Memento Mori

I've been reading about "memento mori."

From UCLA: "A memento mori is a form of image that urged a European person of the late Middle Ages to "remember thy death." To do this, a memento mori might represent death as a human skeleton--perhaps as the Grim Reaper gathering his harvest--or it might depict human bodies in an advanced state of decay. Its purpose is to remind the viewer that death is an unavoidable part of life, something to be prepared for at all times. Memento mori images are graphic demonstrations of the fact that death was not only a more frequent, but a far more familiar occurrence in medieval Europe than it is today."

Shakespeare was writing during the era of memento mori. I've written before about the plague and Hamlet. Lots of death in Hamlet, of course. Hamlet is haunted literally and figuratively by the death of his father, he gives several speeches about how death is the great equalizer: about how we all wind up food for maggots, or how even the great Alexander dies and decays into earth. Etc.

Interesting that there isn't much talk in terms of any after-life. Two exceptions: 1) Hamlet's father (the ghost)--the fact he exists, and he makes reference to coming from a hell-like world and 2) Claudius expresses (some) remorse as he prays; Hamlet sees him praying & decides not to kill him, believing he'll be sending him to heaven.

But believing in "heaven" doesn't figure in, say, the "to be or not to be" speech; what lay in the undiscovered country is not "heaven," but a mystery. (One that has endured, obviously--death is still the great mystery/great equalizer it was then, still the same undiscovered country.).

I'm very curious how Shakespeare's audiences took Hamlet's death-speeches. If a play like this were to be written today, or a movie, it would be surely be perceived as gloomy and macabre. But in a time when theaters were still being closed during plague-outbreaks, I wonder if it wasn't just perceived as normal (not overly dark); our version of macabre = utterly normal back then.

The idea of memento mori fascinates me, having gone through cancer. I was shocked, shocked, shocked by my diagnosis--in a very basic way, I was shocked by the idea, even, that I was mortal.

The three images above are from the "Final Farewell: The Culture of Death and the Afterlife" exhibit at the University of Missouri, featuring artworks with memento mori iconography.

Top image is "The Card Game of Death," by Giuseppe Erts, 1663.

The second image is an engraving by Philip Galle, no date, but sometime in the late 1500s-early 1600s.

About the third image: "Beginning in the later seventeenth century, undertakers supplied the living with objects concerning the recently deceased. Printed ephemera, such as this funeral invitation, were common. They often featured popular memento mori text and iconography, such as the phrase “Remember your death,” the skull and crossbones, and the winged hourglass. Similar to other works in this exhibition, this invitation shows allegorical figures of Death and Time (a skeleton holding an arrow and a winged man, respectively)."