a proactive stance, Floyd insisted, and turn private sorrow into prayer for the end of ignorance and impiety, as well as a public defense of the Catholic cause.
Hamlet dramatizes the later message of Floyd and the Catholic’s moral struggle of conscience: whether to “act” in the wake of an “accident,” “mischance,” “mischief,” or “calamity,” terms used by both Floyd and Shakespeare. Nearly every death in Hamlet occurs by “accident” at the hands of Hamlet: Polonius is accidentally killed by Hamlet, and Gertrude accidentally drinks from the cup of poison, for example. In his tract, Floyd expands the definition of accident beyond what had occurred at Blackfriars and includes Catholic executions under the prior reign of Queen Elizabeth—“the slain of our country”—in the category of “accident.”
Floyd’s Word of Comfort of 1623 and Southwell’s Epistle of Comfort written shortly after his arrival in 1586, both composed as consolatory compositions to co-religionists with the message of hope in divine providence, reflect the directives of the mission prefect Robert Persons. In a letter to the General of the Society of Jesus, Claudio Acquaviva, written in 1584 after the capture of the lay brother Ralph Emerson, Persons writes: “The news of this happening has distressed us not a little; yet when we consider that this is the purpose of this mission of ours or at least an accident (italics added) obviously incidental to it, we console one another with that hope of things eternal which the kindness of God bestows on us.” Persons goes on to express his feelings of guilt in being denied the privilege of martyrdom, allegedly because of his “sins.” “Yet even in this matter, I have something to console me or to support me, when I consider the providence (italics added) of God.”2We may begin to see Hamlet as part of Jesuit efforts in regard to consolation and instruction to lay Catholics.
Hamlet’s excessive grief forms the backdrop for the central Jesuit message: prolonged grief and sorrow weaken the individual Catholic cause, giving Protestants a tactical advantage. As a reflection of this struggle, Hamlet asks whether “to be or not to be.” Should he persevere in “patient merit” and suffer “outrageous fortune” in the form of “the oppressor’s wrong” and “the proud man’s contumely” (i.e., persecution and Calvinist blame of Catholic victims for their own demise) or should he “take up arms against a sea of troubles” by taking matters into his own hands. The play equates this latter course of action with suicide and sleeping; Robert Persons in Reasons of Refusal, essentially a call to lapsed English Catholics to awaken from the “sleep” of inconstancy, equated conformity to Anglicanism with the sin of the betrayal of Christ, which he believed was essentially the sin of weakness and which he equated metaphorically with sleep. “Many of oure bad Catholiques in Ingland, may see in some parte, the miserable daungerous case wherein they stande, by sleeping so careless as they doe, in this sinne,” Persons writes of those who attended services of the national church.3
Hamlet imagines such a course of action as the play’s image of “the undiscovered country” of death, an image that “puzzles the will” and staves off action. While most critics view Hamlet’s famous soliloquy as a choice between bearing life’s ills and suicide, the subtlety of the passage’s language indicates that a course of action which does not include trusting in God presents to the Catholic the uncertainty of what lies ahead in the afterlife.
Essentially, Hamlet’s famous “to be or not to be” soliloquy juxtaposes (1) persevering and remaining patient in a spirit of trust in the providence of God, a course of action that may mean martyrdom on earth but salvation of the soul for all eternity, and (2) turning away from faith in God by attempting to end persecution through either rash action or attendance of Anglican services, courses of action that will weaken the Catholic cause and invite more persecution. The Jesuit urgings to lay Catholics to restrain their “passions” in silent trust of God’s providence are perfectly encapsulated in the words of Hamlet: “Give me that man/That is not passion’s slave, and I will wear him/In my heart’s core, ay in my heart of heart” (3.2.73-75).
On the other hand, Laertes, upon discovering his father’s death, acts in a manner that runs counter to the Jesuit message. He discards his vows of allegiance, says he does not care what happens to him in the next world, and promises to take revenge:
How came he dead? I’ll not be juggled with.
To hell, allegiance! Vows, to the blackest devil!
Conscience and grace, to the profoundest pit!
I dare damnation. To this point I stand
That both the worlds I give to negligence.
Let come what comes, only I’ll be revenged
Most thoroughly for my father. (4.5.130-136)
In an important connection to Hamlet, Floyd, in a separate tract refuting various anti-Jesuit arguments by the Puritan preacher William Crashaw, cited St. Augustine’s belief in 38 as the number of “weakness and infirmity” in Christian number symbolism. “The number 38, which number doth signify weaknesse & infirmity, as St. Augustine noteth,” Floyd writes in The Overthrow of the Protestants Pulpit-Babels, noting that Augustine speaks of 38 in connection with the sick man in John 5 who lacks the two commandments to make the perfect number of 40. The Second Quarto of Hamlet, published in 1604, a time when Floyd likely was in England, comprises 3,800 lines. (The version of Hamlet published in 1623 in the First Folio contains an additional 80 lines not found in the Second Quarto. Additionally, the First Folio omits 230 lines of the Second Quarto’s 3,800 lines, making the 1623 version a total of 3,650 lines. Thus, the First Folio’s Hamlet is 150 lines shorter than that of the Second Quarto.)
The number 38 is incorporated into Southwell’s collection of 52 lyrical poems as well: the first 14 poems of the sequence are dedicated to the lives of Mary and Christ, while 38 poems remain. This silent numerical message juxtaposes the missionaries of the Society of Jesus (represented by “Jesus Maria,” as the English Jesuits referred to their mission in the wake of Campion’s execution) and the opposite stance of weakness, subtly setting up a choice and mirroring the Election for Christ in the Spiritual Exercises.
In A Word of Comfort, Floyd urged Catholic mourners to subordinate excessive grief and sorrow to a public defense of the Catholic cause. Engaging in excessive grief and sorrow strengthens the Protestant enemy and creates vulnerability, he wrote. Such grieving is counterproductive, putting the Catholic at the mercy and power of his adversaries and giving enemies a tactical advantage in their rhetorical wars against Catholic doctrine. He urged a type of action that can almost be seen—from the modern viewpoint—as a type of inaction: grief and sorrow should be limited to seven days, as stipulated by scripture, and subsequently redirected into prayer against ignorance and impiety to ensure their limitation and destruction as well. Shakespeare refers to these seven days of mourning in Hamlet, when an angry Laertes acknowledges his grief over Hamlet’s treatment of Ophelia and calls for salty tears to burn his eyes: “Tears seven times salt/Burn out the sense and virtue [power] of mine eye!” (4.5.154-155). During the reign of Queen Elizabeth, the leaders of the Jesuit mission consistently urged an end to tears in favor of Catholic resistance to the Crown in the form of perseverance, patience, and non-attendance of Anglican services.
Hamlet is a character who engages in prolonged and excessive grief—termed “madness” in the play—supposedly over the murder of his father but more so in regard to the adultery of his mother. He is full of purpose and resolves to seek revenge against his uncle Claudius for murder and adulterous marriage. But Hamlet consistently fails to act. When he does finally act, he places himself at the mercy of his enemy Claudius and is killed. The play dramatizes the Jesuit message that excessive mourning leads to more calamity.
In 1623, Floyd essentially was attempting to dispel the Protestant
