(Part 6) Hamlet in 3.2 as boy Jesus: Plucking mysteries' hearts?

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
INDEX OF POSTS IN THIS SERIES:
https://pauladrianfried.blogspot.com/2023/01/index-hamlet-in-32-as-boy-jesus-lost.html
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

When Hamlet implies after The Mousetrap that he and his parents are like (or ironically unlike) the boy Jesus and the Holy Family, [1] we have an analogy:

Hamlet, his mom Gertrude and uncle/stepdad Claudius on one side,
Jesus, his mother Mary and stepdad Joseph on the other.

Some analogies may seem simple and straightforward:
The moon is like a pearl in the night.

But what if both elements of the analogy are mysterious, ambiguous, moving targets?

That is the case with Hamlet and Jesus.

HAMLET IS NOT YOUR AVERAGE REVENGER: He wants to be sure his uncle is guilty, to avoid killing the wrong man.[2] Soon after Hamlet thinks he can be sure, he kills the wrong man - Polonius, by accident.[3]

This is not your average revenger.

Peter Lake says that Hamlet the play is a hybrid of four genres:
Revenge Tragedy (like Kyd’s The Spanish Tragedy)
History Play (something rotten overcome - often with the help of foreign intervention)
Murder Pamphlet (murder exposed, murderer brought to justice)
Conversion Narrative (repenting from sin) [4]

Many assume Hamlet is just a revenge tragedy, or a misogynistic prince with an oedipal complex.
They fall short.

THE OTHER HALF OF THE ANALOGY IS JESUS.
Many assume they know who Jesus is:
Crucified.
Second person of the Trinity.
Savior.

They assume that even during his pre-crucifixion, earthly life, he was
all-knowing (omniscient) and
all-powerful (omnipotent). [5]

That’s what Sunday school and church doctrine teaches.

But this does not describe the boy Jesus in the temple.[6]
Nor does it describe the Jesus that the disciples first met.

Of the four canonical gospels written decades after Jesus died, there are differences that are perhaps irreconcilable (in spite of church claims otherwise).

The gospels portray a Jesus whom many found to be a wise teacher, and a compassionate example in his ministry. He claimed that many religious leaders of his time were hypocrites.[7] He was careful in speaking about corrupting influences of the Roman occupation.[8]

People believed they would be healed merely by touching him. When they were healed, he sometimes said it wasn’t a power in him, but their faith that healed them. [9]

After he was killed, his followers tried to honor his memory by portraying him as a New Moses, [10] a wonder-worker, Son of God, perhaps with attributes of Greek gods and heroes as well.[11]

We begin from a very different starting point than that of the disciples if we begin from the gospel writers’ conclusions.

We risk losing sight of Jesus’ humanity if we begin mostly with our assumptions about his divinity.

So in Hamlet’s analogy of himself as like the boy Jesus, both elements in the analogy are moving targets, mysteries, filled with ironies.

And as Hamlet bids Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, we should be careful not to assume we can pluck the heart of a mystery.[12]

NOTES

[1] For a basic introduction to the allusion in its context in Hamlet 3.2 after The Mousetrap, see Part 1 in this series: https://pauladrianfried.blogspot.com/2023/01/hamlet-as-boy-jesus-among-synagogue.html

For a closer look at how the analogy correlates with Hamlet and his family, see part 3: https://pauladrianfried.blogspot.com/2023/02/hamlet-as-boy-jesus-among-temple-elders_14.html

For a glimpse of some of the ways the analogy is ironic for how it is also dissimilar to Hamlet’s situation, see part 4:
https://pauladrianfried.blogspot.com/2023/02/part-4-dissonance-and-irony-in-hamlets.html

[2] The initial purpose of the play-within-the-play, The Mousetrap, is to test the ghost’s honesty by testing Claudius: Can Hamlet’s uncle view a play that reenacts the murder, without having his conscience caught very uncomfortably in public? Hamlet says this is his plan in 2.2.633-634, and The Mousetrap is enacted in much of 3.2.
- All references to Hamlet are to the Folger Shakespeare Library online version: https://www.folger.edu/explore/shakespeares-works/hamlet/read/

[3] Hamlet 3.4.23-30

[4] See previous blog post on Peter Lake’s point regarding the four genres in Hamlet: https://pauladrianfried.blogspot.com/2022/07/peter-lake-on-four-genres-represented.html

[5] I had a theology professor in college (then a priest, now a bishop) who speculated: Perhaps Jesus didn’t have unlimited knowledge of all things past and present (omniscience), but instead, was uniquely open to being corrected, as he is by the woman who corrects him, observing that even the dogs get the scraps that fall from the master’s table (Matthew 15:22-28). This aligns with John Henry Newman’s idea of perfection:
“To live is to change, and to be perfect is to have changed often.”

[6] Luke 2:46-52

[7] Matthew 23:23-28

[8] Mark 12:13-17

[9] The gospel writers are sometimes torn, wanting to attribute healing to a power in Jesus (Luke 8:46) although in the next breath, Jesus says, “your faith has healed you” (Luke 8:48). See also Luke 18:42.

[10] The flight into Egypt to escape the slaughter of innocents (Matthew 2: 13-15) paints Jesus as a new infant Moses; the transfiguration (Mark 9:2–13; Matthew 17:1–13; Luke 9:28–36) also has Jesus resemble Moses who went apart, and up on the mountain to receive the law.

[11] Luke 24:13-35, the encounter by two disciples with a stranger on the road to Emmaus after the crucifixion, resembles some of the tales in Greek mythology, such as the Odyssey, where the son of Odysseus and others encounter a goddess in disguise.
See Max Whitaker, in Is Jesus Athene or Odysseus? Investigating the Unrecognisability and Metamorphosis of Jesus in his Post-Resurrection Appearances (2019) p.174.
See also Dennis R. MacDonald, Mythologizing Jesus: From Jewish Teacher to Epic Hero (2015), chapter 10.

[12] Hamlet to Rosencrantz and Guildenstern:
Why, look you now, how unworthy a thing
you make of me! You would play upon me, you
would seem to know my stops, you would pluck
out the heart of my mystery, you would sound me
from my lowest note to the top of my compass;
and there is much music, excellent voice, in this
little organ, yet cannot you make it speak. ’Sblood,
do you think I am easier to be played on than a pipe?
3.2.395-396

IMAGES: These two images are the closest to the dating of Shakespeare’s Hamlet of all the images in this series so far, but while Shakespeare may have seen paintings or drawings depicting this gospel tale, it is unlikely that he ever saw these particular images.

LEFT IMAGE:
“Jesus among the Doctors,” circa 1550-1600, by a follower of Hieronymus Bosch (circa 1450-1516).
Alt. title:
“Christ's dispute with the doctors in the temple.”
Louvre Museum. Public domain, via
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Bosch_follower_Christ%27s_dispute_with_the_doctors_in_the_temple_(Louvre).jpg

Alternative version in private collection seems to show a priest in foreground on left:

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Bosch_follower_Christ%27s_dispute_with_the_doctors_in_the_temple_(private_collection).jpg

RIGHT IMAGE:

German title: Christus unter den Schriftgelehrten (Jesus among the doctors), circa 1600. Anonymous.
Kunsthistorisches Museum. Public domain, via
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Anonymous_-_Christus_unter_den_Schriftgelehrten_-_GG_7793_-_Kunsthistorisches_Museum.jpg

Search This Blog

Paul Adrian Fried / HAMLET'S BIBLE

(Part 6) Hamlet in 3.2 as boy Jesus: Plucking mysteries' hearts?

Comments

Post a Comment