Part 27: Ophelia's Willow, Psalm 137, & Religious Refugees

Ophelia hangs coronets on a willow. Why a willow?

One of the older known willow poems is Psalm 137,[1] about Israelites taken captive to Babylon, forced to sing for their captors. They hung their harps on willows [2]:
"How shall we sing [...] a song of the Lord in a strange land?" [3]

“Babylon” became a Protestant metaphor for the corruption of Roman Catholicism in continental Europe and in England under Catholic monarch Mary I. Protestants were internal religious refugees, captives in their own lands.

When Protestant Elizabeth became queen, Catholics and Puritans became the new internal religious refugees. [4]

Hamlet wants to go back to Wittenberg (associated with Luther), but Claudius and Gertrude oppose it. The censors and master of revels would never allow a play about England’s internal religious refugees (Protestant, Catholic, or Puritan), but Shakespeare could have his prince and internal refugee say,
 “Denmark’s a prison.” (2.2.262)

For internal religious refugees with strong convictions about faith and England’s official religion du jour, to some, it seemed like suicide to be pubic about such convictions. Others felt called to martyrdom. Many suffered in silence, like Hamlet keeping secrets:
“But break, my heart, for I must hold my tongue.” (1.2.164)

Stephen Greenblatt, Harvard Shakespeare scholar, sees a connection between King Hamlet’s ghost and the “ghostly fathers,” Catholic priests, many executed for treason.[5]

Ophelia was required by her father and king to act as bait for spying on Hamlet (to figuratively sing and dance for them), just as some internal religious refugees were used as bait for spying on spouses, families and friends. She tries to sing, but the court doesn’t comprehend or appreciate her songs.

This is another way of viewing Ophelia, not primarily as a convincing character with convincing motivations for her death, but as a mirror held up to her age. Perhaps too many patriarchal readers and scholars wish to read her father’s death, her father’s requirements for obedience, and Hamlet’s rejection and cruelty as sufficient and convincing reason and motivation for perhaps a suicide we don’t witness.

But Shakespeare’s Hamlet doesn’t say let’s start a school of realism; he says let’s hold a mirror up to the age.

All of this is not to say Shakespeare's use of the willow reference is "nothing but" a reference to Psalm 137 and internal religious refugees in England. It can be much more, as willows (weeping or otherwise) are associated with a range of literature, song and mythology. But to ignore these more specific religious references, perhaps to paint Shakespeare as indifferent or uninterested in such themes, would be a mistake.

In the theme of suicide that swirls around Hamlet, Ophelia, and her willow, Shakespeare may have been alluding to Psalm 137 and holding a mirror up to England, its internal religious refugees under Mary I and Elizabeth I, and the seemingly suicidal bravery (or madness?) of Protestant, Catholic, Puritan, and other martyrs.


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

[1] Rachel B. Dankert, “Three Chords and the Truth,” October 12, 2021, https://www.folger.edu/blogs/collation/three-chords-and-the-truth/
Geneva trans., 1599:

[2] Geneva trans.

[3] During the Roman occupation under which Jesus lived, Jews and early Christians were internal refugees, captives in their own land, as the Romans made sure to control the choosing of high priests so the people would not be encouraged to use the Jewish faith to justify disobedience against their occupiers - as they sometimes had done, with disastrous consequences, rebelling against the "graven" images on Roman coins and the Roman banners placed in the temple in Jerusalem, resulting in mass crucifixions: "Josephus, the ancient Jewish historian, reported that Roman troops crucified as many as 500 Jews a day during Jewish revolts in A.D. 1st century." https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2023/04/08/jesus-crucifixion-easter-good-friday/

[4] See Nicholas Terpstra’s book, Religious Refugees in the Early Modern World: An Alternative History of the Reformation. https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/religious-refugees-in-the-early-modern-world/7ABAFA0EBBB6B45D71838DC96966F4AB

On how religious persecution that had focused on Catholics became even greater against Puritans after the 1593 Parliament, see Richard Strier, Resistant Structures: Particularity, Radicalism, and Renaissance Texts, 1995, U. of California Press, p.138.

[5] See Stephen Greenblatt, Hamlet in Purgatory. https://press.princeton.edu/books/paperback/9780691160245/hamlet-in-purgatory

[6] Since the “turn to religion” in religious studies (around 2000), some scholars have claimed new evidence that Shakespeare was secretly Catholic, but others (including Jeffrey Knapp, “Shakespeare’s Tribe”) have claimed he was religiously tolerant. So when considering how Psalm 137 may point to religious refugees, we should note that Shakespeare and his family lived in a time when many religious refugees, Protestant, Catholic, Puritan, and more, were persecuted.


IMAGES:
Left: Stephen Greenblatt, Hamlet in Purgatory.
Center: Claude Monet  (1840–1926), “Weeping Willow,” 1918, Columbus Museum of Art, public domain via https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Claude_Monet,_Weeping_Willow.JPG

Right: Nicholas Terpstra, Religious Refugees in the Early Modern World: An Alternative History of the Reformation.



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