Hamlet, All Saints, and Discourse with the Dead

Shakespeare’s Hamlet is a play that is in part about how we relate to the dead:
What, if anything, do we owe the dead?
What can we do for them, or they for us?

The play bears the scars of the Reformation. The ghost seems to be Catholic, but his son was sent to study at Wittenberg, made famous in part by Martin Luther.

Long before Calvin and Luther, the Catholic Church had made efforts at reform in fits and starts, some successful, many not. Many Catholic theologians and historians believe that reformation thinkers like Martin Luther were correct in their perception of abuses in need of reform, and of stubborn resistance.

Protestantism cut off many of the faithful from the idea that they could ask saints to intercede for them, to pray with them, to advocate for them. The first of the Ten Commandments said that there was only one God, and that believers were to worship that God alone.

And yet the creed also taught that there was a resurrection, and that living Christians were united in Christ to a communion of saints, living and dead. The gospels taught that when two or three are gathered in his name, Christ would be there. Why can’t Christians, mindful of the stories of their favorite saints and believing in the resurrection, ask those saints to pray with them?

Human cultures are made of stories. We owe great debts to those who have gone before us: We depend on them physically, genetically, and their stories and values inform and guide our lives in more ways than we can know. The communion of all saints is not just a tenant of faith, but a kind of truth that even an empiricist like Albert Einstein articulated in his own way. [1]

Explicitly or implicitly, the play evokes the names or stories of many Biblical figures:
Adam and Eve [2];
Cain and Abel [3];
Jepthah [4];
Job [5];
the rich man and Lazarus [6];
King David, Bathsheba, Uriah, and the Prophet Nathan [7];
John the Baptist, Herod the Great, Herod Antipas and Salome [8];
Mary, Jesus, and Joseph [9].

It evokes the names of saints like St. Patrick [10],
Veronica [11],
Francis of Assisi [12],
and Bernard of Clairvaux [13], the last of whom was a favorite of Luther.

Critics have speculated that the play also commemorates the deaths of Shakespeare’s son Hamnet, and of his father, John, and perhaps a beloved court fool or stage clown commemorated in the figure of Yorick.

Even if Protestant thinkers claimed that prayers to saints were ineffective or prohibited, perhaps the lives of the dead are embodied in their stories and in the effects of their lives on the world. At least analogously, the dead still pray with and through us as we wrestle with and sometimes strive to purge the flaws of their legacies: This may be at least in part what purgatory is about. The many contingencies of characters and their actions in the play demonstrate and embody something analogous to a communion of saints.

NOTES: All quotes are from the Folger Shakespeare Library online version of Shakespeare’s Hamlet: https://www.folger.edu/explore/shakespeares-works/hamlet/read/

[1] Albert Einstein, in his 1949 book, The World As I See It, writes:
What an extraordinary situation is that of us mortals! Each of us is here for a brief sojourn; for what purpose he knows not, though he sometimes thinks he feels it. But from the point of view of daily life, without going deeper, we exist for our fellow-men--in the first place for those on whose smiles and welfare all our happiness depends, and next for all those unknown to us personally with whose destinies we are bound up by the tie of sympathy. A hundred times every day I remind myself that my inner and outer life depend on the labours of other men, living and dead, and that I must exert myself in order to give in the same measure as I have received and am still receiving.

[2] 5.1.32-38. See also reference to the serpent in the orchard, 1.5.42-47.

[3] 5.1.79. See also “First corse” (corpse, of Abel killed by Cain), 1.2.109, and “a brother’s murder,” 3.3.41-42.

[4] 2.2.427-436.

[5]; See William Burgess, The Bible in Shakspeare: A Study of the Relation of the Works of
William Shakspeare to the Bible (New York: Haskell House Publishers Ltd., 1968), 65.

See also Kathleen Lundeen, “The Book Of Job And
Shakespearean Subjectivity,” page 336:
“...William Burgess notes a structural similarity between the Book of Job and Hamlet—each protagonist has “friends,” dubious characters who have been designated to comfort him—and also
describes Hamlet as “a man of moods,” who is “overweighted with a sense of responsibility and care,” an apt description of Job. 9 Though Burgess observes two instances where Hamlet’s speech resembles that of Job, he does not consider the full extent to which Job haunts Hamlet. “In the final result,” he contends, “there is no parallel, but an opposite, in Hamlet and Job.” In fact, there is a strong affinity between Hamlet and Job. The psychology and aesthetics of the Book of Job permeate the play and in the most memorable moments, Hamlet channels Job.”
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1163/ej.9789004177529.i-536.67

[6] 1.5.78-80. See also my series on the theme of Lazarus and the rich man (Dives) in Hamlet, which begins here:
https://pauladrianfried.blogspot.com/2021/02/new-series-on-rich-man-lazarus.html

[7] Hamlet’s resolve to use a play to catch the conscience of the king would have been immediately recognizable as resembling the efforts of the biblical Prophet Nathan to catch the conscience of King David after his affair with Bathsheba and his having her husband, Uriah, killed: This was the topic of a popular 1594 play by George Peele, David and Bethsabe. See also
https://pauladrianfried.blogspot.com/2017/09/hamlet-has-david-complex-freud-claimed.html
and https://pauladrianfried.blogspot.com/2023/01/13-handles-on-hamlets-mousetrap.html

[8] In The Mousetrap, the player queen is named “Baptista” (3.2.263) and before the players perform, Hamlet speaks of Herod, pointing both to Herod the Great who killed the innocents, and to Herod Antipas who had John the Baptist beheaded according to the wishes of Salome and her mother. See also https://pauladrianfried.blogspot.com/2018/10/in-hamlet-do-laertes-ophelia-echo.html
and https://pauladrianfried.blogspot.com/2018/11/hamlet-which-herod-which-baptista-in.html

[9] Various scholars have said that when Polonius asks Ophelia to read a book when she acts as bait for him and Claudius to spy on Hamlet, he wants her to look like the Virgin Mary at the Annunciation, a ubiquitous image from prayer books and paintings. See https://pauladrianfried.blogspot.com/2019/05/ophelias-prayer-book-annunciation-of.html
After The Mousetrap, Hamlet jokes, comparing himself to the boy Jesus who was lost and found in the temple by his family and amazed his parents when they found him speaking with the elders of the temple. See https://pauladrianfried.blogspot.com/2023/01/hamlet-as-boy-jesus-among-synagogue.html

[10] St. Patrick: 1.5.52.

[11] Like the legend of Veronica wiping the face of Jesus on his way to crucifixion, Gertrude wipes the face of Hamlet (5.2.321). See https://pauladrianfried.blogspot.com/2019/01/the-ghost-of-veronica-haunts-hamlet-in.html

[12], Francis of Assisi: The first sentinel on stage is named Francisco, which in Shakespeare’s time would have recalled Francis of Assisi, founder of a monastic order with a strong presence in England before Henry VIII closed the monasteries. The confessor of Henry’s wife Catherine of Aragon, John Forest, opposed Henry’s efforts to seek an annulment, and was burned to death for it. He was a Franciscan.

[13] Bernard of Clairvaux: The second sentinel on stage, who speaks first, is Bernardo. Bernard of Clairvaux was reformer of the Cistercian monasteries that also had a strong presence in England: The patron of Shakespeare’s playing company was sent for education to a Cistercian monastery, paid for by the sister of Henry VIII’s second wife, Anne Boleyn. On Martin Luther’s admiration for St. Bernard of Clairvaux, see Theo M.M.A.C. Bell, “Luther's Reception of Bernard of Clairvaux,” Concordia Theological Quarterly, Volume 59: Number 4, Oct. 1995, 245-277.
http://www.ctsfw.net/media/pdfs/bellluthersreception.pdf


IMAGES:
LEFT: CATHEDRAL OF ALL SAINTS, 19th century, Greece. Treasures of the Central Accreditation Center MPDA. Public domain, via https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Synaxis_of_all_saints_%28Greece,_19_c.%29.jpeg

CENTER: Icon of All Saints, 16-17 c. (Anonymous), public domain via https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Icon_of_All_Saints_01.jpg

RIGHT: Siemeon Khromoy, All Saints, From the Church of the Resurrection of Christ c. Kishert. Before 1616. Perm Art Museum, Russia. Public domain via https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Icon_of_All_Saints_by_Simeon_Khromoy.jpg

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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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