Read Online 30 Great Myths about Shakespeare by Laurie Maguire, Emma Smith - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Laurie Maguire, Emma Smith
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in 1569. Whether she was related to William Shakespeare or not, it is possible that Shakespeare knew of the story, and the marigold-picking Jane may have developed into the herb-gathering Ophelia. But the media interest in Gunn's discovery (the infant Jane Shaxpere, invariably accompanied by a reproduction of John Everett Millais' pre-Raphaelite painting Ophelia , completely overshadowed all Gunn's other archival work) suggests something more: that we want Shakespeare's characters to derive from real events, perhaps because we want to get hold of their inspiration and peg it to something recognizable—like the death of a son.
If Hamlet does not derive his name from Hamnet or his grief from Shakespeare's loss of his son, where does his name come from? In writing Hamlet , as in all his plays, Shakespeare worked from source material (dramatic, poetic, prose, classical, contemporary, written, oral). In this case, as so often, Shakespeare's source material was multiple. The plot derives from Danish legend, where the avenging hero is called Amlothi. This story, written down in Latin in manuscript in the thirteenth century by Saxo Grammaticus, was printed (in Latin) in 1514 and translated into French in 1576 in François Belleforest's Histoires tragiques . Within a decade this story had been dramatized on the English stage. By 1589 Thomas Nashe could speak of it as being cliched: “whole Hamlets, I should say handfuls of tragic speeches” (Epistle to Robert Greene's Menaphon ). Thomas Kyd is believed to have written the Hamlet play which was the forerunner of Shakespeare's version. (A play in which a son mourns a father would be an obvious partner piece to his Spanish Tragedy , in which a father mourns a son.) The theater manager Philip Henslowe was still recording performances of a Hamlet play in June 1594. In all these English versions the hero's name is Hamlet.
Shakespeare sometimes changed the names he found in his sources. (In the source of All's Well That Ends Well , Boccaccio's Decameron , the heroine is called Giletta; Shakespeare rechristens her Helen. He may have changed the name Rosader, the hero of the source for As You Like It , into Orlando in part to avoid confusion in abbreviated speech prefixes with the heroine, Rosalind.) In Hamlet , he retains the hero's name. He may have done so because of its closeness to his personal circumstances. But to assume that he did so is to take us into the territory of Myth 18, with its impulse to read the sonnets as autobiographical. Hamlet is a play full of grief; but there is no need to assume that this derives from grief in Shakespeare's life (although it may coincide with it). Proximity of emotion there is, just as there is proximity in the names of hero and author's son. But proximity is not the same as identity; we cannot call “snap!”
The play we are discussing explores this very conundrum. When Marcellus asks Horatio to agree that the ghost they have seen is indeed like the deceased King of Denmark, Horatio provides reassurance in an image that is not as straightforward as it sounds:
Marcellus: Is it not like the King?
Horatio: As thou art to thyself.
(1.1.57–8)
But Marcellus cannot be like himself because he is himself. Similes work by making a temporary connection between two things that are actually dissimilar. And Hamlet is full of linguistic tricks that constantly ask us to be suspicious of conflationary maneuvers. In marrying his sister-in-law, for instance, Claudius conflates relationships: he makes Gertrude an aunt-mother, himself an uncle-father, Hamlet a nephew-son. Hamlet resists such conflationary procedures by puns—he is “too much i'th'sun/son” (1.2.67), his stepfather is a “little more than kin and less than kind” (1.2.65)—which try to separate the new semantic and emotional relationships. This is a play whose hero constantly defies attempts to turn two separate things into one single entity. It is an example we should perhaps
If Hamlet does not derive his name from Hamnet or his grief from Shakespeare's loss of his son, where does his name come from? In writing Hamlet , as in all his plays, Shakespeare worked from source material (dramatic, poetic, prose, classical, contemporary, written, oral). In this case, as so often, Shakespeare's source material was multiple. The plot derives from Danish legend, where the avenging hero is called Amlothi. This story, written down in Latin in manuscript in the thirteenth century by Saxo Grammaticus, was printed (in Latin) in 1514 and translated into French in 1576 in François Belleforest's Histoires tragiques . Within a decade this story had been dramatized on the English stage. By 1589 Thomas Nashe could speak of it as being cliched: “whole Hamlets, I should say handfuls of tragic speeches” (Epistle to Robert Greene's Menaphon ). Thomas Kyd is believed to have written the Hamlet play which was the forerunner of Shakespeare's version. (A play in which a son mourns a father would be an obvious partner piece to his Spanish Tragedy , in which a father mourns a son.) The theater manager Philip Henslowe was still recording performances of a Hamlet play in June 1594. In all these English versions the hero's name is Hamlet.
Shakespeare sometimes changed the names he found in his sources. (In the source of All's Well That Ends Well , Boccaccio's Decameron , the heroine is called Giletta; Shakespeare rechristens her Helen. He may have changed the name Rosader, the hero of the source for As You Like It , into Orlando in part to avoid confusion in abbreviated speech prefixes with the heroine, Rosalind.) In Hamlet , he retains the hero's name. He may have done so because of its closeness to his personal circumstances. But to assume that he did so is to take us into the territory of Myth 18, with its impulse to read the sonnets as autobiographical. Hamlet is a play full of grief; but there is no need to assume that this derives from grief in Shakespeare's life (although it may coincide with it). Proximity of emotion there is, just as there is proximity in the names of hero and author's son. But proximity is not the same as identity; we cannot call “snap!”
The play we are discussing explores this very conundrum. When Marcellus asks Horatio to agree that the ghost they have seen is indeed like the deceased King of Denmark, Horatio provides reassurance in an image that is not as straightforward as it sounds:
Marcellus: Is it not like the King?
Horatio: As thou art to thyself.
(1.1.57–8)
But Marcellus cannot be like himself because he is himself. Similes work by making a temporary connection between two things that are actually dissimilar. And Hamlet is full of linguistic tricks that constantly ask us to be suspicious of conflationary maneuvers. In marrying his sister-in-law, for instance, Claudius conflates relationships: he makes Gertrude an aunt-mother, himself an uncle-father, Hamlet a nephew-son. Hamlet resists such conflationary procedures by puns—he is “too much i'th'sun/son” (1.2.67), his stepfather is a “little more than kin and less than kind” (1.2.65)—which try to separate the new semantic and emotional relationships. This is a play whose hero constantly defies attempts to turn two separate things into one single entity. It is an example we should perhaps
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