It is interesting to discover
the surprising influence of the Book of Ecclesiastes
on Shakespeare's masterwork play.
This is an updated version of the article that first appeared in The Jewish Press 9/16/94 and presents an abridged account of a chapter in David Basch's book,
SHAKESPEARE'S JUDAICA AND DEVICES.

THE BIBLE ON STAGE
by David Basch
(Rev: 1/2/06)

Famous actor, Paul Muni, wrote of the experiences of his father, who had been dedicated to the ideal of creating a Yiddish theater. One day his father chanced to see a play in Yiddish in which the saddened son of a great Rabbi has been called home from the Yeshivah (School of Judaic Study) only to learn that his father was dead and his mother had quickly remarried to his father's brother, who had now become the new dynastic Rabbinic leader.

Of course, unknown to Paul Muni's father, what he was watching was a Yiddish version of Shakespeare's Hamlet. So moved was he by the play that he blurted out, "Now this is Yiddish theater!" How right Muni's father was.

The more one analyzes Shakespeare's play, the more it becomes evident that it translates The Book of Ecclesiastes (Kohelet) into the play form. Among other things, Ecclesiastes is a reflection, a stream of conscious, by wise King Solomon, called Ecclesiastes (Kohelet) the preacher, about the meaning of life and the confrontation with authority in the guise of the power of a king. This reflective personality is picked up in Shakespeare's play in the character of the studious and jaded Prince Hamlet with his "vexation of spirit" (Ecc 1:14). The events that befall Hamlet, with surprising regularity, parallel the words of Ecclesiastes.

For example, Hamlet's predicament in "rotten" Denmark, made rotten by the "flies in the ointment" of corruption (Ecc 10:1), can be summed up in Ecclesiastes (8:4):

Where the word of a king is, there is power: and who may say
unto him, What doest thou?

As already noted for the Rabbi's son, Hamlet is vexed, his flesh wearied by the sore travail of study (Ecc 12:12) in seeking out wisdom. But he is made even more melancholy at the sudden turn of events in which his smooth uncle Claudius has taken over everything meant for him -- his inheritance and his mother.

To Hamlet, the calamitous injustice of being robbed of his throne as the rightful crown prince and the impropriety of his mother's hasty action lead him to be think that existence has no meaning. Such meaninglessness, as expressed in Ecclesiastes (1:2), "vanity of vanities; all is vanity," is paraphrased in a speech by Hamlet that picks up the essence of the Bible's description. In the Biblical version, the Hebrew word "hevel," translated as "vanity," literally means "vapor," which captures the essence of such meaningless by comparing it to the insubstantiality of the vapor of breath. Note then how magnificently Shakespeare has Hamlet express this very thought in a form in which the vapor of "hevel" becomes the "pestilent vapours" under the "golden fire," the sun:

this most excellent canopy, the air, look you, this brave
o'erhanging firmament, this majestical roof fretted with
golden fire, why, it appears no other thing to me than a
foul and pestilent congregation of vapours.

So when the visitation of the ghost of Hamlet's father occurs that tells Hamlet of his uncle's murderous treachery and urges Hamlet to act in vengeance, Hamlet finds he has to tread carefully and utter no word of rebellion lest the new powerful king discover what he is about -- "Curse not the king, no not in thy thought;... for a bird of the air shall carry the voice, and that which hath wings shall tell the matter (Ecc 10:20).

Unlike earlier versions of the revenge story, Shakespeare's Hamlet is rightly concerned that the devil of his own imagination is tempting him to kill his uncle by assuming a "pleasing shape" -- the shape he wishes to see as his evil uncle. This is an amazing departure from the earlier stories. What other avenger needed more than the word of a ghostly figure to confirm self-serving suspicions? However, since the law is not in heaven -- a famous biblical and Talmudic doctrine ("Hatorah lo bashamayim") -- Hamlet, in this mode, struggles mightily against committing a rash and unjust attack before he can prove guilt right here on earth. This new Hamlet is a modern man with a great sense of justice and integrity.

Like Ecclesiastes-Solomon, who is a student of wisdom and who applies his heart "to know the wickedness of folly, even ... madness" (Ecc 7:25), Hamlet, the university student of wisdom, also plays at madness -- feigning as did the Bible's David -- to protect himself and to trip up the watchful King Claudius.

Also, like Ecclesiastes, Hamlet finds "more bitter than death the woman, whose heart is snares and nets" (Ecc 7:26). This is borne out to a bitter Hamlet that thinks the women in his life have played just such a role. He is right about his mother, who, having been a snare and a net to his uncle, her husband's murderer, she had swiftly married him after her husband death. However, Hamlet is wrong about Ophelia, his young, impressionable girl friend, who has no such heart but only spies on him under the pressure of her overbearing father, Polonius.

In another famous incident of the play, Hamlet has succeeded in publicly proving his uncle's guilt as a result of his uncles's shocked reaction to a play Hamlet stages reenacting the crime. Hamlet then comes upon his uncle in prayer, but does not kill him -- a fatal mistake for himself and puzzling to Shakespearean commentators. But, as is clearly expressed, Hamlet, craving strict justice, feels that his now penitent uncle would escape punishment in the afterlife. Hence, for proper retribution, Hamlet thinks it would be better to punish him at a time when he would be found immersed in his sins. This penchant for perfect justice and not to leave well enough alone is a grave error since it allows Claudius to recoup and turn the tables on Hamlet. Clearly, Hamlet had failed to heed the warning in Ecclesiastes 7:16:

Be not righteous over much; neither make thyself over wise:
why shouldest thou destroy thyself ?

As can be seen, many incidents of the play subtley enact of the words of Ecclesiastes. For example, there is the scene in which Hamlet, joking with Polonius, points to a cloud that he first says resembles a camel and then to a weasel, to each of which comparisons Polonius servilely agrees. This incident recalls Ecclesiastes' words, "He that regards the clouds shall not reap" (Ecc 11:14). It comments on Hamlet's character as a man distracted from his serious purpose and it foreshadows the ending of the play in which Hamlet does not regain his throne -- does not reap.

For at the very end of the play, Fortinbras, the young "unimproved" warrior, whom Shakespeare had earlier taken pains to identify as a person that is yet untested, reaps the harvest of the throne of Denmark. This occurs after the famous last scene, where the righteous and the wicked -- Hamlet, the Queen, King Claudius, and Laertes -- meet their deaths. Truly "there is one event to the righteous, and to the wicked" (Ecc 9:2).

The punch line and irony of Shakespeare's play is the accession to the throne of Denmark by the "unimproved" Fortinbras, an untried person that has this victory dumped into his lap. This irony is aptly summed up in Ecclesiastes 2:19 concerning a king's successor:

Who knoweth whether he shall be a wise man or a fool? yet shall
he have rule over all my labour wherein I have laboured, and
wherein I have shewed myself wise under the sun.
This is also vanity.

The vanity in the play reflects the happenstance and insubstantiality -- as the wind of vapor -- of the material life of ambition and power, in which, through human failings, accidents, and errors, careful plans of strivers come to naught. ("the race is not to the swift,... nor yet favour to men of skill; but time and chance happeneth to them all." (Ecc 9:11).

Hamlet's personal conclusion in the play as he emerges from his melancholy is that "the readiness is all." Here he implies that it is the readiness to seize the opportunity to render heaven's will -- the carrying out of justice -- as encountered in its time -- "in its season" (Ecc 3:1). This readiness is akin to the readiness to do one's duty under the awe of heaven that is concluded as the "sof davar" (final word) in Ecclesiastes. Interestingly, this "readiness" can be summed up by the Hebrew word "hi'ne'ni" -- "Here I am (at your service)" -- spoken by Abraham and some of the Prophets to note readiness to do God's will.

Finally, it is to be observed that among the many strictly, non biblical, Judaic touches in this play is the clear reference to the Talmud's Pirke Avoth (The Ethics of the Fathers) of a skull floating on the water. Like Rabbi Hillel in that reference, Hamlet also discovers a skull -- the world famous skull associated with the line "Alas poor Yorick, I knew him Horatio." Hamlet had earlier mused that perhaps this skull was that of a politician who could "circumvent G-d" but is now being "over reached," overruled, by the lowly grave digger. This is the same moral of "measure for measure" drawn by the Jewish sage, Hillel.

*****

David Basch is the author of the THE HIDDEN SHAKESPEARE,

SHAKESPEARE'S JUDAICA AND DEVICES, and THE SHAKESPEARE CODES, in which is revealed the surprisingly frequent use of Judaic motifs and elements.

Further information can be obtained on line at

www.ziplink.net/~entropy/

www.ziplink.net/~entropy/codes.htm

These books are available on line or from Revelatory Press, P.O. Box 370-577,

West Hartford, CT, 06137-0577. Ask your library to order them.