Was Hamlet Banned?
Many consider it among the best plays ever written, an iconic masterpiece that has stood the test of time for over four centuries:
Hamlet, Prince of Denmark.
And yet, did Shakespeare’s most celebrated work fail the test of government censors when it first appeared? Was Hamlet banned during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I?
The performance record
Hamlet was published in 1603, though no one knows exactly when Shakespeare wrote it. Only four pre-1603 references to the play have survived:
A preface written by Thomas Nashe to Robert Greene’s book of prose published in 1589, in which Nashe says of another writer: “[I]f you entreat him fair in a frosty morning, he will afford you whole Hamlets – I should say handfuls of tragical speeches;”
A record of a 1594 performance staged by Philip Henslowe at Newington Butts;
A 1596 book written by Thomas Lodge, which refers to a performance just outside London; and
The registration of Hamlet in the Stationer’s Register in 1602, which secured exclusive rights to print the play.
There’s also evidence that Gabriel Harvey mentioned Hamlet in notes written in a 1598 edition of Chaucer, but it’s not clear when Harvey wrote those notes and the edition has not survived.
So, during the 13 years after 1589—the earliest year of Hamlet’s known existence—the historical record mentions the play just four times.
The play is not even included in a list of twelve Shakespeare plays compiled by the clergyman Francis Mere and published in 1598. G.R. Hibbard concluded that “[Hamlet’s] absence from that list amounts to strong presumptive evidence that it had not been staged.”
Hibbard was referring to the first printed version of Hamlet that appeared in 1603. He’s among scholars that speculate there was an “Ur-Hamlet” written by someone other than Shakespeare, which was the play being referred to prior to 1602. (The prefix “Ur-” derives from a German word meaning “original”.)
Other scholars (including Harold Bloom) dismiss the “Ur-Hamlet” theory, maintaining that Shakespeare, and no one else, wrote the Hamlet referred to in 1589, 1594, and 1596.
One explanation for the sparse references to Hamlet before 1602 is that the play was performed often, but the performance records didn’t survive. That’s certainly possible, but for those who believe that only Shakespeare wrote Hamlet, it still begs the question why the Bard’s best-known play doesn’t appear on Francis Meres’ 1598 list.
And why did it take at least 14 years for Hamlet to appear in print, when at least eleven other Shakespeare plays ─ about a third of the canon ─ were published prior to 1603?
Corambis aka Polonious aka William Cecil
Another explanation for seeing Hamlet mentioned just three times prior to 1602 is that the Crown suppressed the play. It’s easy to understand why.
For 150 years, scholars have concluded that the character Polonious represents William Cecil, Lord Burghley, who was Lord Treasurer under Queen Elizabeth. A Machiavellian spymaster under Francis Walsingham, Burghley was the most powerful man in England during 40 years of Elizabeth’s rule.
In Hamlet, Polonious is a pompous, meddling, long-winded councilor to Claudius, the man who has poisoned Hamlet’s father to marry Hamlet’s mother and become King of Denmark. Hamlet murders Polonious as the latter spies on him, a turning point in the play.
In the first printed version of Hamlet published in 1603, the name for the king’s councilor was not Polonious, but Corambis, a name that resembles Burghley’s motto, “cor unum,” meaning “one heart” in Latin. “Corambis” translates as “two hearts,” meaning duplicity.
Other Polonious-Burghley links include the words of advice that Polonious gives his son in the play, which sound much like the moral precepts Burghley wrote for his own son.
It’s difficult to imagine the most powerful nobleman in the queen’s court standing back and allowing himself to be lampooned on the public stage. It’s doubtful, too, that Queen Elizabeth would have tolerated Hamlet, given the close association she had with Burghley. She spoon-fed him on his deathbed and went into deep mourning when he died in 1598.
Remember 1598?
That’s the year Francis Meres published his list of Shakespeare plays, and it would have been wise to exclude a play that mocked Burghley and, by association, Queen Elizabeth.
It would surprise no one if she abhorred being mirrored as Queen Gertrude. As Hamlet begins, Gertrude has recently married her husband’s poisoner, Claudius. Queen Elizabeth’s long-time consort was Robert Dudley, the Earl of Leicester, who was known as a notorious poisoner. Some scholars see Claudius as mirroring Leicester.
Prince Hamlet repeatedly accuses Gertrude (his mother) of incest by marrying his uncle, Claudius. The subject of incest had to be a sensitive one for Queen Elizabeth, whose mother, Anne Boleyn, was executed on charges of incest and adultery. Elizabeth herself, as a young teenager, was caught up in a sex scandal involving her stepfather.
How could Shakespeare get away with writing and staging Hamlet? The short answer is, maybe he didn’t.
Muzzling the Dogs
Freedom of expression was strictly limited in Elizabethan England. The Crown controlled the press, licensing everything that could be printed, and it could ban the performance of plays.
The Crown shut down The Isle of Dogs, a play written by Thomas Nashe and Ben Jonson. Though the play hasn’t survived, its subject matter was described as “lewd” and “scandalous.” It may have satirized Queen Elizabeth.
After her privy council heard about the play, it wasted no time shutting it down. It’s easy to see how Hamlet—a play mocking Elizabeth, Burghley, and Leicester—would meet a similar fate.
It could explain the spotty performance history of Hamlet and why Francis Meres left it off his list. The play may have quietly resurfaced in 1594 after its suppression in the late 1580’s. Ultimately, however, the Crown couldn’t keep Hamlet underground.
The Queen is Dead, Long Live Hamlet
Hamlet appeared in print only after Queen Elizabeth’s death. We know this because the title page of the 1603 quarto describes the play as having been “diverse times acted by his Highness servants in the City of London,” meaning the servants of the new king, James I.
By that time, neither the queen, Burghley, nor Leicester were around to protest.
Burghley’s son, Robert Cecil, however, was still living, and serving as James’s secretary. If Cecil couldn’t keep Hamlet banned, the name Corambis nonetheless was changed to Polonious, which is how the name appears in the 1604 version and subsequent editions.
That Hamlet was banned during Queen Elizabeth’s reign is only a theory. But it arguably explains the dearth of records about its performance, and its absence from Francis Meres’s list, equally as well as explanations based on an “Ur-Hamlet” and lost performance records.