‘Hyperion’s curls, the front of Jove himself’ (3.4.56): mythological portraits in Hamlet’s closet scene

Abstract

The article shows how Renaissance humanism — the rediscovery of classical learning — is dramatised in Hamlet to pit an idealised past against a corrupted present. It focuses on the ‘closet scene’ (3.4), that, for the benefit of Gertrude’s eyes — and the audience’s —, represents Hamlet’s father, a solar king, against Hamlet’s ‘father’s brother’, a satyr, in a vivid stage image that echoes Hamlet’s line in a previous soliloquy: ‘So excellent a king, that was to this / Hyperion a satyr’ (1.2.139-40). Such contrasting mythological portraits question Gertrude’s refusal to grieve her spouse until then, even suggesting a matricidal impulse in Hamlet.