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Hamlet's “God Kissing Carrion”: A Theory of the Generation of Life

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

John E. Hankins
John E. Hankins*
Affiliation:
University of Kansas, Lawrence, Kansas
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Extract

In the Quarto and Folio versions of Hamlet, Act ii, Sc. ii, occurs the following bit of byplay during Hamlet's conversation with Polonius:

“For if the sun breed maggots in a dead dog, being a good kissing carrion—Have you a daughter?” “I have, my lord.”

“Let her not walk in the sun. Conception is a blessing, but not as your daughter may conceive.”

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 64 , Issue 3 , June 1949 , pp. 507 - 516
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1949

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References

1 See particularly Golding's translation, Bk. i, lines 495–524.

2 MLN, XLI (1926), 234–238. See also Pliny, Eistoria Naturalis, lx, 84.

3 De Rerum Natura, iii, 713–740.

4 De Generatione Animalium, i, i (715b. 30).

5 Ibid., iii, xi (762a. 3).

6 Ibid., ii, iii (737a. 1).

7 Ibid., iii, xi (762b. 27).

8 De Generatione et Corruptione, ii, x (336b. 1). Cf. Aquinas' commentary on Bk. ii, x, x, 4 and xi, xi, 5.

9 De Natitra Pueri, ch. xxxv.

10 Bk. i, ch. vi.

11 Condusiones: “Secundum Avicennam”, no. 5.

12 Aristotelis Eistoria de Animations (Toulouse, 1619), Bk. vii: Introd., p. 789.

13 De Generatione Animalium, ii, iii (737a. 18–24). Cf. note 21.

14 Eistoria Animalium, vii, iii (583a. 24).

15 “Ferment”, Scaliger, op. cit., vn, ii, 22; “coagulate”, Pico, In Astrologiam, vii, ii; “putrefy”, Paracelsus, infra.

16 De Generatione Animalium, i, xx (729a. 12), ii, iii (737a. 15), ii, iv (739b. 23).

17 De Natura Rerum, Bk. vii: “De transmutationibus rerum naturalium”, Opera (Geneva, 1658), ii, 97.

18 Ibid., Bk. i: “De generationibus rerum naturalium”, p. 85.

19 Aristotle, De Partibus Animalium, n, iii (650a. 34, 651a. 15), rv, iv (678a. 8 ff.). Cf. Aquinas, De Principiis Naturae.

20 De Generatione Animalium, i, xix (726b. 1–15).

21 As organic matter, the genital fluids possess a certain “life”, and in the male there lies dormant the “efficient cause” which, awakened by heat, starts the process of generation; but the seed becomes a living organism only after that process has begun. Cf. De Generatione Animalium, ii, iv (739b. 35).

22 De Generatione Animalium (1651), Exercise 68. Cf. Bruno Bloch, “Die geschichtlichen Grundlagen der Embryologie bis auf Harvey”, Abhandlungen der Kaiserlichen Leopoldinisch-Carolinischen Deutschen Akademie der Naturforscker (Halle, 1904), lxxxii, 215–334.

23 Commentarium in De Anima Aristotelis, iii, iv, 619; Commentarium in De Generatione et Corruptions Aristotelis, Bk. i, v, xiii, 4; Summa Theologica, Pt. i, Q. 118, A. 1.

24 Summa Theologica, arr. by J. de Montefortino (Rome, 1901), Q. 104, A. 2.

25 Speculum Naturole, xxiii, 46, xxxi, 38.

26 A Platonic Demonstration of the Immortality of the Soul, tr. in Thos. M. Johnson, Opuscula Platonica (Osceola, Mo., 1908), p. 28.

27 De Immortalitate Animorum, Bk. xv, ch. xi.

28 I, 146.

29 Bk. i, chs. xvii–xxi.

30 Bk. vii, ch. xxii.

31 Vol. iii: “Balder the Beautiful”, pp. 204 ff.

32 Folklore Society Publications (London, 1909), i, 25, 89–98.

33 Hartland, The Legend of Perseus (London, 1894), i, 99.

34 De Genealogia Deorum, Bk. v, ch. x.

35 For the mediaeval tradition of the sun as the instrument of God's generative power, and also as a sexual symbol, see H. Flanders Dunbar, Symbolism in Medieval Thought (Yale University Press, 1929). The notion was a commonplace of Hermetic philosophy; cf. the Latin Asclepius.

36 Institutes, i, xvii, 5.

37 Distinctiones Dictionum Theologicalium: “Vermis”, in Migne's Patrologia Latina, ccx, 997.