http://www.crossref-it.info/textguide/Hamlet/1/0
Shakespeare was born just after the middle of the sixteenth century, a century which, in England, was
fraught with extraordinary events. It was marked by discord, violence and change, particularly affecting
the monarchy and the practice of the Christian religion in England. Many of these aspects are reflected
in Hamlet.
Papal rule
At the start of the century England was a Christian country following the practices of the Roman
Catholic Church. As today this was governed by the Pope whose headquarters were in Rome. Although
the kings of England were supreme rulers within the country in all earthly, or temporal, matters, the
Pope had supreme power in England, and in all other Christian states, over matters of the Christian
religion.
The Aragon alliance
In 1485, Henry VII came to the throne of England, the first of the Tudor dynasty of monarchs. His elder
son, Arthur, was born in 1486 and betrothed as a child to Katharine of Aragon, daughter of the King of
Spain. They were married in 1501 when she was sixteen and he was fifteen. However, Arthur died in
1502. Negotiations then took place to enable Henry VII’s second son, Prince Henry, to marry Katharine
instead, the alliance between Spain and England being seen as politically desirable.
More on Katharine’s first marriage: Annulling the marriage. In order to do this, a special dispensation
had to be obtained from Pope Julius II, since the marriage of a woman with her deceased husband’s
brother was within the relationships prohibited by the Church. Such concerns are reflected in Hamlet.
The dispensation was granted because the marriage to Arthur had not, according to Katharine’s sworn
declaration, been consummated – that is, the couple had not had sexual intercourse — and so it could
be annulled.
Henry VIII becomes king
In 1509, Henry VII died and Henry VIII came to the throne. Shortly afterwards he married his brother’s
widow. They had seven children, but only one survived – a daughter, Mary. Henry felt that she could not
possibly follow him in the line of succession to the throne:
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There had not been a queen as ruler of England for 400 years
At that time the accession of a woman had led to civil war.
Henry’s desire for escape
At about the time Henry was despairing of Katharine producing a male heir, he was strongly attracted
to one of her ladies-in waiting, Anne Boleyn. Since he had asked for a papal dispensation to marry
Katharine, it was difficult to ask for another to divorce her.
Religious evidence
Henry began to develop religious scruples. Citing the book of Leviticus in the Old Testament of the Bible
(Leviticus), he claimed that he should never have married his brother’s widow, and that it was a sin for
which he was being punished by the lack of a male heir.
Leviticus 20:21, with which Henry became increasingly obsessed, says: ‘If a man shall take his brother’s
wife, it is an unclean thing: he hath uncovered his brother’s nakedness: they shall be childless.’ In 1527,
Henry asked Cardinal Wolsey to ensure that Pope Clement VII granted him a divorce.
More on incest: We see in Hamlet that this seems to be the view both Hamlet and his father’s ghost
take of Gertrude’s re-marriage; they find it depraved and disgusting.
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The Ghost describes how Claudius ‘won to his shameful lust / The will of my most seemingvirtuous queen,’
Hamlet’s vision of Claudius and Gertrude’s relationship (Act III scene iv) is that they live: ‘In the
rank sweat of an enseamed bed, Stewed in corruption, honeying and making love/ Over the
nasty sty.’
The monarch rules the Church in England
When Henry realised that the Pope would not grant him a divorce, he took matters into his own hands.
He declared that the Pope’s rule did not extend over England and that he himself, and not the Pope, was
Supreme Head of the Church in England.
Henry appointed Thomas Cranmer as Archbishop of Canterbury, and Cranmer used his authority to
declare the marriage of Henry and Katharine annulled. Henry then married Anne Boleyn.
The new law is enforced
Henry ordered that everybody should swear an oath of loyalty to him confirming that:
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Henry was Head of the Church in England
The children of Anne were his rightful successors.
There were severe penalties for refusing. Many loyal Catholics, most notably Henry’s former Chancellor,
Sir Thomas More, were executed.
More on the power of the monarchy: Although Claudius is more a powerful politician than a divine king,
the complete power of a monarch is reflected in Hamlet, where Hamlet is aware that his reactions
against Claudius are severely limited: ‘But break, my heart, for I must hold my tongue’.
A third attempt to secure an heir
Anne Boleyn failed to produce the heir that Henry wanted, and within three years of her marriage to
Henry she had been beheaded on a charge of treason.It was alleged that she had been unfaithful to the
king. The charges were almost certainly untrue. Henry had decided that it was time to try another ladyin-waiting as his wife.
In 1536, eleven days after Anne’s execution, Henry married Jane Seymour. In October 1537, she
produced the longed-for male heir — Prince Edward. Jane would presumably have remained as Henry’s
well-loved Queen, but she died shortly after Edward’s birth.
Further marriages
Henry married three more times:
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Anne of Cleves, whom he quickly divorced
Catherine Howard, who was executed for extra-marital affairs
Katharine Parr, who outlived him.
Henry died in 1547, and the ten-year-old Prince Edward came to the throne as Edward VI.
Protestant versus Catholic religious turmoil
Shortly before Henry’s death, he announced that in future, all church services were to be in English,
including Bible readings. However, the services were still the same as the Catholic mass, so:
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Protestants who would not attend them were burned as heretics
Roman Catholics who still professed loyalty to the Pope were executed as traitors.
There was a brief struggle for power — the sixteen-year-old Protestant Lady Jane Grey was briefly
declared Queen, then executed, as Henry’s first child, Mary, claimed the throne.
More on Protestants: Protestants were those who objected to or protested about, many aspects of the
Roman Catholic Church. In Hamlet, some of the beliefs expressed seem to be Protestant, and others –
such as the idea of purgatory – are definitely Catholic.
Public differences of opinion
Shakespeare was writing at a time when many of the population would have had to adapt, under
different rulers, to different aspects of the Christian faith, and would have held a variety of views – no
matter what the current monarch, and current laws, expected them to believe.
The (brief) return of Catholicism
Mary I had been brought up as a Catholic by her mother Katharine of Aragon. During the five years of
her reign, from 1553 to 1558, Mary reversed the movement to Protestantism in England. Those who
refused to declare loyalty to the Pope and to Roman Catholicism (including Archbishop Cranmer) were
burnt at the stake – giving Mary her nickname of Bloody Mary.
She married the Spanish King, Philip II, son of the Emperor Charles V, but died in 1558 without an heir.
Danger for the Protestant champion
During Mary’s reign, Elizabeth, daughter of Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn, was in considerable danger. As
a Protestant, she was seen by Mary as a possible focus of Protestant rebellions. To avoid execution,
Elizabeth had to make some concessions to Mary’s re-introduction of Catholicism.
However, as soon as Mary died in November 1558, Elizabeth was declared rightful Queen. She at once
set about re-introducing Protestantism to England.
Protestant resurgence
With the protestant Elizabeth I on the throne, services were again held in English and a new Book of
Common Prayer (i.e. prayers to be used uniformly throughout the Church of England) was introduced in
1559.
Elizabeth reigned until 1603, when she was succeeded by her protestant relative, James, King of
Scotland
The influence of church on Shakespeare
Throughout his life, therefore, Shakespeare heard the words of the Bible in English and listened to the
scholarly and poetical language of the Book of Common Prayer, both of which had a considerable
influence on his own written style.
The Renaissance: Changing attitudes
Between the thirteenth and sixteenth centuries there was a changing attitude to religion, part of a
movement now known as the Renaissance (meaning re-birth) which affected many areas of life from art
to exploration. Much of its impetus came from Italy, where the study of ancient Latin, and particularly
Greek, manuscripts led scholars to question the ideas that the Church had for so long put forward —
especially that the Roman Catholic Church was the holder of all wisdom essential for salvation.
Printing: Information explosion
The spread of new knowledge was hugely accelerated by the invention of printing in Germany in the
mid-fifteenth century (about 1450). In England, the first printing press was set up by William Caxton in
London in 1476. The impact was like that of the internet today. Printing had actually been known in
China for centuries, but not in Europe. Prior to this, information, including such lengthy works as Bibles,
had to be copied out by hand. This was usually done in monasteries under the supervision of the Church.
There were very few books available, and these were very expensive.
Once material was much cheaper and easy to reproduce by printing, scholars could much more easily
disseminate information. Adventurous new ideas could spread, including material attacking institutions
such as the Church.
Books Shakespeare read
Shakespeare himself read many printed works translated from French and Italian. They suggested the
plots of his plays — for example:
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The Decameron by Boccaccio provided Shakespeare with material for All’s Well
That Ends Well
Sir Thomas North’s translation of Plutarch’s Lives of the Romans gave
Shakespeare the information he needed for Julius Caesar and Antony and
Cleopatra.
More on sixteenth century reading: It is interesting to note that, in Hamlet, both Hamlet and Ophelia
appear on stage reading books — an activity which, a little over a century earlier, would have been
almost impossible; hand-written manuscripts were so precious that few people, even the wealthy,
owned any, and books kept in churches or the libraries of the two universities in England (Oxford and
Cambridge) were chained to prevent theft.
Advice on how to govern
Kings and courtiers began to be more aware of political theory and the need to study how to rule. One
of the most famous books published during the Renaissance in Italy was Machiavelli’s The Prince. This
suggested the need for rulers to be prepared to be devious. It was translated into English and certainly
known in England by the time of Henry VIII.
More on Machiavellian Rule: Claudius’s actions reflect the sort of behavior that Machiavelli advocated.
The Renaissance prince: Hamlet the ideal
An aspect of Renaissance court life was the idea that the ideal Renaissance man should be widely
accomplished. We see this encapsulated in Ophelia’s description of Hamlet as the perfect prince in Act
III scene i of Hamlet: ‘O what a noble mind …/ The courtier’s, soldier’s, scholars’ eye, tongue, sword!
Th’expectancy and rose of the fair state,/ The glass of fashion and the mould of form,/Th’observed of all
observers.’
More on the Renaissance Tudors: Henry VIII and Queen Elizabeth I certainly qualified as renaissance
princes. Both:
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were scholars
were widely read
enjoyed writing poetry and music
set fashions in clothes and appearance
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were soldiers / involved in warlike activity;
Henry on the Field of the Cloth of Gold in France;
Elizabeth addressing her troops at Tilbury.
Radical changes in the Christian Church
For some centuries there had been criticism of the way some supposed churchmen behaved. The
translation of the Bible into English by John Wycliffe (1330-84) was seen as an attack upon the authority
of the Roman Catholic Church, whose copies of the Bible, prayer books and services were all in Latin.
This gave the priests considerable control over the beliefs of the uneducated people who could not read
them.
Martin Luther: Moral outrage and the Wittenberg Theses
Perhaps the most famous reformer of the Church was Martin Luther (1483-1546). He was a German
friar, who, on a visit to Rome, was appalled at the luxurious way of life and sexual immorality of the
Pope and cardinals. Luther returned to Germany, where he lectured at the University of Wittenberg. He
was then even more appalled by the arrival in Germany of the Pope’s representative Tetzel, who had
come to sell indulgences. Luther was outraged at the idea that the effects of sin could be removed by
paying money. He wrote out ninety-five theses, or reasons why the sale of Indulgences should be
stopped, and nailed them to the door of the main church in Wittenberg.
As a result, in 1520 Luther was excommunicated by the Pope. This placed his life in danger, but he was
protected by one of the most powerful Princes of Germany. Those who accepted the ideas of Luther and
other reformers of the Church, and protested against its current state and practices, were known as
Protestants.
More on Wittenberg: Act I scene ii tells us Hamlet is studying in Wittenberg, though we are not given
any clear indication of whether Hamlet is supposed to share any of Luther’s beliefs.
Indulgences
Indulgences were documents issued by the Pope and on sale to the public. They were a way of raising
money. Instead of stressing the need for penitence, the Pope was suggesting that, if people paid for
Indulgences, he could lessen the time sinners – or even their dead relatives – needed to spend in
purgatory. The sale of such documents had been condemned as corrupt for many years – Chaucer’s
Pardoner (i.e. a man who sells Pardons or Indulgences) is the vilest character in The Canterbury Tales.
More on purgatory: According to Catholic belief, purgatory is the place of purification, between heaven
and hell, where Hamlet’s father’s ghost is confined: 'I am thy father's spirit,/ Doom'd for a certain term
to walk the night,/ And for the day confined to fast in fires,/Till the foul crimes done in my days of
nature/Are burnt and purged away. ' (Act I scene v)
More on Henry’s VIII’s early position on the Catholic Church: Ironically, a year later in 1521, Henry VIII,
who at that point still saw himself as a faithful member of the Roman Catholic Church, published his
book defending the Church and its beliefs — see Social/political context: The grounds for divorce.
The power of the monarch
Throughout the Middle Ages and beyond, monarchs were seen as being God’s deputies on earth, and
having a ‘divine right’ to rule. Henry VIII was able to act as he did largely because he had absolute
power, and an attack on him, even a verbal one, was considered to be treason.
Although there were meetings of Parliament, and had been for hundreds of years, Parliament did not
convene unless summoned by the King; this practice continued through the reign of Elizabeth I and
beyond.
For most English (and European) citizens of Shakespeare’s day, the ruler was accepted as head of the
nation by divine appointment.
More on attitudes to the monarch: There were inevitably rebellions, but whereas nowadays antigovernment protests are common, and in England are accepted as part of the democratic process,
under Elizabeth I, and her successor James I, such rebellions were seen as against God’s command.
In 1547, 1563 and 1571 a series of sermons was published in England by the government, and sent out
to be read in churches, attacking those who disobeyed the monarch.
‘An Homily Against Disobedience and Wilful Rebellion’ explained that, just as God gave laws to mankind
who should obey God in all things, and that humans were expelled from the happiness of the Garden of
Eden through disobedience, so the earthly ruler should receive due obedience from his (or her) subjects
if the realm was to remain in ‘felicity’. The question of divine right in Hamlet
Claudius refers to the belief in God’s protection of kings when, in Act IV scene v, he is confronted by the
furious Laertes, whom Gertrude tries to hold off: ‘Let him go, Gertrude; do not fear our person./ There’s
such divinity doth hedge a king/ That treason can but peep to what it would.’
This is of course terrible hypocrisy, since an awareness of the ‘divinity’ surrounding Old Hamlet had not
prevented Claudius from killing him.
By putting these words in Claudius’s mouth, Shakespeare makes us aware of at least part of the
dilemma facing Hamlet: should he ‘kill a king’, the crime of which he accuses Gertrude as well as
Claudius in Act III scene iv, even a king who is a murderer: ‘A cutpurse of the empire and the rule/ That
from a shelf the precious diadem stole,/ And put it in his pocket?’
What makes a good king?
The nature of kingship is debated through many of Shakespeare’s plays. In Act IV of Macbeth, Malcolm
lists the virtues that suit a king as: ‘Justice, verity, temperance, stableness,/ Bounty, perseverance,
mercy, lowliness,/ Devotion, patience, courage, fortitude.’
In Hamlet, there is a deliberate contrast made between the previous king, Old Hamlet, and his usurping
brother Claudius:
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Even before he knows of the murder, in Act I scene ii Hamlet compares them: ‘My uncle/ My
father’s brother, but no more like my father/ Than I to Hercules.’
When confronting his mother in Act III scene iv, he shows her two physical, as well as verbal,
contrasting pictures: ‘Look here, upon this picture, and on this,/ The counterfeit presentment
of two brothers./ See, what a grace was seated on this brow —/ Hyperion’s curls, the front of
Jove himself,/ An eye like Mars to threaten and command,/ A station like the herald Mercury
…/This was your husband. Look you now, what follows: Here is your husband, like a mildewed
ear,/ Blasting his wholesome brother.’
More on Shakespeare’s intention: Shakespeare may here use references to pagan gods, rather
than to the Christian God, but his meaning is clear; Old Hamlet was truly a noble representative
of God on earth, while Claudius is totally unfit for the role.
By the last scene of the play, Hamlet seems to have decided that:
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It is right to get rid of a usurping and corrupt monarch
It is evil to let such a man continue to infect the whole country with his corruption: ‘Is’t not
perfect conscience/ To quit him with this arm? And is’t not to be damned/To let this canker of
our nature come/ In further evil?’
The topicality of Hamlet
Hamlet was written at the end of Elizabeth’s reign, after many plots against her life from catholic
supporters of her cousin Mary Stuart. People were also concerned about who might try to take the
throne after the death of this childless monarch.
The idea that there were some rightful and God-chosen claimants — such as James I, who certainly
believed strongly in the Divine Right of Kings and himself as evidence of it — and others who were not,
was a very relevant issue for Shakespeare’s audience.
Many started to question the idea of divinely-given earthly power, although it persisted among
monarchs and the Papacy.
Notes from www.crossref-it.info
Religion
Important Event
Impact on Society
Connection to Hamlet
At the beginning of the 16th
century, the “Pope had supreme
power . . . in all Christian states,
over matters of religion”
Christians felt they had to follow
the Pope’s rules/laws regarding
all religious matters, even when
those laws contradicted civic
laws.
Marriage of Claudius and
Gertrude is against Church law,
so Claudius has overstepped his
boundaries.
Politics
Important Event
Impact on Society
Connection to Hamlet