which might appear between a superbly cultured mind and immaturity of years; and, therefore, near the close of the drama, he adroitly reveals by the mouth of the grave-digger that the Prince has attained the full maturity of thirty years.

CHAPTER VII

Hamlet's Right to the Crown

Prince Hamlet was sole heir to the crown of Denmark, and in the natural order of events, would, at the death of his father, have ascended the throne. In this he was thwarted by the ambition of his uncle. Having acquired the crown through crime and intrigue, Claudius was an interloper, and may be justly considered a usurper. Against this reasonable view several critics take exception. Professor Werder affirms:

"The critics are pleased to assume that Hamlet was the legitimate heir to the throne, his right to which has been wrested from him by a usurper. But where does it stand so written? It is a pure fiction. Hamlet himself never breathes a syllable of complaint."

This latter assertion is refuted by evidence intrinsic to the play itself; and the former is negatived by showing that Hamlet's right to the crown was real and not fictitious. It is evident from the text that the Prince, contrary to the assertion of Professor Werder, expected to succeed his father on the throne. To his trusted friend, Horatio, Hamlet reveals his disappointed hopes:

"He that hath killed my king, and stained my mother
Popped in between the election and my hopes."

Again, in the scene where Hamlet strives to arouse his mother to a sense of shame at her incestuous union, he calls the usurper a "cutpurse," or thief; and so he was, because, during the interregnum he had stolen away the crown:

"A cutpurse of the empire and the rule,

That from a shelf the precious diadem stole,
And put it in his pocket."

His disappointed hopes are clearly revealed in Shakespeare's first acting copy of the play:

"What would he do had he my loss?

His father murdered, a crown bereft him,

He would turn all his tears to drops of blood," etc.

In agreement with Professor Werder is Hudson, who maintains his position by a specious argument:

queen.

"Whatever there is of hereditary right, belongs to the She was the only child of the former king; and Hamlet's father was brought within the circle of eligibility by his marriage with her. Of course when her first husband died, and she married a second, the second became eligible just as the first had done. So that Claudius, the present king, holds the crown by the same legal title and tenure as Hamlet's father had held it."

The argumentation offers indeed at first sight an apparently satisfactory proof, but a careful examination discloses the hypothesis to be without foundation. Hamlet, the only child of the reigning house, was the recognized heir apparent, and in an absolute monarchy like the Denmark of his day, became ipso facto king on the death of his father. But ambition for the crown had, even before the elder Hamlet's death, impelled Claudius to resort to a deep-laid plot in which after the seduction of the Queen and the murder of her husband, he would marry her, and claim the throne He was favored by every circumstance; as royal consort. he had already gained the Queen with her powerful influence, and in Hamlet's continued absence and ignorance of his purpose, he found it easy to win over the chief men of the nation by intrigue and promises. The plot proved successful. When Hamlet returned for his father's funeral, he was amazed to find his uncle crowned as royal consort by reason of his marriage with the Queen. But was the plea of Claudius valid? Was his espousal of the Queen lawful, or was it

only putative and criminal? If unlawful, he was then the de facto, and Hamlet the de jure King.

The question therefore turns upon the validity or nullity of the marriage. The point is important; it affects the whole action of the drama, the relationship of the principal characters, and gives force to the term, "adulterous" and "incestuous," with which Hamlet reproaches his mother, as well as to the shame which he feels at her disgrace. Though the Prince's view is for Catholic readers most decisive, it seems not so clear to others whose judgment is influenced by loose notions concerning matrimony, notions which, first introduced into Christendom with the birth of the "Reformation," have in the course of time become more and more lax.

The legality of the marriage, it is clear, must be judged according to the laws which prevailed in the eleventh as well as in the sixteenth century, and not by the modern notions of the twentieth. In the time of Shakespeare's Hamlet, all Europe was Catholic, or Jewish, or infidel, and the Catholic code of morals was supreme in public and private life. Then a marriage was valid only when contracted according to the canons which governed the social and religious life of the Denmark of those times; hence, Hamlet, Claudius, Gertrude, and the Ghost, all considered the marriage in question to be incestuous as the drama shows, and the audiences of Shakespeare were of the same belief. Matrimony, it is true, was reduced to a mere contract by the "Reformers" of the sixteenth century, but in the eleventh it was, as it still is in the Catholic world, a contract which the "New Lawgiver" raised to the dignity and sanctity of a sacrament, and as such it is subject to the spiritual authority of His Church. In consequence, she has always regulated the administration of this sacrament, and safeguarded it by laws against desecration. These laws are designed to prevent crime, to protect married people in their rights, to guard

the sanctity of the sacrament, to maintain public and private morality, and so promote the common good.

Of these laws, known as canonical impediments, some are called diriment, because by their annulling force they make null and void any marriage which the parties concerned may attempt. Their fundamental idea is contained in the Levitican law, and in ancient canonical texts. Some arise from the Divine law, and others, while suggested by the natural: and Divine law, are ecclesiastical enactments. Three of these impediments directly affected Claudius, and in fact any one of them sufficed to invalidate his attempted marriage with the Queen. The first was the law that prohibited one from marrying his deceased brother's wife without a dispensation.' It was a law which was rarely dispensed from by the spiritual court, and only for the gravest reasons; but ambition for the crown was not a sufficient cause to invalidate the law in the case of Claudius; since the crown prince was capable of ascending the throne, and besides there remained other impediments to the marriage.

If then it is evident from the drama that Claudius obtained no dispensation to legalize his marriage, did he, like the English Bluebeard, defy the moral law and fall under the ban of the spiritual authority recognized in the realm! Such a supposition is far from probable. The solution of the difficulty is rather found in the situation of Claudius and in his character. On the one hand, the Church which alone could act in the matter had in Denmark no representative with sufficient power to derogate from the law. It was still a missionary country under the jurisdiction of the metro1 The diriment impediment of marriage with a deceased brother's wife was in force through the whole Church from the earliest times. mentioned in several councils of the 6th and 7th centuries, e. g. the 1st It is expressly Council of Orleans (511); Auvergne (535); 3rd C. of Orleans (538); 3rd C. of Paris (557); 5th C. of Paris (614). The law was retained by the State Church of England until recently, when it was abolished by an act At the time several Anglican bishops protested against the innovation; but their objections were inconsistent and futile, since their official position as well as their religion were the creations of the same supreme power of Parliament.

of Parliament.