What Does Hamlet’s Allusion Suggest.Shakespeare’s timeless play, Hamlet, is filled with allusions that offer profound insights into the characters and themes of the play. One of the most famous allusions in Hamlet occurs in Act 3, Scene 1, when Hamlet makes a reference to a passage from Virgil’s Aeneid. But what does this allusion suggest and how does it enhance our understanding of the play?Shakespeare crafts Hamlet’s character to reflect the religious ambiguity of his time. Hamlet lives in Denmark, a Protestant nation, yet many of his beliefs and moral struggles align more with Catholic doctrine.
What Does Hamlet’s Allusion Suggest.
, I will cover the most famous and significant allusions in the play and explain what each one suggests about Hamlet’s character, his state of mind, and the play’s overarching themes.
Here are the big ones:
1. The allusion to Hyperion, a Satyr, and Niobe (Act 1, Scene 2)
In his first soliloquy, Hamlet compares his dead father (Old Hamlet) to Hyperion (the Titan god of the sun) and his uncle Claudius to a Satyr (a lecherous, half-man half-goat creature). He also compares his mother Gertrude to Niobe (a queen who wept so much for her dead children that she turned to stone).
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What it suggests: This suggests Hamlet’s idealized grief and his profound disgust. He sees his father as literally god-like, radiant, and perfect, while Claudius is bestial, ugly, and depraved. By calling Gertrude Niobe, he suggests she is performing exaggerated grief, but unlike Niobe (who was turned to stone by her tears), Gertrude moved on too quickly. It suggests Hamlet is trapped in a black-and-white worldview where he is the only one who feels things properly.
2. The allusion to Hercules (Act 1, Scene 2)
When Claudius tells Hamlet to stop grieving, Hamlet mutters, “A little more than kin, and less than kind.” Claudius then calls Hamlet his “son,” and Hamlet replies bitterly that he is “too much i’ the sun.” He later says, “My uncle-father and aunt-mother are deceived,” and when asked how, he replies, “I am but mad north-north-west; when the wind is southerly I know a hawk from a handsaw.” But earlier, he compares himself unfavorably to Hercules.
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What it suggests: This allusion suggests Hamlet’s crippling sense of inadequacy. He feels he cannot live up to the heroic, action-oriented ideals of a classical demigod. While Hercules completed twelve impossible labors, Hamlet cannot even bring himself to complete one (avenging his father). It suggests his introspective, scholarly nature is at war with the violent, masculine role society expects him to play.
3. The allusion to Pyrrhus and Priam (Act 2, Scene 2)
Hamlet asks a player to recite a speech about Pyrrhus (the Greek son of Achilles) brutally killing the old King Priam of Troy during the Trojan War. Pyrrhus hesitates for a moment, his sword suspended in the air, before he brings it down in a bloody rage.
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What it suggests: This is a mirror to Hamlet’s own hesitation. Pyrrhus is an avenger just like Hamlet, but whereas Pyrrhus acts with savage, merciless fury, Hamlet gets stuck in “thought” (the sword suspended in the air). The allusion suggests Hamlet is self-aware about his own procrastination and is using the play to whip himself into action. It also suggests that revenge is inherently savage and unnatural.
4. The allusion to Jephthah (Act 2, Scene 2)
Hamlet calls Polonius a “Jephthah” (a Biblical judge from the Book of Judges who made a foolish vow to sacrifice the first living thing that came out of his house, which turned out to be his beloved daughter).
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What it suggests: This is a dark, satirical allusion suggesting that Polonius is using his daughter Ophelia as a sacrificial pawn to gain favor with Claudius. It suggests Hamlet sees Ophelia as a victim of her father’s political scheming, and it foreshadows her eventual destruction.
5. The allusion to Nero (Act 3, Scene 3)
When Hamlet catches Claudius praying, he decides not to kill him because he doesn’t want Claudius’s soul to go to heaven. He says, “I’ll take his life at a moment when he is drunk, asleep, or in his rage… so that his soul may be as damned and black as hell.” He references Nero, the Roman emperor who murdered his own mother.
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What it suggests: This suggests Hamlet’s descent into a dark, vengeful ruthlessness. He is not just concerned with justice; he wants Claudius’s eternal damnation. However, by comparing himself to Nero, he also reveals his deep inner conflict—he is terrified that by becoming an avenger, he is becoming a monster, just like the tyrannical figures of history.