The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 20.0338 Wednesday, 24 June 2009
From: Joe Egert <
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Date: Tuesday, 23 Jun 2009 16:13:50 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: 20.0307 What ho, Horatio
Comment: Re: SHK 20.0307 What ho, Horatio
Conrad Cook writes:
"But I think there's something else going on with the snake story: this
is a reference to the Myth of the Fall. King Hamlet is resting in his
orchard when a serpent stung him: an orchard is a garden for trees, and
it reflects the Garden with two conspicuous trees, of Life and of
Knowledge. When the Ghost says, therefore, "know thou noble youth the
serpent that did sting my life now wears my crown," there is therefore a
strong but subtle symbolic link made between Claudius and the
tempter-devil."
C.laudius is also linked of course to the first fratricide C.ain, whom
some legends stamped the natural son of Eve and her serpent. The first
slayer in our drama was not Claudius but his brother King Hamlet,
perhaps another 'tempter-devil', a 'dreaded sight' arrayed in dazzling
armour upon the battlements of Elsinore, waiting to entice the Prince
toward bloody revenge, in defiance of God's law.
Renaissance commentators endlessly pondered the nature of this Serpent
of Eden. Was he perhaps the immaterial Devil himself, casting a
serpentine illusion to beguile his prey? Most however believed the
Serpent a material being, the most cunning of God's creatures, yet (like
Iago) an instrument or tool possessed by Satan to lead astray the
innocent and vulnerable.
But what kind of material creature was he? A common snake? a basilisk? a
dragon? After reviewing the candidates, Pererius, in his Latin
COMMENTARIORUM on Genesis (1589 and later), settled on the legendary
scytale, an erect wondrously speckled and spotted serpent, given voice
by the Devil inside him. Some deemed Eve's engaging this wondrous
creature by eye and ear an early stage in her sinful regression.
As pagan or Biblical serpents were often affiliated with staffs/rods (or
phalluses), so etymologically the scytale, or scitalis, was also a
device where ciphers in fragmented strips were layered around a
distinctly shaped rod for decoding. The Bible staffs were often pictured
with flowery heads (asphodels); so too the Serpent was often portrayed
with a flowery or even virgin's head, the easier to beguile his prey. I
wonder sometimes if the peeled rods, used by Jacob in Shylock's example
to speckle and spot the newborn lambs and kids by visual impression,
recall the scytale in both its senses. Preachers saw the mingled dark
bark and white wood layering of these peeled rods as forecasting the
final integration of the varied peoples of the Earth under the Christian
dispensation (as with Jessica and Launcelet's Moor). Others contrasted
the dark bark of the Judaic letter with the white wood of the
superseding Christian spirit underneath. I wonder though if the Ewe
gazing upon the speckled rod recapitulates Eve's succumbing to the
speckled Serpent, thus leading to Original Sin tainting all her progeny.
Both staffs and serpents also served as crucifixion symbols. The
astronomer's or navigator's 'Jacob's staff' was in fact such a
cross-staff. Moses' brazen serpent in NUMBERS for healing bitten
penitent believers was similarly transformed by Christian expositors
into a crucified serpent of salvific potency for true believers gazing
upon an image of Jesus' atoning sacrifice. Could choosing the lead
casket in the MERCHANT similarly save Christian pilgrims like Bassanio,
ready to hazard all for the image within of the sacrificial Portia (and
later, Antonio)? Hasn't Bassanio's own spiritual journey taken him from
the golden casket/fleece, which many want, to the lead casket of sacrifice?
Joe Egert
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