Which Beatles song title comes from Shakespeare?
Paul McCartney’s surprise revelation
In The Lyrics: 1956 to the Present (2021) Paul McCartney suggest that the song Let it Be was inspired by Hamlet.
There are a couple of lines from late in the play: ‘O, I could tell you — But let it be. Horatio, I am dead,’ I suspect those lines had subconsciously planted themselves in my memory.
McCartney reasons that he may have learned the phrase at school while studying for an exam under his favourite teacher, Alan Durband.
The words let it be appear in Hamlet twice. Curiously, it is the first occurrence, which McCartney does not mention, that seems more in tune with the song.
Let it Be famously was inspired by a dream in which Paul’s mother appears and offers solace. In Act One Scene 2, Hamlet is overcome with grief for his his father and suspicion about his mother’s remarriage.
It is news that the ghost of his father is (metaphorically) walking the ramparts that lifts the despairing prince’s spirits :
If it assume my noble father’s person,
I’ll speak to it, though hell itself should gape
And bid me hold my peace. I pray you all,
If you have hitherto conceal’d this sight,
Let it be tenable in your silence still
So far, this seems thematically consistent. Hamlet craves ‘words of wisdom’ from his beloved father — Paul’s mother helps him get through his ‘hour of darkness’. The problem is that the ghost of Hamlet’s father is not a ‘let it be’ kind of guru. He will counsel revenge: the opposite message to that conveyed by the song.
This duly leads to the carnage of Act 5 Scene II, in which scores are settled to the ghost’s liking. Hamlet’s mother dies and her son kills his stepfather — with Horatio, Laertes and the Prince himself all adding to the body count. It is amidst this bloodbath the second use of ‘let it be’ occurs
But let it be. Horatio, I am dead;
Thou livest; report me and my cause aright
In other words, more Live and Let Die than Let it Be. Hamlet does not adapt easily to candle-waving communal singing.
Perhaps it was the musicality of the phrase ‘let it be’ — which long predates Shakespeare — that lodged in the songwriter’s subconscious. The eminent literary critic, John Sutherland, describes a chance meeting in which McCartney paid tribute to former English teacher:
Durband had been a formative influence on him as a schoolboy at the Liverpool Institute. He was head of the grammar school’s English department. Sir Paul loosed a volley of Chaucer (word and accent perfect) source
Chaucer, the first published source of ‘let it be’ (“Lat be thyn arguynge”) may also be in the running for royalties.
One obvious subconscious inspiration for Let it Be is not literary. McCartney acknowledges that though ‘not a religious person’ the song’s ‘prayer or mini prayer’ feel is apparent in both the words and the music.
When I find myself in times of trouble/Mother Mary comes to me/ Speaking words of wisdom/Let it be
