Claudius = Serpent

Claudius from Shakespeare’s “Hamlet” is a generally dislikeable character, and it is only fitting that he should be portrayed as a snake. Claudius is repeated compared to beasts of the earth; he is called a satyr (a goat-man with a large sexual appetite) and an incestuous beast.   But none of these are so fitting as “serpent” He draws a parallel to the serpent from the Garden of Eden in more ways than one. Here are just a few, just in case you didn’t dislike him enough.

First off, he seduces the “seemingly” virtuous queen. Gertrude was devoted to her husband the king until Claudius, “with witchcraft of his wit, which traitorous gifts—o wicked wit and gifts that have the power so to seduce”   tempted the queen. If Claudius is a serpent, then the virtuous and devoted Gertrude is most definitely Eve, who was tempted by a snake to eat from a tree of knowledge and was banished from Eden because of it. Just like Eve, Gertrude’s temptation costs her the ability to live happily in the “Garden of Eden,” which in her case is Denmark. Once Gertrude succumbs to Claudius’s wit and consummates a marriage on “incestuous sheets,” the purity and sanctity of the garden is destroyed.

Secondly, he poisoned his brother. That makes him a bad person, but what makes him the serpent is that he poisoned him while he was “sleeping in [his] orchard.” Claudius destroyed his brother while he was in a garden, which draws a direct parallel to how Adam was led to his downfall in the Garden of Eden. Furthermore, his destruction is because his wife was tempted by Claudius, just as Adam’s was because of Eve’s temptation. Claudius kills his brother in order to win the queen and persuade her into marriage. Gertrude was tempted by his charm, which made the king’s destruction inevitable and necessary in the eyes of Claudius. The ghost of his brother even describes the event by saying “a serpent stung me.”

Third, when Claudius enters the thrown, Hamlet compares Denmark to an “unweeded garden that grows to seed.” In essence, Denmark is Eden, a pure and prosperous garden, until Claudius, a weed with a personal agenda comes and destroys it.  

Claudius is a very traditional antagonist. He is selfish, he tempts innocent women and destroys the men that love them. His pattern is not in the least original, but he is no less evil. 

Why Sonnets are Frustrating

Fact: Shakespearean sonnets are confusing.

Fact: The above statement is an opinion, but it is a well-grounded one.

Shakespearean sonnets are beautiful and wonderful, filled with complex wit, language and emotion. It is for that reason that they are so difficult to interpret. They are a lot like his plays: filled with puns, sexual innuendos, emotions, and humor. However, they are a lot shorter so the language is a lot deeper because of this. That is where the trouble with interpretation comes in.

Take Shakespeare’s Sonnet 78 for example. It is a member of what has been called the “Fair Youth” sequence consisting of the first 126 sonnets. They are called such due to the fact that they were addressed to an unnamed young man. The young man has never been able to be identified, though there have been many suggested possibilities. The sonnets were all dedicated to “Mr. W. H.,” who was believed to be either Henry Wriothesley, 3^rd Earl of Southampton who had once been a patron of Shakespeare, or William Herbert, 3^rd Earl of Pembroke, who was also a patron of Shakespeare.

But I digress.

In Shakespeare’s 78^th Sonnet, the speaker is writing for a young person who has been not only his inspiration, but that of countless other poets as well. In reference to this source of inspiration, the speaker says, “So oft have I invok’d thee for my Muse/ and found such fair assistance in my verse/ as every alien pen hath got my use/ and under thee their poesy disperse” (lines 1-4). This first stanza shows the pure admiration that the speaker has for the youth. The speaker shows that he often seeks the young person for inspiration and the young person has in turn guided his pen in writing poetry.

In the second stanza, the speaker says, “Thine eyes, that taught the dumb on high to sing/ and heavy ignorance aloft to fly/ have added feathers to the learned’s wing/ and given grace a double majesty” (5-8). Again, this is showing the admiration the speaker has for the youth, showing the amount of influence the youth as on more “learned” poets.

Next, the speaker reveals that the youth is the sole inspiration of his poems, saying “yet be most proud of that which I compile/ Whose influence is thine and born of thee/ In other works thou dost but mend the style/ and arts with thy sweet graces graced be” (9-12). The speaker attributes the youth entirely with the success of his works. He uses the comparison of the poem to a child being “born” to the youth. The youth is essentially a parental figure to the speaker, nurturing him into a mature poet.

This poem, at first glance seems straightforward enough. However, upon delving a little bit deeper one is able to make some interesting connections. For example, each stanza makes a reference to a writing utensil. The first one is easy to pick out: it is simply the word pen. The second one is slightly more vague but is still relatively easy: the word feather is used in reference to a quill. The third is harder: the word “style” is used, which can be taken as a reference to the word “stylus,” another writing utensil.

Additionally, key words are repeated, such as “art” and “ignorance.” The word “art” appears not only as the traditionally defined work of art, but also in the archaic form of “are” as in “thou art” or “you are.” When the speaker says “But thou art all my art” in the couplet at the end of the poem, it draws the connection of the youth not only being the inspiration for a work of art, but also being a work of art himself. As for the word “ignorance” which appears twice in the poem, its use again demonstrates how the youth has inspired the speaker. Its first use in the second stanza, which says “and heavy ignorance aloft to fly” shows that youth has lifted the burden of ignorance, in a sense allowing a writer to “fly” or be successful. The other use is in the couplet, which says “as high as learning my rude ignorance.” The speaker claims the ignorance as is own, making the first use of the word more significant as it now shows that the writer that was allowed to fly because of the youth was our speaker.

Shakespeare’s mastery of language ensures that his sonnets can be analyzed from many different angles. Each time I discover one, I come a little closer to pulling my hair out. Either way, the depth of each of Shakespeare’s fourteen-line poems is definitely something to appreciate. 

Playing with Words

In all Shakespearean plays, William Shakespeare makes use of wordplay. This man was a master of language and bended words to his will. Sometimes his wordplay makes his works difficult to understand, but the presence of puns and jokes throughout ensure that they will never be dry.

Shakespeare is known to use puns, perverted hidden meanings, and the occasional antanaclasis in his texts. The last one is a literary device where he uses the same word multiple times within a scene but employs a different definition each time. These are not always clear to the casual reader (something I know from experience after reading Romeo and Juliet casually and then again analytically) but they add pleasure and meaning to the work.

One occasion of an antanclasis that I found to be very interesting was in the conversation between Ophelia and Polonius in Act I, Scene III of “Hamlet.” The key word here was “tender,” which could mean anything from offering of love to money to taking care of something or someone. Shakespeare employs it here five times, which is not a coincidence.

The first appearance of the word is when Ophelia uses it as a description of the words of love that Hamlet has offered her: “He hath, my lord, of late made many tenders of his affection to me.” This use and the next use of the word both employ the definition “offering” or “showing.” The third employs an entirely different definition. Polonius says, “You have ta’en these tenders for true pay, which are not sterling.”  Here the word “tender” is used more as a description of money or some form of currency, specifically a fake or counterfeit currency. The use of the word “tender” as both an offering of affection and a form of money draws the parallel between love and payment. Payment for exchange of love is prostitution so in drawing this comparison Polonius is essentially calling Ophelia a harlot and stating that Hamlet’s “tenders” for her are lies.

The next appearance of the word is when Polonius says to Ophelia: “Tender yourself more dearly; or—not to crack the wind of the poor phrase, running it thus—you’ll tender me a fool.” The first use of the word in this sentence means “take better care of yourself,” of course, but the second is far more harsh and far harder to read. In order to understand it, one must also understand the term “fool,” which here is “to kid.” Essentially, the phrase waters down to “you’ll provide me a kid,” but it is much harsher than that. The phrasing makes a fool of not only Ophelia for having a kid, but also of Polonius for having a daughter with a tarnished reputation. The words “you’ll tender me a fool” equate to the entire phrase “You will get yourself pregnant and humiliate me and yourself in the process.” With four words, Shakespeare shows that not only is Polonius making fun of and verbally abusing Ophelia, but he is also showing how both of their reputations could be tarnished because of her actions. How’s that for wordplay?

Murder Most Foul...

Even today, a ghost is something you never want to see, but in the 16^th century it carried an even greater weight. Ghosts were believed to be spirits of the dead trapped in purgatory, people who were on good terms with God when they died but never received their last rites and were thus doomed to walk the earth until their souls could be put to rest. Whenever a ghost appeared, it was a sign that something was amiss with the natural order of things. That makes it easy to understand why the appearance of the ghost of Hamlet’s father in Shakespeare’s “Hamlet” would make a 16^th century audience nervous.

It is unclear exactly what agenda the ghost of Hamlet’s father is pushing. He seems like he is a kindly, justice-seeking ghost trying to bring order back to Denmark so his soul can finally rest and go to heaven. However, he also has the potential to be a vengeful spirit: he comes dressed completely in armor as if he is about to engage in a battle. Which brings us to the ultimate question: is Hamlet’s father a spirit trapped in purgatory or is he a vengeful spirit from hell?

I’m inclined to think that Hamlet’s father is trapped in purgatory. He is described as a fairly good person and a just king; Hamlet goes so far to compare him to Hyperion, the god of watchfulness, wisdom and light. The comparison to the god Hyperion initially screams “good guy.” That argument is strengthened by the ghost’s own words: when he appears to Hamlet he says, “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.” The process he describes sounds like purgatory: he is doomed and bound to earth until his crimes are “purged away” meaning he must be cleansed or purified before he can be admitted into heaven. In this sense, the fires he describes could be purifying fires as described in  the bible, such as in 1 Peter 1:7: “So that the genuineness of your faith, more precious than gold which though perishable is tested by fire.” The ghost also says, “But this eternal blazon must not be to ears of flesh and blood,” the “eternal blazon” directly referring to an afterlife of heraldic brilliancy that the ghost can’t tell Hamlet about.

However, he also has the potential to be a demonic figure. Where most Shakespearean spirits at unrest appear to only one person, Hamlet’s father appears to three which already indicates that he is something out of the normal pattern even in the spirit world. Furthermore, when Hamlet is demanding that his men swear not to reveal what they have seen, the Ghost also makes this demand but his voice comes from beneath the ground as if the Ghost is speaking from the very pits of hell. Horatio, a friend of Hamlet even warns him before he seeks to speak to the ghost that it could deprive his “sovereignty of reason and draw [him] into madness.” It seems like the ghost does indeed draw Hamlet into madness later on when Hamlet makes a vast personality change and puts on “an antic disposition.”

Though I see purgatory to be a more likely argument, seeing the ghost as a demon is still a viable reading. But either way, these two different readings of the Ghost make you feel bad for Hamlet. The ghost of his father is either trapped in purgatory or has come to draw him into madness, and Hamlet is unable to determine which one it is doing. You have to sympathize with Hamlet’s ambivalence towards the ghost who could save him and his kingdom from the wrath of his uncle, or could lead him to his own destruction.