DARK LADY PLAYERS WORKING PAPER (2009) NUMBER 3

THE REAL MEANING OF HAMLET:

WHAT WE CAN LEARN FROM HAMLET’S MILL

By looking at how the astronomical

allegory inter-works with the
religious allegory in the play we can
comprehend the author’s real
meanings. For instance in the Virgin
Mary allegory in the play Ophelia is in
her closet when suddenly Hamlet
appears. She is frightened, and
Hamlet continually looks at her, his
eyes “bended their LIGHT” on her.
Later there is a reference to the sun
god kissing carrion--which was how
maggots magically appeared from nowhere--which some theologians
used as an allegory for how Mary conceived Christ. Polonius is told not to
let her too much in the sun, for she may conceive. Knowing that Hamlet is
the sun god Helios, the lights from his eyes are like the sun beams of
light that in Renaissance art were used to depict the conception of the
Virgin Mary. In other words the astronomical allegory confirms that this is
a revolutionary parody of Ophelia as the Virgin Mary.

THE ASTRONOMICAL BACKGROUND

Every 2,200 years the polar axis of the Earth moves to point at another
sign of the zodiac, rotating through all of them in an Aeon or great year.
This is technically known as the ‘precession of the equinoxes’, and in
ancient times the movement from one zodiacal age to another was
thought of great significance. Sometime in the first century the zodiacal
age of Aries the Lamb finished, and the new zodiacal sign was that of
Pisces, which has now moved to the new Age of Aquarius that we are
entering. In mythology in many different nations this gave rise to myths
of a giant who uprooted and replanted a doorpost, or who had a great set
of millstones spinning around an axle. See for instance the chapters on
Amlodhi http://phoenixandturtle.net/excerptmill/santillana.htm
http://phoenixandturtle.net/excerptmill/santillana4.htm#Ch6
in Hamlet’s Mill which trace dozens of these myths.

AMLODHI AMLETH HAMLET

The mythical Amlodhi (meaning simpleton) was used by Saxo in the 12th
century in his History of the Danes (1514) to write his account of Amleth.
Thus Amleth’s reference to how the sand on the seashore is flour/meal
and was ground up by the sea comes from a 9th century reference to the
sea-maidens grinding Amlodhi’s mill. Shakespeare scholars see this
story of Amleth as a major source of Shakespeare’s Hamlet (see for
instance pgs.85 to 89 of the Jenkins Arden edition). What scholars have
not appreciated is that Shakespeare’s Hamlet, like Amlodhi is a
cosmological character, who is also trying to uproot the polar axis and
shift the world into a new age of the Zodiac.

In his book Hamlet’s Universe, astronomer Peter Usher comes the

nearest to identifying the astronomical allegory in the play. He rightly
identifies Ophelia as the MOON (she is Op-helia, or opposite to the sun,
is referred to as a star, is supposedly chaste like Diana the moon
goddess, and is a moist star because the moon governs the tides).
Named after the geo-centric astronomer Claudius Ptolemy, Claudius
represents the EARTH. He is surrounded by 10,000 fixed stars which he
thinks circle around him “a massy wheel Fixed on the summit of the
highest mount” which has “huge spokes” to which are adjoined “ten
thousand lesser things”. Hamlet who is too much in the sun, and moves
in a way that is retrograde (an astronomical term), and who is the child of
a man he equates with Hyperion, is thus Helios, the SUN god.
Guilderstern is a GOLDEN STAR. So at one level the astronomy in the
play represents the overthrow of geo-centric models of the universe and
the new helio-centric models. The supernova that is seen right at the
beginning of the play is the one noticed by astronomer Tycho Brahe
which could not be explained in terms of the seven crystal spheres of the
heavens, and shattered the old geo-centric model.

But there is more. We are told that in an angry parle (quarrel) on the ice
Hamlet senior smote the “sledded Polacks” (1,i.66) (Q1), otherwise
described as the "sleaded pollax," (Q2) and in the Folio the "sledded
Pollax”. The phrase is actually referring to the POLAR AXIS that runs
through the planet from one icy Pole to another. The reason the axis is
“sleaded” or weighted down as if with lead, is that it is carrying the
weight of the whole earth.

Later, the young Hamlet will kill the man who in the first Quarto was
called Corambis, two hearted-- and thus a satire on Lord Burghley’s
family motto. Burghley was addressed by Petrus Bizzarus as controlling
the ‘Polus’ the axis of the world. (It was a common conceit at Court,
Essex describes the windows of the Queen's bedroom as the polar axis
around which his entire world revolved). So Hamlet is allegorically
striking down the polar axis around which the Elizabethan world
revolved, in order to bring the country into a new age.

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