16th Century Scotland & ``Hamlet'' Part Two

3) ``Again, Shakespeare's Denmark is a place where the king has been murdered and his wife has married the murderer. This also happened in sixteenth-century Scotland; Darnley is almost invariably alluded to in contemporary documents (Buchanan's Oration and Detection, for instance), as the "king"; the "king" had been murdered, and his wife had married the murderer.
``Shakespeare's Denmark also is a place where a councillor is murdered in the presence of a queen, and his body disposed of "hugger-mugger" fashion by a staircase. This, also, had happened in contemporary Scotland in the case of Rizzio's murder.''
4) Our author also notes that in both Scotland and in the play there is a love for strong drink. Dr. Buchanan in his ``Oration and Detection'' refers to Bothwell the elder as a drunken beast and it is in Hamlet that drink plays a killer role.
The resemblances between Scotland and ``Hamlet'' would be more than striking, but also lawful. The Elizabethans were curious perhaps a bit anxious as to who would be their new ruler and what's up with Scotland, their ruler's home, given the added possiblity of an invasion from their northern neighbor.

16th Century Scotland & ``Hamlet''

Just as in Ancient Greece, any attempt to resist prophecy causes its fulfillment, Macbeth's murderous attempts at evasion helped fulfill prophecy going back to mythological Arthur's times, to reunite the old empire.
Now to ``Hamlet''. What is Denmark for our playwright? The Denmark attributed to the source, Saxo Grammaticus, which is this backwater, barely this side of antedeluvianism? ``Even the Hamlet, the hero of the primitive story, cuts an enemy's body to pieces and boils it and outrages a woman, and yet he is the best person in the whole piece.'' Something is rotten, but's it not in the state of Denmark.
Shakespeare's Denmark was 16th century Scotland. Here's why.
1) In Shakespeare's Denmark, feudal anarchy is the rule, no pun intended, the crown is overthrown and all the main characters are killed or die tragically. The same for Scotland. Its crown was in continuous danger of being overthrown and seized by the elder and younger Bothwells, nearly every head of state or statesman is killed or died tragically-such as James V (James VI's grandfather), Mary Queen of Scotts, Lord Darnley, Rizzio, and Murray.
2) Shakespeare's Denmark while feudal, was an intellectual hotbed where Cathlolicism and Protestantism lived side by side although barely peacefully. This would be similar to Scotland of the 16th century where John Knox the founder of Presbyterianism and his co-religionist Dr. George Buchanan--teacher to the young James VI and Michel de Montaigne--worked to further the Renaissance. In ``Hamlet'', the ghost Hamlet, the living Hamlet's father, was Catholic:
Cut off even in the blossoms of my sin,Unhousel'd, disappointed, unanel'd,No reckoning made, but sent to my accountWith all my imperfections on my head:O, horrible! O, horrible! most horrible
(I.v. 76-80)
The living Hamlet is Protestant; as the Queen requests of her son:
Let not thy mother lose her prayers, Hamlet:I pray thee, stay with us; go not to Wittenberg.
(I.2.118-119)
Wittenberg is the site where in 1517 Martin Luther nailed his theses to the church door and is considered to have started the Protestant Reformation.
``This peculiar combination is, once again, exactly paralleled in contemporary Scotland; the queen's party were Catholics; her opponents were the Protestant lords, and there was a specially close connection between Scotland and German Protestant Universities. Knox himself once had a congregation at Frankfort-on-the-Main, [Froude, Chap. X.] and there were many other Scotch Protestants in different parts of Germany. `"There was a whole Scoto-German school, among whom the Wedderburns were predominant."'

The Stage Was the Message

At the turn of the 16th century there was no American first amendment, no radio, no newspaper, and of course no internet. News was presented in terms that Winstanley called ``symbolic mythology''. The main character names had to be changed or the author and actors risked being brought before the star chamber. That and the execution of Lord Essex aka Robert Devereaux who was a backer of ``Hamlet'' and other plays by the same author, for Essex's role in ``accelerating'' James to power, was a lesson not wasted on the interested parties.For the living reader several questions might be asked: Was Hamlet based on the 12th century Danish saga by Saxo Gramaticus? Or a history from the more recent Holinshed? Or was this well attended production aimed at a very curious audience as to who their next ruler might be? and what he might be? Things were looking good for James VI of Scotland, in spite of his existentialist doubts as revealed in privy correspondence between the young Scottish king and his cousin the more mature, educated in statecraft by both her ruthless father Henry VIII as well as personal experience, Queen Elizabeth as revealed by Lilian Winstanley in her Hamlet book.

Lilian Winstanley & History Today

RESURRECTING LILIAN WINSTANLEY/HISTORY TODAY
In 1567, the Earl of Bothwell and his lover Mary Queen of Scots murdered her husband Lord Darnley, the father of the future James VI of Scotland, later James I of England. That is in part the historical substance Shakespeare's play ``Hamlet'', as posited Professor Lilian Winstanley in her groundbreaking book ``Hamlet and the Scottish Succession: Being an Examination of the Relations of the Play of Hamlet to the Scottish Succession and the Essex Conspiracy''.This assassination and cover-up was still on the about to be regime changed minds of the audience in attendance of ``Hamlet'' in 1600 and 300 miles south of the crime scene in Stratford on Avon. This Elizabethan audience was concerned not just with ``old regicides'' as Darnley was considered informally the King; but also the peaceful succession to its Queen Elizabeth, as well as two possible invasions--one from the north in Scotland, and one from the southwest, the Spanish Armada.