Life or Death by Ear: King Hamlet and Mary Queen of Scots

In Hamlet, the ghost tells the prince that his brother Claudius poisoned him by pouring a vial of "cursèd hebona" (1.5.69) in his ear.[1] Yet the ghost first presents the poisoned ear as a metaphor for how Claudius lied about the cause of his brother's death:

So the whole ear of Denmark
Is by a forgèd process of my death
Rankly abused.
(1.5.43-45)

It is possible that Prince Hamlet has had his own ear poisoned by what the ghost tells him: The ghost may be a demon in disguise, or a sinner in purgatory, not yet purged of his sinful and distorting assumptions, goals, and ways of viewing his own life.[2]

In general, this idea of death by ear would have had other resonances for Elizabethan audiences: By the time Shakespeare's play was first published in the first quarto (1603) and expanded in the second of 1604, Mary, Queen of Scots had already been executed in 1587, the focus of alleged plots to overthrow Elizabeth and replace her on the English throne.

Mary's first husband, Francis II of France, had died, probably from an ear infection, not long before turning 17, when Mary was 18. Some Catholics speculated that he may have been poisoned in a Protestant plot. Mary’s second husband, Henry Stuart, Lord Darnley, had died from wounds sustained from a bomb, which many believed to have been planted by her third husband, James Hepburn, the 4th Earl of Bothwell.

Gossip and propaganda can be like poison in the ear, but as Riccardo Cocchi has kindly reminded me, some have noted that the Virgin Mary conceives by ear, via words of good news from angel Gabriel [3], a story to which Polonius hopes to allude by asking Ophelia to be reading a book when she meets Hamlet (3.1.49-50). Then Polonius and Claudius will spy upon them (like two corrupt elders or judges in another biblical tale, that of Suzanna, from Daniel 13).

In this sense, these biblical allusions are not simple and harmonious, but layered and dissonant. Using a resemblance to the conception of the Virgin Mary to deceive Hamlet while corrupt elders spy, the scene may offer veiled commentary on the idea of Elizabeth as “Virgin Queen”...


NOTES: All references to Hamlet (and other Shakespeare plays) are to the Folger Shakespeare Library online versions: https://shakespeare.folger.edu/shakespeares-works/hamlet/entire-play/

[1] The biologically-inclined like to take this literally and seek out poisons that might work this way and produce the effects described, including the "lazar-like" crusting of skin.

[2] The play invites us to take seriously, and perhaps quite literally, the Biblical mythology of a place called hell, for eternal punishment of the damned, and perhaps also for the less eternal purging of the mostly-good but otherwise sinful. As Stephen Greenblatt points out in his book, Hamlet in Purgatory, some Protestants claimed that tales of purgatory were mere poetry, lies, fanciful creations; and those labeled atheists of the time (an inexact label) may have taken the idea of hell less than literally.

[3] Riccardo has kindly offered this essay as an example:

José María SALVADOR GONZÁLEZ, Per aurem intrat Christus in Mariam. An iconographic approach
to the conceptio per aurem in Italian Trecento painting from patristic and theological sources
Universidad Complutense de Madrid
jmsalvad@ucm.es
15/07/2016

Abstract: The mariological thesis of the conceptio per aurem, according to which the Virgin
Mary would have conceived Jesus Christ trough the ear at the instant of hearing the angel's
heavenly message announcing her that she would be mother of the Son of God incarnate
without losing her virginity, has received so far very few academic studies rigorously grounded
in primary sources. In fact the references to this theory in the specialized literature are very
scarce and, when a scholar evokes it, he almost always only alludes to it, without providing
documentary evidence. However, as the nine Italian paintings discussed here reveal, this theory
was illustrated by subtle visual metaphors in many medieval paintings, which were inspired by a
strong literary tradition. In addition a pleiad of Church Fathers and medieval theologians testify,
by explicit statements, that such a theory enjoyed remarkable acceptance among teachers of
Christian thought. Based on many patristic and theological texts, this paper attempts two main
purposes: firstly, to expose the various theoretical formulations proposed by these thinkers; then
to try to highlight the dogmatic meanings that underlie this astonishing thesis.

https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Jose-Salvador-Gonzalez/publication/305641172_Per_aurem_intrat_Christus_in_Mariam_An_iconographic_approach_to_the_conceptio_per_aurem_in_Italian_Trecento_painting_from_patristic_and_theological_sources/links/5bd47711a6fdcc3a8da9a008/Per-aurem-intrat-Christus-in-Mariam-An-iconographic-approach-to-the-conceptio-per-aurem-in-Italian-Trecento-painting-from-patristic-and-theological-sources.pdf


IMAGES:

LEFT: From article on Vesalius
Verwaal RE. Fluid deafness: earwax and hardness of hearing in early modern Europe. Medical History. 2021;65(4):366-383. doi:10.1017/mdh.2021.29

LEFT IMAGE: From Figure 1 The glandular skin in the ear canal, in G.J. du Verney, Traité de l ’ organe de l’ ouie (Paris, 1683), Planche III. Source: Bibliothèque nationale de France.
https://static.cambridge.org/binary/version/id/urn:cambridge.org:id:binary:20211101101822303-0054:S0025727321000296:S0025727321000296_fig1.png?pub-status=live

CENTER IMAGE: Francis II and Mary, Queen of Scots,
Unknown author, after François Clouet  (1510–1572);
Francis II, King of France, and his wife, Mary Stuart, Queen of France and Scotland. Miniature taken by Catherine de' Medici's Book of Hours, BnF, NAL 83, folio 154 v.
circa 1573
illumination on parchment
Bibliothèque nationale de France 
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:BnF,_NAL_83,_folio_154_v_-_Francis_II_and_Mary,_Queen_of_Scots.jpg

RIGHT IMAGE: Parts of ear Andreas Vesalius (1514–1564), from the book, De Humani Corporis Fabrica Libri Septem, 1943. Top: source information: https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/journal-of-laryngology-and-otology/article/an-otolaryngological-tour-of-vesalius-de-humani-corporis-fabrica/3FEA60AECFE812CA8A38A14D41230C39

TOP RIGHT IMAGE:
https://static.cambridge.org/binary/version/id/urn:cambridge.org:id:binary:20230604121140395-0614:S0022215123000257:S0022215123000257_fig6.png?pub-status=live

BOTTOM RIGHT IMAGE:  Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license.
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Part_of_ear,_Vesalius_Wellcome_L0015629.jpg

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