Thomas More and Hamlet
Both Thomas More and Prince Hamlet opposed the kings under whose rule they lived, but there are some illuminating key differences:
It is said at his execution, More’s last words were, "I die the King's good servant, and God's first." He did not oppose Henry’s marriage to his dead brother’s widow, because the church gave special dispensation for it, but later Henry would claim it was an incestuous and biblically sinful marriage. More would have been fine with Henry VIII having his marriage annulled if Rome had approved, but they did not, so when faced with a choice between obeying the church and his king, More chose the church, and believed this choice was also good service to his king.
Hamlet, on the other hand, opposed a similar marriage of his uncle to his mother. Rome had not given special dispensation, and probably would not have because the previous marriage had already produced Hamlet as a son of Gertrude and King Hamlet.
The incestuous first marriage of Henry VIII (certainly as Henry defined it) caused England a great deal of trouble.
It is as if Shakespeare, through the plot and themes of his play, Hamlet, is suggesting:
England and its princes should have done better than Thomas More, and opposed the incestuous marriage from the start, instead of merely opposing the annulment.
So in Hamlet’s world, we are asked to imagine a Denmark – and an England – where (in part because of an incestuous marriage of the monarch) the time is out of joint and has to be made right [1].
Thomas More was executed for trying to make things right, as he saw them. But it was not enough, and as Marc Antony says in another play, "The evil that men do lives after them; the good is oft interred with their bones" [2]. Through the analogy of old Denmark, Shakespeare’s Hamlet envisioned an England in which there was still much to set right.
NOTES: All references to Shakespeare plays are to the Folger Shakespeare Library online versions: https://shakespeare.folger.edu
[1] “The time is out of joint. O cursèd spite
That ever I was born to set it right!” Hamlet 1.5.210-211.
[2] Julius Caesar, 3.2.84-85.
IMAGE: Portrait of Sir Thomas More (1527), by Hans Holbein the Younger (1497/1498–1543). The Frick Collection, New York. Public Domain, via https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d2/Hans_Holbein%2C_the_Younger_-_Sir_Thomas_More_-_Google_Art_Project.
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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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