The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 17.0767 Tuesday, 5 September 2006
[1] From: Joseph Egert <
This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
>
Date: Sunday, 03 Sep 2006 20:11:04 +0000
Subj: RE: SHK 17.0754 Hamlet's Age
[2] From: John W. Kennedy <
This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
>
Date: Friday, 01 Sep 2006 19:17:06 -0400
Subj: Re: SHK 17.0760 Hamlet's Age
[1]-----------------------------------------------------------------
From: John W. Kennedy <
This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
>
Date: Friday, 01 Sep 2006 19:17:06 -0400
Subject: 17.0760 Hamlet's Age
Comment: Re: SHK 17.0760 Hamlet's Age
Hardy M. Cook wrote:
> The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 17.0760 Friday, 1 September 2006
>
> [Editor's Note: When I sent out the initial message in this thread
yesterday, I expressed my misgivings about this subject. Several of the
following posts have confirmed some of my reservations. In the future,
please remember that my goal is to post only submissions that I deem of
interest to the academic Shakespeare community. This means that I will
not accept messages based upon hidden, coded information and that when a
submission makes an assertion, it must be supported with the evidence
from the text. I am letting these submissions go today, but in the
future I will simply ignore ones that I judge to be inappropriate. -HMC]
While I acknowledge the problem, and mostly agree that this sort of
question serves merely to decrease the signal-to-noise ratio in
SHAKSPER, the question of Hamlet's age /is/ a question that must be
faced in production. In this, it is unlike the question of Lady Mac's
children, which, on the one hand, cannot be addressed in production,
and, on the other, has a perfectly sound, albeit extratextual, academic
answer (Mackers was her second husband).
[Editor's Note: Okay, and I acknowledged this in my Note in the first
post. Further, I would not have a problem were the issue stated as such.
-HMC]
[2]-------------------------------------------------------------
From: Joseph Egert <
This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
>
Date: Sunday, 03 Sep 2006 20:11:04 +0000
Subject: 17.0754 Hamlet's Age
Comment: RE: SHK 17.0754 Hamlet's Age
Mark Alexander asks:
>Is there a consensus on Hamlet's age or is it still an unsolved mystery?
In the play's hall of mirrors, one clue to the span of Gertrude's first
marriage and Hamlet's age may be the Player King's account (III:2):
"Full thirty times hath Phoebus' cart gone round/
Neptune's salt wash and Tellus' orbed ground,/
And thirty dozen moons with borrowed sheen/
About the world have times twelve thirties been/
Since love our hearts and Hymen did our hands/
Unite commutual in most sacred bands."
Steve Sohmer interprets Phoebus' "thirty times" as thirty solar days,
not years; and the "thirty dozen moons" as an additional 360 synodal
months. He concludes therefrom (amid other calculations) that Hamlet was
born a "bastard eigne" before King Hamlet and the Queen were marrried.
Any child Gertrude would bear Claudius could therefore easily displace
the Prince as heir.
In other plays of the period, where similar phrasing was used, I believe
thirty years was intended, as in Greene's ALPHONSUS KING OF ARRAGON:
"Thrise ten times Phoebus with his golden beames/
Hath compassed the circle of the skie,/
Thrise ten times Ceres hath her workemen hir'd
And fild her barnes with frutefull crops of Corne,/
Since first in Priesthood I did lead my life."
The Player King's thirty-year marriage is of course consistent with the
gravemaker's unmistakable
thirty-year career since Hamlet's birth, confirmed by Yorick's 23-year
old skull (How interesting that Othello's initiation into the world of
war, and Hamlet's loss of his beloved Yorick both occur at age
seven--any significance here?).
Age thirty was deemed even in classical times the culmination of youth.
The period of the "adulescens" extended from sixteen to thirty, after
which the body began its inexorable decline. Jesus, like Hamlet born to
set the time right, was baptized, crucified, and resurrected in his
early thirties. The play hints throughout that the final slaughter in
Act V may adumbrate Dooms-day, when the resurrected and those still
living would stand for Final Judgment.
Debates raged, however, over the nature of this Resurrection. The Church
Fathers rejected as heresy the belief in the Pythagorean transmigration
or serial reincarnation of souls on earth without the Final Heavenly
Judgment by Father and Son. Paul's conception of the ascending
"spiritual body" bit the dust along with it.
Orthodox doctrine came to insist on the distinct individual corporeality
of the Final Resurrection. The corpse of every innocent and purged soul,
no matter how far dissolved or dispersed its elements, would be restored
to its perfect healthy state, its unique identity intact though freshly
clothed without blemish, no matter the illnesses and traumas accumulated
during life. (Even the Ethiop would be "cured" of his black color!)
Judgment Day scenarios in medieval iconography are replete with fish
(Nature's promiscuous cannibals) vomiting forth their devoured human
body parts for individual reintegration. The corporeal dust of Alexander
and Caesar would be reassembled from their respective bungholes and wall
patches into Resurrection bodies for Final Judgment. The body, if need
be, would be "re-membered" to return fully equipped with all limbs and
organs, their functions no longer needed. Jerome, the arch-masculinist,
insisted that the genital members were restored as well to differentiate
men from women in Heaven. The play's Ghost may be using the Prince to
bring Doomsday nearer to re-member himself as well. Whether the wicked
and unpurged would return with their bodies perfected for Judgment was
kept off-limits to speculation, but return they would.
The saints were also a special case. Their spiritual bodies or blessed
souls would rise immediately upon death to rest in lasting peace and
repose, awaiting the full glory at the End of Days. Their otherwise
perfect Resurrection bodies might retain their scars suffered for the
Faith as badges of honour. They would shine like "glowworms" in the
dark. Even their earthly remains was deemed noble spirit-imbued flesh
and therefore less corruptible to time and worms. Ordinary mortals left
to rot in unconsecrated ground unprotected by these Gracious saintly
remains would risk demonic assumption of their corpses to wander the night.
At the other end, women being composed (like mater Gertrude) of colder
more decadent matter were far more easily corruptible both in life and
after death. Cyprian warns women not to powder themseves, lest God fail
to recognize their unpowdered Resurrection bodies. After all, there was
to be no marriage in Heaven. Sound familiar?
But how old would the Resurrection body be? No matter the age at death,
the body would return at the perfect age of thirty, yet retaining the
distinct identity of its host.
In sum, regardless of Hamlet's age during life, at death the King's Son
would rise and shine--a perfect thirty!
Joe Egert
P.S.: For further details, check out Caroline Bynum's THE RESURRECTION
OF THE BODY...(1995).
_______________________________________________________________
S H A K S P E R: The Global Shakespeare Discussion List
Hardy M. Cook,
This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
The S H A K S P E R Web Site <http://www.shaksper.net>
DISCLAIMER: Although SHAKSPER is a moderated discussion list, the
opinions expressed on it are the sole property of the poster, and the
editor assumes no responsibility for them.
|
