TEXT:
HORATIO
You will lose this wager, my lord.
HAMLET
I do not think so: since he went into France, I
have been in continual practise: I shall win at the
odds. But thou wouldst not think how ill all's here
about my heart: but it is no matter.
HORATIO
Nay, good my lord…
HAMLET
It is but foolery; but it is such a kind of
gaingiving, as would perhaps trouble a woman.
HORATIO
If your mind dislike any thing, obey it: I will
forestall their repair hither, and say you are not fit.
HAMLET
Not a whit, we defy augury: there's a special
providence in the fall of a sparrow. If it be now,
'tis not to come; if it be not to come, it will be
now; if it be not now, yet it will come: the
readiness is all: since no man has aught of what he
leaves, what is't to leave betimes? Let be.
NOTES:
Whit
A tiny thing.
Augury
The ancient Roman practice of studying the flight paths of birds. Ancient Rome had a great penchant for the reading of omens, but the two most famous positions were that of augur (one who studied the birds and the skies for signs) and haruspex (one who studied the entrails of sacrificed animals). The Roman penchant for portents features heavily in Shakespeare’s Roman plays - he really gives a sense of the cultural faith put in signs and signals. Hamlet, by contrast, is having none of it.
The Fall of a Sparrow
In Matthew 10:29, the lesson is that not even a little bird falls without god’s awareness. Hamlet (and his audience) know the text well enough for him to paraphrase it.
John Calvin
Martin Luther may have been the most famous reformer of the 16th century, but John Calvin was the most prominent proponent of new ideas about predestination - the theory that a person’s life and afterlife were all determined even before birth. He represents the second generation of the Protestant Reformation, and was a major figure in Europe in the mid-16th century.
Seneca
Lucius Annaeus Seneca (or Seneca the Younger) was a Stoic philosopher. He also wrote plays, many of which had a direct influence on Shakespeare because we can assume he read them at school. Although he was born in what we now call Spain, Seneca grew to great prominence in Rome when he was hired as a tutor to the young Nero. He’s of interest to us here for the sentiment at the end of his LXIXth Moral Letter to Lucilius, in which he says “no man dies before his own death. And indeed, you can reflect on this thought: no on dies except on his own day. You are not throwing away any of your time, for what you leave behind does not belong to you.”
Montaigne
Michel Eyquem de Montaigne (1533-1592) was a Renaissance philosopher from France. He is most famous for his essays, which were made available in Shakespeare’s time in an English translation by one John Florio. If you would like to read these remarkable pieces, the New York Review Books imprint has a beautiful volume called Shakespeare’s Montaigne that is very much worth a look. Montaigne’s first essay in that book has a great deal about death, and he makes reference to a wide range of thinkers and ideas. Much like Seneca, he insists that ““no man dies before his hour. The time you leave behind was no more yours than that which was before your birth and concerneth you no more.”