Why Claudius as a (Thomas) "More" was an insult in Hamlet 3.4
Thomas More and Hamlet’s uncle Claudius were both, in their own ways, defenders of incestuous marriage. More would not agree to Henry VIII’s plan to break from Rome to get his divorce from his first wife, a marriage that the church had considered incestuous from the start: Henry and Catherine had to ask Rome for special permission to marry in the first place [1]. So for Hamlet to refer to Claudius as a “moor” - meaning also a “More” - would be entirely appropriate. In Act 3, scene 4, when Hamlet refers to his father favorably as a “fair mountain” and his uncle insultingly as a "moor," to the Elizabethan ear, audiences heard no difference between "moor," or "Moor," or the last name of Thomas More [2]. Today, many may consider Thomas More a martyr for conscience who opposed Henry’s quest for divorce [3]. There is nothing wrong with this view, but it is incomplete: It doesn’t consider how some Elizabethans understood More. By the end of her life, Elizabe...