Hamlet, John the Baptist, and Jesus as Symbolically Political

My previous post noted that Hamlet alludes to John the Baptist [1].

Consider the religious, symbolic, and political significance of John baptizing at the Jordan [2], for Jews who knew their founding story by heart, that Moses led their ancestors through parted waters of the Red Sea to freedom and a promised land, escaping a foreign oppressor [3]. 


John at the Jordan plays into the same tropes, where Rome (not Egypt) is the foreign oppressor (which in part explains why Rome and Herod Antipas saw him as a threat).

England’s Henry VIII claimed he needed to repent of incest, had seen action in battle, but was thought to have died a sinful man, guilty of foul crimes. Hamlet deals with an incestuous king and the ghost of a king, fearsome in battle, who died with sins on his soul, foul crimes.

Same tropes.

Hamlet alludes to both Julius Caesar and Jesus. Consider Jesus, preaching where Roman coins bore the image of a Roman emperor [4] with an inscription calling the emperor “son of a god.”

Also consider the symbolism of Jesus telling everyone how to pray to his daddy, his “abba” [5]: Our Father [6]. This puts all who pray “The Lord’s Prayer” on equal footing with a Roman Emperor, a “son of a god” whose troops occupied their land.

Same tropes.

Or the significance of Christians writing of Jesus healing a man, casting out demons whose name was Legion [7], a Latinate word that was hard to miss in a Greek text: Legion, same name as an elite force of the occupying Roman army.

Hamlet is about a melancholic, mourning prince, nearly gone mad, written at a time when England’s queen often referred to herself as a “prince” [8] and mourned the loss of her favorite, the Earl of Essex, executed for treason at her orders, after which she was in a deep state of distress and melancholy.

Same tropes. (So as we know, poets, playwrights - and scripture writers - can be parts of gentle, subtle resistance movements...)

Just as Jesus and John the Baptist performed symbolic actions that were not only religious but symbolically political [9], Shakespeare’s Hamlet had similar political-symbolic significance, seeking subtle and safe ways to raise dangerous issues in a time of a profoundly melancholic English prince.


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

[1] Hamlet's Baptista and the Multiverse of Allusions - December 07, 2025: https://pauladrianfried.blogspot.com/2025/12/hamlets-baptista-and-multiverse-of.html

[2] See Mark 1:9-11, Matthew 3:13-17, Luke 3:21-22, and John 1:28-34.

[3] The Book of Exodus tells the story of Moses, slavery in Egypt, and his leading the Israelites slavery to a promised land. Chapter 14 tells the story of crossing the parted Red Sea, and subsequent chapter tell of the long journey to the promised land. This may or may not be historically true: The story was written during the Babylonian captivity, and may have been a fiction to send a message to Israel’s captors that they had been in captivity once before, and that their God was on their side, and led them to freedom. Traditionalists may defend the historicity of the book of Exodus, while more unbiased secular historians may dispute it.

[4] The story of Jesus being asked if the Jews should pay taxes to Rome, and Jesus saying, “Give to Caesar what is Caesar’s” can be found in  Mark 12:13-17, Matthew 22:15-22, and Luke 20:20-26.

[5] Jesus calls God “abba” or “daddy” in Mark 14:36 in the Garden of Gethsemane before his passion and death. The term “abba” is also mentioned in Galatians 4:6 and Romans 8:15.

[6] Jesus teaches the Lord’s Prayer or “Our Father” in two gospel passages: A longer form in Matthew 6:9-13 (Sermon on the Mount) and a shorter form in Luke 11:2-4.

[7] The story of Jesus and the demoniac whose demon says his name is “legion, for we are many” can be found in Mark 5:1-20, Matthew 8:28-34, and Luke 8:26-39. Because the demons ask to be cast out into a herd of pigs (unclean for Jews to eat their meat), and because the pigs rush to their deaths by drowning, it may imply a belief on the part of the gospel writer that the Roman Legion of the occupying force was like many demons, like pigs, that deserved to be cast into the sea or a lake and drowned.

[8] See Emily Jane Lewis, “The word of a Prince”: Representations of Virginity in the Speeches of Queen Elizabeth I” (March 23, 2019 AZE ). Lewis writes,

<Elizabeth’s use of masculine language was vested in a history of male rulers that provided authority. At various points in her sovereignty, she labeled herself a “gentle prince,” [..] her speech as a “prince’s word,” [..] and urged her Parliament “never to tempt too far a prince’s patience” [..]. Constance Jordan proposes that her status as a “female Prince” [..] was due in part to her predecessor; England had created a “legal fiction” of the queen regent as politically male to account for Mary’s occupation of the throne, and this codex of rulership carried on through Elizabeth’s reign [..]. Similarly, Mary Beth Rose argues that Elizabeth’s usage of masculine-coded sovereignty is inherently tied to her need to establish herself “as the legitimate successor in a divinely sanctioned, symbolically male dynasty” [..].>

https://azejournal.com/article/2019/3/21/the-word-of-a-prince-representations-of-virginity-in-the-speeches-of-queen-elizabeth-i#:~:text=Constance%20Jordan%20proposes%20that%20her%20status%20as,rulership%20carried%20on%20through%20Elizabeth's%20reign%20%5B17%5D.

[9] In 1602, one year before the 1603 First Quarto of Hamlet , Thomas Lodge published a popular English translation of the works of Jewish historian Josephus, which describes Romans using mass crucifixions to put down revolt in Jerusalem. Latin versions had already long been available in England and on the continent. Reading Josephus may have helped Elizabethans understand that when John the Baptist preached and baptized by the Jordan River, he was acting like a new Moses, equating the Roman occupation of their land with the oppression and slavery suffered by the Jews in Egypt. In that sense, John was not only spiritual and religious, calling for repentance of personal sin, but also political, calling for deeper social reform.


IMAGES
Upper Left: Salome with the Head of John the Baptist.
Guido Reni (1575–1642).
Oxford Town Hall.
Public domain via https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Guido_Reni_(1575-1642)_(after)_-_Salome_with_the_Head_of_John_the_Baptist_-_90_-_Oxford_Town_Hall.jpg

Upper Right: Moses at the Red Sea (“The Destruction of Pharaoh's Army”), 1792.
Philip James de Loutherbourg (1740–1812).
Art Institute of Chicago. Public domain via https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Philippe_Jacques_de_Loutherbourg,_II_-_The_Destruction_of_Pharaoh%27s_Army_-_1991.5_-_Art_Institute_of_Chicago.jpg

Lower Left: 1611 Portrait of William Shakespeare (1564-1616), Attributed to John Taylor (1585–1651). National Portrait Gallery. Fair use via https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:William_Shakespeare_by_John_Taylor,_edited.jpg

Lower Right: Queen Elizabeth I (circa 1585 and circa 1590), by unknown.
National Portrait Gallery. Fair use via https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Elizabeth_I_of_England_c1585-90.jpg


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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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