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| - Hamlet Do you see yonder cloud that's almost in shape of a camel? Polonius By the mass, and 'tis like a camel, indeed. A camel? A cloud? Claudius? Where? Hamlet Would I had met my dearest foe in heaven Or ever I had seen that day, Horatio! My father, methinks I see my father. If your father is your foe, I can see that he would be your dearest foe, Hamlet, but he's not quite in heaven -- it sounds more like he’s on his way to heaven, going through purgatory: Ghost I am thy father's spirit, Doom'd for a certain term to walk the night, And for the day, confin'd to fast in fires Till the foul crimes done in my days of nature Are burnt and purg'd away......... Let me get this straight, Hamlet: Your father is like your Uncle Claudius. Claudius (cloud-ius) is like a cloud that’s like a camel. The camel-cloud is floating in heaven. You wish to see your dearest foe in heaven. Then you see your father. Is he in heaven? Or in purgatory? Hamlet, where is your father? Horatio Oh where, my lord! Hamlet In my mind's eye, Horatio. In your mind's eye? Or in purgatory? Or both? Your father or your uncle? Or both? Your dearest foe or a camel? Or both? A camel in your mind's eye? Hamlet Why, what should be the fear? I do not set my life at a pin's fee So now you're a pin, Hamlet? And there's a camel in your eye? MATHEW, 19, 24. HOLY BIBLE in the King James version. Jesus And again I say unto you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the Kingdom of Heaven Some people misconstrue this biblical passage to mean that wealth is evil. Actually, it means that some rich men can't get into heaven because they value their worldly possessions more than their souls; they value Situation more than Self. Being rich is not a sin; even killing a brother to gain a kingdom is not an unforgiveable sin. But the man who values an earthly kingdom more than his own soul is doomed to fast in fires. Such a man is Claudius: Claudius What if this cursed hand Were thicker than itself with brother's blood, Is there not rain enough in the sweet heavens To wash it white as snow? Whereto serves mercy But to confront the visage of offense? And what's in prayer but this two-fold force, To be forestalled ere we come to fall, Or pardon'd, being down? Then, I'll look up; My fault is past. But, O! what form of prayer Can serve my turn? 'Forgive me my foul murder'? That can not be since I am still possess'd Of those effects for which I did the murder, My crown, mine own ambition, and my queen. May one be pardon'd and retain the offense? .... Try what repentance can: what can it not? Yet what can it, when one can not repent? And such a man is Hamlet's father: Horatio (to the Ghost) Or if thou hast uphoarded in thy life Extorted treasure in the womb of earth, For which, they say, you spirits oft walk in death... Hamlet's father is in purgatory by choice, because he refuses to leave his "extorted treasure." These two foolish old men (and Polonius too) are trying to go camel-like through Hamlet’s mind’s eye. Forget the camels -- what’s happening to the poor needle? Horatio (speaking of the ghost of Hamlet’s father) A mote it is to trouble the mind’s eye. Hamlet (after killing Polonius, whom he mistook for Claudius) I do repent; but heaven hath pleas’d it so, To punish me with this and this with me; That I must be their scourge and minister. Pity the poor camel-crammed needle; that scourge and minister; purgatory personified. By following a tenuous thread between three innocent words, camel, pin, and eye, my imagination has traced Hamlet’s father, his Uncle Claudius, and the false steward Polonius going camel-like through the purgatory in Hamlet’s mind’s eye. At this point, perhaps the reader agrees with Horatio: Horatio ‘Twere to consider too curiously, to consider so. Hamlet No, faith, not a jot; but to follow him thither with modesty enough and likelihood to lead it, as thus: Before the age of Joe Camel, in the Elizabethan age, "camel" had just one vivid connotation -- the biblical metaphor of the camel going through the eye of the needle. The camel appears just four times in all of Shakespeare’s works; twice in Troilus and Cressida, once in Richard II, and once in Hamlet. TROILUS AND CRESSIDA Panduros Achilles! a drayman, a porter, a very camel. Ajax (beating Thersites) You cur!. Thersites Mars his idiot! Do, rudeness, do, camel, do, do. Thersites I say this Ajax - ....... Has not so much wit - ....... As will stop the eye of Helen’s needle... RICHARD II Richard It is as hard to come as for a camel To thread the postern of a small needle’s eye. So the mere presence of the word "camel" is enough to send us in search of the needle (or pin) and its eye (Hamlet’s mind’s eye). But must our search lead us to Purgatory? Horatio There’s no offence, my lord. Hamlet Yes, by Saint Patrick, but there is, Horatio, And much offence, too... A New Variorum Edition of Shakespeare, edited by Horace Howard Furness, Hamlet, volume 1, New York, American Scholar Publications, INC, 1965, first published in 1877, page 111: 136. Saint Patrick] TSCHISHWITZ: If Sh. had wished to be historically correct, he would have made a Dane swear by St Ansgarius. But since the subject concerned an unexpiated crime, he naturally thought of St Patrick, who kept a Purgatory of his own. See The Honest Whore [pt 2, I, I, p 330, Dodsley ed 1825, where the text reads, ‘St Patrick, you know keeps Purgatory,’ and not as the learned German quotes, ‘keeps his Purgatory.’ Ed] There is a very personal clue that Hamlet/Shakespeare’s mind was Purgatory. In Stratford Guild Chapel there was a mural of Judgment Day. Although the mural was daubed over with whitewash about the time Shakespeare was born (in belated obedience to a government edict against religious icons and images), I believe that young Will could see the mural through the whitewash (or perhaps the whitewash was temporarily removed for special occasions, such as secret midnight Catholic Confirmations). The mural showed a group of sinners bound together with hoops of steel (a chain) and being led toward the mouth of hell. The mouth of hell (or purgatory) was set in what looked like a giant porcupine head. Gertrude (to Hamlet) Forth at your eyes your spirits wildly peep, And, as the sleeping soldiers in the alarm, Your bedded hair, like life in excrements, Starts up and stand an end. Ghost (to Hamlet) I could a tale unfold whose lightest word Would harrow up thy soul, freeze thy young blood, Make thy two eyes, like stars, start from their spheres, Thy knotted and combined locks to part, And each particular hair to stand on end, Like quills upon the fretful porpentine.
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