(Part 3) Hamlet as boy Jesus among Temple Elders: A closer look

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INDEX OF POSTS IN THIS SERIES:
https://pauladrianfried.blogspot.com/2023/01/index-hamlet-in-32-as-boy-jesus-lost.html
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After The Mousetrap, Hamlet subtly compares himself to the boy Jesus,[1] amazing elders in the Temple (Luke 2:41-52).[2]

See Part 1 of this series [3] for a simple comparison of the Hamlet lines to the scripture verses in Luke 2.

Some of my readers caught the allusion right away with the texts side-by-side. Others were reluctant. It may help to look more closely.

HOW THE ALLUSION WORKS

Why might Hamlet (and Shakespeare) have thought that this moment parallels the Luke tale enough to warrant the allusion? (Not an exhaustive list.)

DISTRESSED PARENTS

- In Luke: Mary and Joseph had “heavy hearts” (v.48) to find that Jesus was missing.

- In Hamlet: Claudius is “marvelous distempered” [4]; Gertrude, “in most great affliction of spirit" [5].

ASTONISHED & AMAZED

- Luke uses the word “astonish” (v.47) to describe the elder’s reaction to the boy; “amazed” to describe the parents’ reaction “when they saw him” (v.48).

- Rosencrantz tells Hamlet, “your behavior hath struck her into amazement and admiration” [6].

WONDER-WORKER BOY

- The boy Jesus impressed the temple elders (vss.46-47).

- Hamlet seems to think he worked a kind of wonder, to use The Mousetrap to catch the consciences of his mother and uncle. Proud of himself, a bit arrogant, he compares his own feat to that of the boy Jesus (336).

LOST CHILD, NOT LOST?

- The Luke tale says that when the family left Jerusalem, the boy Jesus stayed behind, but the parents didn’t realize until longer after they’d left with a larger group (vss.43-44)

- The allusion may imply that Hamlet’s alleged madness was a form of being lost from his family, like the boy Jesus separated from his.

LOST, FOUND, REVEALED

- In Luke, the parents find him in the temple (v.46).

- In Hamlet, they find him at a play performance, catching their consciences, revealing thoughts and feelings he had hidden. He is reunited with them as something closer to his honest self—but this drives them from the room.

MY FATHER’S BUSINESS

- When Jesus’ parents find him, he asks, “knew ye not that I must go about my Father’s business?” (v.49).

- Hamlet has also been about his [ghostly] father’s business, catching consciences to prove Claudius’ guilt (and prove the ghost was honest). Then he thinks he will be ready to avenge his father’s death by killing his uncle.

DISHARMONY

This should create cognitive dissonance for the audience: Jesus wasn’t getting ready to kill an uncle or a king. Harsh irony.

FORESHADOWING

Francis of Assisi had an abusive father; legend says he he cut ties with him in a public square, saying before the bishop that he had a father in heaven. The sentinel name, “Francesco,” therefore foreshadows the Luke 2 allusion’s theme of Jesus saying he had to be about his (heavenly) father’s business. [7]

REPRISE:

After the sea voyage, Hamlet finds a heavenly father in “Providence” when pirates kidnap him, spare his life, and take him home. And Hamlet finds the skull of his surrogate father, Yorick, whose fooling spirit seems to reside in the gravedigger.

Make sense?

https://pauladrianfried.blogspot.com/2023/02/hamlet-as-boy-jesus-among-temple-elders_0941470661.html

NOTES:
[1] Hamlet, 3.2.325-356: All references to Hamlet are to the Folger Shakespeare Library online version: https://shakespeare.folger.edu/shakespeares-works/hamlet/entire-play/

[2] See Bible Gateway for a modern spelling version of the Geneva translation: https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Luke%202%3A41-52&version=GNV

See StudyBible.info for original spelling: https://studybible.info/Geneva/Luke%202:41-52

[3] Part 1 in this series: https://pauladrianfried.blogspot.com/2023/01/hamlet-as-boy-jesus-among-synagogue.html

Also see Part 2 in this series: https://pauladrianfried.blogspot.com/2023/02/hamlet-as-boy-jesus-among-temple-elders.html

[4] (3.2.327-8)

[5] (339-340)

[6] (354-5)

[7] Giotto, 1297-1299. Basilica of Saint Francis of Assisi, Assisi, Italy. Image Public Domain via Wikipedia.org: https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Giotto_-_Legend_of_St_Francis_-_-05-_-_Renunciation_of_Wordly_Goods.jpg

COLLAGE IMAGE - LEFT: Francis renounces his earthly father for a heavenly one, echoing Jesus staying in Jerusalem when his parents left - so that he could be about his “father’s business”:

Giotto, 1297-1299. Basilica of Saint Francis of Assisi, Assisi, Italy. Image Public Domain via Wikipedia.org: https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Giotto_-_Legend_of_St_Francis_-_-05-_-_Renunciation_of_Wordly_Goods.jpg

COLLAGE IMAGE - RIGHT: The boy Jesus raises his hand to make a point in dispute with the temple elders? Or to emphasize that he strayed from his earthly parents because he had to be about “his [heavenly] father’s business"?

Christ Among the Doctors (or, "The dispute with doctors in the temple"), circa 1560, Paolo Veronese.
Museo del Prado. Public domain, via
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Disputa_con_los_doctores_(El_Veron%C3%A9s)_grande.jpg

Comments

Paul Adrian FriedFebruary 27, 2023 at 11:18 AM
Thank you for your comments about T.S. Eliot, Jayshree. I'm familiar with his writings on Hamlet, and with his famous thinking on "objective correlatives."

I think Eliot is correct in saying that Hamlet's actions and feelings "are too complex to be represented by Gertrude alone."
- Freudians take that one way: Oedipal complex must explain it.
- Some (new- and old?) historicists might say the excess complexity is related to Shakespeare's culture and the (supposedly) incestuous marriage of Henry VIII to his first wife, a foundational claim by Henry that triggered the English Reformation, and led to many executions, as well as a kind of national trauma that resulted.

Eliot assumes Hamlet the play is a failure because of this excess complexity that he thinks is not embodied enough in objective correlatives. But most people in Shakespeare's time knew very well the ways that a sort of madness over a royal incestuous marriage was very concretely embodied in their lives, so I would disagree with Eliot on this point and claim that the play was a success for its time.

The problem is that by the time Eliot was writing, and perhaps even earlier, people were so far removed from the trauma of Henry VIII and the Tudors, that some may feel the objective correlatives are insufficient in the play.

That's my best guess.

But I appreciate your comment! It's an important issue, and frequently cited by scholars still!

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(Part 3) Hamlet as boy Jesus among Temple Elders: A closer look

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