{"id":15434,"date":"2016-12-14T11:27:42","date_gmt":"2016-12-14T16:27:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.kith.org\/journals\/vardibidian\/2016\/12\/14\/15434.html"},"modified":"2024-01-19T11:36:54","modified_gmt":"2024-01-19T16:36:54","slug":"polonius-production-diary-jeph","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/2016\/12\/14\/polonius-production-diary-jeph\/","title":{"rendered":"Polonius Production Diary: Jephthah!"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

A thing that came up last night as we were working II,ii: Does Polonius know the Jephthah story? Here are the lines in question, which are in Hamlet’s mad scene:\n

HAMLET:      O Jephthah, judge of Israel, what a treasure hadst thou!
\nPOLONIUS     What a treasure had he, my lord?
\nHAMLET     Why, One fair daughter, and no more, The which he lov\u00e8d passing well.
\nPOLONIUS     [aside<\/i>] Still on my daughter.
\nHAMLET     Am I not i’ th’ right, old Jephthah?
\nPOLONIUS     If you call me Jephthah, my lord, I have a daughter that I love passing well.
\nHAMLET     Nay, that follows not.
\nPOLONIUS     What follows then, my lord?
\nHAMLET     Why, As by lot, God wot and then, you know, It came to pass, as most like it was—the first row of the pious chanson will show you more, for look where my abridgment comes.<\/blockquote>\n

Hamlet is specifically referring to a song<\/a>:\n

I have read that many years ago,
\nWhen Jephthah, judge of Israel,
\nHad one fair daughter and no more,
\nWhom he loved passing well;
\nAs by lot, God wot,
\nIt came to pass, most like it was,
\nGreat wars there should be,
\nAnd who should be the chief but he, but he.<\/blockquote>\n

And more generally referring to Judges 11<\/a>.\n

It seems to me that Polonius doesn’t know the song—he doesn’t know what follows, in the sense of the next line of the song. That makes sense to me, and is fine: it is proper for old age to not know popular lyrics. But would Polonius know the Scripture? Today, I would call it an obscure story, as obscure as, oh, the rape of Dinah—not as obscure as Ehud the Lefty and Fat King Eglon, but not as well-known as Judith or Sampson. I certainly would not casually throw in a reference to Jephthah’s daughter in conversation without explanation. But that was a different time, and Polonius is (or was) a sharp sort of a man, if pretty strongly anti-clerical. It’s hard for me to accept that he wouldn’t know the Jephthah story.\n

And yet, he doesn’t react to being called Jephthah anywhere near strongly enough. I mean, when Hamlet calls him Jephtah, he doesn’t immediately flip out. He doesn’t make his aside recognizing that it’s another reference to his daughter until Hamlet uses the word daughter<\/i>, and even then he accepts the name and seems to accept identifying Ophelia with Jephthah’s daughter. All of that makes sense if Hamlet has completely baffled Polonius by the reference, but not so much if Polonius is even dimly aware of the outlines of the Jephthah story.\n

I’m going to have to figure out how to play the scene at some point, so I’ll have to make a decision. Our Director has advised me to try it each way and see what feels right (she’s that sort of director, about which more anon) which is all well and good, but maybe some of y’all can help, too.\n

Tolerabimus quod tolerare debemus<\/I>,
-Vardibidian.\n\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In Which Your Humble Blogger could go on about the Four Foolish Vows, or about the sibling thing, or weird diplomacy thing, but none of that is really relevant to the play.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[207,209],"tags":[216,217],"class_list":["post-15434","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-scripture","category-theeyater","tag-polonius","tag-shakespeare"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15434","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15434"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15434\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16251,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15434\/revisions\/16251"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15434"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15434"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15434"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}