Hamlet

We drove down to San Diego to see what turned out to be an outstanding production of Hamlet at the Old Globe Theater in Balboa Park (outdoors at the adjacent Lowell Davies Theater). A great young actor named Lucas Hall played the title role, and I am sure we will be hearing a lot more about him in the years to come.

Shakespeare wrote Hamlet under the cosmic influence of a Grand Mutation (also known as a Mutation Conjunction). A Grand Mutation occurs when the 20-year Jupiter-Saturn conjunction changes elements (roughly every 200 years), signifying great changes in society, culture, and government.

We are currently experiencing just such a Grand Mutation, as the Jupiter-Saturn conjunction moves from 200 years of being in earth signs to the next two centuries of air signs. In 1980, the conjunction was in Libra, its first elemental change since the beginning of the 19th Century; then in 2000, it moved back into an earth sign, Taurus. In 2020, the Jupiter-Saturn conjunction will be in Aquarius and will remain in air signs for the next 200 years.

In about 1600, the Jupiter-Saturn conjunction moved from the water element to the fire element, believed to be its most powerful elemental change. Hamlet was written in about 1601. The world around Shakespeare was being transformed, and he captured this sense of a world disordered in his four great tragedies, but most especially in Hamlet. In this play, the royal lineage of Denmark has been sundered by the murder of Hamlet’s father, the king, and the usurpation of his throne by Hamlet’s uncle, Claudius. The old order is fractured—“time is out of joint”—and Hamlet is tasked with putting it right.

Sceptics sometimes use anti-astrology quotes from Shakespeare to buttress their arguments. However, the late, great astrologer John Addey explained (in An Astrological Anthology) that it was Shakespeare’s villains who railed against astrology while his heroes supported a harmonious cosmos. Part of the implicit conflict in Hamlet is the natural, divine order versus human free will. Addey writes that Shakespeare

…views the order of the heavens as but one aspect of that same order which runs, or should run, through all life, including the activities of man, and he implies that it is the acknowledgment of this order which alone makes life dignified and civilized in the true sense.

In Hamlet, universal harmony has been broken and Hamlet is given the monumental heroic task of restoring order to the world. Which planet represents Hamlet most strongly? Here are some of my own conjectures about Hamlet’s possible horoscope:

He is a hero and the play revolves around him completely, so Hamlet’s Sun is essential. He may be a Leo, too, or a Sagittarius (or a Scorpio or a Pisces or a Libra or a Cancer or a...) but certainly the Sun is a key to his character. However, he’s a tragic hero so his Sun is afflicted. Since the affliction has to do with his father (the Disney movie The Lion King was loosely based on Hamlet), Saturn is probably opposing or squaring his Sun.

Hamlet’s feelings toward his mother are also conflicted and a number of productions, including the one I saw, convey a strong Oedipal relationship. Hamlet’s Moon is a key to his character.

Hamlet is famous for his wit and intelligence, character traits the actor Lucas Hall captured magnificently. The actor would sometimes cap a particularly smart remark with a short, victorious ballet leap, thus giving physical form to his mental kinesthetics. Hamlet’s mind is mercurial and he is always way ahead of every other character, even though he does not always know it. He has a strong Mercury close to his Sun, and perhaps conjunct the lightning flash of Uranus.

Hamlet’s Venus is shown in his very problematic relationship with Ophelia.

Hamlet’s Mars becomes activated during the play. He is at first a character apart, aloof, doubting, and unassertive. The way he was played by Lucas Hall earlier in the play was reminiscent of a much more serious Napolean Dynamite—an awkward teenager who has suddenly grown long legs and does not quite know how to move like an adult. Hall at first moved stiffly about the stage, playing a young Hamlet not yet comfortable with his own body. Later in the play, of course, he has mastered Mars and moves aggressively to seize the initiative from Laertes in the famous sword switch.

Jupiter is the planet of morality and, as the royal planet, it is central to the play and to Hamlet’s character. Hamlet is also a great philosopher.

Saturn occludes Hamlet’s entire being throughout the entire play. He is constantly looking for invisible boundaries and feels emotionally depressed. It is also important for him to be logical and grounded: He needs proof of his father’s murder.

The outer planets are also part of Hamlet's character, although in Shakespeare’s time they had not yet been discovered. He’s a Uranian rebel, an introverted Neptunian dreamer, and undergoes a Plutonian transformation. The director of the Old Globe San Diego production, Darko Tresnjak, wrote in the performance notes that Hamlet is "…about crumbling, falling apart under the weight of an assignment that you are not cut out for, about having to transform yourself into a much tougher human being in order to fulfill that assignment."

The play is also a Plutonian meditation on death.

In short, Hamlet captures the essential natures and conflicts of all the planets, and this is one reason why his universality continues to fascinate and illuminate. One could do the same thing with the twelve signs of the zodiac--Hamlet is all of them.

There are strong Capricorn and Scorpio elements to the play. Surveillance, secrecy, and control are pervasive. Polonius spies on Hamlet and Ophelia. Polonius sends someone to spy on his son, Laertes. Claudius spies on Hamlet. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are domestic spies. I was grateful that this production was traditionally staged, but I’ve always thought that mounting numerous surveillance cameras in the audience would be a great way to convey the feeling of Hamlet’s court.