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COPYRIGHT 1994 University of Illinois Press
The opening lines of the final act of Hamlet confront us, in emblematic fashion, with two gravediggers preparing for the funeral of Ophelia and discussing her death. "Is she to be buried in Christian burial when she willfully seeks her own salvation?" asks the one; to which the other replies, "I tell thee she is, therefore make her grave straight. The crowner [coroner] hath sate on her, and finds it Christian burial." And yet, says the one, "she drown'd herself wittingly."(1) The question is left tantalizingly unresolved, but the gravediggers have given play to fundamental matters of interest. I want to focus especially on the phrase "willfully seeks her own salvation," for it would reverberate at once in a soteriological age. Can the creature seek her own salvation (willfully), or must she rely exclusively upon God's inscrutable, unpredictable, and certainly undeserved grace? In what sense has the "crowner" judged Ophelia (if she is in fact a suicide) worthy of Christian burial? In a play notable for the multiple perspectives it continually casts on the hero, we might ask the same of Hamlet: in what sense may he seek his own salvation? Hamlet is continually bemused by the relation of his individual being to larger purposes of the divine. The final scene, in particular, finds Hamlet pondering the mystery of this relationship: is there a providential determining force within which human freedom plays its part? If so, what is the nature of this providence," and what is its relation to the individual will?
Questions about Hamlet's understanding of the divine have preoccupied critics of the play at least since Bradley, particularly as they have contemplated Hamlet's famed apothegms in the final scene: "there's a divinity that shapes our ends" (V.ii.10), "there is special providence in the fall of a sparrow" (V.ii.219-20), "the readiness is all" (V.ii.222).(2) In the middle years of this century, it was often asked whether Hamlet is a Christian or a Stoic, whether, that is, he reposes his trust in the divine or fatalistically resigns himself to an impending doom.(3) The standard critical tactic was to concentrate on Hamlet's musings about the supernatural late in the play and to reach a conclusion bout his religious or philosophical partisanship based upon how closely those musings might be aligned with one or another of the currents swirling through Renaissance and Reformation culture. Over the last fifteen years, the desire to situate Hamlet securely in a theological camp has diminished, if not disappeared;(4) perhaps as a result, other features of the ending of the play have received considerable salutary attention.(5) With the efflorescence of Protestant studies in recent years we might profitably take up again these vexed ruminations - not, I hasten to note, with the intention of determining Hamlet's theological alliance, but rather with the aim of clarifying some of the play's difficult religious questions.(6) To decide Hamlet's understanding of the divine may be quixotic, but it will be useful to elaborate the play's pervasive attentions to the nature of the will and thereby achieve a clearer perspective on the last act. Hamlet's achieved definitions of the role of providence in human life cannot be isolated merely within the final act; they belong rather to a filigreed repertoire of possibilities throughout the play about freedom of the will. That repertoire ought not, in turn, to be divorced from contemporary Protestant writings about human freedom, its corruptions and potentialities, for that discourse is inscribed upon the text. After exploring how Reformation controversies about the nature of the will find expression in the play, this essay will suggest how, in the last act, Hamlet transcends Reformation discourse even while incorporating their understandings of human freedom.
The gravedigger's question about the relation of Ophelia's will to her salvation points bluntly to the paramount crux of Reformation controversy. From Paul's epistles and the writings of Augustine, Protestant writers fashion a view of sinful human nature against which the drama of salvation is enacted. The fallen creature suffers from an inherent and inherited depravity that leaves salvation altogether out of the reach of natural ability. As Luther states the matter in an early translation, Adam's fall means that human beings are "borne in synne, lyue and dye, and must be condemned to euerlastynge death: If not Jesus Christe were come to succour us."(7) On this point Protestant writers across the spectrum agree. But the position of Calvinist writers is of especial interest because by the late sixteenth century the theology of the English Church is professedly Calvinist. Recent scholarship has made a strong case for the dominance of the great Genevan in English Reformation thought; G. R. Elton has pointed out that "By 1538 at the latest, however, a new Continental influence had replaced the charms of Wittenberg" and from thenceforward Calvin assumed the role of mentor to English Protestants.(8) This influence is particularly noteworthy for the ways that Calvin emphasizes and enhances the Lutheran conception of human insufficiency: "Yet of such peruersenesse of nature as [man] is, hee cannot but be moued and driuen to euill."(9) Both Calvin and his English followers find venerable precedent for this view: "Man . . . is subject to necessitie of sinning. . . . Augustine ech where speaketh of it" (sig. [N6.sup.v]). This theological determinism is intended to point to the utter uselessness of good works in achieving salvation, a futility that pertains closely to the role of the will: Edwin Sandys can therefore maintain that because corruption is bredde and setled within our bones," "our will is in such thraldome and slauerie vnto sinne, that it cannot like of any thing spirituall and heauenly."(10) The tenth of the Thirty Nine Articles of Religion echoes the point that human nature, unaided by grace, is incapable of redemption: "The condition of man after the fall of Adam is such, that he can not turne and prepare hymselfe by his owne naturall strength and good workes, to fayth and calling vpon God: Wherefore we haue no power to do good workes pleasaunt and acceptable to God, without the grace of God by Christe preuentyng us, that we may haue a good wyll, and workyng with vs, when we haue that good wyll."(11) Salvation, in short, is attributable solely to God, for we cannot earn it.
But Calvin and his English followers go further than this statement would indicate. Not only is salvation unavailable to good works, to human effort; sinful human beings can do no good at all. Calvin's belief in the "unvarying corruption of our nature" extends to all human action: "the soul being drowned in this gulfe of destruction [i.e., the body], is not onely troubled with vices, but also altogether voide of all goodnesse" (sig. [N4.sup.r]). In sketching this view of human nature Calvin's focus is the will: "the bondage of sin" by which the will is held bound "cannot once moue it selfe to goodnesse . . . libertie is by necessitie drawe or led into euil" (sig. [N5.sup.r]). Calvin's deterministic view of the depraved will is echoed by his many followers among English Protestants. Archbishop Jewel's remarks are typical: "But as touching the freedome of will, and power of ourselues, wee say with S. Augustine . . . Man misusing his free will, spilt both himselfe, and his will," with the result that human nature is "wounded, it is mangled, it is troubled, it is lost." Hence "[f]ree will once made thrall, auaileth now nothing but to sin."(12) The followers of Calvin, then, impeach all human activity. As Calvin's chief English representative, William Perkins, puts it: "originall sinne is nothing els, but a disorder or euill disposition in all the faculties and inclinations of man."(13)
Against the intransigence and determinism of the Calvinist...
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