‘What is’t to leave betimes?’ Proverbs and Logic in Hamlet

Summary

When he created Denmark’s corrupt court, Shakespeare played fast and loose with common sixteenth-century adages which then formed the great bulk of moral philosophy. At the same time he skillfully mishandled the rules of logic then commonly used to prove the dicta of proverbial wisdom. Shakespeare did so, I think, in the confidence that his audience which was taught from childhood to speak in proverbs and act on precepts would recognize his distortions and judge accordingly. Erasmus’s Adagia, of course, was the great source for Renaissance collections of proverbs. It was thus also the principal textbook of moral philosophy, which William Baldwin defined as ‘the knowledge of precepts of al honest maners . . . necessary for the comely gouernaunce of mans lyfe’. Furthermore, said Baldwin, ‘it is the duetye of . . . Logike, to make reasons to proue and improue . . . Ethike, which is moral Philosophye’ (f. 2). In Hamlet, Shakespeare sometimes manipulated the proverbs of moral Philosophye’ (fo. 2). In Hamlet, Shakespeare cipate discoveries. More often, however, Shakespeare made the characters clustered about Claudius and Claudius himself define their being and their actions in terms of proverbs which are false either because they are somehow garbled or because they reflect moral values which clearly no longer obtain in Elsinore.