HAMLET & The FIRST COMMANDMENT: What Matters Most? (Figurative Sense) - Series

The First Commandment, "THOU SHALT HAVE NO OTHER GODS BUT ME,” has both a literal meaning (Don’t worship other deities) and figurative meanings.

What matters most? One could say that one’s highest priority is, figuratively, one’s god.

In an Elizabethan understanding, one could serve God in many practical ways, but one could also be distracted toward vice or tempted to sin and selfish priorities. 

Moses came down from the mountain, but the people had created a golden calf. This was always interpreted figuratively as well as literally: Don’t make hoarding wealth your god. Don’t misplace your priorities. 

What matters most to each character? (Do priorities evolve with character arc?)

An actor or director’s understanding of character motivation or priorities may vary greatly depending on the cast and the director’s overall vision. 

Feel free to comment regarding what you see as character priorities. In the footnotes, see some of my own thoughts on each character…

What mattered most to King Hamlet and Old Fortinbras? [1] 

To Hamlet? [2]

To Ophelia? [3]  

To Rosencrantz and Guildenstern? [4]

To Polonius? [5]

To Gertrude? [6]

To Laertes? [7]

To Horatio? [8] 

To Claudius? [9]

To Osric? [10]  

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

[1] What mattered most to King Hamlet and Old Fortinbras: 

- Their honor and reputation as brave and strong warriors? Brave to fight in single combat and gamble their own lives and their sons’ and country’s futures on a dare? 

- Does their pride matter most? 

- Does the ghost’s pride matter more to him than his son, that he would make his son feel obligated to avenge his murder at great risk? 

- Horatio says King Hamlet and/or Old Fortinbras suffered “emulate pride,” the worst of the seven deadly sins, of fallen angels who thought they were equal to, or greater than, God. But besides being concerned about the honor and dignity of Denmark’s monarchy, is he also concerned about the future and well-being of Denmark? 

- When the ghost says to avenge his murder but to leave Gertrude to heaven, does this mean having his son kill Claudius in revenge is a higher priority to him than Gertrude’s life? 

- When the ghost says, “Leave her to heaven / And to those thorns that in her bosom lodge / To prick and sting her,” does the ghost desire heaven’s harsh judgment for Gertrude, or for her to repent after long reflection? 

[2] To Hamlet, what matters most?

- Early on: Ophelia, who in a letter he calls his “soul’s idol”?

- Going back to Wittenberg (1.2), school and simpler times? Or escaping Denmark and the shame of his mother’s hasty remarriage, when he may have become king upon his father’s death (in spite of no soliloquy declaring desire for the throne)?

- To avoid breaking heaven’s laws against suicide?

- To be a servant-prince instead of lording it over others? (When Horatio calls Hamlet his “lord” and presents himself to Hamlet as “your servant ever,” Hamlet says he would “change those names” with Horatio...)

- To do his duty, if reluctantly? (“O cursèd spite / That ever I was born to set it right! 1.5.210-11.) 

- To find the truth in the ghost’s claims by catching his uncle’s conscience in a play?

- To get his mother to repent of her scandalous remarriage?

- Revenge?

- To bask in the memory of Yorick in the graveyard – and match wits with a gravedigger, who beats him at the game of wit?

- To save Denmark from further harm caused by Claudius?

- To give his dying voice to Fortinbras to be the next king, so as to heal a wound his father made and end his father's agony - or at least to do unto Fortinbras as he’d have Fortinbras do unto him?

[3] What matters most to Ophelia? 

- Her love for Hamlet? 

- The chance that she might be the next queen of Denmark? 

- Obeying her father, and protecting his secrets? 

- To watch and understand Hamlet’s play, “The Mousetrap,” even if it means being crushed by the realization that Claudius poisoned King Hamlet? 

- In song, to tell the court of how her Valentine promised to wed her, but betrayed her?

- To give away wildflowers in a royal court where ambitious people are more interested in grasping than in giving? 

- To give away crowns (coronets) made of flowers, in a Denmark where an envious king was only interested in stealing his brother’s crown and wife? 

- Chanting hymns on her way to a peaceful death whose approach she did not resist?

[4] What matters most to Rosencrantz and Guildenstern? 

- To help Denmark’s monarchs to figure out what may have caused a kind of madness in their schoolfriend, Prince Hamlet? 

- To gain reward and advancement at court, with rewards possibly overshadowing their love for their schoolfriend? 

- In a recent book by Richard Strier, Professor Emeritus of the U of Chicago, Part 1 includes a chapter on “Happy Hamlet” and imagines a happier youth, and also rethinks the often assumed villainy of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. See Strier, Richard. "Chapter 2 Happy Hamlet". Shakespearean Issues: Agency, Skepticism, and Other Puzzles, Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2022, pp. 48-65. https://doi.org/10.9783/9781512823226-003

[5] What matters most to Polonius? 

- Protecting his children (even by spying on Laertes)? 

- His reputation as advisor and spymaster, even at the cost of misjudging Hamlet, and then using his daughter as bait for spying? 

- What priorities keep Polonius from considering that by loving Hamlet, she could be queen? Is his fear of appearing ambitious for his daughter more important than other priorities?

- Is it more important to Polonius to judge Hamlet cynically as trying to use his daughter, than to realize he may love her sincerely? 

- In his advice to his son, Polonius does not encourage generosity. Is general selfishness a priority to Polonius? 

- Is the ambition of Polonius for Denmarks’ foreign relations at first a stronger priority than his ambitions for his daughter? 

- Once he realizes that he misjudged Hamlet, does it matter most to him that he prove Hamlet is love-mad, so that Hamlet will marry his daughter and make him father to a queen? 

[6] What is most important to Gertrude? 

- Her son? (Claudius says “The Queen his mother / Lives almost by his looks” 4.7.13-14). 

- To save Denmark from war by marrying Claudius? 

- What is Gertrude’s motivation for describing Ophelia’s drowning as being triggered when an “envious sliver” of the willow broke? She had just finished describing Ophelia as bestowing little crowns (“coronets”) of wildflowers on the branches, so this means the “envious” sliver was envious because it has not received a crown. What could motivate her to describe the willow sliver that way? 

- Some claim that Gertrude is a slave to her passions, and to them, this means that she can’t help but drink the poison cup [1]. But she never expresses affection for Claudius, or concern – except to protect him and herself from a mob. For an example of an argument for Gertrude as a slave to her passions, see Chamberlain, Stephanie, “Fatal Indulgences: Gertrude and the Perils of Excess in Early Modern England,” Journal of the Wooden O, Vol. 13 (2013): https://omeka.li.suu.edu/ojs/index.php/woodeno/article/view/198

[7] What is most important to Laertes? 

- Protecting his sister from scandal, but pursuing it himself in France? 

- Keeping his sister from marrying the prince so she won’t be in authority over him? 

- When Laertes comes home with a mob that wants to declare him king, is it at all his priority to blame Claudius for his father’s death, kill him in revenge, and take the throne? 

- Revenge? To cut the throat of his father’s murderer, even in a church (4.7.144), as the Pazzi assassins tried to do to two Medici brothers?

- Once Claudius is exposed, is Laertes’ main priority to obtain forgiveness from Hamlet? 

[8] What matters most to Horatio? 

- His friend Hamlet? 

- Being a skeptic? (and of course, a dramatic foil for the prince…) 

- Following in the tradition of the classical Stoics? 

- Some suggest that he is Machiavellian and only appears to be a Stoic, but quickly aspires to be the chief advisor to Young Fortinbras, taking over for Polonius. If so, at least after Hamlet’s death, does ambition become his highest priority? Or doesn’t the text support such a reading? 

[9] What would Claudius kill for? 

- At prayer, he admits: “My crown, mine own ambition, and my queen” (3.3.59). 

- Would Claudius kill his nephew Prince Hamlet to keep the secret of his brother’s murder? Does keeping the secret, and his crown and wife, matter more to him than Hamlet’s life? 

- What does the drinking game of Claudius reveal about his priorities? That in his drunken revelry, he’s like to play god and make the heavens re-echo his cannon-thunder? 

- What is most important to Claudius when at prayer he says he knows there is no fooling heaven, but he wants to go on poisoning people anyway? 

[10] What is most important to Osric? To praise Laertes so much within Hamlet’s hearing that the prince gets angry and wants to fight Laertes out of envy, anger, and passion? Does he emulate the strategy of Claudius in this way, manipulating Laertes?
[CLAUDIUS: Hamlet, returned, shall know you are come home.

We’ll put on those shall praise your excellence

And set a double varnish on the fame

The Frenchman gave you; bring you, in fine,

together

And wager on your heads. ...(4.7.148-153)]

- Or does Osric in his own way aspire to the job Polonius recently vacated? 

IMAGE:
Since Hamlet gives his dying voice to Norway's Young Fortinbras to be the next king of Denmark, I thought it would be nice to have an Early Modern image of the Ten Commandments from Norway: 
Image: Nederlands: Anonymous (Noord-Nederland). Title: Moses showing the Tables of the Law, circa 1600-1624. Museum Catharijneconvent. Creative Commons CC-Zero (Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication).

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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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Thanks for reading!
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My current project is a book tentatively titled Hamlet’s Bible, about biblical allusions and plot echoes in Hamlet.

Below is a link to a list of some of my top posts (“greatest hits”), including a description of my book project (last item on the list):

https://pauladrianfried.blogspot.com/2019/12/top-20-hamlet-bible-posts.html

I usually post every week.