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REVIEW
McGee, Arthur. The Elizabethan Hamlet.
New Haven: Yale U P, 1987.

Thesis: The Ghost is a "demonic tempter" (22); Hamlet is "the tool of the Devil" (103); Ophelia is "both nun and whore" (149); and Horatio is "a parasitic sucker-fish" (175). How does this all add up? McGee won't say. He claims to be "a picture-restorer who has found traces of an earlier portrait underneath, as it were," but as for the big picture, he says "It would be premature, as well as presumptuous . . . for me to attempt to pass judgment on what I have been suggesting is the Elizabethan Hamlet" (177).

McGee's Method: In proving a particular point he quotes from all kinds materials -- catechisms, sermons, anti-Catholic pamphlets, and non-Shakespearean plays -- in order to show that those who first saw Hamlet were so crammed with religious doctrines that they would judge everything by the light of those doctrines. In addition, McGee bolsters his argument by quoting literary critics, often reinterpreting their interpretations. The following passage is a fair sample:

     The setting of the Prayer Scene is crucial to its interpretation. We must consider that Claudius's concern is with religion and with prayer and not merely with metaphors which have a religious tinge. The Brudermord puts 'Erico' before an altar in a temple; in Shakespeare's version however we find later that the body of Polonius is to be placed in 'the chapel' (4.1.37 and 4.2.8). This also would be an appropriate place for this scene to be enacted. If then the inner stage were to represent a chapel, since Denmark is Catholic like its late king, the chapel might contain a small altar placed before a statue of the Virgin and Child. Such a Madonna made of silver is illustrated in The Story of Art by Sir Ernst Gombrich, who adds that 'works of this kind were not intended for public worship. Rather were they to be placed in a palace chapel for private prayer.' Such a setting seems appropriate, for as Eleanor Prosser puts it 'Heaven is doing a very good job'. For even without punishment administered below Claudius is tortured by guilt even before the Play Scene:
How smart a lash that speech doth give my conscience.
The harlot's cheek, beautied with plast'ring art,
Is not more ugly to the thing that helps it,
Than is my deed to my most painted word:
O heavy burden!   (3.1.50-4)
Like Cain he is 'persecuted' with the 'worm of conscience':
And the devil that then told thee that it was a light sin, or no sin at all, now aggravates on the other side, and telleth thee that it is a most irremissible offence, as he did by Cain and Judas, to bring them to despair.
The Elizabethans were brought up to believe that in the end there was no escape from the wrath of God -- without penitence there was only damnation. Claudius is not only a fratricide like Cain whose crime had 'the primal eldest curse upon't' (3.3.37) and upon whom all human revenge was forbidden lest they bring down upon themselves 'sevenfold vengeance' of the divine variety, but he is a regicide as well and that in itself was sufficient reason, as we have just seen, for incurring damnation,
The deep damnation of his taking off
as Macbeth says of Duncan (1.7.20).

     For Claudius, as for Faustus, the means of bring him to heaven were 'contrition, prayer, repentance' but in Claudius's case his contrition is at best imperfect, he cannot pray sincerely, and he cannot repent. Impenitence, as L.A. Cormican puts it, was considered the greatest sin of all. Hell awaited Claudius even if Hamlet had never lifted a hand to him. Even Claudius's appeal to the angels (3.3.69) would have been brushed aside by Shakespeare's audience because the current Protestant teaching was 'it appeareth nowhere in the word of God that God would have us pray to angels, or to godly men deceased'. And finally, as J. H. Walter, referring to the Homily of Repentance points out, Claudius 'would be repenting without Christ, and that is Cain's and Judas' repentance'.

     In the whole soliloquy there is no mention of Hamlet -- the conflict is between Claudius and his conscience. But even in the abbreviated form to which the soliloquy is reduced in Q1 the religious implications are emphasized:

It is an act gainst the vniuersal power,
Most wretched man, stoope, bend to thy prayer,
Aske grace of heauen to keepe thee from despaire.
Is it then merely fanciful to see Claudius on his knees before a statue of the Madonna and Child?
Bow stubborn knees, and heart, with strings of steel,
Be soft as sinews of the new-born babe --
All may be well.   (3.3.70-2)
He refers to the new-born babe, not a new-born babe.
The point, in case you missed it in the hailstorm of quotations, is that Claudius must be praying to a statue of the Madonna and Child because he is so obviously (and so damnably) Catholic.

Bottom Line: McGee whittles a mighty tree down to a few toothpicks.

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