WHY CLAUDIUS GOES UNNAMED EXCEPT IN STAGE DIRECTION (part 16, Claudius series)

CLAUDIUS UNNAMED:

Why – at the end of the reign of Elizabeth I – would Shakespeare have characters in Hamlet be silent regarding the king’s name, in a play involving an “incestuous marriage” in which the king marries his older brother’s widow?

Some things could not be named. In the minds of audiences, the incestuous marriage would seem uncomfortably close to the first marriage of Henry VIII.

For similar reasons, Richard II could not include the deposition scene when first published [1], and Shakespeare’s collaboration with John Fletcher on Henry VIII was not written or enacted until 1613 [2].

Why? Censorship, fear, and tact.

Everyone knew that
- Henry VIII, Elizabeth’s father, had married his older brother’s widow, and later divorced her, claiming it an incestuous marriage…
- and that Elizabeth was sometimes called a “bastard queen”: Henry and Anne Boleyn had conceived Elizabeth out of wedlock; Elizabeth was born only three months after a secret marriage, making her ineligible in the eyes of some to be an heir to the throne.

Featuring an incestuous marriage like Henry’s was a risk [3]. Leaving him unnamed in dialogue was safe enough, but also allowed audience members to experience a catharsis of reflection on past corruption in England from the time of Elizabeth’s famous father who
- set a record for having the most wives of any English king,
- the most wives executed, and generally
- the highest number of executions of any English king [4].

Naming him “Claudius” only in stage direction after the publication of the Second Quarto in 1604 allowed a rich series of reflections on historical and literary allusions. But meanwhile, in productions at the end of Elizabeth’s reign, the “nothing” of leaving him unnamed was like what a gentleman says regarding Ophelia’s mad speech:

Her speech is nothing,
Yet the unshapèd use of it doth move
The hearers to collection. They aim at it
And botch the words up fit to their own thoughts… [5]
(4.5.9-12)

And to revisit the national trauma of the reign of Henry VIII.

The rest (the “nothing”) is silence.


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

[1] Shakespeare’s Richard II in its first three quartos it omitted the deposition scene; a fourth quarto of 1608 included an abbreviated version of the scene, finally included in full in the First Folio of 1623. William Lambarde, royal archivist, famously claimed that Queen Elizabeth told him, “I am Richard II, know ye not that?” The deposition scene would have been too controversial to publish during her lifetime, and a controversial performance of the play commissioned by some involved in the Essex rebellion was a cause of trouble.
On Lambarde quoting Queen Elizabeth here, see also:
Orgel, S. (2011). Prologue: I am Richard II. In: Petrina, A., Tosi, L. (eds) Representations of Elizabeth I in Early Modern Culture. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230307261_2 [and]
https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1057/9780230307261_2

[2] Even when the collaboration was finally performed and published, it edited the historical record drastically, not mentioning many of Henry’s wives and executions.  (The 1613 performance of Shakespeare’s Henry VIII at The Globe Theater was also famous for how cannon fire ignited the thatched roof and resulted in the theater’s destruction by fire.)

[3] A previous Elizabethan play, A Looking Glass for London and England, by Thomas Lodge and Robert Greene, featured a king of Nineveh being saved in part by the prophet Jonah from an incestuous marriage, which now may easily seem like Tudor propaganda in support of Henry’s divorce from his first wife.

[4] Death Penalty Information Center notes:
“...William the Conqueror would not allow persons to be hanged or otherwise executed for any crime, except in times of war. This trend would not last, for in the Sixteenth Century, under the reign of Henry VIII, as many as 72,000 people are estimated to have been executed.”
https://deathpenaltyinfo.org/facts-and-research/background/history-of-the-death-penalty/early-history-of-the-death-penalty

[5] To some extent we all botch up the words to fit our own thoughts, and even if we try to put ourselves in the shoes of Elizethans, there are other possibilities besides Claudius as a stand-in for incestuous Henry:
Lillian Winstanley’s 1921 a book explores two main possibilities, with Claudius as murderer of his wife’s previous husband as echoing the third husband of Mary, Queen of Scots, a suspected murderer of her second husband, Lord Darnley; and with Hamlet as echoing the Essex rebellion.
See  Winstanley, Lilian, Hamlet and the Scottish succession; being an examination of the relations of the play of Hamlet to the Scottish succession and the Essex conspiracy, 1921, Cambridge, The University Press. https://archive.org/details/hamletscottishsu00wins
The fact that Claudius seems to echo incestuous aspects of Henry VIII does not rule out the possibility of other echoes as well.


IMAGES:
Left: Catherine of Aragon, by Michael Sittow, late 15th or early 16th century; in the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna.
Public domain, via Britanica:
https://cdn.britannica.com/60/187160-050-29462C4A/Catherine-of-Aragon-painting-Michael-Sittow-Kunsthistorisches.jpg

Center: Portrait of Henry VIII, after Hans Holbein the Younger (1497/1498–1543), circa 1540–1547.
Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool, UK. Public domain via https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f9/After_Hans_Holbein_the_Younger_-_Portrait_of_Henry_VIII_-_Google_Art_Project.jpg

Right:
Near contemporary painting of Anne Boleyn at Hever Castle, c. 1550. Public domain.
Unknown (“English school”).  
Source: https://thetudortravelguide.com/2019/09/21/hever-castle/ and
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/03/AnneBoleynHever.jpg

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