TEXT:
HAMLET (continued)
Rightly to be great
Is not to stir without great argument,
But greatly to find quarrel in a straw
When honour's at the stake. How stand I then,
That have a father kill'd, a mother stain'd,
Excitements of my reason and my blood,
And let all sleep? while, to my shame, I see
The imminent death of twenty thousand men,
That, for a fantasy and trick of fame,
Go to their graves like beds, fight for a plot
Whereon the numbers cannot try the cause,
Which is not tomb enough and continent
To hide the slain? O, from this time forth,
My thoughts be bloody, or be nothing worth!
Exit
NOTES
Honour at the stake is an image that Shakespeare uses in multiple plays - it appears here in Hamlet, and also in Twelfth Night, Troilus and Cressida and All’s Well That Ends Well - Olivia, Achilles and the King of France are all concerned that their honour or their reputation is under attack, often with surrounding words that make us think of the dogs attacking the bear in the bear-pit.
OLIVIA (Twelfth Night, Act III scene i)
Have you not set mine honour at the stake
And baited it with all the unmuzzled thoughts
That tyrannous heart can think?
ACHILLES (Troilus and Cressida, Act III scene iii)
I see my reputation is at stake
My fame is shrewdly gored.
KING (All’s Well That Ends Well, Act II, scene iii)
My honour's at the stake; which to defeat,
I must produce my power.
A few other instances make it very clear that when Shakespeare is talking about the stake, it’s to do with bear-baiting rather than witch-burning. (Except when there’s a woman like Joan of Arc or Beatrice making the reference, and in those instances there’s usually language to do with fire to make it very clear!) These quotations come from Macbeth, Henry VI, Julius Caesar and King Lear - each is a clear echo of the practice of bear-baiting.
MACBETH (Macbeth, Act V, scene vii)
They have tied me to a stake; I cannot fly,
But, bear-like, I must fight the course.
Richard Plantagenet (Henry VI pt 2, Act V, scene i)
Call hither to the stake my two brave bears,
That with the very shaking of their chains
They may astonish these fell-lurking curs:
OCTAVIUS (Julius Caesar, Act IV, scene i)
Let us do so: for we are at the stake,
And bay'd about with many enemies;
And some that smile have in their hearts, I fear,
Millions of mischiefs.
GLOUCESTER (King Lear, Act III, scene vii)
I am tied to th' stake, and I must stand the course.
Bear-baiting itself remained popular in England until the 19th century. This engraving from the late 16th or early 17th century shows “the bear garden” somewhere on the south bank of the Thames in London - you could be forgiven for thinking it was a picture of the Globe!
