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I think there's a question here of what's foreground and what's background--what composers call outer and inner voices. The incest theme, such as it is, is clearly, I think, an inner voice. And it's maybe curious that no one thought otherwise in the long history of the play before Freud, altho it's hard to imagine pathological innocence on the part of all the actors, critics and audience of three centuries. It might be useful to remember that incest was a legal term. Claudius and Gertrude were, according to the laws of most of Europe, incestuous. If so judged, Claudius' claim on his brother's property, including the throne, would have been considerably weakened. The queen's body was a political asset. The English audience would have remembered, as clearly as we do the Lewinsky affair, the rupture of Henry VIII's marriage to Catherine of Aragon, his brother's widow, and its consequences. In the absence of the father the maintenance of the honor of the family would have fallen upon the son, as head of the clan, who would have been within his rights to kill his mother's lover, and also to reprove her as if she was, as she was within the politics of the family, his inferior. That he asks if he has killed the king foregrounds the political aspect of the conflict. Hamlet is caught between two responsibilities, to the family honor and to the state as represented by the king. Dynastic disagreements had disastrous consequenses, as again any Englishman would have had a hard time forgetting. As to Hamlet's suggestion about his mother's future behavior, he's paraphrasing Leviticus 20:21, the basis of Henry and Catherine's divorce: "If a man shall take his brother's wife, it is impurity: he hath uncovered his brother's nakedness; they shall be childless." That said, there's no question, I think, but that there's plenty of suggestion of what Freud called the Oedipus complex in Hamlet's over the top language. Different place and time, tho--one should apply an early twentieth century Austrian fiction to other contexts very gingerly. Mark At 10:25 AM 2/1/2003 -0800, you wrote: >I'm as bewildered that Robin Hamilton can't see incest in Hamlet as he is >that others can. Look at III.4, for instance: Hamlet goes into his >mother's bedroom and murders the man who is hiding there like the >stereotypical adulterer caught by an unexpectedly returning husband. Hamlet >asks eagerly if he's killed, not "my uncle," but "the king," a word he uses >to refer to his father in the next sentence he utters. He then describes to >his mother her sexual behavior in the most leeringly obscene terms, in the >midst of which he is terrified by a vision of his reproachful, murdered >father hovering over the bedroom. He then gives his mother a long lecture >full of helpful advice about how she can avoid having sex with her husband, >and finally leaves, dragging the fallen limp form of his mother's >bedchamber-companion along the ground after him. I mean come on what more >do you want -- a chorus in the background singing "Alas, poor Oedipus"? > >In fact there's even a heavy atmosphere of explicit incest in the play. >Claudius is called "incestuous" at least four times, and as soon as Gertrude >comes on stage Claudius introduces her, with breathtaking effrontery, as >"our sometime sister, now our queen." In that same scene Claudius invites >Hamlet to "be as ourself in Denmark." It takes a effort of stony will not >to see the Oedipal irony in that invitation. > >I think Olivier would have agreed with me -- the bedroom scene in his film >version was played so sexually that I wonder how he got it past the censors. > Olivier's version in general combines a classic "melancholy Dane" staging >with an outrageously Freudian interpretation of the characters' motives, a >combination which I find right on the mark. > > >================================================== > >Jon Corelis [log in to unmask] >http://www.geocities.com/joncpoetics > >================================================== > > > >_________________________________________________________________ >STOP MORE SPAM with the new MSN 8 and get 2 months FREE* >http://join.msn.com/?page=features/junkmail