The Hamlet Podcast

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Paradoxes of Defence
George Silver published this book in 1599, as a means of challenging the ever-increasing popularity of Italian fighting styles in London. It's worth noting this likely influence on Shakespeare at the time he created Hamlet, since of all the plays it is the one with the most detailed, specific description of hand-to-hand combat. This contrast between old and new forms of fighting is also echoed in the description of Old Hamlet and his combat with Old Fortinbras.

Partisan
A partisan is a particularly medieval-looking weapon consisting of a large spear-head mounted on a pole. It would be very characteristic of a knight's weaponry in the Middle Ages, and indeed they are still carried by the Beefeaters in the United Kingdom. 

Pate
This is an old Middle English word for head (specifically the crown of the head).

Periwig
The first mention of the word periwig - from which we get the word wig - came in Shakespeare’s play The Two Gentlemen of Verona. In a world infested with lice and other such unpleasantries, wigs became a handy way of keeping one’s appearance while maintaining a shaved head (to prevent lice). Queen Elizabeth I famously wore a red curled wig, and it is safe to assume that others may have emulated her in this. For Hamlet, a wig-wearer is someone affected and overcompensating - like the worst kind of (unperfect!) actor on the stage.

Pharoah’s Dream
In the Book of Genesis, Pharoah has a dream in which he sees seven fat cows and seven healthy ears of corn consumed by thinner - or mildewed - leaner cows and corn. Happily Joseph, exiled from Canaan after his brothers sold him into slavery and then imprisoned thanks to the machinations of the wife of Potiphar, is brought in to interpret the dreams and he becomes a valued member of the pharoah’s court.

Phoebus Apollo
Apollo was the god of light for the Greeks and Romans - interestingly he is one of very gods whose name was the same in both cultures. Although he had many charges and was the god of many things (healing, music, knowledge, medicine, archery, and the arts, to name but a few) it was as the god of the sun and therefore as Bright Apollo that he was most frequently mentioned and invoked. Shakespeare here refers to him as 'the god of day'. 

Phoebus
Phoebus was one of the most common epithets given to the god Apollo. It means “bright”. Apollo was one of the most important gods of the ancient world - so important that his name did not change in the transfer of names between Greek and Roman worship. (He is the only god whose name was never changed.) As Bright Apollo, he is associated with the Sun, and here the word Phoebus alone stands for him in his chariot, blazing across the sky.

Pilgrims
In Romeo and Juliet, the lovers meet at Juliet’s family party. Their elegant and witty exchange takes place over fourteen lines - in perfect sonnet form - at the end of which, they kiss. Romeo calls Juliet a saint, and her body a holy shrine, as if he has come to worship there. Juliet plays along, and calls him “pilgrim”. The wordplay acknowledges the literary tradition of likening pilgrims and lovers, echoed also in Ophelia’s choice of song.

ROMEO
If I profane with my unworthiest hand
This holy shrine, the gentle fine is this:
My lips, two blushing pilgrims, ready stand
To smooth that rough touch with a tender kiss.

JULIET
Good pilgrim, you do wrong your hand too much,
Which mannerly devotion shows in this;
For saints have hands that pilgrims' hands do touch,
And palm to palm is holy palmers' kiss.

ROMEO
Have not saints lips, and holy palmers too?

JULIET
Ay, pilgrim, lips that they must use in prayer.

ROMEO
O, then, dear saint, let lips do what hands do;
They pray, grant thou, lest faith turn to despair.

JULIET
Saints do not move, though grant for prayers' sake.

ROMEO
Then move not, while my prayer's effect I take.

Plutarch
Plutarch (46- c.119) was a Greek historian. Many of his works were translated into English by Thomas North, and Shakespeare used them as source material for many of his plays set in the ancient world.

Polack
In contemporary English, the nouns Polack or Polak are ethnic slurs and derogatory references to a Polish person, of a person of Polish descent. It is an Anglicisation of the Polish masculine noun Polak, which denotes a Polish male or a person of Polish ethnicity and unspecified gender. However, in English the word is now considered an ethnic slur, and is considered insulting in nearly all contemporary usages. The neutral English language noun for a Polish person (male or female) is Pole. 

Mrs. Polonius
As promised, here is the link to Anne Harris' (hopefully deliberately) hilarious exploration of the evidence for the character of Mrs. Polonius, published in The Spectator in March 1933. I'm not sure if it's out of copyright, so I haven't included the entire text on the website. 

Priam
Priam was the mythical king of Troy. His son Paris was caught up in the spat between competing goddesses that led to his affair with Helen, and this led to the Trojan War. Eventually nearly all of Priam’s children - among them Paris, Hector, and many, many others - are killed, as is Priam himself. The sack of Troy was massively important in the classical imagination, and figures heavily in much of the literature that has survived from classical Greece and Rome.

Primrose
Primroses are famed for blooming early in Spring, and crop up quite frequently in Shakespeare's plays. Ophelia's mention of them here is quite a lovely inversion of her brother's concern that she, like a flower blossoming too fast, might be rejected. Shakespeare so liked the image (or got such mileage or praise for it) that it shows up again in Macbeth, Act 2 Scene 3: "the primrose way to the everlasting bonfire".

Progress
A progress was a royal outing - often kings and queens of England would make a progress through the country, visiting cities and estates across the realm. It could be ruinously expensive to host the royal court when it was on the move. But, of course, there was no way to refuse such a visit… 

Prologue
The Dumb Show was quite enough of an introduction for this play, and so a second intro happens in the form of a prologue. Most famous from plays like Romeo and Juliet and Henry V (in which it’s performed by the ‘Chorus’) a prologue is a simple introduction to the story of a play. Here it is comically short, and Hamlet mocks its brevity.

Prostitution
In this scene, Hamlet tells Ophelia five times that she should ‘Get thee to a nunnery’. Critics have debated whether this simply implies that she should enter a convent to escape corruption, or whether it also hints ambiguously that she should go to a brothel – because the world will inevitably corrupt her with its impure ways. Hamlet is riddled with Images of sexual corruption and prostitution: as Hamlet puts it, Gertrude has been ‘whored’ by Claudius. tainted by her ‘incestious’ relations with her brother-in-law. The imagery is not reserved for Gertrude alone, as Hamlet uses it against other women and even other men in the play. Hamlet suggests that Ophelia is being prostituted by Polonius, when he calls the older man a ‘fishmonger’. Hamlet even goes so far as to refer to himself as a ‘drab’ and a ‘whore’ or ‘drab’, and earlier in this scene Claudius has described his guilt with a nod to a ‘harlot’s cheek’ (3.1.50). We have even heard fortune called a ‘strumpet’. Beauty and honesty are very much at odds in this world.

Proverbs
Shakespeare’s plays feature a great many proverbs and then-recognisable turns of phrase. Sometimes they can seem arcane and meaningless today, but very often they are sayings that Shakespeare’s audience would have understood. The instance in this episode is a discussion of a tired horse that “winces” (or kicks!) when it is approached. It’s a very clear image for Hamlet to use against Claudius, himself weary with the weight of his guilt. Hamlet’s hope is that just a little prod from him will make the king snap. (For a complete index of Shakespeare’s Proverbial Language, there’s a splendid book compiled by Robert Dent).

Ptolemy
Claudius Ptolemy (c. AD 100 – c.  170) was a Greco-Roman astronomer, mathematician, geographer and astrologer. He also wrote a short poem that was included in the Greek Anthology. He lived in Alexandria. He wrote on music, on science, and is particularly noted for his treatises on how the earth is the centre of the universe, and that the sun rotates around it. 

Purgatory
According to the Catholic Church, Purgatory is an intermediate state after death, between Heaven and Hell. Merriam Webster defines it rather neatly as a place  "for expiatory purification; specifically : a place or state of punishment wherein according to Roman Catholic doctrine the souls of those who die in God's grace may make satisfaction for past sins and so become fit for heaven". It is very significant to Shakespeare's construction of Hamlet's theology (or, indeed, 'philosophy'.) The greatest poet to deal with Purgatory was Dante, in The Divine Comedy - although it appears very likely that Shakespeare never read Dante. (The Italian poet was not translated into English until the 18th Century). Dante conceptualised Purgatory as existing somewhere in the southern hemisphere. Rather closer to home for Shakespeare, there was reputedly an entrance to Purgatory on Station Island in Lough Derg, in the north west of Ireland. Pilgrims have been visiting this place for almost 1500 years. 

Pyrrhus
In Book II of Virgil’s Aeneid, the hero Aeneas is telling his story to Dido. Obviously we hear the story from his perspective as a prince of Troy, and as such it is understandable that the Greeks are very negatively portrayed. None of them is more wickedly presented than Pyrrhus (more frequently known as Neoptolemus), the son of Achilles. What Shakespeare does not mention is that before slaughtering Priam, he killed Priam’s son Polites. The prince was clinging to the altar of Zeus desperately praying for sanctuary, and the enraged Pyrrhus killed him in full view of his father. Pyrrhus then dragged Priam to the altar too, and “minced his limbs” as Shakespeare so grimly describes it. In Greek he’s more often known as Neoptolemus, was the son of Achilles and Deidamia. Achilles’ mother, the sea goddess Thetis, wanted to protect him from having to fight in the Trojan War, so she disguised him as a girl and hid him in the kingdom of Skyros. There, he fell for the princess Deidamia and she eventually gave birth to a son. Since Achilles’ name was Pyrrha while he was in his female disguise, the child was called Pyrrhus. This son goes on to be instrumental in the Trojan War - no more than his father before him - and had a reputation for being vicious. Shakespeare is drawing on that reputation in the passages he quotes in Hamlet.

Q

Quarto | Folio
Shakespeare's plays were printed in a variety of different printing formats. Some plays (Hamlet included) were first printed as quartos, or books in which the paper is folded in half twice, creating a smaller book. (Quarto because the page was folded into four smaller pages...) In 1623 the plays were edited and published as a folio, in which the pages are folded in half once. This volume, the First Folio, was put together by two actors, John Heminges and Henry Condell. The First Folio contains all of the canonical plays by Shakespeare with the exception of Pericles.

Quarto 6
As discussed in an earlier episode, there were several versions and published versions of the play even in Shakespeare's time. The most substantial of them is the Second Quarto, which is the primary source for this podcast. The Sixth Quarto has little else of note but since a suggestion from it cropped up in this episode I felt it worth a little reference here!

Quotations
Within this speech there are a great many words and phrases that have themselves become famous as the titles of other things. To Be Or Not To Be was the title of a play by Ernst Lubitch, and was rewritten 2BR02B (two b or naught two b) in the title of a short story by Kurt Vonnegut. Slings and Arrows was a popular Canadian comedy about an acting group. Outrageous Fortune was a comedy starring Bette Midler and Shelley Long. HIlariously I overheard a guy in New York telling his date that the Punchdrunk show Sleep No More takes its name from this speech - a clear example of mansplaining, or indeed a proud man’s contumely. (It should be noted that ‘sleep no more, Macbeth doth murder sleep’ appears in the Scottish play, on which the show is actually based!) Natural Shocks is a theatre company in Ireland, and a play about gun violence by Lauren Gunderson. Perchance to Dream was an episode of The Twilight Zone. There’s the Rub was an album by Wishbone Ash. What Dreams May Come was a fantasy film starring Robin Williams. This Mortal Coil was a British music collective, and also an episode of Stargate Atlantis. Most grimly, PD James’ novel The Children of Men refers to forced suicides as Quietus. (I’ll continue adding to this list after next week’s episode. If you have any further additions to the list, please get in touch!)

R

Henrik Ramel
Ramel was a Danish diplomat, born in Poland sometime in the 1550s. Notably, he appears in Wikipedia only in Danish! He is mentioned in Keith Brown's essay on the play in English Studies Vol. 55 (1974). 

Rats
The Arden Shakespeare that suggests two separate proverbs combine in Hamlet’s cry of “How now, a rat” - the first is the fairly obvious and common phrase “I smell a rat”. This phrase dates back at least as far as the Black Death, when dogs could be relied on to sense the presence of a plague-bearing rat long before humans might. So, to smell a rat is to detect something suspicious. The second is more unusual, mentioned in that incredible compendium Shakespeare’s Proverbial Language; it suggests that “the rat betrayed herself with her own noise”. If you didn’t have a dog with a sharp nose, you could listen out because often rats squeak and identify themselves. Rats were a common feature of urban life in London, and Shakespeare’s audience would probably have been familiar enough with the nuisance of hearing rats squeaking behind their curtains and having to deal with them. Hamlet is quick to act, and kills this ‘rat’ immediately. 

Red Skies
It's been a standard phrase for people in the northern hemisphere for millennia - red sky at night, shepherd's delight, red sky in the morning, shepherd's warning. A red glow in the sky indicates an area of high pressure, because the dust in the atmosphere catches the sun's rays in a particular way and causes the glow. The inference is that there's an area of low pressure coming afterwards, so it's bad news to see a red sky in the morning. 

Revenge
As we discussed earlier, the Ghost clamouring for revenge was the most memorable part of whatever earlier version of the story existed on the Elizabethan stage. Shakespeare has the Ghost mention it rather quickly, before he waxes lyrical about how much he cannot speak about his place in Purgatory. Revenge will appear a great deal from now on - the Ghost has let it out of the bag, as it were. 

Rhetoric
Claudius is extremely good at public speaking. This is only the beginning of the extended speech that begins this scene, but immediately he is working the crowd. He mentions his dear brother several times - in increasingly loving terms. Our dear brother, our late dear brother, our most valiant brother... certainly nobody could accuse him of forgetting said brother in his new project of running the country. Any comments on the perhaps unseemly haste with which he has married his dear brother's wife are covered by his acknowledgement of this haste, and the sequence of happy/sad images he uses to do so. What's impressive here is how careful and slick his speech is. He leaves no room for doubt - he's the King, and that's that.

Robustious
A word Shakespeare made up. Something between robust, illustrious and boisterous. (Also used in Henry V!)

The Roman Actor
The Roman Actor is a Caroline-era play by Philip Massinger. Written shortly after Shakespeare died, it is an intriguing look at how contemporary England looked at Ancient Rome.

The Rood
Rood was originally the Old English word for the cross on which Jesus was crucified. The Holy Rood - the ‘true’ cross - was venerated for its function in Christ’s death, and indeed the word is still remembered in the name of Holyrood Palace, the English monarch’s official residence in Scotland. Given the ban on taking the Lord’s name in vain or swearing by it on stage, Shakespeare uses ‘by the rood’ as an exclamation here.

Roscius
Quintus Roscius (ca. 126 BC – 62 BC) was a Roman actor. By the Renaissance, he was considered the paradigm of achievement as an actor. Presumably Hamlet is quoting a ballad or poem about him when he mentions actors riding on their asses in ancient Rome.

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead
Tom Stoppard's play premiered at the Edinburgh Fringe in 1966. It was eventually made into a film starring Tim Roth and Gary Oldman, and had a recent West End revival at the Old Vic, starring Daniel Radcliffe. You can watch the trailer for the recent version here.

There’s The Rub
As mentioned in the episode, what Hamlet refers to as the ‘rub’ is an impediment that would knock the ball off course during a game of bowls. Lawn bowling was popular in the 16th century, and so the reference would have made sense to Shakespeare’s audience. It’s also cleverly mentioned in his history play Richard II, where again a smart character uses it to signify her own troubles.

Queen
What sport shall we devise here in this garden,
To drive away the heavy thought of care?
Lady
Madam, we'll play at bowls.
Queen
'Twill make me think the world is full of rubs,
And that my fortune rubs against the bias.