Hoist with his own petard

A petard from a 17th-century manuscript of military designs

"Hoist with his own petard" is a phrase from a speech in William Shakespeare's play Hamlet that has become proverbial. The phrase's meaning is literally that the bomb-maker (a "petard" is a small explosive device) is blown up ("hoisted" off the ground) with his own bomb, and indicates an ironic reversal or poetic justice.

The phrase occurs in a central speech in the play in which Hamlet has discovered a plot on his life by Claudius and resolves to respond to it by letting the plotter be "Hoist with his own petard." Although the now-proverbial phrase is the best known part of the speech, it and the later sea voyage and pirate attack are central to critical arguments regarding the play.

The phrase, and its containing speech, exist in only one of three early printed versions of the play—the second quarto edition—and scholars are divided on whether this is indicative of authorial intent, or a mere artefact of playhouse practicalities.

Context

Hamlet stabs Polonius through the curtain he is hiding behind as Queen Gertrude looks on, as part of The Closet Scene in Hamlet Act 3, Scene 4.[1]

The phrase occurs in Hamlet Act 3, Scene 4,[2] as a part of one of Hamlet's speeches in the Closet Scene.[lower-alpha 1] Hamlet has been acting mad to throw off suspicion that he is aware that his uncle, Claudius, has murdered his father and married his mother, Queen Gertrude, in order to usurp the throne. In the Closet Scene, Polonius, at Claudius' behest, has hidden himself behind an arras in Gertrude's chambers to listen in as Gertrude scolds Hamlet for his mad antics, hoping to determine whether he is truly mad or merely pretending. On revealing his presence, Hamlet kills him thinking him to be Claudius. Hamlet then accuses Gertrude of complicity in his father's murder, but when she protests her innocence the two of them begin to conspire to reveal Claudius's guilt.

Having previously been ordered to travel to England on a pretext, accompanied by Rosencrantz and Guildenstern carrying letters to the King of England, Hamlet tells his mother:

There’s letters sealed; and my two schoolfellows,
Whom I will trust as I will adders fanged,
They bear the mandate; they must sweep my way
And marshal me to knavery. Let it work,
For ’tis the sport to have the enginer
Hoist with his own petard; and ’t shall go hard
But I will delve one yard below their mines
And blow them at the moon. O, ’tis most sweet
When in one line two crafts directly meet.

— Prince Hamlet, in Hamlet, Act 3, Scene 4.[3]

The letters contain a request from King Claudius to the King of England to have Prince Hamlet killed, but Hamlet manages to modify them during the journey so that they instead request the deaths of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. Hamlet is thus able to return to Denmark in secret to seek his revenge.

Date and text

The title page of Hamlet Q2 (1604), the only early source for the speech.

Hamlet exists in several early versions: the first quarto edition (Q1, 1603), the second quarto (Q2, 1604), and the First Folio (F, 1623).[lower-alpha 2] Q1 and F do not contain this speech, although both include a form of The Closet Scene, so the 1604 Q2 is the only early source for the quote.[6]

The omission of this speech—as well as the long soliloquy in Act 4, Scene 4[lower-alpha 3]—is generally considered to have been cut in the playhouse for various practical reasons. But in the 1985 Cambridge Shakespeare edition of the play, Philip Edwards argued that these were deliberate cuts by Shakespeare. For Hamlet, famously procrastinating about his revenge, to suddenly show such resolve and a concrete plan to do away with Rosencrantz and Guildenstern is out of character, and, as the plan outlined is what ends up happening in the play, the speech gives away the plot and lessens the suspense. It is also a plot hole in that Hamlet, at this point in the play, has no way of actually knowing that Claudius plans to have him killed in England, nor even that Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are to be his travelling companions. The audience is aware that Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are to be his companions, as they've seen Claudius instructing them so at the beginning of Act 3, Scene 3,[8] but the plot to have him killed is otherwise not discussed until Act 4, Scene 3.[9][10]

G. R. Hibbard, in The Oxford Shakespeare edition, agrees with Edwards that the omission of the speech increases the suspense in the F version.[11] However, Ann Thompson and Neil Taylor, in The Arden Shakespeare third series edition, point out that Hamlet isn't specifically planning to kill Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, he merely resolves to outwit them. For example, in the 1964 film adaptation by Grigori Kozintsev the speech is moved to the (later) point in the film where Hamlet describes how he outwitted Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.[lower-alpha 4]

Etymology

The word "hoist" here is the now-archaic past participle of the verb hoist and carries the meaning "to lift and remove".[13] A "petard" is a "small bomb used to blow in doors and breach walls" and comes from the French pétard, which, through Middle French (péter) and Old French (pet), ultimately comes from the Latin pedere ("to break wind").[14] "Enginer", although the origin of the modern engineer, had the meaning specifically of a military engineer or a sapper. It is pronounced with the stress on the first part, as "engine-er": someone who works with military engines (mines, grenades, siege engines).[15]

The phrase itself is a variation on two earlier proverbial expressions: "The fowler is caught in his own net" and "To beat one at his own weapon".[11]

Interpretation

The "letters" referred to in the first line are the letters from Claudius to the King of England with the request to have Hamlet killed, and the "schoolfellows" are Rosencrantz and Guildenstern who went to school with Hamlet at Wittenberg. Hamlet says he will trust them as "adders fanged", that is as much as one would trust a pair of poisonous snakes. That they "bear the mandate"—carry the letters of the diplomatic mission to England—is in itself suspicious according to Hibbard: such letters would usually be carried by the most senior member, Hamlet, rather than the two underlings.[11] Thompson and Taylor disagree, as it might simply mean that Rosencrantz and Guildenstern have been ordered by Claudius to go.[6] That they "must sweep my way" means that they must prepare the way for Hamlet, and the way they "sweep" is to "marshal [him] to knavery": conduct him to some kind of trick, villainy, or trap.[11][6] The word "marshal" here begins a string of military metaphors: Hamlet sees his contest of wits with Rosencrantz and Guildenstern in terms of siege warfare.[6] Hamlet's response is to say "Let it work"; to let their plan unfold.[11][6]

His resolve in the fifth and sixth lines—continuing the military metaphor—is to have them blown up with their own bomb that they had intended for him.[15] Unless it "shall go hard"—unless he has very bad luck—he will "delve … below their mines / And blow them at the moon." Mines here are the tunnels used in siege warfare to attack a fortified town, and later the explosives used in such tunnels.[11][15] In the last two lines he savours the competition of two practitioners of cunning and schemes meeting head on, continuing the martial metaphor of mining and counter-mining.[15][lower-alpha 5]

Significance in Hamlet

Ironic reversal

The speech is a central exemplar of a general theme or pattern in Hamlet: ironic reversal. Throughout the play the pattern unfolds repeatedly: his enemies employ a stratagem against Hamlet, but fail, and he then turns the stratagem back on them. For instance, when verbally sparring with Claudius in Act 1, Scene 2,[lower-alpha 6] Hamlet turns his own words back against him:

Claudius
  But now, my cousin Hamlet and my son—
Hamlet
  A little more than kin and less than kind.
Claudius
  How is it that the clouds still hang on you?
Hamlet
  Not so, my lord; I am too much in the sun.

— Hamlet, Act 1, Scene 2.[17]

When Claudius invokes their kinship, Hamlet puns on kin—kind; and when Claudius invokes a weather metaphor for a gloomy disposition, Hamlet's counter has three distinct meanings: literally that he is not under a cloud but actually too much in the sun;[lower-alpha 7] that Claudius' constant invocation of "son" (which Hamlet puns as "sun") is getting wearisome; and that he feels he spends too much time in the presence of the king ("the sun"). Similarly in the Closet Scene:

Gertrude
  Hamlet, thou hast thy father much offended.
Hamlet
  Mother, you have my father much offended.
Gertrude
  Come, come, you answer with an idle tongue.
Hamlet
  Go, go, you question with a wicked tongue.

— Hamlet, Act 3, Scene 4.[18]

For each verbal attack by Gertrude, Hamlet counters by turning her own words back at her. The plotters' plan was to have Gertrude, his mother, scold him for his antics while Polonius listened from hiding, in the hopes of learning whether Hamlet is truly mad or merely pretending. Instead the conversation ends with Polonius dead and Gertrude convinced of Claudius' guilt and her own culpability.[19]

In order to catch out Hamlet, Claudius and Polonius have Ophelia put on a show for him; whereas Hamlet uses the play-within-the-play The Mousetrap to "catch the conscience of the king".[20] When Claudius plans to ship Hamlet off to be killed in England, Hamlet manages to thwart him and returns in a larger pirate ship. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are to deliver a letter requesting Hamlet's death, but Hamlet switches it out for one that requests Rosencrantz and Guildenstern's death.[21]

In the final scene, Laertes applies poison to his rapier in order to kill Hamlet, but Hamlet ends up killing Laertes with that same poisoned rapier. And in the end, he kills Claudius with the same rapier and poisoned wine that were Claudius's intended weapons against Hamlet.[22]

Ironic reversal was well-known in sixteenth-century England, and Elizabethan theatre inherited the tradition from both Latin comedy and Christian thought. It was so common as to constitute convention, and an early example is from The Jew of Malta (1589–90): Barabas the Jew lays a trap involving a collapsing floor but falls through it himself and lands in a cauldron he had prepared for stewing Turks.[23][lower-alpha 8] In "Ironic Reversal in Hamlet" (1966), Thomas F. Van Laan argues that even further than the general Elizabethan dramatic convention, in Hamlet it is "… central and substantive. It lies at the heart of the play's mystery; it constitutes, in fact, a portion of that mystery."[24]

Hamlet's premeditation

A central critical question in Hamlet is the degree to which Hamlet hesitates and procrastinates, or whether he his coldly determining Claudius's guilt and waiting for an opportunity to exact his revenge. One pivotal point in this question is the "Hoist with his own petard" speech: does it indicate merely that Hamlet suspects the plot against him and means to be on guard, or does it indicate that he has already planned a counter to it? In 1870, George Henry Miles published "A Review of Hamlet" in which he argued that the pirates that attack Hamlet's ship on the way to England, and on which he escapes and returns to Denmark, was not a chance encounter but rather a counter-plot planned ahead of time by Hamlet himself. According to Miles', the "Hoist with his own petard" speech is indicative of premeditation from Hamlet: it outlines future events and these are what actually turn out to take place. He particularly rests his argument on the "When in one line two crafts directly meet" line, seeing in it a pun on "crafts" (strategems and ships) indicating that Hamlet knows in advance that the two ships will encounter each other on the journey.[25]

William Witherle Lawrence, writing in 1944, dismissed the idea: "Little time need be wasted on the absurd idea that the pirate attack was not accidental, but planned by Hamlet."[26] Writing in 1975, Martin Stevens attempted to revive the idea,[27] but most critics who have addressed the issue have sided with Lawrence.[25] However, their main argument against the idea has been based on the idea that the meaning of the word "craft" to mean "ship" was not in use until 1671, based on the Oxford English Dictionary entry's earliest dating for the word. In 1999 David Farley-Hills published an article in The Review of English Studies demonstrating that the relevant meaning was attested as early as 1450.[28] He goes on to make an argument that the pirates were in collusion with Hamlet, and the attack a part of his plan already in mind during the speech in Act 3, Scene 4.[29]

See also

Notes and references

Notes

  1. ↑ The Closet Scene is in Hamlet 3.4.[1]
  2. ↑ Q1 is a so-called "bad" quarto. It contains just over half of the text of the later second quarto. Q2 is the longest early edition, although it omits about 77 lines found in F,[4] most likely to avoid offending James I's queen, Anne of Denmark.[5]
  3. ↑ The "How all occasions do inform against me" soliloquy which is at Act 4, Scene 4, lines 34–69.[7]
  4. ↑ The scene in the film which roughly corresponds to the first sixty-odd lines of Act 5, Scene 2.[6][12]
  5. ↑ G. R. Hibbard, in The Oxford Shakespeare edition of the play, maintains that the word "craft" didn't acquire it's meaning of boat or vessel until the 1670s, and so that it is unlikely that Shakespeare's metaphor here refers to ships colliding.[11] The earlier use of "petar", however, may be a deliberate off-color pun on the meaning flatulence.
  6. ↑ Which are actually Hamlet's first spoken words in the play.
  7. ↑ Literally metaphorically, that is: cloud—sun are still metaphors for Hamlet's mood.
  8. ↑ Laan notes that Barabas had himself once been: "'an engineer … in the wars 'twixt France and Germany,' slaying friend and enemy alike."[23]

References

All references to Hamlet, unless otherwise specified, are taken from the Folger Shakespeare Library's Folger Digital Editions texts edited by Barbara Mowat, Paul Werstine, Michael Poston, and Rebecca Niles. Under their referencing system, 3.4.225 means act 3, scene 4, line 225.

Bibliography

  • Drake, James (1699). The antient and modern stages survey'd, or, Mr. Collier's view of the immorality and profaness of the English stage set in a true light wherein some of Mr. Collier's mistakes are rectified, and the comparative morality of the English stage is asserted upon the parallel. London: Abel Roper.
  • Edwards, Philip, ed. (2003) [first published 1985]. Hamlet, Prince of Denmark. New Cambridge Shakespeare. 7. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 9780521532525.
  • Farley-Hills, David (1999). "Hamlet's Account of the Pirates". The Review of English Studies. Oxford University Press. 50 (199): 320–331. eISSN 1471-6968. ISSN 0034-6551. JSTOR 517878 – via JSTOR. (Subscription required (help)).
  • Halliday, F. E. (1969) [first ed. 1964]. A Shakespeare Companion 1564–1964. Shakespeare Library. Baltimore: Penguin. ISBN 0-14-053011-8.
  • Hibbard, G. R., ed. (2008). Hamlet. The Oxford Shakespeare. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 9780199535811.
  • Harper, Douglas (ed.). "hoist". Online Etymology Dictionary.
  • Harper, Douglas (ed.). "petard". Online Etymology Dictionary.
  • Laan, Thomas F. Van (1966). "Ironic Reversal in Hamlet". Studies in English Literature, 1500-1900. Rice University. 6 (2, Elizabethan and Jacobean Drama): 247–262. doi:10.2307/449635. eISSN 1522-9270. ISSN 0039-3657. JSTOR 449635 – via JSTOR. (Subscription required (help)).
  • Lawrence, William Witherle (1944). "Hamlet's Sea-Voyage". PMLA. Modern Language Association. 59 (1): 45–70. doi:10.2307/458844. ISSN 0030-8129. JSTOR 458844 – via JSTOR. (Subscription required (help)).
  • Shepard, Warren V. (1956). "Hoisting the Enginer with His Own Petar". Shakespeare Quarterly. Folger Shakespeare Library. 7 (2): 281–285. doi:10.2307/2866462. eISSN 1538-3555. ISSN 0037-3222. JSTOR 2866462 – via JSTOR. (Subscription required (help)).
  • Stevens, Martin (1975). "Hamlet and the Pirates: A Critical Reconsideration". Shakespeare Quarterly. Folger Shakespeare Library. 26 (3): 276–284. doi:10.2307/2869608. eISSN 1538-3555. ISSN 0037-3222. JSTOR 2869608 – via JSTOR. (Subscription required (help)).
  • Thompson, Ann; Taylor, Neil, eds. (2006). Hamlet. The Arden Shakespeare, third series. 1. London: Cengage Learning. ISBN 1-904271-33-2.

Further reading

  • Benjamin, Roy (2008). "The Stone of Stumbling in Finnegans Wake". Journal of Modern Literature. Indiana University Press. 31 (2): 66–78. eISSN 1529-1464. ISSN 0022-281X. JSTOR 30053269 – via JSTOR. (Subscription required (help)).
  • Beaulieu, Liliane (1999). "Bourbaki's Art of Memory". Osiris. The History of Science Society. 14 (Commemorative Practices in Science: Historical Perspectives on the Politics of Collective Memory): 219–251. eISSN 1933-8287. ISSN 0369-7827. JSTOR 301970 – via JSTOR. (Subscription required (help)).
  • Broude, Ronald (1971). "Time, Truth, and Right in The Spanish Tragedy". Studies in Philology. University of North Carolina Press. 68 (2): 130–145. eISSN 1543-0383. ISSN 0039-3738. JSTOR 4173715 – via JSTOR. (Subscription required (help)).
  • Brucher, Richard T. (1981). "Fantasies of Violence: Hamlet and The Revenger's Tragedy". Studies in English Literature, 1500-1900. Rice University. 21 (2, Elizabethan and Jacobean Drama): 257–270. doi:10.2307/450148. eISSN 1522-9270. ISSN 0039-3657. JSTOR 450148 – via JSTOR. (Subscription required (help)).
  • Cannon, Charles K. (1971). "'As in a Theater': Hamlet in the Light of Calvin's Doctrine of Predestination". Studies in English Literature, 1500-1900. Rice University. 11 (2, Elizabethan and Jacobean Drama): 203–222. doi:10.2307/450060. eISSN 1522-9270. JSTOR 450060 – via JSTOR. (Subscription required (help)).
  • Coyle, William (1951). "Trollope and the Bi-Columned Shakespeare". Nineteenth-Century Fiction. University of California Press. 6 (1): 33–46. doi:10.2307/3044283. ISSN 0029-0564. JSTOR 3044283 – via JSTOR. (Subscription required (help)).
  • Green, L. C. (1962). "The Nature of International Law". The University of Toronto Law Journal. University of Toronto Press. 14 (2): 176–193. doi:10.2307/825321. eISSN 1710-1174. ISSN 0042-0220. JSTOR 825321 – via JSTOR. (Subscription required (help)).
  • Halpern, Richard (2008). "Eclipse of Action: Hamlet and the Political Economy of Playing". Shakespeare Quarterly. Folger Shakespeare Library. 59 (4): 450–482. eISSN 1538-3555. ISSN 0037-3222. JSTOR 40210299 – via JSTOR. (Subscription required (help)).
  • Hamill, Paul (1974). "Death's Lively Image: The Emblematic Significance of the Closet Scene in Hamlet". Texas Studies in Literature and Language. University of Texas Press. 16 (2): 249–262. eISSN 1534-7303. ISSN 0040-4691. JSTOR 40754321 – via JSTOR. (Subscription required (help)).
  • Highet, Keith (1987). "Between a Rock and a Hard Place— The United States, the International Court, and the Nicaragua Case". The International Lawyer. American Bar Association. 21 (4): 1083–1101. eISSN 2169-6578. ISSN 0020-7810. JSTOR 40706826 – via JSTOR. (Subscription required (help)).
  • Johnson-Haddad, Miranda (1994). "The Shakespeare Theatre, 1992-93". Shakespeare Quarterly. Folger Shakespeare Library. 45 (1): 98–108. doi:10.2307/2871298. eISSN 1538-3555. ISSN 0037-3222. JSTOR 2871298 – via JSTOR. (Subscription required (help)).
  • Mazzio, Carlo (2009). "The History of Air: Hamlet and the Trouble with Instruments". South Central Review. The South Central Modern Language Association. 26 (1/2, Shakespeare & Science): 153–196. eISSN 1549-3377. ISSN 0743-6831. JSTOR 40211295 – via JSTOR. (Subscription required (help)).
  • McDonald, Charles O. (1962). "'Decorum', 'Ethos', and 'Pathos' in the Heroes of Elizabethan Tragedy, with Particular Reference To Hamlet". The Journal of English and Germanic Philology. University of Illinois Press. 61 (2): 330–348. ISSN 0363-6941. JSTOR 27714016 – via JSTOR. (Subscription required (help)).
  • Noya, Shannon T. (1996). "Hoisted by Their Own Petard: Adverse Inferences in Civil Forfeiture". The Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology (1973-). Northwestern University School of Law. 86 (2): 493–529. doi:10.2307/1144034. ISSN 0091-4169. JSTOR 1144034 – via JSTOR. (Subscription required (help)).
  • Page, Warren; Hersh, Reuben; Selden, Annie; Selden, John (2005). "Media Highlights". The College Mathematics Journal. Mathematical Association of America. 36 (1): 80–88. eISSN 1931-1346. ISSN 0746-8342. JSTOR 30044827 – via JSTOR. (Subscription required (help)).
  • Pyles, Thomas (1949). "Innocuous Linguistic Indecorum: A Semantic Byway". Modern Language Notes. The Johns Hopkins University Press. 64 (1): 1–8. doi:10.2307/2909241. ISSN 0149-6611. JSTOR 2909241 – via JSTOR. (Subscription required (help)).
  • Renehan, Robert (1973). "A Proverbial Expression in Tacitus". Classical Philology. The University of Chicago Press. 68 (2): 114–115. eISSN 1546-072X. ISSN 0009-837X. JSTOR 269062 – via JSTOR. (Subscription required (help)).
  • Rowe, C. J.; Welbourne, M.; Williams, C. J. F. (1982). "Knowledge, Perception and Memory: Theaetetus 166b". The Classical Quarterly. The Classical Association. 32 (2): 304–306. eISSN 1471-6844. ISSN 0009-8388. JSTOR 638569 – via JSTOR. (Subscription required (help)).
  • Searle, Leroy F. (1997). "The Conscience of the King: Oedipus, Hamlet, and the Problem of Reading". Comparative Literature. Duke University PressUniversity of Oregon. 49 (4): 316–343. doi:10.2307/1771535. eISSN 1945-8517. ISSN 0010-4124. JSTOR 1771535 – via JSTOR. (Subscription required (help)).
  • Speaight, Robert (1971). "Shakespeare in Britain". Shakespeare Quarterly. Folger Shakespeare Library. 22 (4): 359–364. doi:10.2307/2868911. eISSN 1538-3555. ISSN 0037-3222. JSTOR 2868911 – via JSTOR. (Subscription required (help)).
  • Taylor, Michael (1971). "The Conflict in Hamlet". Shakespeare Quarterly. Folger Shakespeare Library. 22 (2): 147–161. doi:10.2307/2868804. eISSN 1538-3555. ISSN 0037-3222. JSTOR 2868804 – via JSTOR. (Subscription required (help)).
  • Werstine, Paul (1988). "The Textual Mystery of Hamlet". Shakespeare Quarterly. Folger Shakespeare Library. 39 (1): 1–26. doi:10.2307/2870584. eISSN 1538-3555. JSTOR 2870584 – via JSTOR. (Subscription required (help)).
  • Ziolkowski, Theodore (1984). "The Existential Anxieties of Engineering". The American Scholar. The Phi Beta Kappa Society. 53 (2): 197–218. eISSN 2162-2892. ISSN 0003-0937. JSTOR 41211029 – via JSTOR. (Subscription required (help)).
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