Horus and Hamlet: The Motif of Hostile Brothers as Individuation

Horus and Hamlet: The Motif of Hostile Brothers as Individuation by Scott Foran In works such as Psychology and Religion (1938), Researches into the Phenomenology of the Self (1951), and Answer to Job (1952), C. G. Jung identifies an important and recurring archetypal theme which he labels the “motif of the hostile brothers” (Phenomenology of the Self, par. 142). This motif involves brothers who are antagonists, and the resulting conflict between them often ends in fratricide. In most of his discussions of the hostile brothers, Jung refers to the biblical examples of Cain and Abel and Jacob and Esau to illustrate his point, and, yet, as Jung notes, these stories merely “correspond to [a] prototype” which manifests itself “in all ages and in all parts of the world” (Psychology and Religion, par. 629). Two seemingly disparate points in this archetypal pattern, separated by the elements of culture and of time, are the Osirisian cycle of Egyptian mythology and William Shakespeare’s Hamlet. Both stories include antagonistic brothers, fratricide, avenging sons and, consequently, as do all examples of this archetypal motif, represent the individuation process, in that the stories symbolically "constellate the problem of the union of opposites," resulting ultimately in wholeness (Jung, Phenomenology of the Self, par. 142). And while there are many stories that could be used to explore individuation, these two may prove to be an ideal pairing, not only because they exemplify the motif of hostile brothers, but because there may also be an antecedent relationship between Shakespeare’s play and the Egyptian myth of Osiris-Set1-Horus. In examining the examples of the Osiris cycle and Hamlet, it is interesting to note 1 For the sake of consistency, Set will be used in this paper instead of the variants that might appear in original sources (i.e. Seth, Sutekh). Foran 2 that, in spite of his penchant for comparative approaches to archetypal representations, Jung rarely mentions the works of William Shakespeare, a direct departure from the example of Freud, who frequently refers to the plays and poems of Shakespeare. In the Collected Works, Jung only mentions three of Shakespeare’s plays. He briefly notes Macbeth in Psychological Types and includes a longer discussion of Julius Caesar in Symbols of Transformation. The third reference is to Hamlet, easily the most psychological of Shakespeare’s works, and, yet, Jung makes but a single passing reference to the play in Psychology and Alchemy, merely commenting on the skull soliloquy over the span of a couple of sentences. Egyptian mythology, on the other hand, became increasingly important to Jung, as is evidenced by the many references to Egyptian deities and religion in the Collected Works. According to his own account in Memories, Dreams, Reflections, Jung visited Egypt in 1926 at the end of his trip to Kenya and Uganda, travelling north along the Nile on a “journey from the heart of Africa to Egypt [which] became, for [him], a kind of drama of the birth of light” centered on the myth of Horus (274). This, in turn, began Jung’s fascination with the entirety of the Osiris cycle, “the Egyptian myth that most permeates…[his] psychology” (Sauder-MacGuire 651). Before investigating the ways in which the Osiris stories and Hamlet reflect psychological development, it is helpful to first look at how the Egyptian myth may have, in fact, influenced the creation of the play. In the introduction to the Yale edition of the annotated Hamlet, Burton Raffel traces the genesis of the play that is accepted by most Shakespearean scholars, from the “likely but unprovable assumption [of] a bloody family feud” in Denmark to Snorri Sturluson’s “fragmentary mention” of an Irish lament in Foran 3 which a Dane named Amhlaide kills a King Niall (xiv-xv). Raffel points next to a document compiled in the thirteenth century by the ecclesiastic Saxo Grammaticus, Historia Danica (Stories/Deeds of the Danes), in which “a prince, Amletha, whose father, the king of Denmark, [is] murdered by his brother, Fengo” (xv). In order to escape being killed by his uncle, Amletha feigns insanity, and the prince eventually avenges his father’s death and assumes the Danish throne. In his biography of the playwright, Will in the World, Stephen Greenblatt adds that Shakespeare “carefully read the story [of Amletha] as narrated in French by François de Belleforest” in Le Cinquiesme Tome des Histories Tragiques while working on Hamlet and that Belleforest had borrowed it directly from Saxo (295-296). Raffel concludes his summary of sources by identifying the most important, albeit missing, link in the story’s development, “an earlier Elizabethan play [entitled] Hamlet” (xvii). Nothing is known about this dramatic work other than its title and that it was criticized by Thomas Nash in 1589. No copy of it has survived, and no author has been definitively identified, although some scholars suspect it may have been written by Thomas Kyd, best known for the play The Spanish Tragedy. While Raffel admits that Shakespeare might have used other “sources of which we have no knowledge” in the writing of Hamlet, he stops short of positing any (xvii). There may well be an overlooked connection, however, between the Osiris cycle and Hamlet. The goddess Isis is named eight times in Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra, and, although this work was written a number of years after Hamlet, source materials for the Osiris stories could have been in the playwright’s hands during the initial composition of the earlier play, especially if, as the New Oxford Shakespeare suggests, the date of Hamlet is as late as 1604 (Taylor, et al. 1996). Foran 4 French Egyptologist Simson Najovits notes in Egypt, Trunk of the Tree that “the earliest extant written fragments and episodes of the Osirisian cycle of the myth can be traced to many utterance spells in the Pyramid Texts (c. 2375-2125 BC) and then to the spells in the Coffin Texts in the First Intermediate Period (c. 2181-2055 BC)," but the stories were not compiled in any unified way until Plutarch (c. AD 45-125) took on the task in Isis and Osiris, a text which came to be part of the Moralia (178). It is well known that Shakespeare relied heavily on Plutarch for source material; in fact, as The Oxford Companion to Shakespeare observes, “Plutarch’s influence on Shakespeare is hard to overestimate” (348). Samuel Johnson identified “Sir Thomas North’s translation of [Plutarch’s] Lives [as] Shakespeare’s immediate authority [for] the Roman plays” in 1765, and, as Harold Fisch, Professor of English at Bar-Ilan University, suggests, “it seems natural to suppose that [Shakespeare] drew on Plutarch’s Isis and Osiris [for Antony and Cleopatra] since…Philemon Holland had translated a version of [it] in 1603” (Honigmann 25; 61). Fisch goes on to identify two other possible sources for the Egyptian myth, noting that “[Shakespeare] could also have read an account of the appearance of Isis and Osiris in Spenser” or that the playwright might have “read all about the goddess…in Apuleius’ The Golden Ass which had reached four editions in the English translation of Adlington by the end of the sixteenth century” (61). And while scholars have yet to comment on the distinct similarities between the plot of Hamlet and the unfolding of events in the Osiris saga, there is at least circumstantial evidence indicating that Shakespeare could have used the Egyptian myth along with the northern sources to create his own version of a story in which a king is murdered by his own brother and then avenged by his son. Foran 5 In order to understand how the Osiris cycle and Hamlet represent individuation, it is important to begin with an explanation of the process. Jung defines individuation in Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious as “the process by which a person becomes a psychological ‘in-dividual,’ that is, a separate, indivisible unity or ‘whole,’” thus integrating both the conscious and the unconscious parts of the psyche (par. 490). Jung goes on to note that this “course of development [arises] out of the conflict between the…fundamental psychic [elements]” (par. 523). The archetypal antagonism between hostile brothers, then, symbolizes this conflict and leads to an ultimate balance or unity. To illustrate how this process manifests in both the myth and the play, it will be helpful to utilize the “most typical features” of individuation as explained by Marie-Louise von Franz in Man and His Symbols (167). The First Approach of the Unconscious Von Franz points out that “the actual process of individuation…generally begins with a wounding of the personality and the suffering that accompanies it” (169). In both stories, this would correspond to the death of the king. According to Plutarch’s version of the myth, Osiris takes a journey to civilize the world, and “when he [returns] home, [his brother Set contrives] a treacherous plot against him and [forms] a group of conspirators” (13.2). Together, they trick Osiris into climbing inside an ornamental chest which they quickly seal with lead and toss into the Nile. Isis eventually finds her husband’s body, but it is then dismembered by Set, “divided…into fourteen parts and scattered” across Egypt (18.1). King Hamlet suffers a similar fate, murdered by his brother Claudius while he sleeps in the orchard. Claudius “[steals] / With juice of cursed hebenon in a vial, / And in the porches of [the king’s] ears [does] pour / the leperous Foran 6 distilment” which robs King Hamlet “of life, of crown, of queen” (Hamlet 1.5.61-64, 75). The deaths of the two kings at the hands of their brothers points to a loss that must necessarily precede transformation. Geraldine Pinch, Egyptologist at the Oriental Institute of Oxford University, highlights this in her discussion of the myth of Osiris, noting that “Carl Jung [sees] Osiris as the part of the ego that [has] to give way or change in order for individuation to take place,” a statement which could equally apply to King Hamlet (Pinch 86). Marie-Louise von Franz also notes that the “initial shock [from the wounding of the personality] amounts to a sort of ‘call’” (169). In the Osiris cycle and in Hamlet, this call takes the form of a visit from the underworld in which the father appeals to the son to avenge his death. Plutarch tells us that “Osiris came to Horus from the other world and exercised and trained him for…battle [and then] asked Horus what he held to be the most noble of all things” (19.1). Horus’ reply, "To avenge one's father and mother for evil done to them," indicates that he is ready to take on the task (19.1). In Shakespeare’s tragedy, the ghost of the king appears to his son, Prince Hamlet, telling him to “revenge his foul and most unnatural murder,” to which Hamlet immediately responds, “Haste me to know’t, that I, with wings as swift / As meditation or the thoughts of love, / May sweep to my revenge,” indicating that he, too, is in a state of readiness (Hamlet 1.5.25, 29-31). Answering the call, then, serves as a vital preliminary step on the journey toward individuation. The Realization of the Shadow The next feature of the individuation process identified by von Franz is confronting the part of the unconscious that Jung refers to as the shadow, “the ‘negative’ Foran 7 side of the personality, the sum of all those unpleasant qualities we like to hide, together with the insufficiently developed functions and the contents of the personal unconscious” (“Archetypes” 87). Von Franz goes on to warn that “the shadow becomes hostile…when he is ignored or misunderstood,” and this certainly applies to the hostile brothers, Set and Claudius (182). As the younger sons, they are forced to yield to the rancorous reality of Osiris and Hamlet becoming kings, a circumstance which drives them, “with witchcraft of,,,wit, with traitorous gifts,” to the unspeakable crime of fratricide (Hamlet 1.5.43). In addition to the treachery of murder, the shadow figures of Set and Claudius, “prompted by jealousy and hostility,” seek to sexually conquer their brothers’ wives (Plutarch 27.1). Set can be described as a “god of exuberant male sexuality not yet channeled into fertility,” his childlessness set in direct contrast to both his brother Osiris, who sires Horus and is also able to procreate with an artificial phallus, and to the true successor to the throne, Horus, whose semen impregnates Set with a solar disk and who later removes Set’s testicles (Velde 332). In spite of his infertility, however, Set takes the form of a bull and “pursues Isis with sexual advances,” only to be thwarted by the goddess who causes him to spill his seed “on the ground in the desert” (Najovits 194). In a similar fashion, Claudius, “that incestuous, that adulterate beast,” also pursues his brother’s wife, taking the queen as his own “to live / In the rank sweat of an enseaméd bed, / stewed in corruption, honeying and making love / over the nasty sty” (Hamlet 1.5.42, 3.4.92-94). The actions of the hostile brothers, in spite of their undesirable nature, however, do represent the unconscious drives of the shadow that must be synthesized in order to achieve wholeness. Von Franz reminds us that “this is a problem that often comes up Foran 8 when one meets one’s ‘other side.’ The shadow usually contains values that are needed by consciousness, but that exist in a form that makes it difficult to integrate them into one’s life” (178). The Anima: The Woman Within The third feature of individuation outlined by Marie-Louise von Franz is the appearance of a “second symbolic figure…behind the shadow, bringing up new and different problems,” the anima (186). In general terms, the anima is “a personification of all feminine psychological tendencies in a man’s psyche, such as vague feelings and moods, prophetic hunches, receptiveness to the irrational, capacity for personal love, feeling for nature, and [perhaps most importantly] his relation to the unconscious” (186). In the Osiris myth and Hamlet, the anima figures are Isis and Gertrude, and they are fitting representations, for, as von Franz points out, “in its individual manifestation the character of a man’s anima is as a rule shaped by his mother,” and, as mothers, Isis and Gertrude contribute greatly to the individuation of Horus and Hamlet (186). In the Osiris cycle, Isis bears many of the distinctive features of the anima. She is a goddess of fertility, herself “born in the regions that are ever moist” (Plutarch 12.2). She is symbolized by the cow and the crescent moon, and her role “as the Great Enchantress [is] reflected in her magic powers and in her knowledge of the arts of medicine” (Ions 56). In the myth, Isis takes on the functions of both the positive and the negative anima. As the positive anima, she is portrayed as the faithful wife of Osiris who “[governs] Egypt wisely [during her husband’s absence] and [keeps] close watch on her scheming brother Set” (56). When Osiris is killed by his brother, Isis “at once [cuts] off one of her tresses and [puts] on a garment of mourning” and begins searching for his Foran 9 body, “[wandering] everywhere at her wits’ end” (Plutarch 14.1). Her loyalty to her husband leads Isis to recover the body of Osiris from Byblos and later, after the body has been discovered by Set and torn to pieces and scattered across the land, from the far reaches of Egypt. As the negative anima, Isis commits acts of violence, deception, and even treachery. When she first finds Osiris’ coffin, her “dreadful wailing” and “awful look of anger” cause the immediate deaths of the sons of the King of Byblos (16.1; 17.1). Later, during the trial of Horus, she “[turns] herself into a beautiful girl, so that Set would desire her,” tricking her brother into condemning himself when he agrees with her that it is “wicked for a son to be robbed of his inheritance” (Baines and Pinch 45). And during one of the final battles between Horus and Set, when the two are “fighting as transformed hippopotami,” Isis creates a magical harpoon which she throws into the water (Najovits 189). The harpoon wounds Horus and then strikes Set, but, when Set begs for mercy, Isis saves her brother with magic, “[infuriating] Horus, who [cuts] off her head" (189). In some versions of the myth, “Horus establishes dominance by raping Isis rather than beheading her” (Pinch 86). The anima figure in Hamlet is the queen, Gertrude, and, while she does express concern over Hamlet’s welfare throughout the play, her role is best described as that of the negative anima. While she does not seem to be directly involved in the death of King Hamlet, she is characterized by her betrayal to their marriage. Upon the death of the king, his brother Claudius quickly “[wins] to…shameful lust / The will of [the] most seeming-virtuous queen” (Hamlet 1.5.45-46). The nuptial between Claudius and Gertrude takes place soon after the king’s murder, as is indicated by the exchange between Horatio, who “came to see [the] funeral,” and Hamlet, who tells his friend, “I Foran 10 think it was to see my mother’s wedding” (1.2.176, 178). Hamlet is clearly upset by his father’s death and his mother’s choice to remarry, but it is not until after he is confronted by the ghost of the dead king that he sees her as treacherous, at that time calling her “most pernicious woman!” (1.5.105). Later, when he confronts Gertrude, he tells her, “Mother, you have my father much offended,” adding that she “[is] the queen, [her] husband’s brother’s wife” (3.4.10, 15). During the confrontation, he accuses her of “such an act / that blurs the grace and blush of modesty, / Calls virtue hypocrite” (3.4.40-42). As the negative anima, Gertrude also becomes what Jung refers to as the “perilous image of Woman,” and, as such, “stands for the loyalty which in the interests of life [Hamlet] must…forgo” (“Archetypes” 109). Hamlet’s very existence is consumed by the king’s murder, and Gertrude’s marriage to Claudius is an ever-present reminder for Hamlet of his duty to seek vengeance, drawing him into life’s “frightful paradoxes and ambivalences” (109). The Self: Symbol of Totality The final feature of the process of individuation is the appearance of “the Self, the innermost nucleus of the psyche,” which only happens “if an individual has wrestled seriously enough with the anima” (Franz 207). Marie-Louise von Franz notes that the Self is a “regulating center that brings about a constant extension and maturing of the personality,” leading to the successful integration of the conscious and unconscious parts of the psyche (163). When this archetypal figure appears, it is often “as a young man….the youth [signifying] renewal of life…and a new spiritual orientation by means of which everything becomes full of life,” and, in the case of the Osiris cycle and Shakespeare’s play, the Self appears as Horus and Hamlet (209). Foran 11 Both Horus and Hamlet avenge their fathers, “Horus [becoming] the royal heir/successor par excellence, the epitome of legitimate succession,” and Hamlet, even though he dies before assuming his rightful place on the throne, “[proving] most royal” (Meltzer 165; Hamlet 5.2.384). In both stories, the shadow (Set and Claudius) and the anima (Isis and Gertrude) die, indicating that they have been successfully integrated into the psyche. This integration is symbolically portrayed by the emergence of what Jung refers to as the quaternity, “the archetype of wholeness” (Archetypes par. 715). In the Osiris cycle, quaternity appears “as the representation of Horus with his four sons,” and in Hamlet, it appears as the “four captains” appointed by Fortinbras to carry the body of Hamlet, thus indicating that the process of individuation has reached a stage of completion (715; 5.2.381). Foran 12 Works Cited Baines, John, and Geraldine Pinch. “Egypt.” World Mythology, edited by Roy Willis, Henry Holt and Company, 1993, pp. 36-55. Fisch, Harold. “Antony and Cleopatra: The Limits of Mythology.” Shakespeare Survey: An Annual Survey of Shakespearean Study and Production, edited by Kenneth Muir, vol. 23, Cambridge UP, 2002, pp. 59-67. Franz, M.-L. von. “The Process of Individuation.” Man and His Symbols, by Carl Jung, et al., Dell Publishing, 1964, pp. 157-254. Greenblatt, Stephen. Will in the World. W. W. Norton & Company, 2004. Honigmann, E. A. J. “Shakespeare’s Plutarch.” Shakespeare Quarterly, vol. 10, no. 1, 1959, pp. 25–33. JSTOR, jstor.org/stable/2867020. Ions, Veronica. Egyptian Mythology. Hamlyn Publishing Group, 1988. Jung, C. G. Answer to Job. Translated by R. F. C. Hull, Princeton UP, 2010. ---. Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious. Edited by Gerhard Adler and R. F. C. Hull, Princeton UP, 1969. ProQuest Ebook Central, https://ebookcentral. proquest.com/lib/pacgradins-ebooks/detail.action?docID=1573473. ---. “Archetypes: Shadow; Anima; Animus; the Persona; the Old Wise Man.” The Essential Jung, edited by Anthony Storr, Princeton UP, 1983, pp. 87-127. ---. Memories, Dreams, Reflections. Translated by Richard and Clara Winston, edited by Aniela Jaffé, Vintage Books, 1989. ---. Psychology and Religion. Edited by Gerhard Adler and R. F. C. Hull, Princeton UP, 1970. ProQuest Ebook Central, ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/pacgradinsebooks/detail.action?docID=1573471. Foran 13 ---. Researches into the Phenomenology of the Self. Edited by Gerhard Adler and R. F. C. Hull, Princeton UP, 1969. ProQuest Ebook Central, ebookcentral. proquest.com/lib/pacgradins-ebooks/detail.action?docID=1582862. Meltzer, Edmund S. “Horus” The Oxford Essential Guide to Egyptian Mythology, edited by Donald B. Redford. Berkley Books, 2003, pp. 164-168. Najovits, Simson. Egypt, Trunk of the Tree: The Contexts. Vol. 1, Algora Publishing, 2003. The New Oxford Shakespeare, The Complete Works: Modern Critical Edition. Edited by Taylor, Gary, et al., Oxford Up, 2016. Pinch, Geraldine. Egyptian Myth: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford UP, 2004. Plutarch. Isis and Osiris. Moralia, translated by Frank Cole Babbitt, vol. 5, Harvard UP. 1936, pp. 1-191. Lacus Curtius, Bill Thayer and U of Chicago, penelope. uchicago.edu/Thayer/e/roman/texts/plutarch/moralia/isis_and_osiris*/a.html. “Plutarch.” The Oxford Companion to Shakespeare. Edited by Michael Dobson and Stanley Wells, Oxford UP, 2001, pp. 347-348. Raffell, Burton. Introduction. Hamlet, by William Shakespeare, Yale UP, 2003, pp. xiii-xxxiv. Sauder-MacGuire, Alane. “Osiris and the Egyptian Religion.” Encyclopedia of Psychology and Religion, edited by David A. Leeming, et al., Springer, 2010, pp. 651-653. Gale Virtual Reference Library, go.galegroup.com/ps/ido?p=GVRL &sw=w&u=carp39441&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CCX3042600358&it=r&asid=ba16 2fff7ed174ecee97a55b4b7ae14d. Shakespeare, William. Hamlet. Yale UP, 2003. Foran 14 Velde, Herman te. “Seth” The Oxford Essential Guide to Egyptian Mythology, edited by Donald B. Redford. Berkley Books, 2003, pp. 331-334.