The Missing Body Of Polonius And Alleged Atheism Of William Cecil

Last week my post addressed the anxiety of characters in Hamlet about the missing body of Polonius, compared to that of the women at the tomb regarding the corpse of Jesus.

[Images: Illuminations from Folio 117r of the Pericopes of Henry II, Reichenau, c. 1002–1012: The Three Marys, and the Angel at the Empty Tomb. Public domain, via Wikipedia, and fair use, via Flickr.]

If Shakespeare is satirizing William Cecil as Polonius (and as *the antithesis of Jesus*), the point is not to affirm belief in a resurrection of Christ, but to perform political satire.

But there is more to this missing body business (as there usually is with Shakespeare).
Consider certain claims about William Cecil and the Privy Council before we return to Polonius:

Robert Persons, a Jesuit priest, claimed in 1592 that there was a "school of atheism" in England centered on Sir Walter Raleigh.

Atheism in Elizabethan England was a label for many things, including those (like later US President Thomas Jefferson, with his revisionist Bible) who rejected biblical miracles in favor of more rationalist explanations.

Some have claimed that Christopher Marlowe's knowledge of the heretical or atheistic ideas of certain privy council members may have been the reason he was murdered. [1] Atheistic or heretical Privy council members (or rationalistic freethinkers) may have included not only Raleigh and William Cecil, but also Edward de Vere, the 17th Earl of Oxford, and also Lord Strange, originally the patron of the company of players to which Shakespeare belonged.

Evidently, these privy council members sometimes discussed alternative explanations for biblical claims. These included the idea that Jesus was not conceived of the Holy Spirit, but that Mary had conceived Jesus out of wedlock by a man other than Joseph. [2]

Christianity has long disputed such claims. But claiming such things in Elizabethan England would be considered heretical and atheistic, a denial of Jesus’ divine origins. [3]

Marlowe may have been an atheist, and perhaps did not object to heresy in itself so much as to the hypocrisy of it in Privy Council members who promoted the English Church and persecuted those who opposed it instead of promoting tolerance.

Back to Hamlet and Polonius:
A very old rationalistic claim was to say that the tomb of Jesus was empty, and the body of Jesus missing, not because his body was miraculously risen, but that someone had moved and hidden the body so as to justify later claims of resurrection (see Matthew 28:10-15 and the Stolen Body Hypothesis).

Hamlet cleverly and implicitly (without naming it as such) acts out this rationalist reading of the empty tomb of Jesus by hiding the body of Polonius, triggering the anxiety of King Claudius and his spies about the missing body.

So when Hamlet (unnecessarily, inexplicably [4]) "stages" or arranges for the missing body of Polonius, it may have had a purpose: for Shakespeare to connect Polonius (a stand-in for William Cecil) with allegations of rationalistic heresy (like the stolen body theory of the empty tomb) on the part of Cecil.
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[1.a.] These include M. J. Trow, who examines this possibility in his book, Who Killed Kit Marlowe? A Contract to Murder in Elizabethan England (2002). 1.b. See also The Marlowe Society web page, “Death in Debtford”: http://www.marlowe-society.org/christopher-marlowe/life/death-in-deptford/

[2.a.] This is an old claim: Origen of Alexandria (c.185–c.253) wrote of a lost work by the philosopher Celsus, who claimed that a Roman Soldier, Tiberius Pantera, was the father of Jesus.

[2.b.] Others have claimed Mary was raped or captured and prostituted by soldiers. See also Matt 1, which includes in Jesus’ lineage various “women” like Tamar, Rahab, Ruth, and Bathsheba, perhpas suggesting that Jesus was conceived outside of marriage.
See article here, and
[2.c.] relevant book review here.

[3] And it might seem too subtle or convoluted to the literal-minded, to claim that Mary was raped, and that a child of rape might also be "conceived by the Holy Spirit" and become Jesus the Christ.

But in general, both claims about alternative human fatherhood for Jesus, and alternative explanations for the empty tomb, tend to take the virginity of Mary and the symbolic meaning of the empty tomb too literally, so instead of considering their symbolic or figurative meanings, the literal meaning of the story is reified, and the symbolic or figurative meanings are rejected in favor of thoroughly rational explanations.

This is not to say one must take the biblical claims literally as the only possible explanation, but rather to note that the symbolic or figurative meanings are lost if one rejects them in favor of otehr explanations.

[4] Perhaps the only purpose for hiding the body is to set up Hamlet’s rich wordplay about missing bodies, Diet of Worms, beggars eating kings in 4.3.20-41 (Folger)?

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More reading:
School of Night/School of Atheism:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_School_of_Night

On the killing of Christopher Marlowe:
Sparticus Educational on the Murder of Marlowe and Atheism in Elizabethan England:
https://spartacus-educational.com/Christopher_Marlowe_death.htm

Frontline article on the killing of Marlowe:
https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/muchado/fine/killing.html

Christopher Marlowe : An Elizabethan Assassination Conspiracy? By matthewrettino
https://matthewrettino.com/2013/03/24/christopher-marlowe-an-elizabethan-assassination-conspiracy/

The Marlow Society: Death in Deptford
http://www.marlowe-society.org/christopher-marlowe/life/death-in-deptford/

On Heresy and Atheism:
Orthodoxy, Heresy and Treason in Elizabethan England - by Claire Cross
https://journals.openedition.org/rfcb/3561

The Physician as Atheist in Elizabethan England - by Paul H. Kocher
https://doi.org/10.2307/3815926
https://www.jstor.org/stable/3815926

English Literature and the Invention of Atheism, 1564–1611, by Fraser Buchanan
https://ora.ox.ac.uk/catalog/uuid:7e1944b1-c039-4541-8161-56b9fb1a69d8/download_file?file_format=&safe_filename=Buchanan-Atheism-DPhil-2020-corrected.pdf

The Problem of ‘Atheism’ in Early Modern England - by Michael Hunter
https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/transactions-of-the-royal-historical-society/article/abs/problem-of-atheism-in-early-modern-england/75FFF80E4FE7D25437C434BCEC7A42C0

Atheism (from two volume set, chapter 11): Early Modern England, by Jeffrey Collins
from Part III - Reformation, Renaissance, Enlightenment,
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 25 September 2021
https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/abs/cambridge-history-of-atheism/early-modern-england/832E03595721F6336B5DEE0302928F2C

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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 point out how the Bible and religion may have influenced Shakespeare, his plays, and his age.
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Thanks for reading!
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My current project is a book tentatively titled Hamlet’s Bible, about biblical allusions and plot echoes in Hamlet.

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