Hamlet, Royal Bastard

Luke, I am your father. – Darth Vader, The Empire Strikes Back

During my latest rereading of Hamlet, I was struck by a sudden thought: What if the reason for such a hasty marriage between Claudius and Gertrude was because they had already been having an affair together? And what if they had been having this affair on and off for thirty years? And what if, because of this 30-year long affair, it turned out that Hamlet was the son of Claudius?

It isn’t a completely mad idea. After all, it appears that Claudius and Gertrude do have genuine feelings of affection (if not love) for each other. They may have been secretly in love for years. Perhaps when Gertrude was young, she met the handsome princes of Denmark and both fell in love with her. While she prefered the younger Claudius, the elder prince, Hamlet Sr, was a better match, and she ended up marrying him, while secretly engaging in a discreet love affair with Claudius? And while Hamlet Sr was away on war campaigns in Norway, Gertrude and Claudius got it on together, and in the midst of this time, conceive the young prince Hamlet Jr?

To avoid scandal, Gertrude’s illegitimate son is proclaimed as Hamlet Sr’s son–or possibly Hamlet Sr isn’t even aware of the fact, being to caught up in the whole war with Norway thing. And thus Hamlet Jr grows up, unaware that his Uncle Claudius is really his father.

So, when Hamlet is 30 years old, Hamlet Sr dies. Hamlet Jr is distraught, but Claudius and Gertrude are quite happy. Claudius is very happy, but feels guilt for killing his brother, though he thinks he had plenty of reason, because Hamlet Sr was 1) running the country into the ground, 2) Hamlet Sr was a bit of a royal git, and most important, 3) Hamlet Sr was married to Gertrude and Claudius just couldn’t stand keeping his love for her a secret anymore. A patient man, Claudius is.

Then one night, Hamlet Jr meets up with the ghost of Hamlet Sr. Still under the delusion that Hamlet Sr is really his father, Hamlet Jr hangs on his every word and vows revenge on his Uncle Claudius, who is really his father. Obviously, this is a most pernicious ghost who uses the truth–that he was murdered by Claudius–to inspire Hamlet Jr to seek revenge upon a man who the ghost, being dead and presumably aware of Hamlet Jr’s true origins, knows is really Hamlet Jr’s father. The ghost, satisfied with setting Hamlet Jr up to commit unknowing patricide, leaves the prince.

When his parents discover that Hamlet Jr has apparently gone mad and has begun talking to skulls and calling their advisors fishmongers, Claudius and Gertrude are worried. Claudius becomes suspicious that Hamlet has discovered that he [Claudius] is Hamlet Jr’s real father until the hint about married couples not being couples for long informs Claudius that his bastard son wants to kill him.

Meanwhile, Gertrude, struck by widow-ly grief, martial joy, and offspring troubles, becomes increasingly worried and withdraws from the company of her new husband. She, knowing nothing of Hamlet Sr’s unnatural demise, is very worried that Hamlet Sr’s death and her marriage with Claudius has turned her son into a loony. She now wonders if she will ever get to tell him the truth about his birth, but fears that it will send him further into the abyss of madness. When he kills Polonius, Gertrude is convinced that she will never be able to tell him his true parentage. She’s left it too long anyway. Hamlet Jr is 30 years old, and informing him that he’s a bastard is not going to do much for his self-esteem right now. He might even finally give in and decide that the answer is “not to be” after all.

For a brief amount of time after sending Hamlet Jr to England, Claudius and Gertrude regain peace in Elsinore, and rule happily until they find out that Hamlet has hitched a ride with pirates and returned to Denmark. Claudius once again fears for his own safety, and decides that the only way not to be killed by his own son is to have someone else kill Hamlet first, since Hamlet never did arrive in England and get beheaded as Claudius had originally planned. As for the problem of an heir, Claudius is fairly certain that he and Gertrude can still have another kid, as Gertrude hasn’t started menopause yet, being only 45 and still having a good few years of fertility left.

At the sword fight with Laertes, Claudius is heartened to see Hamlet struck down by the poisoned blade, but heartbroken when Gertrude, unaware of her husband’s plan to kill his own son, drinks the poison cup. When Laertes is struck in his own turn by the poisoned sword, he rats out Claudius’s plan, at which point Hamlet gets up to kill the man he still thinks is his father.

This, of course, would be a good point for Claudius  to mention to Hamlet that he, in fact, is Hamlet’s father–perhaps doing so in a rather Darth Vader-ish manner (never mind the fact that Star Wars won’t be around for another few centuries–after all, the events of Star Wars did take place long ago in a galaxy far, far away). Claudius, however, is far too distraught at having caused the death of the woman he loves and is poisoned by his own son without ever getting to inform Hamlet that he has just committed patricide.

Thus dies the entire line of Denmark royalty, caught up in a web of incest and Oedipus-esque events in which the son unwittingly kills the father and has some mommy issues.

So what do you think? Does this stream of logic make any sense? Or am I just making up a very convoluted list of events in order to justify a random thought I had one evening? Let me know in the comments!