Dear Friends,
Step into my study! Shall I fill you a pipe? Pour you a dram? Excellent.
Remember a couple of weeks ago I told you about my new copy of Shakespeare’s First Folio? I have been reading it regularly since I obtained it. I try to take the time to read a scene a day. It is great way to stretch my brain muscles because reading it is twice as hard as it should be. Shakespeare is hard enough by himself; but when you add in the Elizabethan textual oddities where “S’s” are “F’s” and “U’s” are “V’s” and so forth, it is like having to do double translations in your head.
Anyway, I am reading Hamlet, and came across the really clever passage above.
Several things of note. First off, Polonius is a ridiculous and pompous fool. He is what you would call a “know it all.” Here he is showing off to Hamlet how much he knows about the theater. These actors, he says, can do it all! Tragedy! Comedy! History! Pastoral! Pastoral-Comical! Historical-Pastoral! Tragical-Historical! Tragical-Comical-Historical-Pastoral! Single scenes! Unlimited Poems! Seneca! Plantus! I’m sure the patrons of The Globe Theater roared with laughter.
Hamlet, who is at this point pretending to be insane, replies with this very deep cut from the Bible: “O Jephthah, Judge of Israel, what a Treasure hads’t thou?” (Don’t you love that “O Iephta, Iudge of Iſrael”?)
Polonius replies: What a Treasure had he, my Lord?
Hamlet: Why one fair Daughter, and no more, the which he loved passing well.
Polonius: Still on my daughter.
Hamlet: Am I not i’the’right, old Jephthah?
Polonius: If you call me Jephthah my Lord, I have a daughter that I love passing well.
I do not know how one can read Shakespeare without a very good knowledge of the Bible. Jephthah was, of course, one of the Judges of Israel (Judges 11). His was a tragic story. He had one daughter, the apple of his eye. Once, while out at war, Jephthah made a vow to the Lord that if he was victorious he would sacrifice as a burnt offering the first thing to come to the door when he arrived home (silly vow, I know). Well, of course, Jephthah’s daughter is the one who greeted him at the door. Here is where things get very, very interesting.
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