Paul Adrian Fried / HAMLET'S BIBLE

Why did Shakespeare use Illyria as a setting for Twelfth Night? Is there any historical meaning to Illyria that may have made this a creative, illuminating, and relevant setting for Early Modern England, still in the throes of the Reformation? Consider:  On JUNE 19, 325 A.D., at the end of the Council of Nicea, Arian schismatics were exiled to Illyria, 1700 years ago this year.  IF ALL WE KNEW ABOUT ILLYRIA and Twelfth Night was two things:  1. That it was where Arius and his schismatic followers were exiled by Emperor Constantine and the First Council of Nicea; and  2. That Shakespeare’s contemporary, playwright Thomas Kyd, was arrested in 1593, tortured, and falsely accused of the heresy of Arianism [1];  these facts would color our reading of Shakespeare’s play–set in Illyria. [2] What happened after Arians were exiled to Illyria? After Nicea, Constantine’s successors flip-flopped, opposing or supporting Arianism (337-378 AD).  Flash-forward:  Durin...

Depending on who is pope at the time – either the time of the writing of a Shakespeare play, or a during a given production, or work of scholarship – the way people feel about Hamlet’s Uncle Claudius and his various sins or vices may vary greatly.  Elizabeth I had been excommunicated by Pope Pius V (1570) [1]. Under Sixtus V, Rome encouraged Spain to launch three Armada invasions of England (1588, 1596, 1601). (How would you feel?) During the English Civil Wars (1642 to 1651), in part about religion, Pope Innocent X (1644-1655) supported Ireland, against objections of the exiled Henrietta Maria, English Queen living in Paris.  So before 1660, it was easier to connect Claudius and his sins and vices with Rome and a Catholic church that resisted reform.  Fast forward to the 1800s: Charles Dickens publishes Oliver Twist (1837-1839), A Christmas Carol (1843), and Hard Times (1854); Marx and Engles publish Das Kapital (1867-1894), and Pope Leo XIII publishes Rerum Novarum (1...

An idea central to the Protestant Reformation was salvation by “faith alone,” not works [1]. This may help to understand why Marjorie Garber says the drinking game of Claudius approaches blasphemy [2]. Claudius’s drinking game is a celebration of works: Can the king drink the whole flagon without stopping? Fire the cannon! Best king? Claudius! To his health! Long live Claudius! Fire the cannon! The works of Claudius result in “earthly thunder” that the heavens “re-speak” [3] (echo). This is deeply ironic: the work of Claudius by which he obtained the throne was a work of poisoning, fratricide, regicide, usurpation, and lying to cover it up. Celebrate, fire the cannon: He got away with it? When Hamlet tries to conspire – to force his “works” to achieve revenge for his father’s death – he makes mistakes, and innocent people (like Polonius) are killed (3.4). Only late in the play does he articulate his new faith: “There's a divinity that shapes our ends, Rough-hew them how we will” ...

Marjorie Garber of Harvard University thinks the drinking games of Claudius, with cannon fire and “earthly thunder,” are blasphemous, adding yet another sin to his list. Claudius breaks a number of the Ten Commandments: Thou shalt not kill (Deuteronomy 5:17, Genesis 4:3-15) [1], nor covet thy neighbor’s house or wife (etc.) (Exodus 20:17) [2], nor bear false witness (Exodus 20:16) [3]. But more essentially, Claudius breaks the first commandment, which is to love God and have no other gods (Exodus 20:3-5). Garber notes the blasphemy implied in his drinking game: No jocund health that Denmark drinks today But the great cannon to the clouds shall tell, And the King’s rouse the heaven shall bruit again, Respeaking earthly thunder. (1.2.129-132) Garber writes, “It even approaches blasphemy, when we hear [...] that every time the King drinks, the cannons will blaze away, and ‘The King’s Rouse the heavens shall bruit again, / respeaking earthly thunder’.... Properly, thunder is heavenly, not ...

The name Yorick [1] may come from the same root as St. George [2], patron saint of England since 1348 : from the Greek “Georgios”: from ge (γῆ)  - 'earth, soil' - and ergon (ἔργον), 'work' [3]. Yorick, as “earth worker.”   The gravedigger in Shakespeare’s Hamlet is called “Goodman Delver” by his friend (5.1.14). So the gravedigger and Yorick echo one another in more ways than foolery… This relates also to my series on the Emmaus echo in 5.1, the graveyard scene: the story of Jesus’ appearance to the disciples on the road to Emmaus [4] was a gospel read in church on the first Monday after Easter every year of Shakespeare’s life [5]. In that gospel, two disciples on the road are mourning the death of Jesus. They meet a stranger (somehow a real or figurative Jesus, unrecognized [6]) who shows them compassion, listens, scolds them for their flawed thinking, and gives them hope, explaining the scriptures to them. These are all things Jesus had done for them. The disciples ...

Shakespeare’s Hamlet could have unfolded differently from Gertrude’s closet scene onward (3.4): Instead of following the Danish tale, it could have followed Nero’s story [1]. Shakespeare makes the tales overlap, grafting on references to Claudius and Nero; then he rejects that potential plot line and what such historical characters represent. To be a play based on an old Danish tale, or not? To be a play based on Rome’s Claudius I, Julia Agrippina, and her son Nero – or not? (Or in modern productions: To have Hamlet played by Ringo Starr, Nero’s doppelganger – or not? [See collage images….]) In Shakespeare’s time, what were Nero and Agrippina famous for? - Agrippina poisoned her husband, Claudius I, so that her son Nero could be emperor. - Nero later arranged for his mother’s death and attended her autopsy. - In Shakespeare’s 1 Henry VI , Lord Talbot claims that Nero played a lute while Rome burned, and Shakespeare refers to the Claudius-Agrippina-Nero tale in two other plays [...

CLAUDIUS UNNAMED: Why – at the end of the reign of Elizabeth I – would Shakespeare have characters in Hamlet be silent regarding the king’s name, in a play involving an “incestuous marriage” in which the king marries his older brother’s widow? Some things could not be named. In the minds of audiences, the incestuous marriage would seem uncomfortably close to the first marriage of Henry VIII. For similar reasons, Richard II could not include the deposition scene when first published [1], and Shakespeare’s collaboration with John Fletcher on Henry VIII was not written or enacted until 1613 [2]. Why? Censorship, fear, and tact. Everyone knew that - Henry VIII, Elizabeth’s father, had married his older brother’s widow, and later divorced her, claiming it an incestuous marriage… - and that Elizabeth was sometimes called a “bastard queen”: Henry and Anne Boleyn had conceived Elizabeth out of wedlock; Elizabeth was born only three months after a secret marriage, making her ineligible in th...

It is said that in Shakespeare’s plays, all resurrections are staged, faked: Much Ado About Nothing (Hero) [1]; Henry IV, Part 1 (Falstaff) [2]. Staging can fail badly: Romeo and Juliet [3] (as if to admit the limitations of such staging?). Poor Tom/Edgar stages a miracle for Gloucester in King Lear [4].   Sonnet 18 ends, “So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see, / So long lives this, and this gives life to thee,” as if the poem bestows (stages) everlasting life. What to make of this? As is said in Hamlet of Ophelia’s “mad” speech, many will “botch” these facts up “fit to their own thoughts” [5]: Atheists may claim this proves Shakespeare’s atheism. Christians may note: Miracle and Mystery Plays were banned by Henry VIII, still restricted in Elizabethan times. Even if Shakespeare wanted to portray resurrections, his hands were tied. Many of Hamlet’s verbal tricks with Claudius [6] and Polonius [7] (and Claudius again [8]) – and the gravedigger’s with Hamlet [8] – depend on ta...

Years ago, prompted by a student question, I noticed that Hamlet’s westward sea-voyage toward England - and change of mode of transportation mid-sea - was like Jonah’s. I thought others had probably noticed and considered this at length, but never found any. Hannibal Hamlin notes that a popular play, “A Looking Glass for London and England,” featured the prophet Jonah [1] (performed when Shakespeare was with The Lord Strange's Men), and that Elizabeth I named one of her ships Elizabeth Jonas, with a speech that (strangely?) read the Jonah story as a triumph over enemies [2]. Two gospels quote Jesus speaking of the “sign of Jonah” [3]. English citizens were required to attend church, and would have heard these every year of their lives [4]. Many people only know that Jonah was swallowed by a fish. Fewer know that, even after being saved from the fish’s belly, Jonah would rather witness the destruction of Nineveh than see them repent and be saved by God’s mercy. Dennis Taylor notes t...