Alcoholic Claudius? Jeffrey Wilson: Culture of Drunkenness in Shakespeare’s Hamlet
[Left: Alan Bates as Claudius (1990), dir. Franco Zeffirelli. Fair use. Cropped, via screen grab from YouTube. Center: Derek Jacobi as Claudius (1996), dir. Kenneth Branagh. Fair use. Cropped, via Shakespeare Wiki. Right: Patrick Stewart as Claudius (2009), dir. Gregory Doran. Fair use. Cropped, via BBC.]
Wilson is a lecturer at Harvard who has written and published frequently on Shakespeare-related topics. I follow him on Twitter <@DrJeffreyWilson> in part because he often advocates online open access, as well as the idea that scholars should share their ideas more freely to stimulate good thinking and collaboration, rather than hoarding their ideas in fear they might be stolen before publication. (As a blogger, I agree.)
His essay reminded me of a scholar who complained about a variety of modern productions of Hamlet that portray Claudius (and sometimes Gertrude) as alcoholic, saying he thought that these productions overdid it.
I tend to disagree: The first time I read the play, I noticed a self-idolatrous Claudius who liked drinking and shooting off cannons, as if to pretend he could compete with the heavens and their thunder. (1.2.129-32 Folger)
Wilson writes:
In 1918 Howard Mumford Jones thought Hamlet was dead wrong
about his Uncle's alcoholism: “Nowhere in the play do we see, or
hear of, Claudius when he thinks or acts or talks like a drunken
man.” Yet the way Claudius “thinks or acts or talks” depends
on different directors and actors in different stagings. Claudius’s
alcoholism is best captured not in criticism or historicism but in
productions and adaptations that bring to life the cycles of pain in
and around any alcoholic.
[...]
Only by spending little time around functioning alcoholics could one
complain, along with J.J.M. Tobin, that “Claudius . . . behaves
soberly and quite competently but is described by his hostile
nephew aspolitically incompetent, physically ugly, and morally
alcoholic and lecherous.” Alcoholism and success in a high‑
powered career are not mutually exclusive. That fusion of contraries
gives Claudius complexity of character, separating him from
melodramatic villainy. [2]
I am glad that Wilson raises the question of whether it’s misogynistic to assume Gertrude shares Claudius’ addiction. [3] He ponders whether even Yorick (who once spilled a flagon of Rhenish on the head of the gravedigger) was also an alcoholic, a good question.
But it may be that Yorick was critical of the drinking culture (spilling and wasting the wine on the gravedigger's head). Hamlet opposes the drinking traditions (“more honored in the breach”); if Yorick’s gesture was a fool's protest, a young Hamlet may have admired him for it. [4]
Like Peter Lake and some others, Wilson sees Gertrude and Ophelia as doomed along with Claudius, a point on which I disagree, at least regarding the play's hints at their salvation.[5]
But overall, Wilson’s essay offers a needed correction to any careless scholarly assumption that accepts Claudius’ drinking too uncritically.
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NOTES:
[1] “Sigma Alpha Elsinore: The Culture of Drunkenness in Shakespeare’s Hamlet”
Open access at
https://wilson.fas.harvard.edu/files/jeffreywilson/files/jeffrey_r._wilson_sigma_alpha_elsinore_-_the_culture_of_drunkenness_in_shakespeares_hamlet_2022.pdf
[2] page 53
[3] page 56
[4] page 54
[5] I have posted before about how I believe it’s possible to read the play as hinting that Gertrude not only keeps Hamlet’s secret from Claudius, and acts with compassion and charity toward Ophelia in describing her death as accidental rather than suicide, but also that she disobeys Claudius’ command not to drink, in part because she may suspect that the chalice might be poisoned, and she wishes to test it to save her son.
https://pauladrianfried.blogspot.com/2019/10/gertrude-as-recipient-giver-of-gifts.html
I’ve also blogged before about how Ophelia is like the beggar Lazarus, not only to the “churlish priest” (in her brother’s words) but also to her father and brother: She begs for approval and affirmation of her relationship with Hamlet, and they deny her, as the rich man denied the beggar Lazarus. Laertes views her as saved, and in heaven, a “ministering angel,” and the priest as damned.
Ophelia sees herself as the selfish baker’s daughter who was ungenerous with the beggar at the door (like Hamlet), and seems to regret her selfishness.
https://pauladrianfried.blogspot.com/2017/08/being-inclusive-about-religious.html
https://pauladrianfried.blogspot.com/2018/01/the-ghost-of-lazarus-haunts-hamlet.html
https://pauladrianfried.blogspot.com/2021/03/ophelia-in-13-as-beggar-lazarus-part-6.html
With an allusion to a Ben Johnson play subplot, she later understands that she was like the daughter taken from her true (heavenly?) father by a “false steward” who made her believe she was not worthy of a match or marriage she desired, when in fact she was.
https://pauladrianfried.blogspot.com/2019/01/the-false-steward-that-stole-his.html
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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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