Father Figures in Hamlet

Today is Father’s Day in the USA. What kinds of father figures are there in Hamlet? [1]

[Images: Top left: Brian Blessed as the Ghost in Hamlet, 1996, directed by Kenneth Branagh. Via Hamlet Digi-book, Blue Ray -dot-com. Fair use.
Top right: Alan Bates as Claudis in Hamlet, 1990, directed by Franco Zeffirelli. Via Shakespeare Navigators. Fair use.
Lower left: Oliver Ford Davies as Polonius in in Hamlet, 2008, directed by Gregory Doran. Via BBC and RSC. Fair use.
Lower right: Sir Ken Dodd, who played Yorick in Hamlet, 1996, directed by Kenneth Branagh. Via Telegraph UK. Fair use.]

Many children are haunted by their fathers, at least figuratively, in good or bad ways.

Old Fortinbras:
The father of Young Fortinbras gambles his life in for ambition. The prize: Honor and land conquest by defeating an adversary. He loses. Some fathers are ambitious, gamblers, violent, but blunt about it, making no secret of their ambitions, or their violence. Some are killed in battle, never to meet their children.

Claudius:
King Claudius secretly poisons his brother, marries his brother’s wife, becomes king. Some fathers are poisonous, sabotaging others, using them to achieve their ends, discarding them later. Claudius enters into what the Bible would call an incestuous marriage, choosing a partner from among close relations though it may have been more healthy and selfless to be more outward-looking. He imposes himself as a father on Hamlet, calls Hamlet his son, assumes an intimacy Hamlet doesn’t want or need.

Polonius:
Polonius controls his children. He sends his son back to France with a list of advice, but also sends a spy to plant mildly scandalous stories about his son in order to find other gossip about him. He forbids Ophelia to see the prince, who has declared his love for her; he assumes Hamlet only wishes to use her, because that’s what Polonius sometimes did with women in his youth. He admits he misjudged Hamlet, but never apologizes. After forbidding Ophelia to see Hamlet, he later commands her to see him in order to use her as bait to spy on Hamlet.

Jephthah [1]:
Hamlet compares Polonius to Jephthah, who promised to sacrifice to God the first thing that crossed his threshold (his daughter) if God granted him victory. (For Priam[2] and Francesco[3], see notes.)

Yorick:
Many scholars and critics recognize that in Hamlet’s youth, the court jester, Yorick, was an emotional surrogate father figure for him, humoring and entertaining him with “infinite jest,” giving him affection that perhaps his father, King Hamlet, never had time, interest, or natural inclination to give.

The Ghost of Hamlet’s Father:
The Ghost tells Hamlet he is in purgatory for “foul crimes” he doesn’t explain, warns Hamlet that his brother killed him, and commissions his son to avenge his death and set right what is wrong with Denmark.

IF I HAD TO PICK TWO:
Let's avoid the binary tendency to pick one and reject all others. It’s a dark group to choose from, but I'd pick Yorick and the Ghost [3]: Yorick by himself may be a fine au pair, Holy Fool, regime critic, and friend, but can’t teach Hamlet how to be king. The ghost, by admitting “foul crimes,” gives Hamlet an example of humility, and by commissioning Hamlet to set right what is corrupt in Denmark, he is at least a flawed example of leadership with a thirst for some kind of justice and progress.


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NOTES:
[1] Here’s a link to my 13-part series on Jephthah in Hamlet:
https://pauladrianfried.blogspot.com/2021/02/jephthah-series-pay-attention-be-astonished-tell.html

[2] For of my two posts relating to Priam, Hecuba and Pyrrhus in Hamlet, see these links:
https://pauladrianfried.blogspot.com/2021/01/whats-jephthah-to-hecuba-or-she-to-him.html

https://pauladrianfried.blogspot.com/2020/07/hamlets-warrior-christian-dialectic.html

[3] The fact that Shakespeare named the sentinels in 1.1 Francisco and Bernardo points at least in part to their saint-namesakes, Francis of Assisi and Bernard of Clairvaux. Francis had an abusive father and is depicted in paintings as having cut himself off from his father by publicly taking off his clothes and giving them back to his father, with the bishop present as a witness. Francis said he had a father in heaven. Hamlet makes a similar transition, from a problematic attachment to his earthly father, to finding a better father figure in God ("Providence") on his sea voyage.

See the following two posts I've made on this topic:
https://pauladrianfried.blogspot.com/2019/01/shakespeares-hamlet-has-father-issues.html

https://pauladrianfried.blogspot.com/2017/11/shakespeares-hamlet-finds-father-in.html 

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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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