The Hamlet Podcast

D

Dalliance
The word appears in Shakespeare only seven times, but always with the sense of dallying, of wasting time on carefree pleasures rather than anything serious. In contemporary English the word means rather more specifically a romantic entanglement - although not a very serious one. Again, Ophelia turns the tables on Laertes by inferring that it's not her that needs to be weary of the concept. 

Damon & Pythias
Typifying the classical ideal of platonic friendship, Damon and Pythias appear throughout western literature as the best of friends. There was an early Elizabethan play about them by Richard Edwardes, and they crop out throughout the European canon. The story goes that Pythias was arrested for plotting against Dionysius of Syracuse. Pythias begged to be allowed to leave the prison to settle his affairs, on condition that Damon be arrested and incarcerated in his stead. (And, if Pythias absconded, the deal was that Damon could likewise be executed in his stead.) When Pythias did indeed return, Dionysius was so impressed in the trust between the two friends that he released them both.

Danskers
Here's a really obscure reference. So obscure, in fact, that I couldn't in good faith write it into the text of the episode... Shakespeare has Polonius refer to the Danish ex-pats in Paris as 'Danskers' - presumably a little flourish trying to make Polonius sound like the Danish politician he is. In modern Danish, this is absolutely the correct word. BUT in fact, our dear Bard is somewhat mistaken. While he was writing, Dansker meant something coming from Gdansk (or Danzig) - a city in what is now Poland. In Shakespeare's time it was a Danish settlement, and that is where its name comes from. You'll be delighted to know that there's an entire book dedicated to Shakespeare and Scandinavia, which goes into splendid detail about the literary correlations between Denmark and Gdansk in the English imagination. 

Delated
The (doubtless essential) essay I mentioned is Patricia Parker's "Othello and Hamlet: Dilation, Spying, and the "Secret Place" of Woman." It's available in Russ McDonald's book Shakespeare Re-Read - The Plays in New Contexts. You can buy it here. 

Dido
Dido was the mythical founder and queen of Carthage. She is most famous thanks to her depiction in Virgil’s Aeneid, wherein she is sometimes also called Elissa. She is also the subject of an early English opera by Henry Purcell - his Dido and Aeneas remains one of the most popular operas of the English baroque.

The Diet of Worms
The Diet of Worms was an imperial assemby (or diet) of the Holy Roman Empire that took place in 1521. The Holy Roman Emperor Charles V presided, and it took place in Worms, an Imperial Free City in what is now Germany. The assembly is most famous for having been a major moment in the career of Martin Luther, who addressed the assembly and was answered with the Edict of Worms. Hamlet is surely making a reference to it in the speech we cover in this episode. For more information on this historical episode and its relationship with Hamlet, you should check out Stephen Greenblatt’s superb book Hamlet in Purgatory.

Doll Display
I think that Ninagawa's use of the hinadan, or doll-display stand, is one of his most ingenious staging devices in all of the Shakespeare plays he put on. The idea featured repeatedly in several of his productions of Hamlet over the years, and in some cases was extrapolated further through the play in different ways. Jon Brokering wrote an excellent article on this - you can access it here (if you have a way of getting in to JSTOR) or indeed you can read about it in my book, available here. 

Dominic Dromgoole's book Hamlet: Globe to Globe tells the story of the Shakespeare's Globe production of the play that set out to tour every country on earth. It's a beautiful read. 

Doubling
There is always a good deal to say about doubling of roles in Shakespeare's plays. It's reasonable to assume that The Lord Chamberlain's Men (and, as they were later known, The King's Men) had no problem with doubling up on roles so that actors were kept busy and utilised in performance. Most of the current Arden editions feature a casting/doubling table as an appendix, and these can be helpful in terms of tracking how performers might be cast. Our first instance of it is Bernardo, who doesn't appear in this scene (Act 1 Scene 4). The actor might return soon enough as Reynaldo, Polonius' steward. The same actor, and the performer playing Marcellus, could likewise reappear as the various messengers who appear in the later acts of the play. 

Doubting Thomas
The episode between Thomas and the risen Jesus appears only in the Gospel according to John. 

Drunkenness
Hamlet's distaste for Claudius' drunken revels is an unusually negative response to alcohol in Shakespeare. Falstaff is, of course, the Bard's most celebrated boozer, and there's a case to be made for substantial alcoholism in Macbeth's Scotland. Hamlet's negativity towards it is interesting - scholars who enjoy the hunt for biographical clues in the plays might suggest that it's a reflection of Shakespeare's own views, but I find this unlikely. 

Ducat
Ducats appear in several of Shakespeare’s plays based in Europe - nowhere more famously than in The Merchant of Venice. This is probably appropriate for the city that minted the coin, which went on to become the most common trading coin in Europe for several centuries.

Dumb Show
A dumb show was a popular feature of 16th century English drama. Most often it introduces, summarizes or comments on the play’s main action - as happens during the play-within-the-play. The device appears as far back as the 1561 play Gorboduc, the first known play in blank verse, all the way up to Thomas Kyd’s The Spanish Tragedy, which was a major influence on Hamlet. Shakespeare uses it here as a kind of a throwback, making the Players’ performance deliberately old-fashioned.

Dumbshows
The earliest known verse drama is Gorboduc, and it dates from 1561. It features a dumbshow - an interlude of non-spoken activity that illuminates the plot. They were very popular, a hangover from medieval morality plays, but had fallen out of fashion by the time that Shakespeare wrote Hamlet. As mentioned in the episode, the play brought about something of a resurgence, and many Jacobean plays included dumbshows in the years after Hamlet was written.

E

Ecstasy
Ecstasy is defined as the state of having transcended normal emotions. It comes from the Greek for ‘stepping out’ of oneself - Gertrude here is understandably concerned that Hamlet has gone out of his mind.

Eisel (Vinegar)
Eisel is a long-obsolete word for vinegar, and can be traced (via Middle English and Old English) to the Latin acetum or acetillum. While researching this episode I read a completely different explanation of this word that suggests that Hamlet means the river Ijssel (also pronounced EYE-sel), a tributary of the Rhine. Here the suggestion would be that Laertes might drink a river dry as a feat to show the extent of his love for Ophelia. Drinking a river and eating a crocodile might thereby be considered impossible tasks.

Entrances and Exits
There's an extraordinary study by Professor Mariko Ichikawa on the subject of 'Shakespearean Entrances'. While of course academia can sometimes feel like an ever-contracting nightmare of diligent students writing more and more about less and less, I have to say that this specific, particular, focused study - one of many brilliant books by Prof. Ichikawa - has really been making me think of late. Check it out! 

The Essex Rebellion
The Essex Rebellion was an unsuccessful rebellion led by Robert Devereux, 2nd Earl of Essex, in 1601. His faction rose up against Queen Elizabeth I and the court faction led by Sir Robert Cecil in the hope of gaining further influence at court.

F

Falconry
Shakespeare absolutely loved birds - not at all surprising for someone who grew up in the 16th century countryside. According to Caroline Spurgeon in her matchless book Shakespeare's Imagery, "He has more images of riding and of bird-snaring and falconry than of any other forms of outdoor sport, and in both these groups there is evidence of personal experience." No surprise, then, that even in so tiny a moment as Horatio's reappearance up on the battlements, there's a small nod to birds and hunting.

The Famous ApeI’m afraid I have no helpful information on this very obscure image. Perhaps there was an apocryphal story of an ape that behaved like this, known to Shakespeare and his original audience. No more than the cat in the adage that gets a passing reference in Macbeth, this famous ape is no longer known to us…

Fardel
A fardel was a bundle, a pack, a parcel or similar item. It came into English from Old French, early in the 14th century. It is a diminutive of farde , which is the root of the modern French word fardeau - still the French word for a burden. According to some French dictionaries, it comes from the old Arabic word fardah - half a camel load. Carrying that around would make any life weary.

Feminine Endings
The vast majority of verse drama in the Elizabethan period is written in Iambic Pentameter. Pentameter means that there are five sections (or feet) per line, and Iambic means that these feet are all Iambs, or short-LONG stressed sections. So, the basic rhythm of almost all poetic drama in English before Shakespeare is short-LONG short-LONG short-LONG short-LONG short-LONG. Or, as you might recognise, de-DUM de-DUM de-DUM de-DUM de-DUM. Rather akin to the human heartbeat, and certainly a rhythmic pattern that has given form to some of the most beautiful poetry in the English language. But sometimes there are more syllables to a thought than will fit into such a tight rhythm. Sometimes the playwright wants to squeeze in a little more. And in this instances - often because a character is thinking about something a little more complicated or confusing or terrifying - we get a bonus syllable in the line, meaning that it goes up to eleven. Lines like this aren't guaranteed to be a signal of reflection or concern, but they certainly often are. Think about To BE or NOT to BE that IS the QUEST-ion. Eleven syllables - existential crisis.

Fetters were a particular kind of restraint, fastened around the ankles. Specifically designed to impede movement, they have been in use at least since the writing of the Bible.

The First Quarto is an early text of the play, and is at least 1500 lines shorter than the better-established texts known as Q2 (the Second Quarto) and F1 (the First Folio). It was all but lost until the splendidly-named Sir Henry Bunbury found a copy of it in the 1820s, and the text has provoked intense debate for nearly 200 years. Since the text is significantly different to the more familiar versions of Q2 and F1, I refer to it only when there are especially illuminating passages worth mentioning. It was given the full scholarly treatment by the excellent Arden Shakespeare in 2007, when as part of the 3rd Series it was printed in its own right, alongside the F1 text. You can find more details of that edition by clicking here.

Fortune
Fortuna was the Roman goddess of fortune, both good and bad. Of all of the ancient gods who were supplanted by Christianity, Fortune was perhaps the one who lasted the longest. Well into the Middle Ages, she remained a central part of the imagination. She was frequently depicted with a horn of plenty, or a ship’s rudder, or a ball, but more than anything else with a wheel - hence the reference to her wheel in this week’s episode. Boethius makes several references to her, and particularly to her wheel, charting how a person’s life can go through good and bad periods as their fortune increases or decreases. Fortune is also featured in the writings of Boccaccio, and I’ve included an image of an illuminated manuscript page from one of his books.

Fratricide Punished
Fratricide Punished, or The Tragedy of Fratricide Punished: or Prince Hamlet of Denmark, is the (translated) name of a German-language play. We do not know who wrote it, or when. It is a German variant of the story of Hamlet, but we don’t know if it is necessarily based on Shakespeare’s version - or on Shakespeare’s version alone. Fratricide Punished was first published in 1781 and translated to English by Georgina Archer in 1865. It seems that the original manuscript is lost, and so all approaches to the text must happen at something of a remove. While there are elements of the story of Hamlet that feature in it, it is a curiosity that would interest only the most serious Hamlet-o-phile.

French Falconers
I’ve found a rather detailed description of falconry and its place in medieval life, which you can read by clicking here.

Freud and Hamlet
Freud’s identified and named the Oedipus Complex after the mythical Greek character who killed his father and married his mother. In Freud’s analysis, it is a frequent pattern, and he suggests that Hamlet presents similar characteristics. Obviously Hamlet’s father is already dead, but he does have a father-figure in Claudius, who has himself supplanted Hamlet’s father in his mother’s bed. In this scene, there’s a terrible violence to the interaction between son and mother, and some productions do choose to highlight a sexual tension between them. Freudian scholars certainly would have much to say on the matter.

Fullness of Bread
In the Book of Ezekiel (16:49), the iniquities of the city of Sodom are laid out in some detail as a comparison with Jerusalem. Despite the story told in Genesis - of Lot and his escape from the city before it was destroyed by fire and brimstone for the licentiousness and sexual activity that still sometimes bear the city’s name - in Ezekiel the crimes of Sodom are that its daughters were over-fed and unwilling to help the poor. It specifically mentions “fullness of bread” as an iniquity (or sin), and perhaps because it is so curious a thing to be condemned, Shakespeare imagines that people will remember it. He uses it as an example of how his father was murdered without having had time to pray or fast, appropriate (Catholic) preparations for the sacraments. Here is the text of Ezekiel 16:49 from the King James Bible;

Behold, this was the iniquity of thy sister Sodom, pride, fulness of bread, and abundance of idleness was in her and in her daughters, neither did she strengthen the hand of the poor and needy.