Why Hamlet didn't need too-explicit Davidic allusions in 1599-1604

Shakespeare didn’t need to be too explicit about some biblical allusions: He knew his Bible-influenced audiences would experience his play through lenses of scripture.

When modern critics split hairs about whether something is explicit enough to count as an allusion [1], they're imposing modern expectations on Elizabethan texts.

This is true of Hamlet’s Davidic influences: In 1599 George Peele’s popular play “David and Bathsebe” was published in quarto after stage success (c. 1595-9). David was a trending topic [2].

In this context Shakespeare wrote his Hamlet (1599-1601-04):

King Hamlet fought Old Fortinbras in single combat, as David fought Goliath [3].

Claudius killed King Hamlet to take his wife Gertrude,

as King David arranged for Uriah’s death to steal his wife, Bathsheba [4].

The sentinels and Horatio [5], and also the Danish public [6] may have thought Prince Hamlet the rightful heir denied the throne,

like David, chosen by God via the prophet Samuel to be the next king [7] when King Saul fell out of God’s favor.

Hamlet's "To be or not" speech [8] could have been spoken by David: Wait and suffer, or to take up arms and oppose Saul?

With Hamlet’s “slings and arrows of outrageous fortune" [9], Shakespeare's audiences would recall how David used a sling to defeat Goliath [10].

Hamlet catching "the conscience of the king" [11] recalls the prophet Nathan catching the conscience of the murderous, adulterous King David [12].

After "The Mousetrap," Hamlet spares Claudius at prayer [13], like David sparing Saul [14].

When Claudius sends the death letter to England with Hamlet [15], Claudius is again like David, sending Uriah to his death [16], with Hamlet taking the place his father had occupied as analog for Uriah.

Shakespeare’s use of these Davidic echoes don’t match biblical chronology (“the time is out of joint” [17]). Shifting analogies both attract and repel our sympathies: Hamlet is not always the hero, nor was David; both were tempted, both in need of repentance [18]. 

The Davidic influences are often missed, as they are no longer as familiar or popular. 

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

[1] If "foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds,’ as Ralph Waldo Emerson claims, then tracking the shifting analogies and allusions requires that we keep our minds open: There are more possibilities than are dreamt of in our philosophy (from Emerson’s essay, "Self-Reliance").

Also see Greenblatt on Shakespeare’s Freedom, University of Chicago Press, 2010. 

[2] Travelers to and from England to Italy after 1504 may have seen Michelangelo’s sculpture of David, which would have been talked about still, 100 years later,
just as people in the USA still read and allude to The Great Gatsby (1925).
So soon after George Peele’s play, people would have talked about it still,
just as we know that when someone says “beam me up, Scotty” they’re talking about Star Trek;
when they say, “May the force be with you,” Star Wars;
when people speak of the “multiverse,” it still reminds people of Dr. Strange (2016) and of the 2022 film, Everything Everywhere All at Once. 

[3] 1 Samuel 17.

[4] 2 Sam 11, 12:1-23. People were much more aware of this story in Shakespeare’s lifetime, especially after 1597-1599. We have a small reminder in popular culture that often goes unrecognized in a song that is now part of the soundtrack of the animated film, Shrek, the song “Hallelujah” by Canadian composer Leonard Cohen, which contains the lines,
"you saw her bathing on the roof, her beauty in the moonlight overthrew you," a reference to David and Bathsheba.

[5] Marcellus and the sentinel Bernardo do not report the sighting of the ghost to Claudius or Polonius, but instead, ask Hamlet’s friend Horatio to watch for it again, and see it yet again as shown in the opening of the play. Still, they do not report it to Claudius or Polonius, but instead, believe that Hamlet, returned from university at Wittenberg, son of the dead king, should be the first to know. Marcellus asks a rhetorical question in 1.1.188, if their love and duty toward Hamlet requires them to tell him. In 1.2, Marcellus, Bernardo and Horatio speak of “Our duty to your Honor,” and Hamlet replies, “Your loves, as mine to you” (1.2.275-6). They have strong affection for him and feelings of love and duty, but he prefers to define their relationship in terms of mutual love, which may have contributed to his popularity.

[6] When Laertes asks why Claudius did not report the crime of Hamlet murdering Polonius, Claudius replies that his new wife Gertrude loves her son too much, but also says,

The other motive

Why to a public count I might not go

Is the great love the general gender bear him,

Who, dipping all his faults in their affection,

Work like the spring that turneth wood to stone,

Convert his gyves to graces, so that my arrows,

Too slightly timbered for so loud a wind,

Would have reverted to my bow again,

But not where I have aimed them.

This also demonstrates how popular Prince Hamlet was after the death of his father the previous king.

[7] 1 Samuel 16:1-13.

[8] Hamlet 3.1.64-96.

[9] Hamlet 3.1.65-68:

Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer

The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,

Or to take arms against a sea of troubles

And, by opposing, end them.

[10] On October 2, 2025 Arnie Perlstein posed a question to a Facebook Shakespeare forum, saying that a reference to King David was hiding “in plain sight” in Hamlet’s famous “to be nor not” speech.

https://www.facebook.com/groups/452768566054770/posts/1463527871645496/

I assumed he was speaking of “sling” as a reference to David’s weapon of choice for slaying Goliath.

On October 5, 2025, Arnie confirmed that this was his thought. I’m grateful to him for posing the question. https://www.facebook.com/groups/452768566054770/posts/1466420428022907/

It is also quite likely that, in the years shortly after the popularity of George Peele’s 1597 play about David and Bathsheba and its publication in quarto (1599), Shakespeare’s audiences would also have been thinking of David and his sling.

[11] Hamlet 2.2.633-634.

[12] 2 Samuel 12:1-14.

[13] Hamlet 3.3.77-101.

[14] David spared the life of Saul first at En-Gedi in a cave (1 Samuel 24), and later at Ziph when Saul and his camp were asleep (1 Samuel 26). Saul was still king, considered God’s anointed, so David refused to kill him.

[15] Hamlet 4.3.73-77.

[16] 2 Samuel 11:14-15.

[17] Hamlet 1.5.210.

[18] David repents of having arranged for the death of Uriah, but his son by Bathsheba still dies, and sexual scandal later plagues his family.

Hamlet says he repents of having killed Polonius:

For this same lord (Pointing to Polonius)

I do repent; but heaven hath pleased it so

To punish me with this and this with me,

That I must be their scourge and minister. (3.4.193-196)

After saying that all his thoughts should be bloody (4.4.68-69) and sending Rosencrantz and Guildenstern to their deaths (mentioned 5.2.49-60), Hamlet was reluctant to harm Laertes at Ophelia’s grave and warns Laertes of “something dangerous” in him (5.1.276-7), and later apologises to Laertes before the duel in 5.2, and exchanges forgiveness with him (5.2.361-4). After the Jonah-like sea voyage and finding Yorick’s skull, Hamlet seems to repent of bloody thoughts. Giving the kingdom to Fortinbras, son of his father’s enemy, seems to further embody his repentance.

But of course, he still dies, but worries first to Horatio about his legacy: “report me and my cause aright” (5.2.371).

IMAGES

Left: Title page of the first edition of The Love of King David and Fair Bethsabe by George Peele, printed in 1599 by Adam Islip, London. From a copy in the Thomas Pennant Barton collection of the Boston Public Library (Internet Archive). Public domain via https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/44/George_Peele%2C_David_and_Bethsabe_%281599%29.jpg

Right: David by Michelangelo (1501-4). For most of the life of the sculpture, including Shakespeare's lifetime, the statue of David had a fig leaf for modesty's sake. (Who was Modesty anyway, and why did she have so much influence? 😉 ) 

Michelangelo's David in the Accademia di Belle Arte, Florence, photograph by Edizioni Brogi, about 1857. Museum no. REPRO.1857-161. © Victoria and Albert Museum, London. Fair use (Public domain in the US after 100 years) via https://vanda-production-assets.s3.amazonaws.com/2018/07/25/09/52/59/c11b7db0-638e-4a76-ab96-944577eb58fd/2016HY9826.jpg

For more on the plaster replica in Victorian England, see https://www.vam.ac.uk/articles/the-story-of-michelangelos-david#:~:text=David%20was%20initially%20intended%20for,at%20the%20Piazza%20della%20Signoria.

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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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