Exegetical Shakespeare: Hamlet and the Miserere mei deus

Though this be madness yet there is method in't.

—Hamlet, 2.2.202–3¹

As Claudius attempts to pray in the famous "chapel scene" in Shakespeare's Hamlet, he alludes to a text of Scripture that bears upon his unhappy situation in a number of ways:

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 offence?

(3.3.43–47)

As many modern editions will tell you, the reference here is to Psalm 51, commonly known in Renaissance culture by its Latin incipit, Miserere mei deus: "Have mercy on me, God."² Traditionally understood to have been composed by the biblical King David, Psalm 51 is one of the seven "penitential Psalms"—those that most potently express contrition for the act of sinning—and its pleas for divine mercy provide the metaphorical basis for Claudius's repentant language: "Purge me with hyssope, and I shal be cleane: wash me, & I shalbe whiter then snowe" (Ps. 51:7).³ Claudius's subsequent reference to confronting "mercy" with "the visage of offence" also recalls the psalm's interest in acknowledging and imagining guilt: "For I knowe mine iniquities, & my sinne is euer before me" (Ps. 51:3). Both kings, moreover, are overheard in their soliloquies limping toward prayer: "Open thou my lippes, ô Lord," begs the psalmist, "and my mouth shal shewe forthe thy praise" (Ps. 51:15). "But O," asks Claudius more skeptically, "what form of prayer / Can serve my turn […]?" (3.3.51–52).

What form, we might well ask, does this allusion take? The language of "allusion" by which we usually recognize such instances of scriptural citation may fail to comprehend this moment's complex intertextuality, which admits a number of interpretations of its agency and dramatic effects.⁴ Whose allusion is it, and what exactly does it mean for the character and narrative in which it appears? It might, for instance, be the author's referential action, a winking analogy passed from the playwright to the playgoer or reader over the head, as it were, of the character speaking. Or the language of Psalm 51—so intimately known in both pre- and post-Reformation culture—might unconsciously shape Claudius's formulations as he casts around for an idiom in which to pray. Or perhaps Claudius is invoking the psalm self-consciously, choosing it for the penitential power it had in post-Reformation culture. The king in this case would be "applying" Scripture to his own situation according to the usual practice of biblical exegetes. The Psalms were particularly well suited to such applications: they were commonly supposed to be a compendium of human experience in which, as one popular Psalter put it, one could always find "theffect[s] of the mynde" reflected.⁵ Each of these interpretive possibilities implies a distinct configuration of author, character, intertext, and reader; each, that is, suggests a different mode by which Scripture becomes integrated into the Shakespearean text.

Exploring the cultural function of Psalm 51 in Shakespeare's time and the interpretive methods by which early modern Christians were taught to read this text can give us some purchase on the local question of how Claudius's allusion brings Scripture into the theater, but it will also give way to a broader rereading of Hamlet. For the question of how to use and interpret Psalm 51 haunts both Shakespeare's play and the constellation of texts that compose its notoriously "tangled" pre-history.⁶ Claudius's soliloquy may contain the play's only overt reference to the psalm, but the Miserere and its exegetical provocations recur in several key places within Hamlet's textual record, and they underwrite a greater portion of the play's narrative turns and thematic concerns than scholars have yet noticed. Collecting these references can help us to see the psalm as a crucial analogue—even a source—for the play, as well as an object of interpretation in its own...