Jane Austen and William Shakespeare by Unknown

Author:Unknown
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9783030256890
Publisher: Springer International Publishing

The Ghost proclaims that Claudius has taken his life and right to rule, but ‘most horrible’ of all is the taking of his wife Gertrude, for his brother must have her to be king. As Claudius remarks earlier to the assembled council of the court, ‘Nor have we herein barred / Your better wisdoms, which have freely gone / With this affair along’ (1.2.15–16). He claims the council has wisely approved of his marrying his dead brother’s wife and that the court has the authority to sanction the marriage. There is no mention of any special religious dispensation required for this marriage between brother and sister-in-law, but, due to the actions of Henry VIII, Shakespeare’s audience would have been aware that such a union was forbidden. As Jason Rosenblatt has pointed out, ‘at certain moments in Hamlet the imagined world of the play seems to shade into the real world of Shakespeare’s England’.13 In Hamlet, incest is a controversial tool of power to be wielded. In the case of Claudius and Gertrude, it represents moral and political depravity, as well as a specific crime. Prince Hamlet emphasizes that the incest of the King and Queen symbolizes virtue subjected to vice. The Ghost also warns that the kingdom will be tainted: ‘Let not the royal bed of Denmark be / A couch for luxury and damned incest’ (1.5.82–3).

While there is a sense of revulsion in Hamlet as regards in-family marriage, the sentiment in Austen is markedly different. The distinction between the two authors resides in in-family marriage purely in pursuit of political power and ambition versus incest to maintain the sanctity of the family. In other words, the difference is based on moral grounds: in-family marriage as self-promotion is to be despised in Hamlet, whereas in-family marriage as familial defence is viewed favourably in Austen. But while in-family alliances between certain characters in Austen (such as the virtuous Fanny and Edmund in Mansfield Park) are viewed with great approbation, others are presented negatively. As Ruth Perry notes, paternal first-cousin marriages in Austen’s fiction, such as those of Colonel Brandon’s brother to the older Eliza in Sense and Sensibility and Mr. Elliot’s desire to marry his cousin Anne in Persuasion , have implications for inheritance. Because of the weighting of wealth and title for the male line, these marriages are considered as being potentially blighted by social ambition and greed.14 As is the case in Shakespeare’s Hamlet, Austen disapproves of in-family unions that are made solely for the sake of profit and status . She looks more favourably upon in-family marriages stemming from character that serve and reinforce the moral well-being of the family.

As far as the topic of incest goes, the presence of embedded plays is one of the most obvious parallels between Shakespeare’s Hamlet and Austen’s Mansfield Park. In Hamlet, the in-family marriage motif is reinforced by the play-within-the-play, ‘The Mousetrap’, in which Lucianus murders his king and uncle, Gonzago, so that he may marry Gonzago’s wife and usurp the throne.

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