"Damned Incest"
Early in our explorations of Hamlet, students invariably ask if the marriage between Claudius and Gertrude is incestuous and why no one in Elsinore seems overly concerned with what Hamlet and the Ghost clearly see as a damnable union. Those concerns linger while our attention, influenced by the Olivier and Zeffirelli film versions, turns to the possible incestuous desires between mother and son. Ultimately, many students find those repressed or expressed desires to be unsatisfying origins for Hamlet's blistering attacks on his mother.
Again, Jardine's use of ecclesiastical records can provide alternatives in assessing the importance of incest in the social relations in the play. While the play is set in Denmark, an Elizabethan audience would have been aware of the clear restraints on incest in their culture:
No person shall marry within the degrees prohibited by the lawe of God, and expressed in a table set forth by authority in the year of our lord 1563; and all marriages so made and contracted shall be adjudged incestuous and unlawful, and consequently shall be dissolved as void from the beginning, and the parties so married shall by course of law be separated. And the aforesaid table shall be in every church publickly set up, at the charge of the parish.Henry VIII established those tables of consanguinity and affinity. Jardine reports, "The table of consanguinity prohibits marriages with close blood ties, in the generations in which it might plausibly occur (parent, sibling, offspring, grandchild). The table of affinity, by contrast, reflects unions which might produce conflicting inheritance claims. A man may not marry his father's wife, his uncle's wife, his father's wife's daughter, his brother's wife or his wife's sister, his son's wife or his wife's daughters, nor the daughter of his wife's son or daughter. None of these are blood ties, but each creates complications over the line. In particular, the marriage of a widow to her dead husband's brother threatens the son's inheritance claim. The son is first in line, his father's brother second; the marriage of the dowager widow to the second in line threatens to overwhelm the claim of the legitimate heir" (40).Ecclesiastical Courts Canons 1603 (39)
One key to understanding the situation in Elsinore, especially in terms of the line of succession, may be found in another condition of the canons, which required someone to claim an offense caused by the incestuous act:
If any offend their Brethren, either by Adultery, Whoredome, Incest, or Drunkennesse, or by Swearing, Ribaldry, Usury, or any other uncleannesse and wickednesse of life, the Church-wardens...shall faithfully present all, and every of the said offenders, to the intent that they may be punished by the severity of the Lawes..."Jardine focuses attention on the offenses arising from affinity violations, suggesting Hamlet may well have a legal claim of a kinship offense against Claudius, who, as Hamlet finally admits, "Popped in between th' election and my hopes" (V. ii. 165.). Curiously, despite the concern with kinship and inheritance in the early scenes, no one at court, aside from Hamlet, seems angered by the incestuous marriage. Jardine then asserts that in the absence of a public avenue for Hamlet to claim an offense, he turns to a private pursuit--blaming his mother for the hasty remarriage and his loss of political place. In fact, Hamlet before he speaks of "incestuous sheets" condemns the "most wicked speed" of the marriage.Ecclesiastical Courts Canons 1603 (39)
The Murder of Gonzago, ostensibly Hamlet's attempt to catch the conscience of the king (still a private rather than a public claim), also becomes a thinly disguised assault on his mother's hasty marriage. That Hamlet's impulses are directed toward the "wicked speed" is clear in the distinction that the play doesn't contain a parallel character to Hamlet, which, according to Jardine, suggests the performance doesn't resolve the issue of whether a formal kinship claim can be supported. Seemingly, Hamlet is precoccupied with emotion rather than politics.
In discussing the Murder of Gonzago, students may want to probe why Hamlet places so much attention on both queens.
| Player King. | Faith I must leave thee, love, and shortly too: My operant powers their functions leave to do; And thou shalt live in this fair world behind, Honour'd, belov'd; and haply one as kind For husband shalt thou-- |
| Player Queen. | O confound the rest. |
| Such love must needs be treason in my breast. In second husband let me be accurst; None wed the second but who kill'd the first. | |
| Hamlet | (aside) There's wormwood. |
| Player Queen. | The instances that second marriage move Are base respects of thrift, but none of love. A second time I kill my husband dead, When second husband kisses me in bed. |
| Player King. | I do believe you think now what now you speak; But what we do determine oft we break. |
| ... | |
| Player Queen. | Nor earth to me give food, nor heave light, Sport and repose lock from me day and night, To desperation turn my trust and hope, An anchor's cheer in prison be my scope, Each opposite, that blanks the face of joy, Meet what I would have well and it destroy, Both here and hence pursue me lasting strife, If, once a widow, ever I be a wife | .
| Hamlet. | If she should break it now. |
| ... | |
| (To the Queen) Madam, how like you this play? | |
| Queen. | The lady doth protest too much, methinks. (III. ii, 165--222) |
Though now armed with information to make a public accusation about kinship offense, if not murder, Hamlet detours to continue his private vengeance on his mother, who wittingly and unwittingly assisted in depriving him of his place. In the closet scene, students may note that Hamlet spends but one line implicating Gertrude in the murder before turning to the marriage:
| Hamlet. | Now, mother, what's the matter? |
| Queen. | Hamlet, thou hast thy father much offended. |
| Hamlet. | Mother, you have my father much offended.... |
| Queen. | Have you forgot me? |
| Hamlet. | No, by the rood, not so! |
| You are the queen, your husband's brother's wife, And, (would it were not so) you are my mother.... | |
| Queen. | What have I done that thou dar'st wag thy tongue In noise so rude against me? |
| Hamlet. | Such an act |
| That blurs the grace and blush of modesty Calls virtue hypocrite, takes off the rose From the fair forehead of an innocent love, And sets a blister there, makes marriage vows As false as dicers' oaths. (III. iv. 9-45) |
The discussion of this exchange could examine the nature of the offenses and what becomes Hamlet's unseemly interest in his mother's sexuality. What moral judgments does Hamlet make against his mother? Is the moral proportion between murder and a forbidden marriage balanced in his mind? How does self-interest affect his judgments? Why does he choose to pursue his private vengeance rather than make public accusations?
Jardine raises one more issue for a class to consider in light of the historical background. She suggests "the civil complexity of kin and inheritance obligations, under which Hamlet might claim a grievance (and proceed to law) against Claudius, is refocused as moral blame on the civically non-participating Gertrude" (46). Does her role as a woman and mother make her a vulnerable target?
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