MOORISH LIVES MATTER: Hamlet, Luther, & the Expanding Ottoman Empire
Have you eyes? Could you on this fair mountain leave to feed, And batten on this moor? - Hamlet , 3.4.2449-2451 In Patricia Parker's 2003 essay, "Black Hamlet Battening on the Moor" ( Shakespeare Studies , Vol. 31), she masterfully discusses the line from Hamlet 3.4 in which, for his mother's benefit, the prince compares his dead father to a "fair mountain" and his Uncle Claudius to a swamp or "moor," analyzing many implications of the phrase as "part of the racialized lexicon of color" (144) in this and other plays. She notes that others before her like Dover Wilson have picked up on at least the double meaning in this passage, a first meaning being geographical (mountain vs. swamp), and a second being a racialized meaning (a fair and good Nordic Arian vs. a dark and evil "moor"). ~~~~~ [Postscript 7 November, 2025: It is possible that when Hamlet calls Claudius a "Moor" in Gertrude's closet scene (3.4.76-77...