the importance of service: In Hamlet 1.2, when Horatio enters, he has the following exchange with Hamlet:

HORATIO
Hail to your Lordship.

HAMLET
I am glad to see you well.
Horatio—or I do forget myself!

HORATIO
The same, my lord, and your poor servant ever.

HAMLET
Sir, my good friend. I’ll change that name with you. (1.2.165-9)

Horatio calls Hamlet “your lordship” and “lord,” and presents himself to Hamlet as “your poor servant ever,” to which Hamlet responds that he would change that name (your poor servant ever) with Horatio. [2] [3]

Popes have performed the foot washing ritual by washing the feet of bishops or cardinals.

After Henry VIII split with Rome and became head of England’s church, Henry washed the feet of poor men:
"Each year Henry washed the feet of the number of men who equaled his age and gave each of the poor men whose feet he washed a red purse with the number of pence within it that also equaled his age."

But when Henry’s daughters Mary I and Elizabeth I became queens, it would have been awkward (unbecoming? even scandalous?) for them to wash the feet of men, so they washed the feet of poor women.  (See Carol Levin, "Would I Could Give You Help and Succour": Elizabeth I and the Politics of Touch.)

In the United States, as late as the 1990s, pastors often washed the feet of male trustees or members of the parish council. Some dioceses directed their pastors not to wash the feet of women, because when Jesus washed the feet of the disciples, they were all men. (The exclusion of women from the ritual persists in many places today.)

One can imagine that a queen washing the feet of women might offer a metaphor that could lead to women priests and bishops one day.

Linda Kay Hoff also notes in this an echo of the egalitarianism in Revelation 19:10, when “the narrator says of the angel, 'Then I fell down at his feet to worship him, but he said to me, “You must not do that! I am a fellow servant with you. . . .” (138, “Hamlet's Choice: Hamlet—A Reformation Allegory, 1990).

[Image: Screen capture from YouTube clip of The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003), directed by Peter Jackson, Warner Bros. based on the book by J.R.R. Tolkien. Fair use.]

This is reminiscent of the moment at the end of The Lord of the Rings trilogy, when Frodo and the other hobbits bow before King Aragorn and Queen Arwen, and Aragorn tells them they bow to no one.



~~~~~~~ NOTES:
[1] The contrast between the “New Commandment” of Jesus, or the “New Law” to love and serve, and the “Old” law of Moses, is in many ways a false contrast promoted by early Christians in order to differentiate themselves from the Jewish faith Jesus believed, preached, and sought to reform as a prophet and teacher, but whose authorities rejected the idea that Jesus had been raised from the dead.

[2] Protestant scholars who authored reference books listing biblical allusions in Shakespeare usually avoided any mention of the Maundy Thursday allusion for Horatio and Hamlet in 1.2. Why was this? Perhaps for three reasons:
A. The first such reference work, by Bishop Charles Wordsworth, was first published in 1864, just five years after Darwin's book, On the Origin of Species (1859). Charles Wordsworth's book, and most of other reference works on Shakespeare and the Bible that followed it, were therefore influenced by the empiricism of the age. The allusion in Hamlet 1.2 is a paraphrase, and an empirical approach might reject it for lack of explicit similarity to specific Bible passages.
B. While Catholics are especially focused on sacraments, Protestants are especially focused on the Bible as the Word of God, and for this reason, some Protestant scholars may have attended more to explicit chapter-and-verse references.
C. Protestantism in Shakespeare's time said that we are saved not by works, but by faith alone. The foot-washing ritual and all it symbolizes may be taken to imply that works such as serving others, and loving them as Jesus loved, might offer a path to salvation.

Perhaps for these reasons, the servant/lord allusion in 1.2 is overlooked by Charles Wordsworth (1864), Thomas Carter (1905), Richmond Noble (1935), and Naseeb Shaheen (1999).

But it is noted by Peter Milward, a Catholic and a Jesuit, in his 1987 book, Biblical Influences in Shakespeare’s Great Tragedies (11).

[3] On a similar theme, Hamlet insists that Polonius should not merely provide accommodations suited to what he thinks the players deserve, but much better (2.2.555-559), implying a humility and service in hospitality similar to Jesus washing the disciples’ feet.


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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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https://pauladrianfried.blogspot.com/2019/12/top-20-hamlet-bible-posts.html

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