North-Northwest

[Nick Capozzoli]

Was Hamlet mad? What about his statement:

I am mad but north-northwest. When the wind is southerly, I can tell a hawk from an handsaw.?

The imagery is striking to the modern ear. A hawk is a bird. A handsaw is a carpenter's tool...

But "handsaw" could be a corruption of "hernser" or "hernshaw," meaning "heron," another type of bird. To complicate matters, a "hawk" is a plasterer's tool, a small hand-held board that plasterers use to carry mortar/plaster that they apply using a hand trowel. So the image becomes less striking, essentially that Hamlet can tell one tool from another, as opposed to discerning the difference between a bird and a tool...

Or the image could work on the basis of Hamlet's being able to discern the difference between types of birds...

In any case, it clearly means that Hamlet is not really crazy, except when the wind is blowing in a certain direction.;)

[Ray Eston Smith]

"Handsaw" might also come from Hamlet's instructions to the actors: "Nor do not saw the air / too much with your hand," although I don't quite see the logical connection.

"North by northwest" might be related to

When yond same star that's westward from the pole
Had made his course to illume that part of heaven
Where now it burns

Hamlet's father's ghost appeared when a certain star was "westward from the pole" (which would be north by northwest). Horatio correctly warned that Hamlet's father "might deprive your sovereignty of reason." Whenever Hamlet's brain was under the influence of his father (the wind north by northwest), he was "from himself taken away."

"Burn" in "part of heaven," might refer to Hamlet's father, "fasting in fires," in Purgatory.

"Westward from the pole" could be an allusion to Cardinal Pole, who, as Archbishop of Canterbury under Bloody Mary, liked to call himself the Pole Star because all the English people revolved around him. That was during England's brief return to Catholicism, when Mary was queen, about the time Shakespeare's father began his rise through Stratford government.

Cardinal Reginald Pole was an interesting guy. His mother Margaret was mentioned as a child in Shakespeare's Richard III. Margaret's father was Clarence who, according to legend, was drowned in a barrel of wine, on orders from Richard. As an adult Margaret was godmother and governess to Princess Mary . At that time, Reginald was a prominent theologian. Reginald refused to endorse Henry's divorce from Catherine. Reginald fled to the Continent, so Henry chopped off Margaret's head. During his exile, Reginald fell one vote short of being elected Pope. (He would have become the second English Pope. The first was Nicholas Breakspear.) When Mary became queen, she wanted a strongly Catholic husband to help her restore the Old Faith in England. Her first choice was Reginald Pole. But by then Reginald was an old man. Pole declined, saying he wasn't up for the job (my pun, not Pole's). So Elizabeth settled for second choice, Phillip of Spain, which about 30 years later led to the attack by the Spanish Armada - Phillip's attempt to recover England "by strong hand and terms compulsatory."

During his exile, Pole had coined the word "seminaries" for missionary colleges on the Continent to train priests to go back to England. His idea wasn't put into effect during his lifetime. But in the summer of 1563 (about the time William Shakespeare was conceived), the Council of Trent disseminated a canon calling for the establishment of seminaries. (At the time, the future Cardinal William Allen was secretly touring England. Perhaps he stopped at Stratford, perhaps he was William's secret godfather? Perhaps he arranged to make the Guild school a sort of pre-seminary for certain teachers and students?)

A few years later, William Allen founded a seminary in Rheims, France. Over the next 30 years, Allen's seminary trained about 400 missionaries who went back to England, where about a quarter of them were caught and executed. Among those executed was the brother of one Shakespeare's teachers, and also one of the students from the Stratford Guild school. Another of Shakespeare's teachers went on to become head of the English College in Rome.

Was the Ghost an allegory for the ghost of English Catholicism?

[Ray Eston Smith]

I remember reading somewhere years ago that one of the martyred Rheims/Douai missionaries (the seminary moved from Rheims to Douai) had been a graduate of the Stratford Guild school. Just now I was trying to verify that by googling for it. I haven't found that, but I found something even more startling:
In "The Quest for Shakespeare", by Joseph Pearce, published 2008, page 53:
"It has been suggested that [John Shakespeare] might have known William Allen, founder of the first Catholic seminary at Douai in 1568, because Allen had been schoolmaster in Stratford in 1563, when John Stratford was a civic official."

I think that must be an error in the book. If it was true it would be a huge smoking cannon. But in my previous research, I read that William Allen had been exiled to the Continent. In 1563 and 1564, he returned to England and travelled in cognito, because he would have been arrested if caught. There was no specific mention of Stratford, although I have speculated that Allen visited Stratford and influenced the Guild School. Perhaps somebody else carried his speculations even further than me and forgot to label them as only speculations.

William Allen was extremely important. If Phillip's Armada had succeeded, Phillip had planned to install William Allen as Chancellor of England. A documented, direct connection between Allen and Shakespeare would force the rewriting of a lot of history books. But for now, it's only speculation.

I'm still looking for online proof that a student from the Guild School became a missionary priest.

[Nick Capozzoli]

[QUOTE=Ray Eston Smith;724997]"Handsaw" might also come from Hamlet's instructions to the actors: "Nor do not saw the air / too much with your hand," although I don't quite see the logical connection.

Nor do I see a connection

"North by northwest" might be related to

When yond same star that's westward from the pole
Had made his course to illume that part of heaven
Where now it burns

Hamlet's father's ghost appeared when a certain star was "westward from the pole" (which would be north by northwest). Horatio correctly warned that Hamlet's father "might deprive your sovereignty of reason." Whenever Hamlet's brain was under the influence of his father (the wind north by northwest), he was "from himself taken away."

Interesting point of view. I view Hamlet's statement that he's mad only when the wind blows north-northwest as a way of saying that he's capricious; he doesn't really think he's insane; he knows what he's up to and doesn't care what you think about the state of his mind.

[Gladys]

Cardinal Reginald Pole was an interesting guy. Your short history of Cardinals Pole and Allen makes fascinating reading. For a celebrity like Shakespeare, taking sides the Catholic-Protestant divide entailed obvious long-term risks.


Among those executed was the brother of one Shakespeare's teachers, and also one of the students from the Stratford Guild school. Another of Shakespeare's teachers went on to become head of the English College in Rome.

Intriguing.

[OldAndronicus]

Thank you for your "original" research, which you have obviously copied from the bottom of pg. 54 of The Pelican Shakespeare's Hamlet.