TEXT:
Enter HAMLET
HAMLET
Now might I do it pat, now he is praying;
And now I'll do't. And so he goes to heaven;
And so am I revenged. That would be scanned:
A villain kills my father; and for that,
I, his sole son, do this same villain send
To heaven.
O, this is hire and salary, not revenge.
He took my father grossly, full of bread;
With all his crimes broad blown, as flush as May;
And how his audit stands who knows save heaven?
But in our circumstance and course of thought,
'Tis heavy with him: and am I then revenged,
To take him in the purging of his soul,
When he is fit and season'd for his passage?
No!
Up, sword; and know thou a more horrid hent:
When he is drunk asleep, or in his rage,
Or in the incestuous pleasure of his bed;
At gaming, swearing, or about some act
That has no relish of salvation in't;
Then trip him, that his heels may kick at heaven,
And that his soul may be as damned and black
As hell, whereto it goes. My mother stays:
This physic but prolongs thy sickly days.
Exit
CLAUDIUS
My words fly up, my thoughts remain below:
Words without thoughts never to heaven go.
Exit
NOTES:
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.
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.