SARAH: The ghost says that he is forbidden to give a description of the afterlife. But he uses a strange expression for this description: eternal blazon.

RALPH: Yes, it's strange, but it's also quite interesting. So, let's start with the word "blazon" which has to do with a coat of arms.

SARAH: And can you explain to us what a coat of arms is?

RALPH: Of course, Sarah. Originally, it was the tunic, or coat, painted with the family crest that a knight would wear over his armor. By Shakespeare's time, coats of arms were part of a rigid system of social classification. There was actually a department of the government that conferred the right to a coat of arms and the title of "gentleman". The noun, "blazon", meant the coat of arms itself; but it could also refer to the official description of the features of the coat of arms. 

SARAH: But Shakespeare metaphorically extends this meaning, of a description of a coat of arms, to mean a description of anything.

RALPH: And as for the word "eternal"; well, the afterlife lasts for eternity; it's eternal.

SARAH: Et voila. An eternal blazon is a description of the afterlife.

RALPH: But wait, Sarah, that's not the end of the story; now comes the fascinating part. The word blazon had a connection with Shakespeare's personal life, and members of the audience who knew him, or knew much about him, might've picked up on this. A little while before he wrote Hamlet, Shakespeare completed the expensive and arduous process of getting a coat of arms and the title of gentleman for his own family.

SARAH: So for Shakespeare, the term blazon has echoes of his own quest to bring honor and noble respectability to his father, after his father's death.

RALPH: That's right — so it's especially significant that it's Hamlet's father who introduces this term in the play, precisely when he is about to ask his son to bring him honor and respectability by avenging his death. Now, obviously, this scene is not autobiographical in any direct sense — but it is suffused with Shakespeare's own situation as a son grappling with the legacy of his father, and trying to do him justice after his death.

SARAH: Unfortunately, no image of Shakespeare's own coat of arms survives; the picture you see here is a historian's guess because all that has come down to us is its official description, or its blazon.

RALPH: Sarah, you speak French — what's the motto on the Shakespeare family crest?

SARAH: "Non sans droit" — which means, not without right. Sounds a little defensive doesn't it — as if he's saying, "Yes, I do have the right to be called a gentleman.

RALPH: And he had reason to be defensive. The official who granted Shakespeare's coat of arms was actually convicted of corruption, and Shakespeare's coat of arms was one of several which was challenged afterwards for its legitimacy.

SARAH: I imagine Shakespeare might have been mocked as an uppity social climber.

RALPH: Well it could have been worse. The clerk who drew up the official description, the blazon, added a comma after the first word of the motto.

SARAH: So instead of "Non sans droit", not without right; it read "Non, sans droit'! No, you have no justification! It's ironic that Shakespeare, the master of the double entendre, left himself open to ridicule by this choice of motto.

RALPH: He did have the blazon corrected, but he didn't completely avoid satire.

SARAH: Why? What happened?

RALPH: Well, another playwright wrote a play that was performed by Shakespeare's own company, in which an uncultivated social climber bribes an official to get a coat of arms. The coat of arms featured the very ig-noble image of a roasted pig. I'm sure the actor who was playing this social climber enjoyed watching the red-faced Shakespeare sitting out in the audience, as he proudly read out his new family motto — "Non sans moutarde".

SARAH: Not without mustard!

RALPH: Well, Sarah, this has been a rather detailed account of the importance of two small words in the ghost's speech — words that could be easy to miss entirely if we were watching this play for the first, or even the second time.

SARAH: I agree, Ralph — and our audience might draw two reasonable, but quite different conclusions. The first is that it's pointless to try and watch Shakespeare's plays before a lengthy course of study, or else we'll miss crucial elements. But the second conclusion is that all these details are rather boring, and not worth delving into — we should just sit back and watch the action.

RALPH: But both of these conclusions are a little bit extreme. There are two ways to access Shakespeare's poetry and drama, and they're complementary. When we're in the theater, we may indeed miss words and phrases, but Shakespeare's thrilling plots and compelling characters will help us fill in the gaps as we watch the events unfold. And then, when we're examining Shakespeare's text as part of literary or cultural study, these details give us almost endless grounds for appreciating Shakespeare's sharp wit and his philosophical depth.

SARAH: But if our digressions about words and phrases are making you yawn, feel free to stick to the big picture for now — you can always come back to these later, when you've become as fascinated with this text as we have.