Yesterday, my husband became king of both Denmark and Norway.
It is a great and unexpected honor to be queen of two countries.
But we come to the throne of Denmark in great grief, and our coronation celebration was delayed a month to mourn Prince Hamlet, who should have been king.
Lady Ophelia should have been his queen, sitting where I sit.
My darling majesty Fortinbras and I wept before appearing before the public yesterday, and today, and we expect that we will weep tomorrow as well.
We have wept with Lord Horatio for thirty-three days, for we all loved Prince Hamlet so dearly.
My royal beloved has had trouble sleeping because of how he discovered that he was king of Denmark. To see our beloved friend and cousin Prince Hamlet dead on the floor of his last duel, with his mother, his uncle, his dueling partner Lord Laertes – a floor full of poisoned, sliced people – it shook his soul as nothing has ever shaken it.
And then to hear from Lord Horatio about the deaths of Lady Ophelia, and of Lords Polonius, Rosencrantz, and Guildenstern!
It seems like only yesterday that we buried His Majesty, King Hamlet.
It was a surprise when his brother Claudius walked off with the queen and denied Prince Hamlet the throne, but our friend was so distraught because of the death of his father that perhaps it was for the best.
Prince Hamlet always tended to gloom, as if the doom that awaited him had haunted him all his life. It was even worse after his father's death -- he never recovered. He utterly worshiped and adored his father.
But idolatry is always costly, even at its most fine-seeming. It leaves one vulnerable to what lies behind even the finest idol, for there is that evil one ever working to be the creature worshiped rather than the Creator -- the murderer from the beginning, who seduced Cain to kill Abel, and then Claudius to kill Hamlet the Elder.
Thus I am not sure it was the ghost of King Hamlet that set in motion all the destruction that claimed Prince Hamlet and much of the rest of the royal court (except Lord Horatio). There are spirits from below that appear as angels of light, and it would not be past an infernal agent to imitate the idolized father of a grieving, vulnerable son.
King Hamlet was the noblest individual beside my darling majesty Fortinbras that I have ever met. He loved his queen, his son, and his country all alike – selflessly, tirelessly, ably.
Nothing was rotten in the state of Denmark while he lived, at least not that we knew of.
Obviously the jealousy in his brother's heart was rotten, and we can all understand King Hamlet not seeing it. If he had a blind spot, it was that he could be a little too forgiving.
Yet that is why I do not think he returned as a ghost to spur his sensitive son to murder anyone.
King Hamlet knew his son, and often talked with the late King Fortinbras the Elder, my father-in-law, about his honest concerns.
He was doing all that he could to make sure there was as much peace in Europe as possible, because he said Prince Hamlet would make a tremendous ruler in peacetime, but was too sensitive to be a man of war.
This was not an insult – King Hamlet did not think of his son as less than manly, but he knew his son was the kind of man who made a philosopher, a poet, an artist. All those kinder sides of King Hamlet himself, those sides he only showed his queen, were deeply embedded in his son.
“Those things that in his making played a part/Became the ground and root of his dear heart” – the aging king liked his doggerel, but Prince Hamlet could stand and improvise line after line of excellent poetry, and put plays together, and sing, and all those things.
The one thing that would have destroyed Prince Hamlet is the very thing Lord Horatio said the prince had told him his father's ghost had instructed him to do.
Lord Horatio said the whole idea of Prince Hamlet having to avenge his father upon his uncle just unraveled Prince Hamlet. Prince Hamlet's conscience was too sensitive for that. Was he capable of impulsive killing? Yes. Poor old eavesdropping Lord Polonious! Could Prince Hamlet kill to save his own life? Yes? Poor Lords Rosencrantz and Guildenstern!
But cold-blooded murder of a kinsman? No. Only after he realized that King Claudius had fatally poisoned his mother, Lady Ophelia's brother Lord Laertes, and him was he finally able to kill his uncle as he himself was dying. It took all of that to finally get him to lift his hand against his uncle.
Prince Hamlet wasn't anything like his uncle: our dear prince would rather have seen the whole world pass away than to have to murder anyone even to have what was his own.
His father knew that. This is why I don't think whatever reached out to Prince Hamlet was his father's ghost.
Lord Horatio agrees, and says that perhaps a hint was dropped … whatever appeared to Prince Hamlet said that he had to be gone by daylight, and that if he were to tell Prince Hamlet of the horrors of his prison house, even the lightest word would curdle the prince's blood.
King Hamlet did often spare his wife and son the harder side of things.
And yet would he, this extremely caring father, have set his son on the course that would assure that the son he loved would forever SHARE his eternal prison house?
I thought of this as we interred poor Prince Hamlet a month ago.
His uncle and his mother we consigned to the potter's field.
Lord Polonius, his son Lord Laertes, and his daughter Lady Ophelia rest together, and we have had violets and rosemary planted for remembrance.
Prince Hamlet we buried by his father, at his right hand.
We have no peace about the eternal fate of any of them except perhaps Lady Ophelia, who also was too sensitive to survive all that was rotten in the state of Denmark.
She and Prince Hamlet were very much alike, and in a perfect world, she would have made him the perfect queen.
I often feel that she should have been sitting where I sit, even as Hamlet the Younger should have been king.
But then His Majesty Fortinbras the Younger, king of Norway and Denmark and of my heart, has to remind me:
“The King above bestows what seats He will/With heavy hearts, we have our duties still.”
Very clever story, @deeanndmathews! It sounds like you really know your Shakespeare. Were you an English Lit major in college? Hamlet, of course, is a classic tragedy. My father was a professor of theater and I remember him directing it one time, and I was terrified throughout the production.
I love your homage to the famous line something is rotten in the state of Denmark!
Thank you for reading!
I was a journalism major and have a teacher's credential in English, but I started reading Shakespeare at 9... my grandmother had copies of Macbeth and Henry VIII, and the editions had footnotes on all the words I couldn't understand. So, that's where my journey with the Bard began -- 30 years, this year!
Hamlet was the one that hurt me the most... I mean, to the soul. Two entire families wiped out, including the true royal line of an entire kingdom ... even the innocent do not survive (poor Lady Ophelia!) all the scheming of those involved in various degrees of evil... which is why I suspect that the "ghost" was someone else entirely, and that since Shakespeare knew the King James version of the Bible and its prohibitions on consulting with the dead, he left the question open. It is telling that the "ghost" tells Hamlet EXACTLY where he came from and has to return, but because it is the image of his father, Hamlet has no resistance to what may well be deception! Macbeth also has a sub-theme like that ... those witches that only show him part of his future, and then mock him with the rest of it later ...