Why "Hugger Mugger" & "Impostume" are in Hamlet

HUGGER-MUGGER: Shakespeare has Claudius use these words to describe the burial of Polonius in Hamlet 4.5. "Hugger-mugger" means "secret," "chaotic," "clandestine, sly," or "disorderly, chaotic" [1]. 

Shakespeare consulted the 1579 Thomas North translation of Plutarch, which used “hugger-mugger” to describe the burial of Julius Caesar [2]. Polonius once played Julius Caesar in a play production, as he reveals to Hamlet in 3.2. 

HUGGER-MUGGER as HOARDING a SECRET: 

To do something secretly is to hoard the knowledge of the thing: Claudius hoards not only knowledge of the secret burial of Polonius, but also of his murder of his own brother. 

IMPOSTUME: 

Observing Norway’s troops ready to invade Poland, Hamlet notes: 

This is th’ impostume of much wealth and peace,

That inward breaks and shows no cause without

Why the man dies.

(4.4.28-30)

An impostume is an abscess, as if the body is secretly hoarding puss from an infection. Hamlet implies that hoarding wealth and peace (instead of spreading it generously) is like a deadly abscess or tumor, which “inward breaks” secretly, showing no cause of death.[5]

IMPOSTUME, HUGGER-MUGGER, and LAZARUS: 

“Impostume,” the hoarding of wealth and peace, and the hugger-mugger hoarding of secrets, link Claudius thematically to Luke 16:19–31, the tale of the Rich Man and Lazarus, to which the ghost alludes in 1.5. Instead of being generous with the beggar at his gate, the rich man is a selfish hoarder [3]. 

His public image: He is graced with good fortune. 

His dark secret: His inhospitality toward the beggar, for which he is later punished after death in torment in the flames of Hades. 

The dead king may likely have been punished at death with leprous skin, figuratively changing places with Lazarus, as the parable’s rich man also changed places with Lazarus as punishment after death, "confined to fast in fire" (as the ghost says in 1.5.16).

In the play, “hugger-mugger,” the Lazarus allusion, and “impostume” are thereby thematically related [4].

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

[1] https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/hugger-mugger

[2] Regarding the connections between Thomas North and Shakespeare, and between Shakespeare's Julius Caesar and his Hamlet, in a 1906 edition of Thomas North’s translation of Plutarch, R. H. Carr notes in the introduction, 

“The story of Julius Caesar is 

referred to more than once in Hamlet, as in Act iii. Sc. 2, 

where Polonius says : — c I did enact Julius Caesar : I was 

killed i' the Capitol : Brutus killed me.' Again, in Act i. 

Sc. 1, Horatio recalls the portents that heralded the death 

of Caesar. Even more significant is the fact that the 

character of Hamlet is closely akin to that of Brutus. 

Both were men of reflection rather than of action: yet 

both were called upon by inevitable fate to commit deeds 

of violence wholly alien to the promptings of their true 

nature. The parallel, like all parallels, must not be pushed 

too far, but in the main the criticism of Professor Brandes 

is just, that Hamlet is another Brutus with the addition 

of humour and a touch of genius. These considerations 

appear sufficient to warrant the inference that Hamlet was 

written almost immediately after Julius Caesar.” (xxi) 

[3] Ophelia refers in 4.5 to the folktale, "the owl was a baker's daughter," about a baker’s daughter who is ungenerous with a beggar, and in that way like the rich man, and punished by being changed into an owl, an omen of death.

[4] Some of Hamlet's discussion in the graveyard (5.1) - and in light of the fact that we are all mortal - also involves the futility of those who hoard wealth, possessions, property, and power.

IMAGES: “Hugger-mugger” has been absorbed often into popular culture (much more so than “Impostume”). 

UPPER LEFT TITLE over portrait: Book title “Hugger Mugger” taken from Robert B. Parker's Spenser book series (2000) involving a horse named Hugger Mugger. Fair use. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:HuggerMugger.jpg

UPPER LEFT PORTRAIT under title: William Cecil, 1st Baron Burghley (widely believed to be the subject of satire in the character of Polonius), by unknown artist (attributed to Marcus Gheeraerts the Younger, 1561–1636). Cecil died not many years before the first publication of Shakespeare's Hamlet. 

Portrait after 1585. National Portrait Gallery. Public Domain. Via https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:William_Cecil,_1st_Baron_Burghley_from_NPG_(2)FXD.jpg

UPPER RIGHT TITLE under bust of Julius Caesar: Fair use, from “Huggermugger: The Mystery Word Board Game,” via https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/A1UvbEsES4L._AC_SL1500_.jpg 

UPPER RIGHT BUST: The Tusculum portrait, a contemporary Roman sculpture of Julius Caesar located in the Archaeological Museum of Turin, Italy. Museum of Antiquities. Image by Ángel M. Felicísimo. Shared under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license. Image via https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Retrato_de_Julio_C%C3%A9sar_(26724093101)_(cropped).jpg

CENTER LEFT: “Hugger Mugger” is the name of a micro-brewery in Sanford, North Carolina. Image fair use via https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5a318dbaf14aa12a42ec3ccc/25a51648-04f0-44ba-a407-abb772274a40/HM+Web+Logo+LG-01.png?format=500w 

TOP CENTER: “Hugger mugger” implies covert (secret) action, of which there are plenty of famous examples in history. This list offers just a few, each of which can be looked up via Wikipedia for basic information. Sometimes the covert action is like that of Claudius, to kill his brother the king, and replace him on the throne (also like the overthrow of the government of Iranian Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh by the UK and US in 1953 [Operation Ajax] to install the Shah; or like the overthrow of Chilean President Allende [Salvador Guillermo Allende Gossens] by the US in 1973. 

- “Operation Northwoods” was planned but never implemented, for the US to fake an attack by Cuba against the US, so as to justify invading Cuba. 

- “Operation Neptune Spear” was the US operation to kill Osama bin Laden and bury his body (“hugger-mugger”) at sea.

COVERT OPS ARE ALWAYS 

HUGGER-MUGGER 

Until EXPOSED

OPERATION CANNED GOODS 

(Germany-Poland, 1939)

OPERATION AJAX 

(US/UK-Iran, 1953) 

OPERATION MOCKINGBIRD 

(US/media, 1950s-’70S?) 

OPERATION NORTHWOODS 

(US-Cuba plan, 1962)

PIAZZA FONTANA BOMBING 

(NATO-W.Europe, 1969)

(part of OPERATION GLADIO) 

OPERATION ALPHA ONE 

(US-Chile, 1973) 

OPERATION NEPTUNE SPEAR 

(2011) 

LOWER LEFT: Piazza Fontana, Milan: "Banca Nazionale dell'Agricoltura" building, inside of which the terrorist bombing in Piazza Fontana was carried out on December 12, 1969 as part of NATO’s “Operation Gladio,” in this case a bombing conspired secretly by NATO during the Cold War, to be blamed on left-wing elements, so as to sway voters in Italy to vote for more right-wing candidates. (Picture taken on December 12, 2007). Fair use, image by Piero Montesacro, used under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International, 3.0 Unported, 2.5 Generic, 2.0 Generic and 1.0 Generic license. Via https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Milano_-_Piazza_Fontana_-_Banca_Nazionale_dell%27Agricoltura.jpg

LOWER RIGHT: Radio station Gliwice, the location of a radio tower and a “false flag” attack in which Nazi Germany dressed political prisoners in Polish military uniforms, poisoned them until nearly dead, and then transported them as “Canned Goods” to where they would be shot near the radio tower by the border between Germany and Poland. This is sometimes called “Operation Himmler,” some of the details of which came out at the Nuremberg trials. Image by Przemasban, used here under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Poland license. Via https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Radiostacja_Gliwice_-_przemasban101.png 

 

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