Hamlet's Use of the Trojan War & Consequences of the Judgment of Paris

Why does Shakespeare’s “Hamlet” refer to the Trojan war?

Some think that Trojan War references in Shakespeare was merely a Renaissance Greek obsession.

But it also contains allusions to
(1) a Marlow play [1];
(2) the widow Hecuba’s grief [2] (a contrast with Gertrude);
(3) the pause of Pyrrhus (like Hamlet hesitating to kill Claudius at prayer) [3]; and
(4) a popular old war-revenge tale.

When the players arrive in Elsinore and perform a speech at Hamlet’s request, he asks for a speech about Hecuba, mother of Paris, witnessing the revenge killing of her husband, King Priam.

Priam is about to be killed by Pyrrhus, son of Achilles, in revenge for his son Paris having killed Pyrrhus’ father. Revenge begets revenge and more grieving widows, a terrible cycle. Appropriate for Hamlet.

“The Judgment of Paris” involves Paris having to choose the fairest goddess. Each goddess offers bribes, with Aphrodite promising Helen of Troy. Paris chooses Aphrodite, and soon abducts Helen, wife of King Menelaus (as Claudius steals Gertrude from his brother), sparking the 10-year Trojan War.

It is mostly forgotten, but in Shakespeare’s time many knew that after Henry VIII divorced his first wife, he married Anne Boleyn and held a pageant for her coronation. That 1533 pageant depicted Henry as Paris, and Anne as Helen [4].

It was not easy to talk about Henry’s faults while Henry and his children ruled as English monarchs. Many Protestants were executed under Mary I, and many Catholics under Henry, Edward, and Elizabeth. The master of revels and church censors might restrict talk of a recent king’s sins.

But one could use references to popular Greek myths as figurative ways to speak the unspeakable.

So in Shakespeare’s time, references to Paris, Helen, and the Trojan war - including Christsopher Marlowe’s reference, “the face that launched a thousand ships” - may have been, at least in part, ways to speak of the long chain of tragic consequences in the years that followed the poor judgment of Henry VIII, like that of Paris.

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

[1] Jonathan Bate (like others) notes that the Hecuba-Priam-Pyrrhus speech in Shakespeare’s Hamlet bears strong resemblance to passages from Christopher Marlowe’s Dido Queen of Carthage. See Bate, Jonathan, “Pyrrhus Pause,” in How the Classics Made Shakespeare, Princeton U. Press, 2019, p. 143.

[2] See Pollard, Tanya. “What’s Hecuba to Shakespeare?” Renaissance Quarterly 65, no. 4 (2012): 1060–93. https://doi.org/10.1086/669345. Also see:
Pollard, Tanya. "What's Hecuba to Him?" In Greek Tragic Women on Shakespearean Stages, 117–142. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017.

[3] See Bate, Jonathan, “Pyrrhus Pause,” in How the Classics Made Shakespeare, Princeton U. Press, 2019, p. 143-144.

[4] Many sources note the details of Anne’s coronation pageant: See
Ridgway, Claire, “Primary sources for Anne Boleyn’s coronation – 1 June 1533,” The Tudor Society, 2016. https://www.tudorsociety.com/primary-sources-for-anne-boleyns-coronation-1-june-1533/#:~:text=The%20noble%20tryumphaunt%20coronacyon%20of,Anne%20Boleyn%20%2C%20Anne%20Boleyn's%20coronation

IMAGES:
TOP (far left): This may show Menelaus capturing Helen in Troy, while (far right) Ajax the Lesser drags Cassandra from Palladium as her father, Priam, watches helplessly. (1st-century AD fresco from the Casa del Menandro, Pompeii, Room 4). Cassandra is a prophetess, princess, and priestess of Apollo, so her abduction and removal from the statue represents a violation of sanctuary, a sacrilege. Cassandra had predicted that her brother Paris, by abducting Helen, would bring war and the destruction of Troy as well as the deaths of her family members, but because she was cursed with a shrill voice, her prophecies were ignored. Public Domain via https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b4/Ajax_drags_Cassandra_from_Palladium.jpg

BOTTOM: Priam killed by Neoptolemus (Pyrrhus), son of Achilles – this is part of the story narrated by Hamlet and the First Player shortly after the arrival of the players. This story illustrates more of the consequences of the flawed, tragic, fateful judgement of Paris.
Detail of an Attic black-figure amphora, ca. 520 BC–510 BC. From Vulci. Louvre Museum. Public domain via https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/41/Amphora_death_Priam_Louvre_F222.jpg

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