SOME HISTORICAL BACKGROUND OF THE JONAH ECHO in HAMLET

SOME HISTORICAL BACKGROUND OF THE JONAH ECHO in HAMLET

The Jonah echo is perhaps better understood with consideration for the following (not an exhaustive list): 

a) The success of A Looking Glass for London and England (c. 1590); see Hannibal Hamlin, Staging prophecy: A Looking Glass for London and the Book of Jonah,"Part III, chapter 10 in Enacting the Bible in Medieval and Early Modern Drama, Eds. Eva Von Contzen and Chanita Goodblatt, Manchester University Press, 2020.

b) Elizabeth’s having dedicated one of her naval ships “Elizabeth Jonas” (1559) with a speech that exhibited poor biblical exegesis than propaganda; 

"The 3 day of July, 1559, the Queen's Grace took her barge at Greenwich unto Woolwich to her new ship, and there it was named Elizabeth Jonas, and after her Grace had a goodly banquet, and there was great shooting of guns, and casting of fire about made for pleasure ' (Diary of Henry Machin, Camden Society, p. 203). The ship ' was so named by her Grace in remembrance of her own deliverance from the fury of her enemies, from which in one respect she was no less miraculously preserved than was the prophet Jonas from the belly of the whale' (Egerton MS. 2642, f. 150). This refers, of course, to the Jonas."

See John Knox Laughton, ed., State Papers Relating to the Defeat of The Spanish Armada Anno 1588 (1894), vol. 2, p.334. https://archive.org/details/statepapersrelat02navyuoft/page/334/mode/2up?q=Elizabeth+Jonas+&view=theater 

c) That ship’s history included service against the Spanish Armada in 1588, but was troubled by “pestilence” that caused hundreds of crew deaths: 

"The Elizabeth Jonas, which hath done as well as ever any ship did in any service, hath had a great infection in her from the beginning, so as of the 500 men which she carried out, by the time we had been in Plymouth three weeks or a month, there were dead of them 200 and above; so as I was driven to set all the rest of her men ashore, to take out her ballast, and to make fires in her of wet broom, three or four days together; and so hoped thereby to have cleansed her of her infection; and thereupon got new men, very tall and able as ever I saw, and put them into her. Now the infection is broken out in greater extremity than ever it did before, and [the men] die and sicken faster than ever they did; so as I am driven of force to send her to Chatham. We all think and judge that the infection remaineth in the pitch. Sir Roger Townshend, of all the men he brought out with him, hath but one left alive; and my son Southwell likewise hath many dead." Laughton, State Papers, vol. 2, p.96. https://archive.org/details/statepapersrelat02navyuoft/page/96/mode/2up?q=Elizabeth+Jonas+&amp%3Bview=theater&view=theater 

d) Some of the official homilies were very focused on Jonah, perhaps especially John Hooper. See 
GANE, ERWIN R., THE EXEGETICAL METHODS OF SOME SIXTEENTH-CENTURY

PURITAN PREACHERS: HOOPER, CARTWRIGHT, AND PERKINS, PART II, 

Andrews University Seminary Studies, Summer 1981, Vol. 19, No. 2, 99-100. 

"There is very little of medieval-type allegory in the sermons of Hooper, Cartwright, and Perkins. It seems to me that J. W. Blench exaggerates when he says of Hooper's method of interpretation, "Even more like the old manner of allegory is Hooper's treatment of Jonah."' There is an occasional allegorical interpretation in Hooper's Oversight and Deliberation upon the Holy Prophet Jonas, but more characteristic is the use of analogy. Hooper compares the spiritual problems of Jonah and his contemporaries with those of sixteenth-century Englishmen. In most ..." [99]
"...instances it is obvious that Hooper is not intending to impose allegorical meanings upon the text in the manner of John Mirk and others of his kind. Wishing to indicate the true cause of England's troubles, Hooper speaks of the Jonahs who are not following their vocations or obeying their orders.'  The point is not that the true meaning of Jonah's defection is to be found in the recalcitrance of sixteenth-century Englishmen. Hooper obviously accepts the historical authenticity of the story of Jonah and deplores his personal rejection of the divine commission. But Jonah's problem is repeated many times in the lives of men. Every man who neglects his vocation is emulating Jonah. The analogy is pressed to the limit. The ship on which Jonah sailed to Tarshish represents the commonwealth of England; the master of the ship represents the king and council; the storm is an analogy of England's

troubles; and Jonah is those who are the cause of the tempest." [100]  

Over time, all four of these (a, b, c, d) faded:
a) A Looking Glass for London and England was no longer a popular play; 
b, c) The Elizabeth Jonas was no longer in the news for its service against the Spanish Armada, nor for its problems with deadly pestilence; 
d) Elizabethan homilies were no longer required, the repetition of the Jonah analogy for people in England not obeying their vocation and monarch was much less in mind.

All of this helps to explain in part why later generations may have been less likely to notice the Jonah echo in Hamlet's sea voyage.