“Were I a king I could command content…”
Edward de Vere
“O God, I could be bounded in a nutshell and count myself a king of infinite space,” Hamlet cries out; and although he adds the caveat that this would be true “were it not that I have bad dreams,” his point is that, yes, we do have the potential to deal with terrible suffering by retreating from the world – into a nutshell, as the Prince puts it – and by ruling over the vast kingdom of the mind.
Hamlet does have the ability to endure “the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune” by using his sovereign power of thought. In the circumstances of the play, of course, he has literally been deprived of the crown by his uncle; at this time he cannot be the King of Denmark, but he can always be the king of his limitless mind.
“Lo thus I triumph like a king,
“Content with that my mind doth bring”
This theme appears elsewhere in writings attributed to both “Shakespeare” and Edward de Vere Earl of Oxford (1550-1604), with frequent appearances of similar words such as “king” or “kingdom” and “mind” and “content” or “contented.” In 3 Henry VI (3.1) for example the King, in disguise, meets up with two Keepers who wonder why he talks like a king:
KEEPER: Say, what art thou that talk’st of kings and queens?
HENRY VI: More than I seem, and less than I was born to:
A man at least, for less I should not be;
And men may talk of kings, and why not I?
KEEPER: Ay, but thou talk’st as if thou wert a king.
HENRY: Why, so I am – in mind; and that’s enough.
KEEPER: But, if thou be a king, where is thy crown?
HENRY: My crown is in my heart, not on my head;
Not decked with diamonds and Indian stones,
Nor to be seen: my crown is called content:
A crown it is that seldom kings enjoy.
No. 78 of 100 reasons to conclude that Oxford used the pen name “Shakespeare” is that he expressed the same basic ideas in similar combinations of words. The earl stopped putting his own name on any of his writings after age twenty-six in 1576, the year that The Paradise of Dainty Devices was first published (probably by his doing); but even by then his poems (or, rather, songs) often reflect the mind of Hamlet.
One such poem (“My mind to me a kingdom is”), actually a song, is often attributed (for no good reason) to Edward Dyer (1540-1607); but it’s nonetheless subscribed “Earle of Oxfenforde” in the Rawlinson manuscripts. The words were set to music under the title “In praise of a contented mind” by the great contemporary composer William Byrd (c. 1540-1623), with whom Oxford was associated. And Steven W. May cites it in Studies in Philology (1980) and The Elizabethan Courtier Poets (1999) as “possibly” by Oxford (although it seems to me that he thinks the case for him is definite):
My mind to me a kingdom is,
Such perfect joy therein I find,
That it excels all other bliss
That world affords or grows by kind;
Though much I want which most men have,
Yet still my mind forbids to crave …
Content I live, this is my state,
I seek no more than may suffice…
Lo thus I triumph like a king,
Content with that my mind doth bring…
That verse-song might as well have been penned by Hamlet himself! It comes from the same sensibility, with the same note of defiance.
Steven May assigns the following verse to Oxford without qualification:
Were I a king I could command contentWere I obscure unknown should be my cares,
And were I dead no thought should me torment,
Nor words, nor wrongs, nor loves, nor hopes, nor fears;
A doubtful choice of these things one to crave,
A Kingdom or a cottage or a grave.
In this case there is the same preoccupation with the lack of kingship, echoing lines spoken by the king in Richard II:
What must the king do now? Must he submit?
The king shall do it. Must he be deposed?
The king shall be contented…
And my large kingdom for a little grave,
A little little grave, an obscure grave…
Oxford began signing his letters with a “crown signature” in November 1569 when he was nineteen; he stopped using it after the funeral of Queen Elizabeth on April 28, 1603, with the Tudor dynasty officially no more. Did he think of himself a rightful king deprived of his crown? That provocative signature would ordinarily get a nobleman in big trouble — the way Oxford’s uncle, the Earl of Surrey, had been imprisoned and executed by Henry VIII (just before the king’s death in February 1547) for provocatively altering his coat of arms. Why Oxford never got in trouble for his highly suggestive signature is an open question…
Sonnet 114 by “Shakespeare” has these lines:
Or whether doth my mind, being crown’d with yoU,
Drink up the monarch’s plague, this flattery?…
And my great mind most kingly drinks it up…
The anonymous verse publication Willobie His Avisa (1594) comes to its end with a long poem “The Praise of a Contented Mind” signed Ever or Never, one of Edward de Vere’s early pen names, concluding:
Of all the brave resounding words, which God to man hath lent,
This soundeth sweetest in mine ear, to say: I am content.
Oxford was a member of the House of Lords, where “Content” or “Not Content” were the formal expressions of assent or dissent (equivalent to “Aye” or “No” in the House of Commons); but in Willobie, as in works attributed to both Oxford and “Shakespeare,” the phrase “I am content” is an expression of inner peace despite the experience of painful loss — in other words, Hamlet has learned to travel “out of body” to some other dimension that may actually be the realm of madness, as he tells Laertes:
HAMLET: What I have done
That might your nature, honor and exception
Roughly awake, I here proclaim was madness.
Was’t Hamlet wronged Laertes? Never Hamlet.
If Hamlet from himself be ta’en away,
And when he’s not himself does wrong Laertes,
Then Hamlet does it not. Hamlet denies it.
Who does it then? His madness.
In effect he becomes split apart, resulting in an appearance on the surface that’s very different from what is going on inside him, mentally and emotionally:
OXFORD: To entertain my thoughts, and there my hap to moan,
That never am less idle lo, than when I am alone.
OXFORD: I am not as I seem to be,
Nor when I smile I am not glad…
My mind to me a kingdom is
[song lyrics]
My mind to me a kingdom is;
Such perfect joy therein I find
That it excels all other bliss
That world affords or grows by kind.
Though much I want which most men have,
Yet still my mind forbids to crave.
No princely pomp, no wealthy store,
No force to win the victory,
No wily wit to salve a sore,
No shape to feed each gazing eye;
To none of these I yield as thrall.
For why my mind doth serve for all.
I see how plenty suffers oft,
How hasty climbers soon do fall;
I see that those that are aloft
Mishap doth threaten most of all;
They get with toil, they keep with fear.
Such cares my mind could never bear.
Content I live, this is my stay;
I seek no more than may suffice;
I press to bear no haughty sway;
Look what I lack my mind supplies;
Lo, thus I triumph like a king,
Content with that my mind doth bring.
I little have, and seek no more.
They are but poor, though much they have,
And I am rich with little store.
They poor, I rich; they beg, I give;
They lack, I leave, they pine, I live.
I laugh not at another’s loss;
I grudge not at another’s gain:
No worldly waves my mind can toss;
My state at one doth still remain.
I fear no foe, nor fawning friend;
I loathe not life, nor dread my end.
Some weigh their pleasure by their lust,
Their wisdom by their rage of will,
Their treasure is their only trust;
And cloaked craft their store of skill.
But all the pleasure that I find
Is to maintain a quiet mind.
My wealth is health and perfect ease;
My conscience clear my chief defense;
I neither seek by bribes to please,
Nor by deceit to breed offense.
Thus do I live; thus will I die.
Would all did so as well as I!
(My emphases are added above.)
Hank Whittemore's Shakespeare Blog 