INDEX: Why Claudius, not Feng? What's in a name?

INDEX and INTRODUCTION (this post: see INTRODUCTION following this index)
https://pauladrianfried.blogspot.com/2024/11/index-why-claudius-not-feng-whats-in.html

PART 1: Hamlet's uncle "Claudius" as lame, satyr, & polysemous - 26 Nov, 2024
https://pauladrianfried.blogspot.com/2024/11/part-1-hamlets-uncle-claudius-as-lame.html

PART 2: Hamlet, Claudas, and Arthurian legends (Claudius series)
https://pauladrianfried.blogspot.com/2024/12/hamlet-claudas-and-arthurian-legends.html

PART 3: Arthurian Wastelands and rotten Denmark under Claudias
https://pauladrianfried.blogspot.com/2024/12/arthurian-wastelands-and-rotten-denmark.html

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INTRODUCTION:
Why did Shakespeare (or some unknown predecessor or collaborator) name Hamlet’s uncle Claudius (a Roman name! un-Danish!) and make him a Christian—but unrepentant—sinner?

In Saxo Grammaticus’ history (1208? Latin trans.1514), it's uncle Feng;
In Belleforest’s 1572 French translation, Fengon.

A Feng by any other name would smell as sweet?

On Shakespeare’s name-choices, Rhodri Lewis jokingly noted, “I don’t know, maybe he liked the sound?” [1]

What We Talk About When We Talk About Claudius:

Shakespeare’s Claudius [2] points to Rome by way of
- two emperors, Claudius I and II, but also to
- two characters named Claudius in Chaucer’s “The Physician’s Tale,” and to
- a villain named “Claudas” in the Arthurian legends.

Rome’s origin story has Romulus kill twin brother Remus, like Cain-Abel (or Claudius-King Hamlet). 

And Rome urged Spain to use its Armada to invade England in 1588.

Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales includes “The Physician’s Tale,” based on yet another historical Roman: a lustful villain, Appius Claudius [3], has his servant Claudius lie so that he can have 14-year-old Virginia, but her father gives her a choice, to be possessed and shamed by Appius Claudius, or to die by her father’s hand (a Jephthah-like sacrifice).[4]

Consider Claudius I (10 B.C.E. - 54 CE):
A. His career as ruler was delayed (like Hamlet’s?).[5]
B. He had an incestuous marriage (to a niece).
C. He may have been disabled, ridiculed, perhaps suffering seizures.[6]
D. He may have feigned madness or stupidity to avoid assassination before becoming emperor.[7]
E. He was the second Roman emperor to invade England (but with elephants!).
F. He died, poisoned by his wife/niece.   

Next, consider Claudius II (214 B.C.E. - 270 C.E.):
St. Valentine (or one Valentine martyr) was allegedly executed during the reign of Claudius II on February 14, 269 or 270 C.E.

Neither Roman Emperor named Claudius was Christian, but in Hamlet, Claudius at prayer (3.3) is clearly Christian and knows his catechism well, perhaps better than his brother.

Finally, in Arthurian Legends [8], Claudus is a villain; people in Shakespeare’s time may have been more familiar with Arthurian legends than today. (Claudas is now a female Arthurian video game character…)

Future posts in this series will explore these threads…
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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] On social media, I had asked about Shakespeare’s choice of names (very un-Danish, like Francisco) and Rhodri Lewis, author and Shakespeare scholar replied, “I don’t know, maybe he liked the sound?”

[2] Shakespeare either changes the name from Feng to Claudius, or retains the name if it was present in the “Ur” Hamlet, an alleged earlier play source for Shakespeare, perhaps by some other playwright such as Thomas Kyd (or even Thomas North…) .

[3] This is technically another Roman connection: Chaucer’s Appius Claudius was based on Appius Claudius Crassus Inregillensis Sabinus (active 471–451 BC) from an accounts by Livy (59 BCE - 17 CE) and Dionysius of Halicarnassus (c. 60 BCE - c. 7 BCE) as well as the listings of the Fasti Capitolini. I am grateful to Riccardo Cocchi for pointing out Chaucer and the Claudius connections.

[4] Hamlet refers to Jephthah in conversation with Polonius (2.2), implying Polonius is like Jephthah whose ambitious oath (a “bad oath”) led to his sacrifice of his daughter. We know Shakespeare drew upon "The Physician's Tale" for Titus Andronicus, so his awareness of Claudius characters in that Chaucer tale might be assumed.

[5] E. G. Berry speaks not only of the feigned madness of Claudius I, but also of “
Claudius' thwarted ambition and long obscurity in his earlier career” - like Hamlet, off at school for so long, then denied the throne by his uncle. See E. G. Berry
"Hamlet" and Suetonius
Phoenix
Vol. 2, No. 3, Supplement to Volume Two (Autumn, 1948), pp. 73-81 (9 pages)
Published By: Classical Association of Canada
https://www.jstor.org/stable/1086430

[6] Hamlet calls his uncle a satyr and compares him unfavorably to his father King Hamlet, with Claudius as a "moor" (swamp) and his father a fair mountain.
See
Disability and Ability in the Accounts of the Emperor Claudius
Master's thesis by Amanda Witacre, 2018,
https://etd.ohiolink.edu/acprod/odb_etd/ws/send_file/send?accession=kent1532088905482623&disposition=inline

[7] from #4
https://www.history.com/news/8-things-you-may-not-know-about-emperor-claudius

[8] Arthurian legends: origins 600s C.E, compiled by Thomas Mallory 1485.


IMAGES:
Left:
White marble bust of Emperor Claudius, between 41 and 54 AD.
Naples National Archaeological Museum.
Photographer: Marie-Lan Nguyen (2011).
Used under the following license: Creative Commons Attribution 2.5
via https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Claudius_crop.jpg

Center:
Claudas (female video game character, ruler of Berry, a small country in Francia (the "Wasteland"), from King Arthur: Legends Rise, by Gematsu, inspired in part by King Claudas in Arthurian legends; image via YouTube (fair use): https://img.youtube.com/vi/6GhUXa1Pkg0/maxresdefault.jpg

Right: Portrait of a man, so-called Claudio Gotico (Claudius II).
Antiquarium del Palatino (Rome).
Photo: Sailko
Used under the following license:
Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported, via
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Ritratto_virile_c.d._claudio_il_gotico,_270-285_dc_ca.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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Thanks for reading!
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