Beloved Boudica, Contemptible Claudius, Elizabethan Analogies (Part 8, Claudius series)

“CLAUDIUS” WAS NOT A NEUTRAL NAME in Shakespeare’s England, nor was the fact that Claudius I of Rome had invaded England with elephants in 43 AD [1].

By the time Shakespeare’s first and second quartos of Hamlet were published (1603-4), two Roman Catholic popes had excommunicated Elizabeth (Pius V, 1570; Sixtus V, 1588) and openly encouraged her assassination. Rome also supported three Spanish Armada’s attempts to invade England during her reign (1588-1597).

All of this colored England’s views of Roman history and of native resistance, such as that of Boudica [2], sometimes called “Queen of the Iceni” tribe, who led a rebellion against Roman occupiers slightly less than two decades after the invasion of Claudius. When her husband, King Prasutagus died, Boudica was flogged and her daughters were raped.

Killing as many as 80,000, Boudica’s revolt destroyed a settlement of Roman military veterans at Camulodunum (now Colchester), where a large and expensive temple to Claudius I was located, a source of local resentment. They next destroyed Londinium (in a small part of what is now London) and Verulamium (now St Albans).

Outnumbered Roman forces eventually defeated Boudica’s, but she was frequently mentioned in the last decades of Elizabeth’s reign as an analogy for Elizbeth’s opposition to Rome and Spanish invasion [3]:
- The 1588 James Aske poem, “Elizabetha Triumphans,” on the occasion of the defeat of the Spanish Armada, describes Elizabeth at Tilbury as an Amazon queen (line 769), and Boudica (“Voada”) as “once Englands happie Queene” (line 786) [4].
- Stanza 16 of Edmund Spencer’s 1591 poem, The Ruines of Time, is entirely about Boudica (“Bunduca”) [5].

Negative Elizabethan associations with Rome, the Spanish Armada, and Claudius I, make up one of the stronger reasons why Shakespeare may have had Hamlet’s uncle named as “Claudius” instead of “Feng” as in the Danish Saxo Grammaticus source (circa 1200) or “Fengon” in the 1570 Belleforest French translation.

But there are more Hamlet associations with Claudius I, as future posts will show.


#shakespeare #hamlet #claudius #names #literature #history #theater #theatre #religion #bible

INDEX on the uncle’s name as “Claudius” in Hamlet instead of “Feng” (Nov 19, 2024-)
https://pauladrianfried.blogspot.com/2024/11/index-why-claudius-not-feng-whats-in.html

NOTES: All references to Shakespeare plays are to the Folger Shakespeare Library online versions: https://shakespeare.folger.edu

[1] This was the start of many decades of Roman expansion in Britain (expanding at least through the building of the Antonine Wall in 142 AD) and continued occupation (until 410 AD) after less successful invasions by Julius Caesar in the previous century.

[2] I’m most grateful to Michael Brett for posting on LinkedIn about a statue of Boudica, which piqued my interest. https://www.linkedin.com/in/michael-brett-82b34a16/

[3.a.]See Hingley, Richard, Boudica: Iron Age Warrior Queen, Hambledon Continuum, London/New York, 2006, pp.118-119. https://archive.org/details/boudicaironagewa0000hing/page/118/mode/2up?view=theater

[3.b.] See also Margaret C. Steyn:
“In 60/61 CE1,2 on the eastern side of Roman Britain a series of events were set in motion that
resulted in the virtually unknown widow of a minor client ruler becoming such a celebrity that
she now ranks amongst the greatest names in history.”
Steyn, M.C., 2019, ‘Iceni to iconic: Literary, political and ideological transformations of Boudica through time’, Literator 40 (1), a1474. https://doi.org/10.4102/lit.v40i1.1474
Also at https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/fe3b/3bc209a2b50af950356773eca64bd0bc67a1.pdf

[4] Frenee-Hutchins, Samantha, The Cultural and Ideological Significance Of Representations of Boudica During the reigns of Elizabeth I and James I. Doctoral thesis, Universities of Exeter and Orléans, 2009, pp.119-120.
https://ore.exeter.ac.uk/repository/bitstream/handle/10036/88777/Frenee-HutchinsS.pdf?sequence=2&isAllowed=y
https://www.linkedin.com/in/samantha-fr%C3%A9n%C3%A9e-311a6385/
See also Frénée-Hutchins, Samantha. Boudica’s Odyssey in Early Modern England. Farnham, Surrey: Ashgate Publishing Limited, 2014. x + 232 pp. ISBN: 978-1472424617,
and https://www.english.cam.ac.uk/spenseronline/review/item/45.1.10/

[5] Spenser, Edmund, The Ruines of Time (1591), stanza 16: https://pastplace.exeter.ac.uk/2014/06/poem-of-the-weekish-spensers-ruines-of-time/


IMAGES:
Left:  Bust of Emperor Claudius.
Circa 41 - 54 AD. White marble.
Naples National Archaeological Museum.
Photographer: Marie-Lan Nguyen (2011).
Used under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 Generic license.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claudius#/media/File:Claudius_crop.jpg

Right: Boadicea Haranguing the Britons,
John Opie  (1761–1807),
Public domain via
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/bd/Queen_Boudica_by_John_Opie.jpg


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