Pentecost in Hamlet?
[Images, clockwise from UPPER LEFT: Pentecost, circa 1310 and circa 1318, from "Seven panels with scenes from the Life of Christ" by Giotto and workshop (1266–1337). National Gallery, London. Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons. RIGHT: "The Pentecost," Part of Doña María de Aragón Altarpiece, circa 1600, by El Greco (1541–1614). Museo del Prado, National Museum of Spain, Madrid. Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons. LOWER LEFT: "The Pentecost" by a follower of Bernard van Orley, circa 1530. North Carolina Museum of Art, USA. Public domain, via Wikimedia.org.]
Consider: Hamlet contains not only more biblical allusions than do plays by other English playwrights of the age, but also more than any other of Shakespeare's plays.[1]
There is a rhythm in the story of the life of Jesus: He is a mentor and leader figure who is crucified, then rises, and appears to the disciples. He appears to women at the tomb (Luke 24:1-8, John 20:11-18), on the road to Emmaus (Luke 24:11-35) an in an upper room. In one of those appearances (John 20:21-22), he breathes on them and tells them, "Receive the Holy Spirit." In each of the four gospels, he sends them to spread the story, the good news.[2]
On Pentecost, as told in Acts 2, the Holy Spirit descends. In Acts 2:5-6, a detail is added about nations and languages:
5 And there were dwelling at Jerusalem Jews, men that feared God, of every nation under heaven.
6 Now when this was noised, the multitude came together and were aston[ish]ed, because that every man heard them speak his own language.[3]
(1599 Geneva)
So the story moves from teaching and ministry
to betrayal and crucifixion,
to resurrection,
to commissioning (tell the story, practice what Jesus preached),
to Pentecost,
to a gathering of nations that understand the message.
(In the Christian tradition, death and rising from the dead is not merely about corpses, but more importantly figurative: Those who are spiritually "dead" must repent of their sins and "rise" from the "death" of sin to a new life in Christ.)
In Hamlet, the prince undergoes a repentance from “bloody thoughts” of revenge and madness, starting on his Jonah-like sea-voyage, continuing in the graveyard, and in his apology to Laertes for his unkindness, for accidentally killing Polonius, and perhaps for contributing to Ophelia's despair and death.
This is Hamlet, dying to his sinful, mad, vengeful self, and rising anew to something better.
His repenting of his madness is stumbling and flawed, but it is present.
After Laertes poisons him, and he unknowingly poisons Laertes, they forgive each other (echoing "Father, forgive them, they know not what they do"[4] and Jesus’ commission to forgive sins [5]).
Then Hamlet commissions Horatio to tell his story, which parallels Jesus commissioning the disciples (as in FN 2, above).
After Hamlet dies, there is a gathering of Horatio, the Dane;
Fortinbras, Prince of Norway;
and the English Ambassador.
This is the only scene in which representatives of these three nations are gathered, and Horatio is prepared to attempt to tell them all of what has happened in his own flawed way.
This is not like the ending of the source tale in Saxo Grammaticus or Belleforest: Shakespeare seems to have been aware of the rhythms of the gospels, and has ended his play in a way that echoes Pentecost.
Why? Maybe Shakespeare views the story, and his job as a dramatist and storyteller, as one shaped at least in part by the rhythms of the gospel story, even if it usually goes unrecognized?
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POSTSCRIPT:
In A Midsummer Night's Dream, Theseus says,
The poet’s eye, in a fine frenzy rolling,
Doth glance from heaven to Earth, from Earth to heaven,
And as imagination bodies forth
The forms of things unknown, the poet’s pen
Turns them to shapes and gives to airy nothing
A local habitation and a name. (5.1.12-18)
It seems that Shakespeare has given to Pentecost a "local habitation and a name" in the context of the Hamlet story.
But just as many religious topics were hotly debated in Shakespeare's time, people debate
the meanings of the play,
whether Hamlet is a Christ figure,
whether Horatio will tell his story right,
whether Fortinbras will make a good successor to the throne of Denmark.
In Shakespeare's day, they would also debate whether James, a Scottish prince from the North, will make a good successor to Elizabeth I.
Maybe Shakespeare knows and anticipates this, but still views the story as fitting the rhythms of the gospels?
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NOTES:
Images, clockwise from UPPER LEFT: Pentecost, circa 1310 and circa 1318, from "Seven panels with scenes from the Life of Christ" by Giotto and workshop (1266–1337). National Gallery, London. Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.
RIGHT: "The Pentecost," Part of Doña María de Aragón Altarpiece, circa 1600, by El Greco (1541–1614). Museo del Prado, National Museum of Spain, Madrid. Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.
LOWER LEFT: "The Pentecost" by a follower of Bernard van Orley, circa 1530. North Carolina Museum of Art, USA. Public domain, via Wikimedia.org.]
[1] See Naseeb Shaheen, Biblical References in Shakespeare’s Plays, 534-563, for many examples not mentioned below.
Some of these are explicit (such as Hamlet's "Let be" to Horatio, which is often noted as an echo of Mary to the angel Gabriel at the Annunciation, but more exactly, a quote of Jesus to John the Baptist at the River Jordan).
https://pauladrianfried.blogspot.com/2020/01/hamlets-let-be-more-JC-to-JB-than-VM.html
Others are only implied such as Ophelia holding the book Polonius gives her to read while he and Polonius spy on Hamlet (3.1), with Ophelia and book as a visual echo of prayer book illustrations of Mary reading a book of psalms at the Annunciation:
https://pauladrianfried.blogspot.com/2019/05/ophelias-prayer-book-annunciation-of.html
Or the structural plot echoes of Jonah's sea voyage in Hamlet's (5.2):
https://pauladrianfried.blogspot.com/2018/04/the-ghost-of-jonah-haunts-hamlet.html
Or of the Emmaus tale in the graveyard scene (5.1):
https://pauladrianfried.blogspot.com/2018/05/emmaus-in-hamlet-in-emmaus-story-1.html
Or echoes of details from various larger parts of the Jephthah story in details we learn about Young Fortinbras in Hamlet 1.1, 1.2, and 5.2.
https://pauladrianfried.blogspot.com/2020/12/jephthah-polonius-cecil-ambitious.html
Various critics have noted the detail of Gertrude offering to wipe the face of her son Hamlet during his duel with Laertes, like a woman of Jerusalem (or "Veronica") wiping the face of Christ on the way to the crucifixion.
https://pauladrianfried.blogspot.com/2019/01/the-ghost-of-veronica-haunts-hamlet-in.html
[2] Matthew 28:16–20; Mark 16:14–18; Luke 24:44–49; John 20:19–23; Acts 1:4–8. See the following Wikipedia article for more basic information and comparison:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Commission#New_Testament_accounts
[3] People in Shakespeare's time may have related the Pentecost idea of people understanding in their own language to the idea of relatively new translations of the bible into the vernacular.
The Pentecost gift of understanding languages seems to reverse the curse of God in the story of the Tower of Babel in Genesis 11:1-9.
[4] Luke 23:34
[5] John 20:23
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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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Thanks for reading!
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