History Forum / General / British History / June 2008

On the second of March in the year 1316, the very pregnant 19-year-old
Lady Marjorie fell off her horse and broke her neck.  The baby that
was ripped from her dead womb was the son of Walter Stewart, the 6th
High Steward of Scotland.  Lady Marjorie was the daughter of King
Robert I of Scotland.  That baby would grow up to be King Robert II of
Scotland. Thus began the line of Scottish Stewart kings.  And thus
began the deadly curse on the Stewart line, a curse that would not end
until King James VI of Scotland became King James I of England.

"It is the false steward, that stole his master's daughter."

Who would dare risk offending the soon-to-be Stewart King of England
with such a line?  Who else but the Stewart King himself?  The motif
of a cursed birth from a daughter's dead womb is strongly reflected in
Hamlet.

Hamlet
 For if the sun breed maggots in a dead dog, being a god kissing
carrion - Have you a daughter?
Lord Polonius
 I have, my lord.
Hamlet
 Let her not walk i' the sun: conception is a blessing,
 but not as your daughter may conceive.

When Lady Marjorie was 11 years old she had been captured by the
English.  Edward II of England had her confined to a nunnery for about
7 years.  When she was 17, Scotland won the Battle of Bannockburn and
she was returned to Scotland where she was given in marriage to Walter
Stewart as a reward for his valor in the battle. Two years later she
died, then gave birth, posthumously,  to the first of the Stewart line
of Scottish kings.  (This is paralleled by Hamlet being born the same
day that Hamlet Sr. defeated Fortinbras Sr.)

  Get thee to a nunnery.  Why wouldst thou be a breeder of sinners?

Lord Polonius
 Will you walk out of the air, my lord?
Hamlet
 Into my grave.
Lord Polonius
 Indeed, that is out o' the air.
 Aside: How pregnant sometimes his replies are!

Horatio (to the ghost)
 Or if thou hast uphoarded in thy life
 Extorted treasure in the womb of earth,
For which, they say, you spirits oft walk in death,

For more on the birth-death motif, see “The Womb of Earth” in “Motifs
in Hamlet”
at http://academia.wikia.com/wiki/Motifs_in_Hamlet

A dead horsewoman bequeathed the Scottish throne to the Stewart line.
That inheritance doomed them to a series of violent deaths, mostly in
battle with English kings.  Similarly in the play, a horseman named
Death ("LeMord") praised Laertes' skill as a swordsman, which led to
his mutually fatal duel with Hamlet.

The first Stewart King, Robert II, died of old age.

The second Stewart King, Robert III, died of a “broken heart” after
his son (the future James I) was kidnapped by pirates who turned him
over to Henry IV of England.  The English kept James for 18 years, but
they treated him well, educating him and finally sending him home with
an English bride.

Hamlet, speaking of the pirates who had captured him:
 They have dealt with me like thieves of mercy:

But the next four,  James I through IV, all died violently.
  Claudius, as he prepared to poison Hamlet’s drink:
      The king shall drink to Hamlet's better breath;
      And in the cup an union shall he throw,
     Richer  than that which four successive kings
     In Denmark's crown have worn.
But James VI did not want to join his four forefathers’ (and
namesakes’) fatal union.

James I was assassinated by rebellious Scottish cousins.

James II was killed by his own cannon.

After Claudius (cloud-ius) ordered a cannon salute (“the great cannon
to the clouds shall tell”), Hamlet wished that Claudius would
literally, as well as figuratively aim his cannon at himself (cloud-
ius):   “O, that...the Everlasting had not fix'd His canon [his
cannon] 'gainst self-slaughter!”   In the end, Claudius slaughtered
himself with poison “temper’d by himself” to the accompaniment of
cannon fire (“Let all the battlements their ordnance fire: The king
shall drink”).

James III was killed in battle against his rebellious son.

James IV was killed in battle against England.

James V died of natural causes (or of a “broken heart’).

Mary Queen of Scots was beheaded by order of her cousin Elizabeth I.

On his deathbed, James V said of his sole heir, his infant daughter
Mary, “It came wi’ a lass and it shall go wi’ a lass.”   He was
referring to the Stewart line of kings which had begun with Margaret’s
posthumous delivery of Robert II and which James V believed would end
with his daughter Mary.  But he was wrong.  Mary Queen of Scots
married a Stewart cousin and gave birth to James Stewart who would
become James VI of Scotland and I of England.  All subsequent monarchs
of England have been descendants of James VI and I, but none of them
(except Charles I) died violently.   So the dynasty didn’t end with
Mary, but the Scottish curse did.

Mary’s first husband was Francis II, King of France.  He died from an
infected ear.
This was reflected both in Hamlet and in The Mousetrap.
The ghost of Hamlet’s father described how he was murdered with poison
poured into his ear:
 Sleeping within my orchard,
 My custom always of the afternoon,
 With juice of cursed hebenon in a vial,
 And in the porches of my ears did pour
 The leperous distilment

Hamlet, describing “The Mousetrap”:
 ..comes in a fellow... and pours poison in the King's ears
Hamlet described his Uncle Claudius to his mother:
 Here is your husband; like a mildew'd ear,
 Blasting his wholesome brother.

From History of the Affairs of Church and State in Scotland:
[referring to the death of Francis II]
 "He died of an abscess in the ear, and not by poison, the rumours of
which have been proved by  De Thou and other historians to be without
foundation.”

" He was suddenly striken with an aposthume in that deaf car that
never would hear the truth.
of God." - John Knox

Hamlet
 Two thousand souls and twenty thousand ducats
 Will not debate the question of this straw:
 This is the imposthume of much wealth and peace,
 That inward breaks, and shows no cause without
 Why the man dies.

From History of the Affairs of Church and State in Scotland:
[quoting a limerick allegedly popular in France right after Francis II
died]
  “Leist Francis, that unhappy child,
  His father’s footsteps following plane,
  To Christ crying, deaf ears did yield,
  Ane rotten ear then was his bane”

Hamlet, speaking of his father’s ghost:
 It waves me forth again: I'll follow it.

Hamlet’s father’s ghost to Hamlet:
 But this eternal blazon must not be
 To ears of flesh and blood. List, list, O, list!
I  f thou didst ever thy dear father love--
.........................
 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:

Mary’s 2nd husband, James’ father, was found dead in the orchard after
an explosion destroyed his house.  After his father was murdered and
his mother exiled, James was adopted by his father’s parents.  In
their house was a large painting showing Darnley’s murder, with the
inscription to “shut not out of his memory the recent atrocious murder
of the King his father, until God should avenge it through him.”

Ghost
 Revenge his foul and most unnatural murder.
    ................................
 Hamlet, remember me.

James VI grew up to love literature, wordplay, and the theater.  He
had a predilection for comparing himself to literary figures.  When he
crossed the North Sea to meet his Danish bride, James compared himself
to Leander swimming the Hellespont to be with Hero (which might have
been Marlowe’s inspiration for beginning his translation of Hero and
Leander.)    He could not have failed to be impressed by the
similarities between himself and Hamlet.

Hamlet’s stepfather, King Claudius of Denmark, who drained his
draughts of Rhenish down as ordnance was shot off, in the end died
from (poisoned) drink.   James’ father-in-law, King Frederick II of
Denmark, was said to have died from excessive drinking.  (Danish
nobles Rosencrantz and Guildenstern marched at the head of Frederick’s
funeral procession.)  During his honeymoon at Elsinore, James had been
much impressed with the custom of firing ordnance at every occasion.

Hamlet:  “Two thousand souls and twenty thousand ducats will not
debate the question of this straw...”

Martin Luther:  “St. James Epistle is really an epistle of straw.”

As Protestants and Catholics vied for his allegiance, James may have
felt like a straw in the wind.

James’ mother, Mary Queen of Scots, was beheaded after she had been
caught communicating with conspirators with notes hidden in the
bungholes of barrels which were routinely carried in and out of the
castle where she was imprisoned.

Hamlet
To what base uses we may return, Horatio! Why may
not imagination trace the noble dust of Alexander,
till he find it stopping a bung-hole?
...............
Imperious Caesar, dead and turn'd to clay,
Might stop a hole to keep the wind away:
O, that that earth, which kept the world in awe,
Should patch a wall to expel the winter flaw!

The north wind was a motif in Hamlet symbolizing Hamlet’s madness
brought on by the influence of his vengeful father (who was associated
with “yond same star that's westward from the pole”).  “I am but mad
north-north-west.”   For James, any attempt to revenge his mother’s
death would be suicidal madness.

In his secret correspondence with Sir Robert Cecil in 1601, preparing
for his succession after Elizabeth’s eventual death, the codeword for
James was “30”.

Why was Hamlet, the student, thirty years old?  Maybe because “30” was
the codeword for “James VI.”

(Note:  The Ur-Hamlet was prior to 1601.  If the “thirty” in Hamlet
was code for “James,” that would imply that James actively
collaborated in the writing of Hamlet, as well as Ur-Hamlet.)

Player King
Full thirty times hath Phoebus' cart gone round
Neptune's salt wash and Tellus' orbed ground,
And thirty dozen moons with borrow'd sheen
About the world have times twelve thirties been,
Since love our hearts and Hymen did our hands
Unite commutual in most sacred bands.

First Clown
Of all the days i' the year, I came to't that day
that our last king Hamlet overcame Fortinbras.
Hamlet
How long is that since?
First Clown
Cannot you tell that? every fool can tell that: it
was the very day that young Hamlet was born; he that
is mad, and sent into England.

First Clown
Why, here in Denmark: I have been sexton here, man
and boy, thirty years

Transport yourself by the magic of imagination back to the Globe
theater in the summer of 1603.   Watch King James VI of Scotland,
newly James I of England, but right now disguised as a commoner so he
can watch his alter ego on the stage speaking the words in his own
heart:

Is it not monstrous that this player here,
But in a fiction, in a dream of passion,
Could force his soul so to his own conceit
That from her working all his visage wann'd,
Tears in his eyes, distraction in's aspect,
A broken voice, and his whole function suiting
With forms to his conceit? and all for nothing!
For Hecuba!
What's Hecuba to him, or he to Hecuba,
That he should weep for her? What would he do,
Had he the motive and the cue for passion
That I have? He would drown the stage with tears
And cleave the general ear with horrid speech,
Make mad the guilty and appal the free,
Confound the ignorant, and amaze indeed
The very faculties of eyes and ears.

- Ray Eston Smith Jr