W - “Wax Jack”

 

During the scene when Claudius is conspiring with Laertes to poison Hamlet in some manner or other,  he has on his table a peculiar silver device—a wax jack. It consists of a spindle wrapped with a long, narrow length of taper, like a pencil-thin candle, with a clip or clamp holding one end. This created a small flame that was hot enough to melt sealing wax but not scorch it like a candle would. 

Early sealing wax was made of beeswax, and while it would seal correspondence and envelopes, it was not very tamper evident, since it was flexible and could be easily opened and re-sealed by warming the back of the melted blob and pressing it back onto the paper. Later, new “recipes” for improved sealant included other materials such as shellac, mastic, turpentine, chalk, gypsum, colorant, and even essential oils to make it pleasantly fragranced. These ingredients made the “wax” more brittle, and therefore more difficult to unseal and reseal without it crumbling to bits and making tampering more obvious. By the 16th century, the English monarchy (and presumably, other heads of state) used this more reliable sealant for their secret missives. 

Luckily for Hamlet, he had his father’s signet ring, “which was the model of that Danish seal” that Claudius would have used to stamp the letter he gave to Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. That way, Hamlet could easily open it, re-write the letter, and using fresh sealant, he could re-seal it anew, with no one the wiser. 

Wax jacks were an essential desk accessory in the Regency era, when Jane Austen went to see a performance of The Merchant of Venice in 1814, which starred the famous heartthrob Edmund Kean. She subsequently wrote (and sealed) a letter for her sister regarding her review of the play, fawning over Kean’s acting talents. In her novel Sense and Sensibility, Mrs. Dashwood comments ruefully on a how a communal reading of Hamlet was interrupted by the absence of Mr. Willoughby. The popular film version of the book from 1995 stars Emma Thompson, who starred in Branagh’s Much Ado About Nothing (1994), and Kate Winslet, Branagh’s Ophelia. 

Sources:

 

Of Wax Jacks and Bougie Boxes

Jane Austen’s Shakespeare