A Tutor Talk by Dr. Joseph P. Hattrup

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Note: Periodically members of the Thomas Aquinas College teaching faculty or chaplaincy present informal lectures, followed by question-and-answer sessions, on campus. These late-afternoon gatherings afford an opportunity for speakers to discuss topics of great interest to them and to share their thoughts with other members of the community. Tutor Dr. Joseph P. Hattrup delivered the following talk on October 12, 2016:

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From the most ancient days of poetry the plots of the great poems, though the heroes are men, center on a woman. Often this woman is disastrous, as, in certain ways, Helen is in the Iliad. But this is not always the case. In the Odyssey we have Kalypso, but we also have Penelope, and her role in the salvation of Odysseus is of primary importance. In Virgil's Aeneid we have the contrast between Dido and Lavinia to deal with. I don't at the moment say anything definite about these relationships; I just point out their presence.

Among the Christian poets this same thing occurs. Generally, at the heart of the great tragedies and comedies we find a woman to whom the ultimate happiness or desolation of the hero is resolved. And here, more often than not, the contrast stands, symbolically, between the persons of Eve and of Mary, the Mother of God. I want to lay out a general motif that I find operating in most of the poetry read in both the sophomore and junior seminars, but I want to expound that motif concretely in a brief treatment of Shakespeare's Hamlet. I choose Hamlet because it is in some ways the most difficult to understand in terms of this motif. However, once the motif is seen within the play it makes the play more delightful than before.

 

The First Stage: Eve and the Blessed Mother in Paradise Lost

In Milton's Paradise Lost we find a stunning coordination of the characters of Eve and of Dido. In Book 4, as Satan is viewing the garden of Paradise from the outside, we get the impression over and over again that we are looking at the Garden of the Hesperides. This is the mythological garden that the pagan tradition had put in North Africa at the far west of the world against the Atlantic Ocean, near Mount Atlas. One reason for this, at least, is that the seven Hesperides were the daughters of Atlas. The Garden of the Hesperides was noted principally for its containing the tree of the golden apples. Eating these apples gives one the gift of immortality. It is certainly no accident that the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, as depicted by Milton, is a tree of golden apples. (It was from one of these trees, by the way, that the apple of discord was plucked, the apple that began the struggle of the Trojan War.) Further, pagan tradition held that the tree of the golden apples in the garden of the Hesperides was guarded by a great dragon, called Ladon. Ladon appears in Book 4 of the Aeneid, the great Dido book. The image of Satan, winding about the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, has direct reference to this tradition. Finally, just as the tree of the golden apples gave godhead to the mortal eater, so Satan tempts Eve with the baleful chant, "Ye shall be as gods."

Now, I argued in my talk on Queen Dido last year that the Queen of Carthage is herself identified with the Garden of the Hesperides by Virgil, as well as with the golden apple itself. It is by her plucking of that tree, and by her tempting Aeneas so to pluck, that she seals her doom, as it were. There is here, on Milton's part, an attempt to identify Eve with the long-standing poetic tradition that moves from the Garden of the Hesperides in the far west of the world, to the tree of the golden fleece in the far east of the world, to Queen Dido in the heart of North Africa. That Milton intends this likeness is made more manifest by the evidence of his identification of the other chief characters of his poem with characters from the Aeneid, namely, of Satan with Ulysses, and of Adam with Aeneas.

But he does not end here. Standing against Eve at the culmination of the Archangel Michael's prophecy in Book 12 comes the person of Mary:

A virgin is His mother but His sire
The Pow'r of the Most High. He shall ascend
The throne hereditary and bound His reign
With earth's wide bounds, His glory with the heav'ns.
He ceased, discerning Adam with such joy
Surcharged as had like grief been dewed in tears
Without the vent of words, which these he breathed:
O prophet of glad tidings, finisher
Of utmost hope! Now clear I understand
What oft my steadiest thoughts have searched in vain,
Why our great expectation should be called
The Seed of woman: Virgin Mother, hail!
High in the love of Heav'n, yet from my loins
Thou shalt proceed and from thy womb the Son
Of God Most High: so God with Man united!
Needs must the serpent now his capital bruise
Expect with mortal pain.
(Paradise Lost, Book 12, lines 368-384)

Now I will consider Hamlet. I want to argue that it works along similar lines in important ways. In brief, Dido sets the backdrop; the character of Dido is transformed into that of Eve; Hamlet's crisis is defined through this Eveian backdrop; the Blessed Mother, in symbol, brings the crisis to resolution. Once I have gone through this development, I will suggest a universal motif arising from it that characterizes Shakespeare's plays on the whole. I will end with a brief, but fun observation on Part I of Don Quixote that will show how far-reaching the motif really is.

The Second Stage: Eve in Hamlet

Dido frequently provides a context for the main actions of Shakespeare's plays. I want to begin by showing how this is true for Hamlet. In Act II, Scene 2, easily the longest scene in the whole play, Hamlet speaks the following speech to the players who have just arrived in Elsinore:

"I heard thee speak me a speech once, but it was never acted, or if it was, not above once, for the play, I remember, pleased not the million; 'twas caviar to the general, but it was (as I received it, and others, whose judgments in such matters cried in the top of mine) an excellent play, well digested in the scenes, set down with as much modesty as cunning. I remember one said there were no sallets in the lines to make the matter savory, nor no matter in the phrase that might indict the author of affectation, but called it an honest method, as wholesome as sweet, and by very much more handsome than fine. One speech in't I chiefly loved. 'Twas Aeneas' tale to Dido, and thereabout of it especially when he speaks of Priam's slaughter. If it live in your memory, begin at this line..." (Act II, Scene 2)

Now, there are layers within layers within this speech. First, we have the telling of the telling of a tale. That is, Hamlet is asking the player to speak a speech that Aeneas tells to Dido. Second, it is not hard to establish that the tale told in the speech is a telling, or tapestry, of Hamlet's own story. (For this reason these lines of the play may be one of the many places in Hamlet where Shakespeare comments on his own craft and the character of his contemporary audiences.) And here we have a powerful aspect of the play. The story is that of the slaughtering of a king, that is, the murder of King Priam of Troy by Pyrrhus, who, we remember, is the same as Neoptolemus, the son of Achilles. There are many points in the action of the tale as it is here told that clearly do not come from Book 2 of the Aeneid, where the tale is originally told. In particular, there are these four remarkable moments:

1. Pyrrhus is dressed all in black;
2. Pyrrhus' first strike at the king falls wide, and he misses;
3. On his second stroke, Pyrrhus hesitates, and stands for a while immobile;
4. After a pause, with a renewed vengeance, he strikes again and kills the king.

These are the moments of Hamlet's own action. He is introduced to us dressed all in black, and this sets him apart from the rest of the dramatis personae. When, after the mousetrap play, Hamlet, convinced now of Claudius' guilt, finds the king praying in his closet, he raises his sword but does not strike. Later, thinking the king is behind the tapestry in his mother's room, he strikes, but his stroke falls wide, killing Polonius instead. After the death of his mother in the last scene, with a renewed sense of vengeance, his stroke finally falls the second time, and this time, it finds its mark.

Now, what do we make of this? Surely, there is a wealth of conclusions that could be drawn. I will simply suggest for the moment that the tale being told to Dido by Aeneas is Hamlet's own story. Does that mean we simply think of Hamlet as we would of Pyrrhus? I don't think so; but we are compelled to compare the two, whatever else happens. Here is the central point: When we think of the falling out of Hamlet's actions in the play, we are meant to be thinking of Dido. More than that, we are in Dido's very court.

Now I will argue that, like Milton, Shakespeare intends us to move from the symbol of Dido to the symbol of Eve. That is, in their symbolism the two are closely related. In developing this point we will appreciate more deeply the meaning of both women in Hamlet.

We feel Eve's presence from the beginning of the play. When Marcellus and Barnardo, the two sentries, reveal to Horatio, Hamlet's friend, the apparitions of the ghost of old King Hamlet, they ask Horatio, as a man of learning, what these apparitions mean. Horatio replies,

In what particular thought to work I know not;
But, in the gross and scope of my opinion,
This bodes some strange eruption to our state.
(Act I, Scene 1)

Marcellus takes advantage of this comment to elicit some information from Horatio, who is more informed of Denmark's affairs than he is. Marcellus says,

Good now, sit down, and tell me he that knows,
Why this same strict and most observant watch
So nightly toils the subject of the land,
And why such daily cast of brazen cannon
And foreign mart for implements of war,
Why such impress of shipwrights, whose sore task
Does not divide the Sunday from the week.
What might be toward that this sweaty haste
Doth make the night joint laborer with the day?
Who is't that can inform me?
(Act I, Scene 1)

Horatio replies, "That can I," and he goes on to explain that Denmark fears imminent war with Fortinbras of Norway. Though this accounts for Denmark's preparations, it is not clear that it accounts for the coming of the ghost. Barnardo suggests that it may very well be imminent war that brings forth this apparition, but Horatio is not so sure. He points out that ghosts walked the earth before the death of Julius Caesar, and this suggests implicitly the murder of the man who is head of the state. And so we have already the implication of old King Hamlet's murder.

But now let us attend to the speech of Marcellus just reported. There are two noteworthy disorders in Denmark for which he grieves. First, the distinction has been lost between Sunday and the other days of the week; second the distinction has been lost between the day and the night. This double disorder draws our attention forcefully to the creation account at the beginning of Genesis. Shakespeare's plays are universally cosmic, and they nearly always cast their plots in terms of images from Genesis. The creation, the garden of Eden, and Cain's murder of Abel are common themes. All three themes are present at different points in Hamlet.

In the text we are examining, the creation account is drawn to our attention, but through a dissolution of the order of creation, not an establishing of it. The work of creation is the work of distinction, and at each of the points of distinction in the creation account we rejoice in the goodness of what God has established. This rejoicing is crowned by the establishment of the Sabbath day, the day of ultimate rest in the enjoyment of the divine goodness. But here in Denmark there is not distinction and order; there is confusion, and we can no longer tell the day from the night, nor the Sabbath from the days assigned to toil and preparation.

This speech of Marcellus gives us an initial look at this truth about Denmark, but this look builds and builds as the play goes on. Once we have noticed the double disorder alluded to by Marcellus, we cannot but be struck by the fact that young Hamlet, our protagonist, is, when we first meet him, clothed in black. Hamlet's mother, Queen Gertrude, bewailing Hamlet's insistence on unhappiness, cries out to him,

Good Hamlet, cast thy nighted color off,
And let thine eye look like a friend on Denmark.
Do not for ever with thy vailèd lids
Seek for thy noble father in the dust.
Thou know'st 'tis common. All that lives must die,
Passing through nature to eternity.
(Act I, Scene 2)

Two things strike us in this speech. First, the Queen notes a disorder in Hamlet. He cannot distinguish day from night. He is night, when he should be day. She points this out to him by appealing to another order established by, well, someone or other: "All that lives must die, passing through nature to eternity." Second, the reason for Hamlet's sorrow is the death of his father, which, unbeknownst to him until later in the play, was due to his father's murder, in which Gertrude herself played an accessory role. Gertrude may well pray Hamlet to be friendly to Denmark, since her sin must by necessity drive him farther and farther from her, and from her new King. Hamlet replies to her appeal in a famous speech,

'Tis not alone my inky cloak, good mother,
Nor customary suits of solemn black,
Nor windy suspiration of forced breath,
No, nor the fruitful river in the eye,
Nor the dejected havior of the visage,
Together with all forms, moods, shapes of grief,
That can denote me truly. These indeed seem,
For they are actions that a man might play,
But I have that within which passes show -
These but the trappings and the suits of woe.
(Act I, Scene 2)

This speech manifests the deep disturbance in Hamlet's soul. He is not merely sorrowful, he is unhinged. He goes on in the soliloquy that follows,

O that this too too sullied flesh would melt,
Thaw, and resolve itself into a dew,
Or that the Everlasting had not fixed
His canon 'gainst self-slaughter. O God, God,
How weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable
Seem to me all the uses of this world!
Fie on't, ah, fie, 'tis an unweeded garden
That grows to seed. Things rank and gross in nature
Possess it merely. That it should come to this,
But two months dead, nay, not so much, not two,
So excellent a king, that was to this
Hyperion to a satyr, so loving to my mother
That he might not beteem the winds of heaven
Visit her face too roughly. Heaven and earth,
Must I remember? Why, she would hang on him
As if increase of appetite had grown
By what it fed on, and yet within a month -
Let me not think on't; frailty, thy name is woman!
(Act I, Scene 2)

This speech manifests a distinct line of thought. The world is compared to a garden, a garden that is unweeded and rank. The thought of the garden of Eden is not far away. The terms are almost exactly the same as in the garden of the Duke of York in Act III, Scene 4 of Richard II. There, the gardener is explicitly compared to old Adam, and the unweeded garden clearly reflects a state of sin, though both there and here in Hamlet the state of sin is related to political disorders. So we are in the garden of Eden after the original sin. But it is also the case that in Hamlet's mind the state of sin is closely related to the frailty of a woman. Her frailty consists at least in some measure in her detachment from old King Hamlet, whom young Hamlet refers to just after this as "The Man," a universal appellation that again brings Adam to mind.

As the play goes on, Gertrude is manifested more and more in Hamlet's thoughts as the root of disorder (cf. the royal bed of Denmark, Act I, Scene 4). In another "creation" speech, again in Act II, Scene 2, Hamlet says to Guildenstern:

"I have of late - but wherefore I know not - lost all my mirth, forgone all custom of exercises; and indeed, it goes so heavily with my disposition that this goodly frame the earth seems to me a sterile promontory; this most excellent canopy, the air, look you, this brave o'erhanging firmament, this majestical roof fretted with golden fire - why, it appeareth nothing to me but a foul and pestilent congregation of vapors." (Act II, Scene 2)

Notice that so far he is emphasizing the first four days of creation: the firmament and the lights of heaven; or, if we cast the thought in terms of the second creation account in Genesis 2, he is emphasizing the material creation. But now he turns his thoughts to man and the animals:

"What a piece of work is a man, how noble in reason, how infinite in faculties, in form and moving how express and admirable, in action how like an angel, in apprehension how like a god: the beauty of the world, the paragon of animals!" (Act II, Scene 2)

But now, however, enter the woman, the last and best of God's works on either creation account, though hardly perceived this way by Hamlet:

"And yet to me what is this quintessence of dust? Man delights not me - nor woman neither, though by your smiling you seem to say so." (Act II, Scene 2)

Now, what is Hamlet saying? Adam himself must have thought thoughts in some ways similar to these as he walked the earth alone, delighting in God's creation but still sad, lacking that companionship that would make the world a true delight. But where Adam can say, "Now at last here is bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh," all Hamlet can say is, "Man delights not me - nor woman neither." This suggests that his disappointment is precisely in woman.

This business takes one more step in Act III, Scene 1 in Hamlet's tirade to Ophelia, in which he focuses his sadness and his anger on marriage, and especially on the woman's side of it. But there are two aspects to his focus. First, he sees woman as a breeder of sinners. That is, the men who come from women are one and all wicked. Second, he sees woman as essentially dishonest, as portraying the order of creation as something it is not through dissimulation. To the first point, Hamlet says,

"Get thee to a nunnery. Why wouldst thou be a breeder of sinners? I am myself indifferent honest, but yet I could accuse me of such things that it were better my mother had not borne me: I am very proud, revengeful, ambitious, with more offenses at my beck than I have thoughts to put them in, imagination to give them shape, or time to act them in. What should such fellows as I do crawling between earth and heaven? We are arrant knaves all; believe none of us." (Act III, Scene 1)

This speech can easily make us think of a passage from Genesis 6: "The LORD saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. And the LORD was sorry that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him to his heart (Genesis 6: 5-6)." But we also recall the passage that had led up to this one: "When men began to multiply on the face of the ground, and daughters were born to them, the sons of God saw that the daughters of men were fair; and they took to wife such of them as they chose (Genesis 6: 1-2)." It is of these unions that the disasters of mankind follow. Hamlet himself draws out this line of thought with the words:

"I have heard of your paintings well enough. God hath given you one face, and you make yourselves another. You jig and amble, and you lisp; you nickname God's creatures and make your wantonness your ignorance. Go to, I'll no more on't; it hath made me mad. I say we will have no more marriage. Those that are married already - all but one - shall live. The rest shall keep as they are. To a nunnery, go." (Act III, Scene 1: Note the implicit reference to 1 Corinthians 7: 25-31.)

It is noteworthy that in this speech Hamlet not only accuses women universally of dissimulation in their own persons, but he also accuses them of leading men astray from the truth of God's creation: "You nickname God's creatures and make your wantonness your ignorance." It is interesting to compare this thought to a similar one in Book 11 of Paradise Lost:

By their guise
Just men they seemed and all their study bent
To worship God aright and know his works
Not hid, nor those things last which might preserve
Freedom and peace to men. They on the plain
Long had not walked when from the tents behold
A bevy of fair women richly gay
In gems and wanton dress. To the harp they sung
Soft amorous ditties and in dance came on.
The men, though grave, eyed them and let their eyes
Rove without rein till in the amorous net
Fast caught they like and each his liking chose.
(Paradise Lost, Book 11, lines 576-587)

But let us return to the description of this situation that we find in Scripture: "The sons of God saw that the daughters of men were fair." This, as it seems to me, is at the heart of Hamlet's distress. When, in Act III, Scene 1, he has been rebuffed by Ophelia, there follows a remarkable conversation:

• Ha, ha! Are you honest?
• My lord?
• Are you fair?
• What means your lordship?
• That if you be honest and fair, your honesty should admit no discourse to your beauty.
• Could beauty, my lord, have better commerce than with honesty?
• Ay, truly; for the power of beauty will sooner transform honesty from what it is to a bawd than the force of honesty can translate beauty into his likeness. This was sometime a paradox, but now the time gives it proof. I did love you once.
• Indeed, my lord, you made me believe so.
• You should not have believed me, for virtue cannot so inoculate our old stock but we shall relish of it. I loved you not.
• I was the more deceived.

There are many things worth noting in this conversation, for it is rich in paradox. But the chief thing I want to suggest is this: Ophelia is a good woman. She is worthy of Hamlet's love. Throughout the play we are conscious both of Hamlet's nobility of soul and Opehlia's goodness and beauty. We want them to come together. Their marriage would be a good and beautiful thing. But forces are at work from the beginning of the play tending to their separation, and this makes us sad. Here, at this crucial moment, Hamlet reveals that he cannot attach himself to Ophelia because he has been so powerfully affected by the sins of his mother, Gertrude. He explicitly says, when he claims that honesty cannot shape beauty into his likeness, that this is a paradox: "but now the time gives it proof." If we are to understand this business in terms of the disorder of creation, of the rankness of the garden, of the disappointment of man experienced in the woman who was to be the crown and glory of God's creation, then we can understand Hamlet's distress in terms of the symbol of Eve. At the heart of the tragedy of Hamlet is the tragedy of the separation of the Man from the Woman. This is, indeed, a bitter work of the serpent.

At this point it might be asked, What of Claudius, the Cain of the story to old Hamlet's Abel? Claudius is the murder, the usurper, the man who murdered young Hamlet's father. Is not young Hamlet as angry or more with Claudius than with Gertrude? Aren't we overdoing it when we place so much emphasis on the sins of the woman, rather than the sins of the man? The "Moustrap" play is set principally for Claudius. Hamlet is determined to be avenged on Claudius. The murder of Priam by Pyrrhus looks forward to Hamlet's slaying of Claudius. This is all true, and there are a mountain of observations we could make on this point. But what I am trying to draw attention to is this basic fact: The importance of the constant references to Genesis is the focus on the presence of God's goodness in the order of creation. Hamlet has not lost his faith in goodness because of Claudius' murder of his father. This is a source of great anger in him, but not the reason for his loss of faith in goodness. The reason for his loss of faith in goodness stems from his disappointment in the goodness of woman. This disappointment is manifest in him before he has any knowledge of his father's murder, and it is deep and pressing.

The Third Stage: The Presence of the Blessed Mother in Hamlet

It is always easier to tie a knot than to untie it. It is easier to see the disorders of Eve in the works of Shakespeare, and of the literary works of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries in general, than to see the salvific presence of the Mother of God. But, more often than not, as it seems to me, a complete sense of the resolution of these works depends on a sense of this presence. It is at work in Hamlet, and in all of the tragedies of Shakespeare. I will show how I think this is true, and then I will give my fun observation on Part I of Don Quixote.

At the beginning of Act III, Scene 1 Queen Gertrude says to Ophelia,

And for your part, Ophelia, I do wish
That your good beauties be the happy cause
Of Hamlet's wildness. So shall I hope your virtues
Will bring him to his wonted way again,
To both your honors.
(Act III, Scene 1)

As it turns out, this expression of hope is more than a mere hope. It is a sort of prophecy, and it takes us back to the tapestry of Pyrrhus and Priam. Before Pyrrhus kills Priam, he first misses him. In Hamlet's story, the miss is embodied in his slaying of Ophelia's father, Polonius, whom he takes for Claudius. He only discovers his mistake afterwards. The result of Polonius’ death is that Ophelia goes mad, unlike Hamlet, quite genuinely. Hamlet's lack of control and due order in his actions completes the separation between himself and the beautiful woman who seemed destined for him. This creates a situation of such desperate sadness that there seems to be no hope of redemption for anyone involved. In Act IV, Scene 5 we witness Laertes' breaking upon the scene in utter battle rage, first precipitated by his father's death, and second by Ophelia's madness. Gertrude is sick at heart. It would not be out of place to act her lines in the scene in a kind of murmur. Claudius is barely holding his people together. Civil war seems imminent. By the end of the scene Claudius has managed to get hold of Laertes' feelings and to put them to his own uses. But by the end of Scene 7, in which Claudius proposes to Laertes the scheme by which they hope to bring about Hamlet's death, we have witnessed the death of Ophelia, and Laertes is breaking from his bonds again. Claudius exits the scene saying,

Let's follow, Gertrude.
How much I had to do to calm his rage!
Now fear I this will give it start again;
Therefore let's follow.
(Act IV, Scene 7)

So the disorders anticipated in the beginning of the play have reached a pitch that look like a point of no return. But then we arrive at that poignant moment in Act V, Scene 1 when Hamlet and Laertes are struggling with each other in Ophelia's very grave. Hamlet cries out, "I loved Ophelia!" From this moment, Hamlet's passion begins. Act V, Scene 2 marks the progress of this passion, a passion that in its marks recalls the dread but salvific climb up Mount Calvary. In this progress, Hamlet is saved, Laertes is saved, Gertrude is saved, and Claudius, the serpent of the piece, is destroyed. Surrounding the redemptions of the central characters we further witness the restitution of the political order of Denmark in the new Kingship of Fortinbras.

When I say that Hamlet, Laertes, and Gertrude are saved, I do not mean that this is the formal presentation of the scene, or we would not especially have a tragedy before us. The formal presentation of the scene is described by Horatio at the very end:

But since, so jump upon this bloody question,
You from the Polack wars, and you from England,
Are here arrived, give order that these bodies
High on a stage be placèd to the view,
And let me speak to th' yet unknowing world
How these things came about. So shall you hear
Of carnal, bloody, and unnatural acts,
Of accidental judgments, casual slaughters,
Of deaths put on by cunning and forced cause,
And, in this upshot, purposes mistook
Fall'n on th' inventors' heads. All this can I
Truly deliver.
(Act V, Scene 2)

What stands before us is death, the deaths of some undeserved, the deaths of others quite deserved. This is what evokes the tragic pity. But there is salvation underlying the scene of death, and it is largely this salvation that makes pity possible for us. I have always marveled at how much Shakespeare permits Hamlet to do, what wicked thoughts pass his lips; and yet we love him in the end, and we blame Laertes more than we do Hamlet, in spite of the fact that Laertes is himself so sinned against. As it seems to me, it is crucial to the play that Hamlet and Laertes struggle in their loves for Ophelia before they struggle for their lives in the last scene.

If once we have seen that the problem at the heart of Hamlet's distress is his disappointment in woman, with the consequence that the dignity of the whole creation is lost with the perversion of its crown, and that this is all the work of the serpent lurking in the garden, then we begin to look for the remedy in the same place that Milton does, in the Woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars. Does this Woman ever present herself?

First let us go back to Act III, Scene 1. There Hamlet had expressed doubt that honesty could endure with beauty. In particular, he throws this doubt in the face of Ophelia, against whom it is altogether unjust. He will not marry her, and he cries out against all marriage because he sees only evil fruit coming from it, as in the unions of the sons of God with the daughters of men. But the remedy to this condition is proposed right alongside the illness. The man must recognize in his wife beauty that he cannot have by himself. In the holy marriage, the woman is made strong by the man; the man is made beautiful by his wife. Only she can make him beautiful, but he must have faith in her goodness before he can receive that beauty. This is what Hamlet sees in Ophelia when it is too late. He had claimed to her that he no longer loved her. But when he has truly lost her he cries out, "I loved Ophelia!" It seems to me that this is a great part of his final reconciliation to Laertes and of his final disposition toward Claudius and Gertrude.

Now, there are many who do not see signs of salvation in Hamlet. That point is not the most crucial to me. If Hamlet does not come round, then that in some ways simply intensifies the tragedy. He cannot see the fair, the beautiful, for what it is, and so he is prevented from returning.

At this point, I would like to propose a common theme to Shakespeare's tragedies. It is the following: The Tragedy of Man is intimately linked to the bond he possesses with Woman. But this tragedy can fall out in two different ways. It can take the shape of the story of the Garden of Eden, in which the unfallen Man falls at the suggestion of the Woman. Macbeth more or less takes this shape. It can also take the shape of fallen man missing his chance of happiness by not cleaving to the Woman. (It is interesting, by the way, that Genesis 2:24 says that "a man leaves his father and his mother and clings to his wife," rather than the other way around.) This is the plan, in broad strokes, of Hamlet, Othello, and King Lear. It is most obvious in Othello; my experiment in this talk is to see to what degree I can find it in Hamlet. The serpent is involved in both stories. He either works by corrupting the Woman and through her the unfallen Man, or, noting the source of fallen Man's salvation in the Woman, he works to separate him from her. This is the experience of the Christian life. Christian perfection involves cleaving to the Blessed Mother of God. The serpent puts much labor into separating the Christian Man from her. It seems to me that there are strong signs that Shakespeare images this dynamic in his tragedies.

Now I will turn to the fun observation about Don Quixote. If we look to the Blessed Mother as the remedy for the failings of the Dido/ Eve combination we can see more clearly something of the resolution of Part I. We can also account very satisfactorily for the presence of the Tale of Inappropriate Curiosity. One thing, of course, that is nice about the comparison to Hamlet is that Don Quixote is a comedy, and so all serious matters will be presented in quite a different light.

As is well known, there are three couples at the heart of events in Part I: Cardenio and Luscinda, Don Fernando and Dorotea, and the Christian captive and the lovely Moorish lady, Zoraida. The first two couples get involved in a difficult, tangled mess that only Don Quixote himself is up to handling in the end. It is immediately before this mess is sorted out that we hear the Tale of Inappropriate Curiosity. Now, if we are attentive, we see that this tale is about all the same struggles that occur in the tale of Cardenio and Luscinda. The difference is that the heroine of the Tale of Inappropriate Curiosity, Camila, can only falsely declare herself to be what Luscinda really is, namely, incapable of telling a lie. Indeed, it is immediately after Don Fernando has brought Luscinda to the inn that the lady declares that the only reason for all her sufferings is that she is incapable of being false. And she is right. What is the upshot of this? The grand thing is that the tragedy (of the Tale of Inappropriate Curiosity) is only a story. It is not true. It is not the reality. In fact, the priest declares as he finishes reading it that he does not believe it could ever happen. We remember how much emphasis is placed on the truth of a tale being told in Don Quixote. The Tale of Inappropriate Curiosity does not seem to reach the bar.

But then something wonderful happens. By a miracle almost inconceivable in the happiness it brings the two couples, Cardenio and Luscinda, Don Fernando and Dorotea, come together in just the right way to sort out their differences and establish the marriages most longed for and admirable. And this is the reality! This is true! Would the priest, who cannot believe that something like the Tale of Inappropriate Curiosity could happen grant the possibility of this? And just at this moment, the captive appears leading Zoraida.

They come very quietly, the captive leading Zoraida on a donkey. They arrive at the inn, and the captive inquires into the availability of a private room for the woman, who has been traveling long and is tired. But there is no room at the inn.

Thus far, we have quite a compelling likeness to the Christmas story in the Gospel of Luke. But it is clinched when the captive introduces the lady as "Zoraida" and she replies, "No! Maria!" This is the name she has chosen for her imminent baptism. So, just as the marriages for which we longed but felt we could not expect are finally resolved, the very image of the Holy Family descends upon those gathered in that wayside inn. What does this mean? Essentially, peace. The captive is a soldier, one who makes his living by arms. Well, Don Quixote can identify with that! When he makes this discovery, he launches into a two-chapter discourse on the superiority of arms to letters as a profession. In the midst of this discourse he observes,

"The goal of letters... and I do not now refer to sacred letters, whose goal is to conduct souls to heaven, for to an end as endless as this no other can be compared; I refer to human learning, the goal of which is to organize distributive justice and give to every man according to his deserts: to interpret and enforce the law. This is a goal that is certainly noble and generous and praiseworthy, but less so than the goal that arms have before them, which is peace, the greatest good to which men can aspire in this life. And so it was that the first good news the world and men received was proclaimed by the angels on that night which was our day, when they sang in the heavens 'Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace to men of good will.'" (Don Quixote, Part I, Chapter 37)

 

Christmas night.

There are two kinds of love that we encounter in Don Quixote. The first is the love of madness, the black fire that burns in the breast and arouses man and woman alike to fury. This is the love that kills Grisostomo. It is also the love burning in Cardenio when he first enters the story. It is the love that Don Quixote himself imitates on the Sierra Morena in one of the most hilarious scenes in the whole book (and that's saying a lot!). The other kind of love is married love, which begets peace. This is the love that is experienced for the first time by the inmates of the inn as the Holy Family descends on them in the quiet of the evening. And it is a remarkable departure from the Gospel account that, though all the rooms in the inn are occupied, the newly united couples welcome the captive and Zoraida into their own rooms, receiving them into their midst. There is a place for them at the inn.

If the presence of the Blessed Mother is only hinted at in Hamlet, it is explicitly present here. Perhaps the comic genre makes this more natural. But there is one more curious thing worth noting. I started my treatment of Hamlet by showing the context that is set by the character of Dido in that play. We should remember that Zoraida and the captive have just completed an odyssey over the Mediterranean Sea from the coast of North Africa, from the approximate location of Tunis, or Carthage. Zoraida is Dido herself, but a Dido who has been saved, one who has chosen to leave her city behind and go with those who are traveling to Rome, to found a new city, a city subsisting in the interior soul: the Eternal City of the Kingdom of Christ.