Paper 2 (RA-Scholj). Draft 2. Word Count 764

Hodgkiss 1

Carrie Hodgkiss

English 201: Floren

Paper 2 (RA-ScholJ). Draft 2. Word count 764

12 March 2006

Mullaney, Steven. “Mourning and Misogyny: Hamlet, the Revenger’s Tragedy, and theFinal Progress of Elizabeth

I, 1600-1607.” Shakespeare Quarterly 45.2 (Summer 1994): 139-162. JSTOR. MiraCostaCollege Library,

Oceanside, CA. 25 February 2006. <

Author’s Credentials: Steven Mullaney, who received his Ph.D. in English and Comparative Literature from StanfordUniversityin 1982, is an Associate Professor and Director of Graduate Studies in the Department of English Language and Literatureat the University of Michigan. He teaches courses in Shakespeare, and his primary interests include Renaissance drama, early modern cultural and gender studies, and contemporary cultural and literary theory. Dr. Mullaney has written many articles and books, includingThe Place of the Stage: License, Play, and Power in Renaissance England (Chicago UP 1988 and Michigan UP, 1995). [Source: U.Mich. Faculty and Department Webpages, esp. <

Summary and Usefulness: In his article, Steven Mullaney writes about how attitudes toward Queen Elizabeth had an influence on the plays in the Elizabethan era, and vice-versa. He also writes of themisogyny in this period, shows its relationship to the rituals of mourning, and compares Gertrude to Queen Elizabeth. The two queens, one realand one fictional, both live in a patriarchal worldthat promulgates the “ideology of male supremacy and autonomy” (157). Mullaney discusses in detailthe misogynist roots of Hamlet’s seeming hatred ofhis mother and shows how for both mother and son, a queen mother’s sexual conduct is more troubling than the murder of a husband, a father, and/or a king. Mullaney’s briefer discussion of The Revenger’s Tragedy, as an even rawer display of misogyny and disgust for all women, concludes that in contrast, Hamlet sounds “like a proto-feminist” (159).

Relevant Passage and Explanation (1): Misogyny as Source of Gertrude’s Distress and Hamlet’s Outrage. Mullaney points out that a prevailing attitude of misogyny in the exchanges between Hamlet and his mother Gertrude shows that outrage at the murder of a kingseems secondary in importance to outrage at the behavior of a woman who asserts her vitality and sexuality, especially an older woman. By the time Hamlet was being presented onstage in London (as early as 1598), the references to sexuality in an older queen would be easily seen as a reference to “the aging yet erotic body of the queen” (149)—that is, Queen Elizabeth herself. As Mullaney explains,

Regicide is. . . displaced from [Hamlet’s] and our attention by the eroticized and aging figure of the queen. Mourning for a dead king, even revenge, isdisplaced or at least overlaid and complicated by misogyny toward a queen who is too vital,whose sexuality transgresses both her age and her brief tenure as widow. (149)

It is true that Gertrude’s time as a widow was short lived because she re-married so quickly after her husband, King Hamlet,died. Hamlet’s disgust at his mother’s behavior can be explained, says Mullaney, by the misogynist attitudes so common in Renaissance England(“misogyny” means hatred (and/or fear) of women). Hamlet and others in the court are misogynists. Since a misogynist does not respect women rulers and thinks a man should be there atall times, Gertrude’s hasty marriage would be more troubling than regicide of a king.

Relevant Passageand Explanation (2): Gertrude’s Sexuality, Source of Hamlet’s Conflict. In analyzing Hamlet’s judgments about his mother’s hasty remarriage, Mullaney points to references like “unweeded garden / That grows to seed” and “Frailty, thy name is woman” as clarifying the conflict that is so difficult for Hamlet to resolve:

Grief over his father’s is overlaid and supplanted by obsessive disgust overwhat has failed to die, here figured as the unweeded garden of Gertrude’s sexualappetite, the incestuous “dexterity” of the queen (1.157) which indeed occupiesthe core of Hamlet’s being and “denotes him truly” as a generalized sign of thebestial inconsistency of all womankind. (150)

Here Mullaney makes clear that it is Gertrude’s sexuality that is most disturbing to Hamlet. Like an “unweeded garden,” she is acting out of the controlled boundaries circumscribed by the misogynist gardener. In analyzing Hamlet’s obsession with his mother’s quick re-marriage to his uncle, Mullaney further notes that in 1.5.82-3, “the vengeful charge of the Ghost itself focuses not on the past crime of regicide but on the ongoing sexual transgression”(150). So the misogynist attitude is not confined to the young prince; it is a keynote of his father’s ghostly reprimand, and likely the worldview of all Denmark in this play. No wonder Hamlet is in such a state of despondency; he has not only lost his father, but he has also lost his idea of mother as virgin queen. The compounding of misery threatens to take him into a full-throated melancholy.