1When attending a play such as Hamlet, expectations are key. Paradoxically, the play deliberately works to unfulfill one of them: the opportunity to hear the funeral oration delivered at King Hamlet’s funeral, a funeral we never get to witness according to the playtext, but one which we often hear of, if only to regret its unbecoming brevity. ‘Words, words, words’ (2.2.189) are the stuff that this tragedy is made of. In the case of King Hamlet’s death, the words pronounced by his successor on the throne, Claudius, hardly follow the rules of epideictic discourse, that is, the discourse of praise or dispraise. Rather than paying homage to his predecessor and providing a bridge between the two reigns, his failed eulogy sows the seed of doubt and division.

4It is on Claudius’ two inaugural speeches that I intend to focus in this article. It is my contention that the formal aspects of the new king’s speech, which mimics sermons on the inevitability of death and the holy nature of patrilinear bonds linking the dead and the living, contrasts with suggestions that his ‘state [is] disjoint and out of frame’ (20). As I will show, the terms ‘jointress’ and ‘disjoint’ could recall early modern discussions on jointure, a legal provision allowing wives to take possession of their late husbands’ lands and tenements, thereby (momentarily) dispossessing the dead husband’s otherwise natural heirs. Claudius’ speeches therefore contrast the topos of the ‘natural’ cycle of life and death, and the ‘discretion’ afforded Gertrude by law to symbolically dispossess her own son in favour of a new husband and king who, ironically, then remarks that although it is Hamlet’s duty to be ‘bound / in filial obligation’ (90–1) to mourn his father, that he should not ‘Take it to heart’ (101).

‘[M]aimèd rites’ (5.1.186)

His means of death, his obscure funeral,
No trophy, sword, nor hatchment o’er his bones,
No noble rite, nor formal ostentation,
Cry to be heard, as ’twere from heaven to earth,
That I must call’t in question. (4.5.208–12)

Paying lip service to the dead

Though yet of Hamlet our dear brother’s death
The memory be green, and that it us befitted
To bear our hearts in grief, and our whole kingdom
To be contracted in one brow of woe,
Yet so far hath discretion fought with nature
That we with wisest sorrow think on him,
Together with remembrance of ourselves. (1.2.1–7)

9This is far from what could be expected in a eulogy according to Thomas Wilson, whose Arte of Rhetoricke listed topoi of funeral elegies. Orators, Wilson suggested, ought to mention details from the last moments of the deceased:

• 12 Wilson, sig. 8^r.

At the tyme of his departyng, his sufferaunce of all sicknesse, may muche commende his worthinesse. As his strong harte, and cherefull pacience euen to the ende, cannot want greate praise. The loue of all men towardes hym, and the lamentyng generally for his lacke, helpe well moste highly to set furthe his honour. After a mannes death, are considered his tombe, his cote armour set vp, and all suche honours, as are vsed in funeralles.¹²

10To illustrate his point, Wilson provides an example of a funeral oration for ‘Henry Duke of Suffolk, and his brother lorde Charles Duke’ – two brothers again – , and concludes the dirge with a moral lesson:

• 13 Wilson, sig. 9^v.

God graunt vs also to liue, that the good men of this world, may be alwaies lothe to forsake vs, and God maie still be glad to haue vs, as no doubt these twoo children so died, as all men should wishe to liue, and so thei liued bothe, as al should wishe to die. Seyng therfore these two wer suche, bothe for birthe, nature, and all other giftes of grace, that the like are hardely founde behynde theim: let vs so speake of theim, that our good report maie warne vs, to folowe their godly natures, and that lastly, wee maie enioye that enheritaunce, whereunto God hath prepared them and vs (that feare him) from the beginnyng. Amen.¹³

12At this point in the play, it is possible for audiences to interpret the brevity of the eulogy as a sign that King Hamlet’s death has occurred some time ago, and that there is no need to rehearse a more developed eulogy presumably delivered before the play began – after all, it is only with Hamlet’s first soliloquy later in the scene that we learn that barely a month has elapsed since his father’s death. Regardless, Claudius’ speech shows that he is keenly aware that his decision to wed Gertrude was hurried, as intimated by the conditional hedging (‘Though … Yet …’) and his ultimate ‘remembrance’ of himself.

13Given the passing reference to Eucharistic formulations attached to ‘memory’ and ‘remembrance’, it is worthwhile noting that church rites were not only codified with words and formulae such as those found in the Book of Common Prayer, but that these words were also accompanied by gestures. This non-verbal element is important because the playtext leaves ample room in performance to make interpretive choices, either to lend Claudius’ opening speech some gravitas or to underscore its levity. Thus, in film adaptations and stage performances, silent action and a musical score can atone for the absence of verbal eulogies, or not. In some cases, the king’s funeral can, in fact, even be shown to us.

14In Grigori Kozintsev’s 1964 adaptation, for instance, we hear the bells toll and the sound of the waves breaking at the foot of Elsinore castle, then black flags are put out from the battlements to signal the castle is in mourning, while Hamlet (Innokenty Smoktunovsky) is seen on a galloping horse, hurrying to return to Elsinore for the funeral; once he reaches the castle, canons are shot and the drawbridge is drawn up while we hear the foreboding musical score composed by Dmitri Shostakovich; Claudius’ opening speech is then read aloud by a town crier in the castle courtyard before the camera shifts to the king’s inner circle, where Claudius (Mikhail Nazvanov) continues his speech before his advisers sitting around a large table. In Franco Zeffirelli’s 1991 adaptation, the opening sequence shows the people in the castle courtyard in silent mourning, while we hear the solemn soundtrack scored by another musical titan, Ennio Morricone; the court’s highest members are then seen assembled in a dark crypt around the corpse of the dead king; Claudius (Alan Bates) assures Hamlet (Mel Gibson) of his love, while Gertrude (Glenn Close) inconsolably clings to the slab which now covers the corpse; the scene then transfers to a huge hall, where the royal couple sit in full regalia, at which time Claudius begins his eulogy which is dimly heard in the echoing chamber, highlighting the hollowness and staid nature of the first few lines of his speech. In these examples, the dead king’s passing occupies the whole beginning of the play, much like an operatic overture, here served by two eminent composers. The seriousness of the king’s death is apparent and felt by the populace.

Conjoined guilt

16Stage performances seldom have access to the same sound and light effects as film productions and tend to favour the latter examples; on the other hand, theatre has the advantage of giving audiences greater freedom to interpret the behaviour of the silent characters onstage, including Hamlet, whereas the camera’s focus and the director’s intentions tend to redirect our gaze more forcefully. On stage, it is thus entirely possible for the silent courtiers to seem reproachful as Claudius attempts to use humour to alleviate the social awkwardness, as shown by his use of isocolons and pardoxes (in bold and underlined below):

Therefore our sometime sister, now our queen,
Th’imperial jointress to this warlike state,
Have we, as ’twere with a defeated joy,
With one auspicious and one dropping eye,
With mirth in funeral and with dirge in marriage,
In equal scale weighing delight and dole,
Taken to wife; nor have we herein barred
Your better wisdoms, which have freely gone
With this affair along – for all, our thanks. (1.2.8–16)

17The rhetorical figures, based as they are on balance and contradistinction (including from a metrical aspect, with two and three feet on either side of the hemistich), serve to underscore Claudius’ claim that responsibility for proceeding thus far must be shared with his wife, his advisers, and the audience at large. The ‘affair’, in other words, was arranged ‘freely’, absolving him from further reprobation, or joining his guilt with that of all those who ‘have freely gone / With this affair along’. Revealingly, these rhetorical figures of balance and contrast also literalize the metaphor of ‘th’imperial jointress’ used to describe Gertrude, joining as she does two mutually exclusive relations, a husband and a brother, in choosing to wed Claudius. The latter’s curious expression is closely followed by a second reference to the cognate term of joining, or rather disjoining:

Now follows that you know: young Fortinbras,
Holding a weak supposal of our worth,
Or thinking by our late dear brother’s death
Our state to be disjoint and out of frame,
Colleaguèd with this dream of his advantage,
He hath not failed to pester us with message
Importing the surrender of those lands
Lost by his father, with all bands of law,
To our most valiant brother. So much for him. (1.2.17–25)

18The insistence on issues of property (‘lands’) and binding agreements (‘all bands of law’), which also echo ‘contracted’ (4), suggests that the whole speech takes the matter of property seriously (even if it does not take the issue of impropriety seriously). As Claudius – or rather Shakespeare, here – makes clear, we have been made aware of Fortinbras’ claim, ‘Now follows that you know’ (17), from the very first scene of the play. Horatio explained to us that Fortinbras’ lands were lost by virtue of a ‘sealed compact’ (1.1.86) in lines replete with legal jargon (in bold):

[…] our valiant Hamlet
[…] Did slay this Fortinbras; who by a sealed compact,
Well ratified by law and heraldy,
Did forfeit (with his life) all those his lands
Which he stood seized of, to the conqueror;
Against the which a moiety competent
Was gagèd by our king, which had returned
To the inheritance of Fortinbras
Had he been vanquisher; as by the same comart
And carriage of the article design,
His fell to Hamlet. […] (1.1.84, 86–95)

19If this speech is couched in legal jargon, so is Claudius’ speech in scene 2. In it, the meanings of ‘jointress’ and ‘disjoint’ play on at least two levels. While ‘jointress’ and jointure were typically used to refer to property that would be controlled by a woman after her husband’s death, the second term, ‘joining’, was used in carpentry, as noted by editors in their textual glosses (though not, it must be noted, in the New Cambridge Shakespeare edition). Notwithstanding, many editors and critics dismiss the first meaning as inadequate, redefining the term ‘jointress’ to accommodate a very loose understanding, akin to ‘being married’ or ‘being together’ – what in French one commonly calls today a conjoint, a term loose enough to obscure the existence of legal bonds between the two partners in the relationship.

20According to Paul S. Clarkson and Clyde T. Warren in their 1942 book, The Law of Property in Shakespeare and the Elizabethan Drama, the use of the term ‘jointress’ in Hamlet

• 18 Paul Stephen Clarkson and Clyde T. Warren, The Law of Property in Shakespeare and the Elizabethan D (...)

was most likely understood by Shakespeare’s audience merely as a compliment to the Queen, dressed in a figure drawn from the joint estate to husband and wife known to every Elizabethan man-on-the-street as a jointure. He understood very simply that Claudius was referring to Gertrude, in gracious compliment, as his wife and with him joint occupant of the throne of Denmark.18

24As argued by Patricia Parker, both Hamlet and King Lear develop the complementary notions of jointure and joinery. Importantly, the terms revolve around the role of women in the process – which is striking, given the paucity of women in Hamlet and critics’ remarks on their lack of agency in the play. Parker thus analyses the particular echoes of the terms ‘jointure’ and ‘joints’ in Hamlet:

• 24 Patricia Parker, Shakespeare from the Margins: Language, Culture, Context (Chicago: University of C (...)

The harping on joinings and joints in Shakespeare also includes jointures and jointresses, in contexts that call attention to the exchange of women as part of the construction of a house, as well as to the importance of these often marginalized women and the dependence on the material – or transfers of property – that underlies such matrimonial ‘joins.’ Gertrude the ‘imperial jointress’ of Hamlet (1.2.9) – described by Claudius as ‘so conjunctive to my life and soul, / That, as the star moves not but in his sphere / I could not but by her’ [4.7.14] – is the most striking instance here, the hinge or join (if Saxo and Belleforest are to be credited) on which the sequiturs of Claudius’ own succession may depend, in the play that harps incessantly on a poisoned joining before this jointress intercepts a poisoned ‘union’ (5.2.272) at its end.24

25I propose to read Claudius’ second speech to Hamlet in this light. Here too, the new king uses figures of speech of balance, or rather here ‘bonds’, such as antanaclasis or antimetabole, as in the following segment:

[…] But you must know, your father lost a father,
That father lost, lost his, and the survivor bound
In filial obligation for some term
To do obsequious sorrow; […] (1.2.88–92)

26The rest of the speech essentially indulges in what Thomas Wilson called ‘amplification’, developing an idea succinctly expressed by Gertrude moments earlier, when she reminded her son that ‘all that lives must die, / Passing through nature to eternity.’ (72–3), a common trope, as recognised by Gertrude herself, and by Hamlet, who agrees: ‘Ay madam, it is common.’ (74) Claudius, in other terms, amplifies Gertrude’s ‘common’ message (and Claudius uses the term twice, on lines 98 and 103), and their conjoined message is confirmed again by his wife after this speech, when she repeats Claudius’ refusal to allow Hamlet to return to Wittenberg. If Hamlet accepts to stay in Denmark, it is because his mother said so, she ‘th’imperial jointress’, the legitimate inheritor of Danish land in Hamlet’s eyes, an idea again expressed by the prince when he later calls the king ‘mother’ (4.3.46–9).

27All of Claudius’ efforts at using rhetorical flourishes playing with paradox and balance to justify his marrying his brother’s wife, or his efforts at illustrating the patrilinear ‘bonds’ between sons and fathers to justify the ‘natural’ passing of Old Hamlet, only exacerbate the prince’s rejection and undercut the king’s claim that his kingdom is not ‘disjoint and out of frame’ (1.2.20). The king doth protest too much, even as he berates his nephew, son and heir for showing ‘unmanly grief’ (94). Every effort at trying to justify the king and queen’s ‘jointure’ falls flat, as ‘nature’ itself seems to consider it ‘out of frame’. The king’s eulogy for his ‘dear brother’ (1) and subsequent sermon on what is ‘sweet and commendable’ (87), and what is ‘a fault to heaven, / A fault against the dead, a fault to nature’ (101–2), end up conjoined most unnaturally, preparing the audience for the revelation of his guilt, which is here only adumbrated. By making short shrift of his inaugural eulogy for his ‘dear brother’, Claudius paves the way for his own sending off in equally unceremonious fashion in Act 5, an occasion for Hamlet to ironically reassert the infamous nature of the king’s ‘union’ or ‘jointure’ with Gertrude:

Here, thou incestuous, murderous, damnèd Dane,
Drink off this potion. Is thy union here?
Follow my mother. King dies. (5.2.304–6)