Hamlet's Emmaus in Jonah's Belly: Allusions inside of allusions

HOW IS IT POSSIBLE that one allusion or plot echo might be encompassed inside of another?

A playwright can begin one thread of a story with an allusion, have the action cut away to a sub-plot with a different allusion, and pick up later on the original story thread.

This happens in Hamlet, with plot echoes of Jonah and Emmaus.

JONAH [1]: Hamlet’s sea-voyage contains important similarities to the sea-voyage of Jonah.[2] Bits of this allusion or the plot echo begin early in the play, with Hamlet exclaiming to the ghost, “O my prophetic soul!” [3]

Later there are repeated references to his upcoming sea-voyage to England. [4]

On his sea-voyage, we don’t hear of his having been in the belly of the pirate ship
until Horatio reads a letter in which Hamlet mentions pirates [5].
To Claudius, Hamlet writes how he was “set naked on your kingdom.” [6]

EMMAUS:
Before we hear details that complete the Jonah echo in 5.2, Hamlet and Horatio are two Danes on the road to Elisinore, stopping in a graveyard where they meet a gravedigger, a stranger. They echo two disciples on the road to Emmaus, and the stranger on the road.  [7]
 
Only in recent weeks did I realize:
The Emmaus allusion is placed in the belly of the Jonah allusion, or birthed from it, or vomited out of it.
Shakespeare begins the Jonah echo, but doesn’t complete it until 5.2.
Meanwhile, he echoes the Emmaus tale in 5.1.

We only hear, AFTER the graveyard scene, the final details regarding the sea voyage (like after-birth?). There is a figurative emotional umbilical cord joining Hamlet to the ghost of his father, and to his mother, but the ghost no longer appears after the sea voyage, and Hamlet's relationship to his mother is changed after the sea voyage and graveyard scene, when the prince achieves a new freedom and no longer acts merely in the shadow of his father, mother, and uncle.

In 5.2, Hamlet in conversation with Horatio explains how on the ship bound for England, he read Claudius’ letter ordering his death.[8] Death is potentially at the heart of the sea voyages for Hamlet and Jonah.

In the Jonah tale, after being spit up by the fish, when the prophet finally reaches Nineveh, the king hears his call to repentance, and the king and all the people, and even the animals, all repent of their sin and corruption. But to the end of his life in 5.2, Claudius does not repent, so the Jonah echo highlights this contrast between the tales. And Christianity has always framed repentance as a kind of dying to self so as to rise anew in Christ.

When this sort of insertion of one story or sub-plot occurs in the gospels, bible scholars alternately call it a “sandwich,” an “interpolation,” an “intercalation,” “insertion,” or “framing.” [9]

In Hamlet, this allusion sandwich or interpolation is especially interesting because the gospels use the Jonah tale as a metaphor for Jesus in the tomb [10], and Emmaus is a resurrection appearance tale. It is appropriate for Shakespeare to have placed the Emmaus plot echo in Hamlet in the belly of his Jonah plot echo.

“TO HOLD…THE MIRROR UP TO NATURE”
This doesn’t mean that Hamlet is Jonah, or Jesus in the belly of the grave, or that the gravedigger is the risen Jesus, hiding his wounds of crucifixion. But it may mean that Shakespeare is holding up the mirrors of Jonah and Emmaus up to the nature of Hamlet, the gravedigger, Denmark, and England, to highlight both similarities and contrasts.

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NOTES:
[1] When I was teaching Literature at the University of Wisconsin in 2007-2013, a student asked what Hamlet’s sea-voyage from Denmark to England would look like on a map. We checked.
- It occurred to me then that Hamlet’s “prophetic soul,”
his westward sea-voyage,
and his changing mode of transportation mid-sea to a pirate ship
all echoed that of the prophet Jonah, attempting to avoid his calling to prophesy to Nineveh by fleeing westward to Tarshish, changing mode of transportation mid-sea to the belly of a fish.

[2] Jonah series::
JONAH INDEX: Index of posts on Jonah in Hamlet
https://pauladrianfried.blogspot.com/2024/08/index-of-posts-on-jonah-in-hamlet.html

[3] Hamlet “prophetic soul,” 1.5.48. All references to Hamlet are to the Folger Shakespeare Library online version: https://shakespeare.folger.edu/shakespeares-works/hamlet/entire-play/

[4] To England: Hamlet 3.1.183, 200;
3.3.4,
3.4.222
4.3.51, 52, 57,62

[5] Pirates: Hamlet is swallowed by a pirate ship instead of a fish:
“Ere we were two days
old at sea, a pirate of very warlike appointment gave
us chase. Finding ourselves too slow of sail, we put on
a compelled valor, and in the grapple I boarded them.
On the instant, they got clear of our ship; so I alone
became their prisoner. They have dealt with me like
thieves of mercy, but they knew what they did: I am to
do a good turn for them.”
Hamlet 4.6.15-22


[6] “naked on your kingdom… more strange return.” 4.7.49-53

[7] INDEX TO EMMAUS-RELATED POSTS IN THIS SERIES:
https://pauladrianfried.blogspot.com/2024/08/index-emmaus-in-hamlets-graveyard-and.html

[8] Hamlet 5.2.15-28, discovering the death letter.

[9] Edwards, James R. “Markan Sandwiches. The Significance of Interpolations in Markan Narratives.” Novum Testamentum 31, no. 3 (1989): 193–216. https://doi.org/10.2307/1560460.

[10] Matthew 12:38-42, Luke 11:29-32.

SEE ALSO:
Stephen Greenblatt, Hamlet in Purgatory, 2001, page 238 - Hamlet's description of the father's ghost being spit from the "marble jaws" of the tomb - Greenblatt says it's not Jonah, but actually that's the echo.


IMAGES:
Left: Pieter Lastman (1583–1633), "Jonah and the Whale," 1621. Museum Kunstpalast. Public domain. Via Wikipedia: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Pieter_Lastman_-_Jonah_and_the_Whale_-_Google_Art_Project.jpg

Right: Caravaggio, "Supper at Emmaus," 1601, in the National Gallery, London. Public domain, via Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supper_at_Emmaus_%28Caravaggio,_London%29

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JONAH INDEX: Index of posts on Jonah in Hamlet
https://pauladrianfried.blogspot.com/2024/08/index-of-posts-on-jonah-in-hamlet.html
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INDEX TO EMMAUS-RELATED POSTS IN THIS SERIES:
https://pauladrianfried.blogspot.com/2024/08/index-emmaus-in-hamlets-graveyard-and.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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