How old were Hamlet, Sydney, Essex, and Lord Strange at their deaths?

People argue about Hamlet’s age. The ghost calls him “thou noble youth” (1.5);
Ophelia describes his “blown youth / Blasted with ecstasy” (3.1).

Hamlet was a university student: Rhodri Lewis notes, “the median age of matriculation at Oxford for the years 1600-02 was 17.1. Among the aristocracy and gentry it was substantially lower, at 15.9 years” [1].

But given the gravedigger’s remarks in two later editions [2] regarding Hamlet’s birth and Yorick’s death, people assume Hamlet was 30 and ignore references to his youth. Yet why would he still be at university at 30, and want to go back? [3]

Rhodri Lewis makes an argument for the gravedigger feigning a competence with numbers that he doesn’t possess [4].  

Perhaps too many assume that Shakespeare was writing under the same rules as modern writers regarding faithfulness to details.

The gravedigger’s estimate of 30 years may also have pointed to at least three famous Elizabethan men who died in their 30s, and perhaps also a religious reference:

- Sir Philip Sydney died at 31 after a wound in his thigh from a battle [5].

- Robert Devereux, the 2nd Earl of Essex, had been a favorite of the queen’s but was executed at 35 for leading a rebellion [6].

- Theater patron Lord Strange, Fernando Stanley, 5th earl of Derby, died in 1594 at 35, suspected of having been poisoned. The word “strange” occurs often in the first act of Hamlet, always in association with the poisoned ghost [7].

In Elizabethan England, Jesus was believed to be 30 at the start of his ministry, 33 at his death [8]. Hamlet jokingly compares himself to the boy Jesus, lost and found at the Jerusalem temple [9], and his mother offering to wipe his face has been compared to Veronica wiping the face of Jesus on his way to crucifixion [10].

A reference to 30 years – and allusions to Jesus – may be the play’s way to honor a variety of Elizabethan figures who died in their 30s, offering Hamlet as an analogy. It may be anachronistic to insist on slavery to chronological detail, trusting the gravedigger’s math perhaps too much.


NOTES:

[1] Rhodri Lewis is the author of Hamlet and the Vision of Darkness, 2017, Princeton University Press.
In a 2018 Shakespeare Magazine article, he also notes that “Henry Wriothesley, third Earl of Southampton” attended St. John’s College, Cambridge in 1585 at the age of twelve.” (And note that for his English audiences, Shakespeare was probably unconcerned with average ages of matriculation at Wittenberg.)  
See “How Old is Hamlet?” pages 6-13, in the UK Shakespeare Magazine, issue 14, specifically page 9: https://issuu.com/shakespearemagazine/docs/shakespeare_magazine_14

[2] The gravedigger’s reference to 30 years is found in the gravedigger’s lines in Act 5, scene 1, of Q2 (Second Quarto, 1604) and F1 (First Folio, 1623). These references were omitted from scene 16 of the shorter, earlier Q1 (First Quarto edition, 1603).
Q2 5.1 here: https://internetshakespeare.uvic.ca/doc/Ham_Q2M/scene/5.1/index.html
F1 5.1 here: https://internetshakespeare.uvic.ca/doc/Ham_FM/scene/5.1/index.html
Q1 scene 16 can be found here via Internet Shakespeare Editions, from the University of Victoria, Canada: https://internetshakespeare.uvic.ca/doc/Ham_Q1/scene/16/index.html

[3] Some Freudians might say he likes the womb-like safety of university life. Others might compensate by claiming the gravedigger was drunk (references to drinking in 5.1, sending his partner to fetch liquor, and being a drinking buddy of Yorick’s). Still others compensate by noting that Richard Burbage, who played the part in Shakespeare’s lifetime, could not pass for less than 30, and continued to play the part for years. But these still don’t fully deal with the contradiction of “youth” and 30 years.

[3] “The rub is that the Gravedigger is no better at the
numerical computation of time than he is at Latin.
His historical measurements of sixteen, thirty, and
twenty-three years are empty signifiers – no more
than words. They are self-contradictory, but he
doesn’t care: he gets to put one over on someone
of a far higher social and educational status than
himself, and who has presumed to question his
Work.” Ibid, Lewis, page 12.

[4] Sydney during the Battle of Zutphen in the Netherlands, fighting on behalf of Protestants. The wound became infected and he died in less than a month. Referring to Sydney by having the gravedigger set the years at 30 would be the safest reference, because there was no risk in offending the queen or her government, even if Shakespeare intended other less safe possibilities for reference to two others who died in their 30s.

[5] Writing a play in which a prince who kills a king is based on Essex who attempted a rebellion in 1601 would have been less safe, but the possibility of claiming Hamlet was based on Sydney could offer the playwright safe and plausible deniability.

[6] Regarding the poisoned Lord Strange: In the source tale versions from Saxo Grammaticus and Belleforest, the king did not die by poison. Richard Hesketh tried to entrap Lord Strange in a conspiracy to take the throne from Elizabeth, but he reported it immediately. He was poisoned shortly thereafter in what seems to have been an attempt to remove him from the line of succession. Lord Strange had been the patron of The Lord Strange’s Men, a playing company in which more than half of Shakespeare’s players worked. He was suspected of hiding Catholic sympathies. See previous blog post on this topic: https://pauladrianfried.blogspot.com/2021/04/welcome-lazarus-lord-stranges-men-for.html
Yet because of the possibility that someone in Elizabeth’s government was involved in arranging for the poisoning, to have set Hamlet’s age at 35 (the age of Essex and Strange at their deaths), such a reference would have been more dangerous than the 30 years the gravedigger mentions, closer to the age of Sydney at his death (31), a safer reference.

[7] For a more meticulous examination of the scriptural and historical data regarding the age of Jesus, perhaps far more advanced than most Elizabethans in Shakespeare’s early audiences, see Bart Ehrman: https://ehrmanblog.org/how-old-was-jesus/

[8] See previous blog post on Hamlet, after the playlet, “The Mousetrap,” comparing himself to the boy Jesus, amazing and astonishing his mother: https://pauladrianfried.blogspot.com/2023/01/index-hamlet-in-32-as-boy-jesus-lost.html

[9] For more on Gertrude wiping the face of Hamlet as an allusion to Veronica, see previous post: https://pauladrianfried.blogspot.com/2019/01/the-ghost-of-veronica-haunts-hamlet-in.html
See also:
“Hamlet and the Image of Both Churches”
David Kaula
Studies in English Literature, 1500-1900
Vol. 24, No. 2, Elizabethan and Jacobean Drama (Spring, 1984), pp. 241-255

IMAGES:
Left: Unknown author / Attributed to Hieronimo Custodis  (fl. 1589–1598)  
Posthumous portrait of Sir Philip Sidney,
after an original attributed to Cornelis Ketel, 1578, at Longleat House.
Circa 1586 - 1593.
National Portrait Gallery.
Public Domain, via
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/52/British_%28English%29_School_-_Sir_Philip_Sidney_%281554%E2%80%931586%29_-_129796_-_National_Trust.jpg

Center: after Marcus Gheeraerts the Younger, Robert Devereux, Earl of Essex; circa 1596.
Public Domain, via https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/58/Robert_Devereux%2C_2nd_Earl_of_Essex.jpg

Right:  Dated oil portrait of Fernando Stanley, 5th earl of Derby, 1594, Unknown author
Public domain via https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b7/Fernando_Stanley.jpg



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