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Replies | Post Reply | Shakespeare Queries & Replies From Everyone Else 3.15.97: Top | Help
I think you're quite right, Lillith, to detect notes both of election and matrilineal succession in Hamlet.But as the responses you've received show, there's nothing definite - and even if Denmark was in fact a matrilineal or elective monarchy during the epoch of the historical background of the play, what would that prove? The fictional world conjured up by the play seems to be a different epoch entirely, one closer to Shakespeare's own time.
More interesting would be to inquire into the resonances these suggestions of matriliny and elective monarchy would have had for Shakespeare's contemporary audience. Though Hamlet was first performed and the bad quarto published before Queen Elizabeth's death, the good quarto on which all later editions are based came after James's accession to the throne.
Now in this context, suggestions of matriliny gone awry and the dead monarch's Scottish "brother" popping up on the throne - instead of some filial contender who could have been "elected" - are pretty interesting. Especially when you throw into the mix one way in particular James could have been kept off the throne: if Elizabeth had ever married and born an heir, as Gertrude has done in the play.
Sure, it's all a muddle, but a very overdetermined and suggestive one: suggestive of some real discontent with the way succession has been/is about to be/was handled in England after Elizabeth's death - and very subversive suggestions at that.
To get some background on the theory of kingship at this time, you should take a look at James's The True Law of Free Monarchies - in which he refutes the notion (forwarded by Catholic antagonists to his succeeding Mary in Scotland) that the institution of monarchy arose through (and so should go back to) election. James points out that in Scotland and England at least, it in fact arose through right of conquest - making him the rightful heir with or without anyone's pardon (think of Fortinbras...). And James had this book reissued for the benefit of his new English subjects shortly before the publication of the good quarto of Hamlet.
You might also want to follow up a lead I was pursuing before my tenure-track job search ended in vain: that some familial symbolism of James's proposed Union of England and Scotland marks this play as well as the later Romances. While the bad quarto had Claudius poison the wine with an "onyx," the good one has him throw "an Union" into the cup: a pretty odd choice for the poison jewel when James was poisoning Parliamentary debate about this time with this term.
Posted by Marina on April 02, 1997 at 13:16:21
In Reply to "Rightful King" posted by Lillith on March 29, 1997 at 07:32:40
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