Part 1: Hamlet's uncle "Claudius" as lame, satyr, & polysemous

Last week I hinted at reasons why Shakespeare may have named Hamlet’s uncle Claudius.

Consider a prerequisite:
Too many people limit thinking to binaries, either-or, yes-no, treating words like “Claudius” as ciphers with a single meaning, an allusion to one historical or literary figure. The trick is not to decode a single meaning, but to embrace multiple possibilities, like stepping into a multiverse [1], or what Julia Kristeva and others call “intertextuality” [2]. The name “Claudius” can mean more than one thing (can be polysemous), each meaning relevant in its own way.

Next, note that “Claudius” can mean “lame” [3]. Maybe King Hamlet’s brother was disabled and was thought less fit for rule than his brother, like Richard III (of hunched-back fame, blamed in another Shakespeare play for killing the young princes in the tower, getting rightful heirs out of his way).

First, “Claudius” can mean “lame” [3] Maybe King Hamlet’s brother was disabled and was thought less fit for rule than his brother, like Richard III of hunched-back fame, blamed in another Shakespeare play for killing the young princes in the tower, getting rightful heirs out of his way.

Disabled people are not inferior, but disease and disability was cause for anxiety and doubt in Shakespeare’s time:  Were these signs of God’s disfavor? Were the disabled or lepers already suffering a kind of purgatory, and more likely to go to heaven? Or were they cursed, predestined for hell?

In his mother’s closet, Hamlet compares Claudius to a swamp (moor), (perhaps also hinting a comparison to a Muslim [Moor]), and his father King Hamlet to a mountain (taller, not low/lame).[4]

Lameness may be related to how Hamlet describes Claudius as a “satyr” [5], often portrayed as an over-sexed and goat-legged mythological creature. Goat-legs (for actors, certainly) may make it harder to walk; demons were similarly portrayed as goat-legged and cloven-footed.

People in Shakespeare’s lifetime attended Masques and plays (like The Winter’s Tale) featuring a satyr’s dance [6] and were familiar with an artistic and theatrical tradition that featured cloven-footed, goat-legged, satyrs and demons, so for Hamlet’s uncle to be given a name that means “lame” would connect to that satyr tradition for original audiences more than for us today.


FOR INDEX AND INTRODUCTION TO THIS SERIES, SEE THE FOLLOWING LINK:
https://pauladrianfried.blogspot.com/2024/11/index-why-claudius-not-feng-whats-in.html

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] A multiverse: An allusion can be like a window into more than one reality or universe, as in Dr. Strange, or Star Trek, or the award-winning film, Everything Everywhere All at Once.

[2] For Kristeva and others, intertextuality allows every occurrence of a word or image or sound to be related to all other instances. The name Claudius can be related to at least two Roman emperors, and a character in Chaucer’s “The Physician’s Tale,” an antagonist-villain in Arthurian legends, and more. See Wikipedia entry on Intertextuality: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intertextuality

[3] We should note that the word “lame” is contained in, and represents two thirds of, the letters in the name “Lameth,” a name found in biblical and apocryphal tradition, associated in Shakespeare’s time with the person who killed Cain.
"Lameth" is also an anagram for "Hamlet."
This will be a topic for a future post, but for those interested, see
Vladimir Brljak [BRUL-yak], https://www.academia.edu/5252513/Hamlet_and_Lameth

[4] 3.4.75-77:
Have you eyes?
Could you on this fair mountain leave to feed
And batten on this moor?”
(Hamlet’s father is the “fair mountain” and Claudius is the “moor.”)

[5] 1.2.143-144:
“So excellent a king, that was to this / Hyperion to a satyr…”
(Hamlet compares his father to a Greek god, Hyperion, and Claudius to the satyr.)

[6] See “ The Bard's Galliard: A Practical Guide to Shakespearean Dance
The Jonsonian Masque as Choreographic Resource for Shakespeare's Plays”
by Dr. Emily F. Winerock: http://individual.utoronto.ca/winerock/shakespeareandance/papers/senior_thesis/chapters/Jonsonian.html


IMAGES:
Far-Left:
Albrecht Dürer (1471–1528),
Detail, from “The Satyr Family” 1505
National Gallery of Art   
Rosenwald Collection
https://www.nga.gov/collection/art-object-page.6680.html

Middle-Left:
Detail from
Dirk van der Aa  (1731–1809)  
Satyrs and fauns dancing before a shrine
circa 1790
Resnick Collection, Los Angeles https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Dirk_van_der_Aa,_Satyrs_and_fauns_dancing_before_a_shrine,.jpg

Middle:
Satyrs - Bestiary Harley MS 3244, ff 36r-71v
Author     Unknown author
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/11/Satyr_3244.jpg

Middle-Right:
Satyr
17th century
Flemish
Ivory
Sculpture-Miniature
Bequest of Mary Clark Thompson, 1923
Accession Number: 24.80.83
Met Museum, public domain via https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/195114

Far-Right:
Satyr (Satyrus in caedibus), from "Speculum Romanae Magnificentiae"
Anonymous
After Philippe Thomassin French
Publisher Antonio Lafreri French
16th century
Met Museum, public domain via https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/402996


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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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