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Title:
More nuns and nunneries and Hamlet's speech to Ophelia
Author(s):
Richard C. Levin
Source:
Notes and Queries. 41.1 (Mar. 1994): p41. From Literature Resource Center.
Document Type:
Article
Copyright :
COPYRIGHT 1994 Oxford University Press
http://nq.oxfordjournals.org.ezproxy.lib.usf.edu/
Full Text:
R. V. HOLDSWORTH's recent note (N&Q, ccxxxviii (1993), 192-3) adds a number of examples to those that D. S. Bland and I
presented some time ago (N&Q, ccx (1965), 332; ccxiii (1968), 248-9) to prove that in Elizabethan and Jacobean slang ~nun' could
refer to a whore and ~nunnery' to a whorehouse. I have also come across some more evidence. The earliest use of ~nun' in this
sense that I found, which antedates the first OED entry by 191 years, is in Stephen Gosson's The School of Abuse (1579), where
we hear of prostitutes who live ~like Venus Nunnes in a Cloyster at Nuington, Ratliff, Islington, Hogsdon or some such place'
([C3.sup.r]). In ~An Execration upon Vulcan' (1623) Ben Jonson refers to Kate Arden, a well-known prostitute (whom he also
mentions in Epigram 133.118), as ~the Nun' (Underwood 43.148) -- three of the manuscript versions have ~Venus nun'.(1) And in
Jasper Mayne's The City Match (1637-8), IV.vii, Dorcas speaks of ~Nuns' and ~Vestalls' in this sense ([N2.sup.r]).
Holdsworth is certainly correct, however, in concluding that the evidence proving that this meaning of ~nun' and ~nunnery' was
available at the time does not prove that it is employed in Hamlet's speeches telling Ophelia to ~Get thee to a nunnery' (III.i.120,
129, 136, 139, 149). That can only be determined by the context, which makes it clear that he is advising her to avoid any contact
with men, especially sexual contact, so it would be very appropriate to urge her to enter a convent but wholly inappropriate to
urge her to enter a brothel. That, it seems to me, is the basic case against interpreting ~nunnery' in the bawdy sense in this
passage, and it cannot be affected by the discovery of more contemporary examples of the use of the word (or of ~nun') in this
sense, no matter how many of them turn up.
It is possible, however, that external evidence could provide indirect support for my argument. The most relevant such evidence I
know of is in the opening scene of The Witch of Edmonton (1621) by Dekker, Ford, and Rowley, where we seem to have a
borrowing from Hamlet. Sir Arthur Clarington has married off his mistress, Winnifride, to Frank Thorney and tells her that he
expects to continue their liaison. She indignantly refuses to violate ~A Temple hallowed to the purity / Of holy Marriage', and he
replies
Get you to your Nunnery,
There freeze in your old Cloyster. This is fine.
(I.i.207-10)(2)
Although commentaries on this episode have noted the connection to Hamlet's speech,(3) I have not seen any commentaries on
Hamlet's speech that note this episode. It does not prove what his meaning is, but it does show that in a context that is even more
explicitly sexual than the one in Hamlet, the command to go to a ~nunnery' can be used in a way that could not possibly refer to a
brothel and must refer (metaphorically, of course) to a convent.
There is more corroborating evidence in Der Bestrafte Brudermord, oder Prinz Hamlet aus Danemarck, II.iv, where Hamlet's
command to Ophelia becomes
gehe nur fort nach dem Kloster, aber nicht nach einem
Kloster, wo zwey Paar Pantoffeln vor dem Bette stehen.(4) This again does not prove anything about Shakespeare's Hamlet,
whose relationship to the German play is uncertain, but it proves that someone then was aware of the two possible meanings of
~nunnery' or ~cloister' (apparently in German as well as English) and wanted to be sure that the audience got the right one. (1) Ben
Jonson, ed. C. H. Herford and Percy and Evelyn Simpson, 11 vols (Oxford, 1925-52), viii.209. Their commentary (xi.80) states that
~Venus nun' in the manuscript versions ~is a comic adaptation' of Marlowe's Hero and Leander (1598), i.45-6, where the phrase is
applied to Hero, but the passage in Gosson (which they also cite) suggests that it was in common use. Marlowe of course is not
calling Hero a prostitute. (2) The Dramatic Works of Thomas Dekker, ed. Fredson Bowers, 4 vols (Cambridge, 1953-61), iii.497. (3)
See H.J. Oliver, The Problem of John Ford (Melbourne, 1955), 27. The passage is not included in The Shakspere Allusion-Book. (4)
Die Schauspiele der englischen Komodianten, ed. Wilhelm Creizenach (Berlin, [1889]), 161. ~Get you to a cloister, but not to a
cloister where two pairs of stippers stand before each bed.'
Abstract:
Hamlet, in William Shakespeare's 'Hamlet' does not intend Ophelia to enter a brothel when he tells her to enter a nunnery. The
many instances which prove that nun and nunnery could mean whore and whorehouse, in Elizabethan English, do not change the
context of Hamlet's speech. The context of the Hamlet-Ophelia conversation makes clear that Hamlet intends Ophelia to avoid all
contact with men. A similar use of 'nunnery' to refer to its original meaning, in 'The Witch of Edmonton,' serves as external
evidence. The German version of the Hamlet story shows that nunnery is the intended meaning.
Source Citation (MLA 7th Edition)
Levin, Richard C. "More nuns and nunneries and Hamlet's speech to Ophelia." Notes and Queries 41.1 (1994): 41+. Literature
Resource Center. Web. 12 Feb. 2014.
Document URL
http://go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?
id=GALE%7CA15103309&v=2.1&u=tamp44898&it=r&p=LitRC&sw=w&asid=a9d45c8953c399b58050efd5d8a738ff
Gale Document Number: GALE|A15103309