SHAKSPER 2006: Dying Unshriven
From: Hardy M. Cook (editor@shaksper.net)
Date: 12/02/06
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The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 17.1072 Saturday, 2 December 2006
[1] From: Paul E. Doniger <pdoniger@snet.net>
Date: Thursday, 30 Nov 2006 16:14:04 -0800 (PST)
Subj: Re: SHK 17.1065 Dying Unshriven
[2] From: John W. Kennedy <jwkenne@attglobal.net>
Date: Thursday, 30 Nov 2006 20:14:17 -0500
Subj: Re: SHK 17.1065 Dying Unshriven
[3] From: Arthur Lindley <adlindley@gmail.com>
Date: Friday, 1 Dec 2006 09:07:08 +0000
Subj: Re: SHK 17.1065 Dying Unshriven
[4] From: Donald Bloom <dbloom@asms.net>
Date: Friday, 1 Dec 2006 07:49:03 -0600
Subj: RE: SHK 17.1065 Dying Unshriven
[5] From: Hugh Grady <hughgrady@comcast.net>
Date: Friday, 1 Dec 2006 09:25:43 -0500
Subj: RE: SHK 17.1065 Dying Unshriven
[6] From: Edmund Taft <taft@marshall.edu>
Date: Friday, 1 Dec 2006 10:42:45 -0500
Subj: Dying Unshriven
[7] From: David Evett <d.evett@csuohio.edu>
Date: Friday, 1 Dec 2006 11:13:46 -0500
Subj: Re: SHK 17.1065 Dying Unshriven
[1]-----------------------------------------------------------------
From: Paul E. Doniger <pdoniger@snet.net>
Date: Thursday, 30 Nov 2006 16:14:04 -0800 (PST)
Subject: 17.1065 Dying Unshriven
Comment: Re: SHK 17.1065 Dying Unshriven
Louis Swilley wrote: "What is to be made of Hamlet's calm attitude on
his return to Elsinore - after the butchering of R. and G., (about
which, by the way, Horatio is horrified.)"
I am curious what evidence you find for Horatio reacting so strongly. He
seems quite calm in 5.2 when Hamlet describes how he dispatched R&G:
"How was this sealed?" ('this' being the letter Hamlet composed that
condemned R&G, and "So Guildenstern and Rosencrantz go to't" (5.2.47 &
5.2.55). And there the discussion ends. There appears to be no horror in
these lines.
Can you clarify your point for me? Thanks,
Paul E. Doniger
[2]-------------------------------------------------------------
From: John W. Kennedy <jwkenne@attglobal.net>
Date: Thursday, 30 Nov 2006 20:14:17 -0500
Subject: 17.1065 Dying Unshriven
Comment: Re: SHK 17.1065 Dying Unshriven
Louis Swilley <lswilley@houston.rr.com>
>An old friend and I were today discussing "Hamlet" for the
>umpteenth time. One of the points introduced made me aware
>for the first time (shame!) of the three repetitions of the idea of
>one dying unshriven. The Ghost protests that he was so served
>by Claudius; later, Hamlet backs off from killing Claudius because
>he prefers to catch him in an unshriven state, "kicking his heels at
>heaven"; this is followed his ugly treatment of Rosencrantz and
>Guildenstern whom he sends to their death "no shriving time allowed."
>(It would appear that Hamlet's conduct in these last two events is
>expressly against the logical extension of the Ghost's restraining remark
>to Hamlet about Gertrude, "Leave her to heaven.")
It is /an/ extension, I suppose; I do not see that it is a "logical" one.
>Then what is to be made of Hamlet's calm attitude on his return to
>Elsinore - after the butchering of R. and G., (about which, by the
>way, Horatio is horrified.)
His "horror" seems singularly understated and short-lived. A better case
could be made for Shakespeare's own distaste, assuming F1 to be a
revision of Q2, with its addition of the line
Why man, they did make loue to this imployment
>Then the whole play shows Hamlet trying to bring Claudius to
>justice for the murder of his father, yet it is not that issue, but
>Claudius' successful plot against the prince's life that destroys
>him. This is in the public order. I suppose we may say that, by
>this means, Claudius' crime is one against the state, rather than
>the object of personal revenge. It would be seriously irresponsible
>of a prince to act out of personal revenge rather than for correction
>of the public order.
If one believes in the "tragic flaw" interpretation of ???????, one
might place it upon the prayer scene.
[3]-------------------------------------------------------------
From: Arthur Lindley <adlindley@gmail.com>
Date: Friday, 1 Dec 2006 09:07:08 +0000
Subject: 17.1065 Dying Unshriven
Comment: Re: SHK 17.1065 Dying Unshriven
My immediate reaction is that you can't separate the two matters: the
public issue of the usurpation of Denmark's kingship begins with
Gertrude's private, secret change of heart. Does Claudius take her to
get the kingdom or does he take the kingdom in order to keep her? Does
he know which it is? What customarily happens in revenge tragedy, as
here, is that any initial separation of public issues from private is
dissolved by the act that precipitates revenge. I'm hard put to
remember any revenger who acts purely from public motives, assuming that
there is such a thing.
Regards,
Arthur Lindley
[4]-------------------------------------------------------------
From: Donald Bloom <dbloom@asms.net>
Date: Friday, 1 Dec 2006 07:49:03 -0600
Subject: 17.1065 Dying Unshriven
Comment: RE: SHK 17.1065 Dying Unshriven
We have down this road several times in the past, and it may be just the
sort of thing Hardy is trying to avoid in his revised List, however -
In "Hamlet" even more than in most of the plays you tend to find what
you look for, and say more about yourself than about the title character
or any of the others; however -
The facts LS cites are indisputable. What they mean as to religion or
morality is. According to Christian teaching revenge is forbidden.
According to custom or tradition it is required, at least of a
gentleman. Within the play, the second seems to be in force - if the
ghost is an honest ghost and the normal Christian ban is lifted. But
some don't think they are. We have, thus, two conflicting moralities -
one which forbids Hamlet to seek revenge and one which requires him to
do so - with the added complication of the ambiguous ghost.
The question of "shriving time" would appear to be essentially Roman
Catholic: that is, the amount of time suffering the agonies of Purgatory
could be lessened if one had time to repent to a priest. Being denied it
is therefore a double-punishment: death in this world and extended
suffering in the next. I suspect that this is not good Catholic
doctrine, but I'm not going to research its precise error unless
compelled to.
Even so, that is only the appearance. Does Shakespeare believe it? Does
he expect his audience to believe it? I believe we can assume that he
and they would recognize it as specifically Roman Catholic and thus
irrelevant to themselves as Anglicans. But do he and they so regard it?
On the other hand, is he merely adding it in as some coloration of the
Early Middle Ages?
To quote Viola, "O Time thou must untangle this, not I; It is too hard a
knot for me t'untie."
I go into it just this much because I believe Hardy does not want us to
go into it at all, except as a matter for the kind of research that I
mentioned not planning to do. We like Hamlet so we accept the ghost's
word and work out ways of exonerating him in the death of R & G. We hate
Hamlet so we pour over every real or imaginary violation of rigid
morality. Who needs that kind of discussion?
Cheers,
don
[5]-------------------------------------------------------------
From: Hugh Grady <hughgrady@comcast.net>
Date: Friday, 1 Dec 2006 09:25:43 -0500
Subject: 17.1065 Dying Unshriven
Comment: RE: SHK 17.1065 Dying Unshriven
In an on-gong draft of a chapter on Hamlet, I wrote on this issue the
following:
Hamlet's explicitly expressed motivation for foregoing his momentary
advantage [of killing Caludius at prayer] is one of the moments of the
play when its archaic, medieval material surfaces in Hamlet's own
subjectivity.[i] The reason he gives for the deferral is as savage as
the preceding imagery of hell and night. His decidedly un-Christian
desire not just to execute his father's murderer and Denmark's usurper
but to damn him as well is at once highly expressionistic and
theologically puzzling. Eighteenth-century critics were shocked and
dismayed by Hamlet's passion here. Samuel Johnson, for example, found
Hamlet's explanation for his delay "too horrible to be read or to be
uttered" (Johnson 990). Beginning with the Romantics, critics tended to
discount these words, arguing that they are a pretext for Hamlet's
hesitation to kill. In the twentieth century, J. Dover Wilson also
thought that Hamlet's explanation for foregoing revenge was a "pretext"
(246), but one which "no Elizabethan would have thought of questioning"
(245). But taking a completely different tack, Arthur McGee argued that
these Catholic resonances were signals to the original audience that
Hamlet's mission was flawed, that the Ghost was entrapping him,
successfully tempting him to effectuate his own damnation at a moment of
weakness. And deliberately willing the damnation of another was a
grievous sin for both Catholic and Protestant theologians, so that
Hamlet seems in that light to be courting the loss of his own soul.
But it is impossible, I believe, to map such moments -the executed order
of "not shriving time allowed" for Rosencrantz and Guildenstern repeats
the same deed- into a key to the play's overall significance. Rather, we
might say, they are moments of "madness," the archaic material
expressive of primal emotions and extreme stress. In that way, these
moments function as fragmented allegories in Benjamin's sense-in this
case, they are fragments that evoke feeling and atmosphere; they are
evocative of the rage and cold resolve of a revenge-hero, moments when
Hamlet is not far from Hieronimo or Marlowe's Barabas. We see a world
not only emptied of meaning but open to the forces of hell and damnation
as well. Significantly, Hamlet situates the moment in a direful nighttime:
'Tis now the very witching time of night,
When churchyards yawn, and hell itself breathes out
Contagion to this world. Now could I drink hot blood,
And do such bitter business as the day
Would quake to look on. (3.2.358-62)
It is as if, at this moment, Hamlet has plunged over the beetling cliff
into madness, and yet the feeling it evokes is as much relief at his
apparent resolution as horror at its savagery. Again, as in the figure
of the beetling cliff, the images depict boundaries giving way, borders
dissolving: graves "yawn" and hell "breathes out/Contagion". The image
of drinking hot blood is a kind of inverted, diabolical Eucharist.
Hamlet seems entrapped; from one moral perspective (Christian) he is
damning himself, but from another (Machiavellian/pagan) he is empowered:
he is finally preparing himself for the bloody necessities of carrying
out his princely duty. Of course, what follows from this vivid dramatic
build-up is-another deferral, perhaps the most ambiguous one of all.
[i] Ariès 297-321 argues that the Renaissance was a period in which
both Protestant and Catholic teachers tended to criticize the previous
age's emphasis on the disposition of the soul at the moment of death,
casting doubt on death-bed conversions and repentance, and emphasizing
that a person's entire life was relevant to her salvation. In that sense
Hamlet's and the Ghost's preoccupation with the state of the soul at the
moment of death was medieval and anachronistic.
[6]-------------------------------------------------------------
From: Edmund Taft <taft@marshall.edu>
Date: Friday, 1 Dec 2006 10:42:45 -0500
Subject: Dying Unshriven
Louid Swilley's puzzlements about the end of _Hamlet_ echo some of my
own concerns about the problematic way in which the play ends. Two
observations may help a bit: first, Hamlet's "calm" manner upon his
return to Denmark is really only half the story. He is anything but calm
when he baits Laertes during Ophelia's burial, and his recitation of his
"adventures" while he was gone reveals a man who seems reckless and even
perhaps out of control. I'd suggest that Hamlet's "calmness" comes
across as eerie to many readers and playgoers. Perhaps he is mad?
Second, Hamlet's exact motivation for killing Claudius is hard to figure
out. In part, it could be the Queen's death from poison, which gives the
prince a new reason for killing the king. A public murder may deserve a
public response, and that's what Claudius gets when Hamlet kills him.
Still, his motives seem mixed to me. Elsewhere, I have argued that
Hamlet thinks by the end of the play that he is the instrument of
Providence.
But is he? (Sorry I can't be of more help.)
Ed Taft
[7]-------------------------------------------------------------
From: David Evett <d.evett@csuohio.edu>
Date: Friday, 1 Dec 2006 11:13:46 -0500
Subject: 17.1065 Dying Unshriven
Comment: Re: SHK 17.1065 Dying Unshriven
A venerable and still valuable article by Fredson Bowers, "Hamlet as
Minister and Scourge," PMLA 79 (1955): 740-49, discusses early modern
ideas about the relationships between personal and public vengeance.
David Evett
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