In Act I, Scene 4 of Hamlet, the Prince, Horatio, and Marcellus are on the battlements of Elsinore awaiting (they hope) the re-appearance of Hamlet's father's ghost. In the meantime, below them in the castle, they hear "A flourish of trumpets, and ordnance shot off." Horatio, clearly surprised, asks, “What does this mean, my lord?” Hamlet informs him:
The King doth wake to-night and takes his rouse,“Is it a custom?” asks Horatio. And with Hamlet’s response Confusion makes his entrance.
Keeps wassail*, and the swagg'ring upspring reels,
And, as he drains his draughts of Rhenish down,
The kettledrum and trumpet thus bray out
The triumph of his pledge.
Ay, marry, is't;
But to my mind, though I am native here
And to the manner born, it is a custom
More honour'd in the breach than the observance.
But to my mind, though I am native here
And to the manner born, it is a custom
More honour'd in the breach than the observance.
As a pun (one assumes in this case the creators really did know the original), the title of the successful British sitcom To the Manor Born (1979-1981), starring Penelope Keith and Peter Bowles worked perfectly, for the series involved the desire of the previous occupant (now rather impoverished), Audrey fforbes-Hamilton, to regain possession of the manor from the present owner, the nouveau-riche supermarket tycoon, Richard DeVere (original name, Polouvicka). Now a manor is a pretty nice place to dwell in, I imagine (being an American peasant myself), but consider that Hamlet is a prince and calls the castle Elsinore his home (when he is not off studying at Wittenberg). Thus, he's not likely to be calling himself "manor born."
Recall that Horatio's question was about "custom"; Hamlet's reply is that the wassailing is customary, but that even though he is native to the culture, it is a practice of which he disapproves. To his mind, he says (and here's the second bit of Confusion's mischief),
. . . it is a custom
More honour'd in the breach than the observance.
More honour'd in the breach than the observance.
After making the above remarks, Hamlet goes on for twenty-two lines to complain to Horatio how such customs of hard drinking make Danes
traduc'd and tax'd of other nations;To better explain the origin of the negative reputation of his nation, Hamlet uses the analogy of how individual men--men with “the stamp of one defect,”—are forever branded in the eyes of others by that fault, no matter what “virtues else—be they as pure as grace” they may have.
They clip [call] us drunkards and with swinish phrase
Soil our addition; and indeed it takes
From our achievements, though perform'd at height,
The pith and marrow of our attribute.
*
Back in August, 2011 the blog post entitled
"Ask the Wrong Question . . ."** focused on Prof. Joshua Knobe of
Yale, a pioneer in the field of experimental philosophy, who had the
observation that."people are more likely to assign blame for things that
go wrong than to give credit for things that go right" (Stanford
magazine)*** named after him--the "Knobe Effect." (Isn't this where
we're all supposed to go "Duh"?) The Stanford article (Knobe's an
alum) goes on to pose (in paraphrase) some of Knobe's questions ensuing from
his "Effect:"
Why
should the results of an action have a bearing on intentionality? And when it
comes to questions of character, why do we tend to give more weight to
negativity? Why does it sometimes happen that a single misdeed in a lifetime of
otherwise exemplary behavior can destroy a reputation?
Perhaps if he had space in the English department, he'd have learned that Shakespeare dealt with the issue over 400 years ago.
***
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