Hamlet In Purgatory By Stephen Greenblatt Excerpts from

Hamlet In Purgatory By Stephen Greenblatt Excerpts from text and Shakespeare’s Hamlet

The whole social and economic importance of Purgatory in Catholic Europe rested on the belief that prayers, fasts, almsgiving, and masses constituted a valuable commodity —“suffrages, ” as they were termed—that could in effect be purchased, directly or indirectly, on behalf of specific dead persons (p. 13).

The blessed souls in Heaven, of course, had no need of suffrages, since they had already attained eternal bliss, while the damned souls in Hell could not make use of them, since they were condemned to an eternity of irremediable torment. But imperfect souls, souls still bearing the stains of the faults they had committed in mortal life, would have to endure excruciating pain (p. 17).

Fortunately, suffrages were available to reduce the intensity and duration of this agony. Masses lovingly paid for and performed in memory of the dead were particularly efficacious, as were the prayers of the poor and sick offered in grateful memory of their benefactor. Similarly, the pious fasts, prayers, and alms of relatives and friends could be directed to relieve the sufferings of a named individual whom they believed to be in Purgatory (p. 18).

Moreover, the pope was the administrator, in effect, of an enormous account of “superabundant satisfactions” left by Christ and further enhanced by the saints and martyrs, an account that could be expended, in the form of indulgences, on behalf of deserving souls (p. 19).

The reckoning in every case was strictly individual and scrupulously proportional to the gravity of the particular sins, but it was possible for individuals after death to receive help from others, just as living debtors languishing in prison could have their debts paid by their friends(p. 19).

“Thus devout prayers said with humility, ” writes the poet and monk John Lydgate, “Delivereth souls out of Purgatory”(p. 19). (ca. 1370—ca. 1450)

Theologians assured the faithful that their generous acts of penance and commissioned prayers would not he wasted, even if those for whom the prayers were said went directly to Heaven (or, for that matter, to Hell). Prayers that could not be used by the person for whom they were intended would go to the next of kin (p. 25).

Only if no such person were available would the benefit of those prayers be deposited in the papal treasury, along with the supererogatory virtues of the saints and martyrs, to be dispensed to those who properly paid for them. It was always better to err on the side of excess, since there could be no waste, and since inadequate suffrages would work inadequately (p. 26)

Catholic texts repeatedly emphasize that the donations on behalf of someone’s soul have to be made in the right spirit, but they could also be amazingly explicit about the benefits that money could buy. And though the doctrine fostered familial solidarity and the bonds of charity and remembrance linking the living and the dead, appeals were often made directly to self interest (p. 29).

Hence, for example, the seventeenth century English Catholic writer Jane Owen urges her wealthy readers to acts of frankly self serving generosity: “ 0 how many peculiar Advocates and Intercessors of then most blessed Souls (released out of Purgatory) might a rich Catholic purchase to himself, by this former means, thereby to plead his cause before the Throne of Almighty God, in his greatest need? ” (p. 37)

Purgatory could be the subject of complex debates about the quantification of quality, the ethics of proportionality, the difference between purgatorial and consummatory fire, the precise jurisdictional claims of the Church Militant, the degree to which souls could be said to undergo their pains voluntarily, ” the distinction between pardon “as to the penalty” (quoad poenarn) and pardon “as to the guilt” (quoad culpum) and so forth. But as a popular belief, Purgatory aroused— was meant to arouse— fear (p. 43).

Theologians who teased out the subtle science of the hereafter had, for the most part, a reassuring access to the fund of suffrages; the great majority of Christians did not. The faithful who were most deeply moved by visions of torment were the most anxious to acquire some remissions. To those who lacked the money to pay for such remission, the system of indulgences must have been particularly infuriating (p. 69)

Not everyone is taken in by the fraud. “Many men of great literary judgment” dare to point out that Purgatory does not exist. They observe that if there is a Purgatory, and if the pardons that the pope sells for money can in fact deliver souls from its pains, as Catho 1 ic Church claims, then those same pardons given freely, without charge, would surely be equally effective (p. 76).

Moreover, if the can deliver one soul from torment, he can presumably deliver a thousand, and if he can deliver a thousand, he can presumably deliver everyone, “and so destroy Purgatory. ” If he possesses power and does not use it, if he leaves souls to languish in prison unless he is given money, then the pope is nothing but “a tyrant without all charity. ” Indeed, if all priests and friars — “the whole sort of the spirituality”—will allow souls to be punished for want of prayers and will “pray for no man but for them that them money”, then they are all tyrants (p. 103).

In 1545 and 1547, with zealous Protestantism in the ascendant, the English Parliament acted to dissolve the whole system of intercessory foundations created to offer prayers for souls in Purgatory, the lawmakers and bureaucrats found themselves faced with an immense task (p. 235).

They had to strike at colleges, free chapels, hospitals, fraternities, brotherhoods, guilds, stipendiary priests and priests for terms of years, as well as at many smaller funds to pay for trentals (the cycle of thirty requiem masses), obits (the yearly memorial service), flowers, bells, and candles (p. 235).

It would have been a social catastrophe simply to shut institutions that had been created in the attempt to provide prayers for the dead (p. 235).

The brilliance of the doctrine of Purgatory—whatever its topographical implausibility, its scriptural belatedness, and its proneness to cynical abuse—lay both in its institutional control over ineradicable folk beliefs and in its engagement with intimate, private feelings. Reports of hauntings were going to recur from time to time, no matter what churchmen soberly declared. (They continue to recur, for that matter; no matter what intellectuals declare. ) (p. 236)

Purgatory enabled the church to make sense of these reports, to harness the weird and potentially disruptive psychic energy to its liturgical system, and to distinguish carefully between those experiences that could be absorbed into the moral order (encounters with “good” ghosts) and those that had to be consigned to the sphere of the demonic. (p. 237)

The notion of suffrages—masses, almsgiving, fasts, and prayers—gave mourners something constructive to do with their feelings of grief and confirmed those feelings of reciprocity that survived, at least for a limited time, the shock of death(p. 237).

Moreover, the church could find in Purgatory a way to enable mourners to work through, with less psychological distress than they otherwise might experience, their feelings of abandonment and anger at the dead. To imagine the dead in great pain no doubt caused alarm, fear, and pity, but it also served other, murkier needs, needs that could be resolved in organized acts of mercy or even in the delay or withholding of organized acts of mercy (p. 101).

From which place does the Ghost come. Purgatory or Hell?

Shakespeare’s Ghost cries out for vengeance…but his parting injunction, the solemn command upon which young Hamlet dwells obsessively, is that he remember (p. 239).

Does the emphasis in the spectral command fall on “remember” or on “me”? (p. 239).

It seems faintly ludicrous to imagine that Hamlet could or would ever forget the Ghost. Or rather, Hamlet’s reiterated question precisely picks up what seems to him the absurdity of the Ghost’s injunction: “Remember thee? ” (p. 240)

From this perspective, what is at stake in the shift from vengeance to remembrance is nothing less than the whole play (p. 241).

It is fear that seems to shape Shakespeare’s depiction of the Ghost and Hamlet’s response (p. 242).

The Ghost makes it clear to Hamlet that he is not damned for eternity but forced to suffer torments in a “prison house” designed to purge him of the crimes he had committed in his life. “Till the foul crimes done in my days of nature Are burnt and purged away. ” (p. 243)

In Church teachings, the excruciating pains of purgatory and of hell were identical; the only difference was that the former were only for “a certain term. ” (p. 245)

That one difference, of course was crucial, but the Catholic Church laid heavy emphasis upon the horrors of purgatorial torments, so that the faithful would be as anxious to reduce the term they would have to endure (p. 246).

There is a famous problem with all of these heavy hints that the Ghost has come from Purgatory: by 1583, almost 40 years before Shakespeare’s Hamlet was written, the Church of England had explicitly rejected the Roman Catholic conception of Purgatory and the practices that developed around it (p. 247).

This fact alone would not necessarily have invalidated allusions to Purgatory: there were many people who clung to old beliefs, despite the official position, and Elizabethan audiences were in any case perfectly capable of entering into alien belief systems (p. 250).

There is a second famous problem: souls in Purgatory were saved (p. 250).

The fact that old Hamlet died suddenly and hence without time for last rites (“unhouseled, dis appointed, unaneled”) left him with the heavy burden of earthly sins that had painfully to be burned away after death, but he could not possibly commit new sins (p. 251).

Such a call for vengeance – and Hamlet understands that it is pre meditated murder, not due process, that is demanded of him – could only come from the place in the afterlife where such ghosts reside: Hell (p. 251).

In the ingenious attempt to determine whether it is a spirit of health or goblin damned, whether it comes from Purgatory or Hell, the many players in the long standing critical game have called attention to the bewildering array of hints that the play generates

Perhaps most striking is simply how much evidence on all sides there is in the play, and not only from those scenes in which the status of the Ghost is directly discussed (p. 253).

For example, Ophelia tells her father that the distracted Hamlet appeared to her in her chamber: With a look so piteous in purport As if he had been loosed out of hell To speak of horrors. (2. 1. 83 -85)

With the doctrine of Purgatory and the elaborate practices that grew up around it, the church had provided a powerful method of negotiating with the dead or rather with those who were once dead and yet, since they still could speak, appeal, appall, not completely dead (p. 253).

The Protestant attack on Purgatory and the middle state those souls inhabited destroyed this method for most people in England, but it did not destroy the longings and fears that Catholic doctrine had focused and exploited.

Instead, the space of Purgatory becomes the space of the stage where old Hamlet’s Ghost is doomed for a certain term to walk the night (p. 255).

“A spirit of health or goblin damn'd…”

Horatio: Two nights together had these gentlemen, Marcellus and Bernardo, on their watch, In the dead vast and middle of the night, Been thus encounter'd. (1. 1. 206 -208)

Horatio: A figure like your father, Armed at point exactly, cap-a-pe, Appears before them, and with solemn march Goes slow and stately by them: thrice he walk'd(1. 1. 208 -213)

Horatio: By their oppress'd and fear -surprised eyes, Within his truncheon's length; whilst they, distilled Almost to jelly with the act of fear, Stand dumb and speak not to him. (1. 1. 213 -216)

Horatio: This to me In dreadful secrecy impart they did; And I with them the third night kept the watch; Where, as they had deliver'd, both in time, (1. 1. 216 -219)

Horatio: Form of the thing, each word made true and good, The apparition comes: I knew your father; These hands are not more like. (1. 2. 219 -221)

HAMLET: Angels and ministers of grace defend us! Be thou a spirit of health or goblin damn'd, Bring with thee airs from heaven or blasts from hell, Be thy intents wicked or charitable, Thou comest in such a questionable shape That I will speak to thee: I'll call thee Hamlet, King, father, royal Dane: O, answer me! (1. 4. 43 -50)

HAMLET: My fate cries out, And makes each petty artery in this body As hardy as the Nemean lion's nerve. Still am I call'd. (1. 4. 91 -94)

HAMLET: Unhand me, gentlemen. By heaven, I'll make a ghost of him that lets me! I say, away! (1. 4. 95 -96)

HAMLET: Go on; I'll follow thee. (1. 4. 95)

Ghost: Mark me. HAMLET: I will. Ghost: My hour is almost come, When I to sulphurous and tormenting flames Must render up myself. (1. 5. 2 -7)

HAMLET: Speak; I am bound to hear. Ghost: So art thou to revenge, when thou shalt hear. HAMLET: What? Ghost: I am thy father's spirit, Doom'd for a certain term to walk the night, And for the day confined to fast in fires, Till the foul crimes done in my days of nature Are burnt and purged away. (1. 5. 10 -16)

Ghost: But that I am forbid To tell the secrets of my prison-house, I could a tale unfold whose lightest word Would harrow up thy soul, freeze thy young blood, Make thy two eyes, like stars, start from their spheres, (1. 5. 16 -21)

Ghost: Thy knotted and combined locks to part And each particular hair to stand on end, Like quills upon the fretful porpentine: But this eternal blazon must not be To ears of flesh and blood. (1. 5. 22 28)

Ghost: List, list, O, list! If thou didst ever thy dear father love– HAMLET: O God! Ghost: Revenge his foul and most unnatural murder. HAMLET: Murder! Ghost: Murder most foul, as in the best it is; But this most foul, strange and unnatural. (1. 5. 28 -34)

Ghost: Now, Hamlet, hear: 'Tis given out that, sleeping in my orchard, A serpent stung me; so the whole ear of Denmark Is by a forged process of my death Rankly abused: (1. 5. 41 -45)

Ghost: . . but know, thou noble youth, The serpent that did sting thy father's life Now wears his crown. (1. 5. 45 -47)

HAMLET: O my prophetic soul! My uncle! Ghost: : Ay, that incestuous, that adulterate beast, With witchcraft of his wit, with traitorous gifts, -- O wicked wit and gifts, that have the power So to seduce!--won to his shameful lust The will of my most seeming-virtuous queen: O Hamlet, what a falling-off was there! (1. 5. 49 -54)

Ghost: Thus was I, sleeping, by a brother's hand Of life, of crown, of queen, at once dispatch'd: Cut off even in the blossoms of my sin, Unhousel'd, disappointed, unanel'd, No reckoning made, but sent to my account With all my imperfections on my head: O, horrible! most horrible! (1. 5. 81 -87)

Ghost: If thou hast nature in thee, bear it not; Let not the royal bed of Denmark be A couch for luxury and damned incest. (1. 5. 88 -90)

Ghost: Fare thee well at once! The glow-worm shows the matin to be near, And 'gins to pale his uneffectual fire: Adieu, adieu! Hamlet, remember me. (1. 5. 97 -99)

HAMLET: O all you host of heaven! O earth! what else? And shall I couple hell? O, fie! Hold, hold, my heart; And you, my sinews, grow not instant old, But bear me stiffly up. Remember thee! (1. 5. 100 -104)

HORATIO: Propose the oath, my lord. HAMLET: Never to speak of this that you have seen, Swear by my sword. Ghost: [Beneath] Swear. HAMLET: Hic et ubique? then we'll shift our ground. Come hither, gentlemen, And lay your hands again upon my sword: Never to speak of this that you have heard, Swear by my sword. (1. 5. 172 -180)

HAMLET: Indeed, upon my sword, indeed. Ghost: [Beneath] Swear. HAMLET: Ah, ha, boy! say'st thou so? art thou there, truepenny? Come on--you hear this fellow in the cellarage-Consent to swear. (1. 5. 168 -172)

Ghost: [Beneath] Swear. (1. 5. 176)

HAMLET: Rest, rest, perturbed spirit! [They swear] (1. 5. 204)

HAMLET: So, gentlemen, With all my love I do commend me to you: And what so poor a man as Hamlet is May do, to express his love and friending to you, God willing, shall not lack. (1. 5. 205 -208)

HAMLET: Let us go in together; And still your fingers on your lips, I pray. The time is out of joint: O cursed spite, That ever I was born to set it right! Nay, come, let's go together. (1. 5. 208 -212)-

Film version of GHOST