Paul Adrian Fried / HAMLET'S BIBLE

In mid-May, Philip Rowe, the host of the podcast, The History of European Theatre , asked me to be a guest on his podcast. I was delighted. Philip's podcast series has more than 260 episodes covering a wide range of subjects, and he has interviewed an impressive list of guests, including Kristen McDermott, Steve Sohmer, Rob Eastaway, Darren Freebury-Jones, Susan D Amussen, Roberta Barker, Robert Crighton, Rachel Aanstad, Colin David Rees, Iman Sheeha, Laurie Johnson, Katherine Sheil, Cassidy Cash, and Ian McCormick, to name just a few in recent years. After some planning, on June 10, we recorded a conversation about Shakespeare's use of biblical allusions, especially in Hamlet . Philip edited the interview into two episodes. I'm very happy that Philip found and liked my blog, honored to be a guest, and greatly enjoyed the conversation. In the first of these two episodes we talk more generally about Shakespeare and the Bible, and in the second (release date to be ann...

Shakespeare's Hamlet offers glimpses of two ways of transcending dysfunctional parentage: a) The limited path of Freud's Oedipal complex, or b) Yorick and the paths of Francis of Assisi and Bernard of Clairvaux. In the first, the son kills the father-figure to reclaim a lost closeness to the mother. If the father is a tyrant and the son resorts to violence to replace him, this is a very limited, temporary transcendence, with the son too much like the father he replaces [1]. Francisco and Bernardo are the names of sentinels, the first two characters on stage in the play. Together, they are the names of the Pazzi assassins [2], but individually they are names of saints: - Francis of Assisi and Bernard of Clairvaux didn't kill their fathers, but Francis famously renounced his abusive father before the bishop, stripping off his clothes and giving them back to his father, saying that he had a father in heaven. - St. Bernard’s biological father and brothers eventually joined t...

Does Shakespeare use Hamlet’s remarks about women’s “painted faces” to expose misogyny in official English Protestant sermons? Hamlet complains to Ophelia that he knows of the “paintings” she, and women in general, make when they take the one face God gave them and make themselves another. This may represent more than merely a cruel and misogynistic Hamlet, mistreating a former love. Hamlet is quoting almost word-for-word similar statements in a homily of the time. Not by a fringe preacher who made misogynistic remarks about women: An official Elizabethan homily [1]. Claudius uses the analogy of “The harlot's cheek, beautied with plast'ring art,” to describe his “deed” of having killed his brother, covered by lies (3.1.59-62). All acted out by actors who put on faces other than those God gave them, with make-up. This theme may be very related to England’s iconoclasm and the white-washing of old images in churches [2]. Shakespeare - who created many strong female characters in...

English audiences - after recent attempted invasions by the Spanish Armada, and anticipating more - may have felt Hamlet was their hero, to change Claudius’ secret letter that ordered Hamlet's death so that Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are executed instead. Early audiences may have opposed any suggestion of oppression by a foreign power, Spanish or Danish. Hamlet and his former school-friends-turned-spies had been sent by Claudius, who claimed they must collect England’s "neglected tribute" (3.1), like insurance payments to organized crime: Pay, and we won't hurt you. It may have seemed to them satisfying that the rebellious, "mad" Danish prince would change the letter intended to bring about his own death, so that Rosencrantz and Guildenstern would be executed by the very English from whom the three were told to collect this tribute. Although Elizabeth prohibited speculation about her successor, many knew that James of Scotland, who had married Princess A...

MORE PARTICIPANTS AT SAA DENVER 2026 My previous post named members in my seminar (Shakespeare and the Forms of Religion), but I met many other wonderful scholars in Denver for The Shakespeare Association of America 2026 conference. Here are six more:  TOP (L-R):  EVELYN GAJOWSKI is an author and one of the most prolific Shakespeare essay collection editors today. [1]  ARNIE PERLSTEIN has long been a strong supporter of my work, and was presenting in a workshop on the afterlives of The Taming the Shrew. His focus was on Shakespeare’s influence on Jane Austen in works like Pride and Prejudice and he has a blog about Jane Austen’s works. [2] RICHARD STRIER (emeritus, U. of Chicago) has written a number of books that have had a profound effect on my thinking [3]. Strier nicely distinguishes between common scholarly assumptions and facts related to texts:  “Interpretive conclusions, even widely held ones, do not become facts. That Hamlet delays in killing Claudius is a...

It was a great pleasure to attend the April 2026 conference of the Shakespeare Association of America in Denver, Colorado, and to participate in a 9 am Thursday seminar on April 2 titled “Shakespeare and the Forms of Religion,” along with an exceptional group of scholars. These included (top, left-to-right): Sean M. Benson (University of Mary Hardin-Baylor), who wrote about holy fools in a number of Shakespeare’s comedies, drawing on Erasmus and his idea of folly; James E. Berg (Middlebury College), who wrote about the Buddhist idea of “no mind” as a lens through which to view Romeo and Juliet; Paul Adrian Fried (yours truly), on often-overlooked biblical allusions or plot echoes in 𝘏𝘢𝘮𝘭𝘦𝘵 and their implications for expanding a taxonomy of such references; and (bottom, left-to-right): Trina Hyun (SUNY University at Buffalo), who wrote about Golding’s (mis-?) translation of Ovid and the idea of grace in Antony and Cleopatra; Joseph Navitsky (Champlain College, Saint-Lambert), wh...

Divine right of monarchs is challenged by Shakespeare's scripture allusions, especially in Hamlet. 1. When Hamlet spares Claudius at prayer [1], this echos of 1 Samuel 24 and 26, where David has chances to kill King Saul, but will not raise a hand against “God’s anointed.” - But years before Saul’s death, Saul acted badly and fell to disfavor with God, whose prophet chose David as successor (1 Sam 16) while Saul was still alive. This challenges unrestricted divine right.  2. St. Paul in Romans 13 urges obedience to rulers, as it is their job to maintain civil order, but does not include obedience to immoral orders of tyrants [2]. 3. Darren Freebury-Jones recently noted key ideas from John Neville Figgis’ book on the Divine Right of Kings, [3], including that the monarch is accountable to God alone. 4. More fundamentally, however, scriptures quote Jesus as saying, “whatever you do unto the least of these, you do unto me” [4]. By this logic, when monarchs treat “the least” badly, t...

KING LEAR begins like a folktale: There was a king who had three daughters. He wished to retire and divide his kingdom among them, so he asked which loved him best. Two daughters, dishonest and greedy, flattered him, while the third refused, so he banished her. The divided kingdom descended into violence, while the king, expecting still to be treated as such, is shuffled back and forth, finally homeless. The story’s themes resonate with any age. Audiences will see in the play reflections of their own time: reckless aging leaders in a bleak world brightened occasionally by the compassion of the oppressed. What were some of the divisions in Shakespeare’s time that may have inspired the play, and resonated most with its first audiences? FLATTERY OF FAVORITES: Leaders are always tempted to surround themselves with those who say what they want, instead of need, to hear. England was no different. James was known to have charming, flattering favorites rewarded with wealth and status but w...

The ending of King Lear has inspired some modern critics to claim it is a godless play, without hope. The ending scene (5.3) - in which Lear howls and holds the corpse of the one daughter who loved him best - is filled with grief. Actors and directors (who perhaps have only been kings and queens of wishful thinking [1] and never literally monarchs) must draw upon general feelings of deep grief to enact their roles. Feelings are one thing. But how shall we express them? Cultures and art shape expectations, showing how we might act in such circumstances.  Profound grief may make some catatonic, or suicidal, causing self-harm, or seeking revenge. But was there a stage tradition in Shakespeare’s time for the grief of a parent at losing a beloved child? A young Shakespeare may have witnessed some of the last performances of medieval passion plays, as well as perhaps medieval mystery, miracle, and morality plays, increasingly prohibited under Elizabeth I. [2] In a 2005 book, Katharine...

In Shakespeare’s Henry V (F1), "Hostesse" describes the death of Falstaff (2.3.832-847), claiming not that Falstaff is in heaven in the bosom of Abraham (like the beggar Lazarus of Luke 16:19-31), but in the bosom of Arthur. She also offers: "his Nose was as sharpe as a Pen, and a Table of greene fields." (2.3.838-9) Adam Roberts [1] notes:  - Lewis Theobald (1733) "amends Table to babbled, giving us: ‘his nose was as sharp as a pen and [he] babbled of green fields’."  - Most editions follow Theobold, but Gary Taylor’s Oxford edition considers other options. Dobson notes that the RSC edition (eds. Bate and Rasmussen) make it ‘for his nose was as sharp as a pen on a table of green fields.’ [2]  Mark Alcamo offers that "Nose" might have at least a double meaning, both literal and also that his "knows" (his knowing) was sharp at his death [3]. Roberts considers that "table" might also mean "tableau," image. Roberts and ...

When Lear speaks with Cordelia in 5.3 of being "God's spies" [1], this draws on a common trope, which activates a kind of cognitive framing. The trope is present in the tale to which Ophelia alludes in Hamlet 4.5: “the owl was a baker’s daughter,” a tale about Jesus or a fairy in disguise as a beggar at the baker’s door.  It is also present when Henry V (in 4.1) moves disguised among his troops on the eve of the Battle of Agincourt, and when Hamlet in 5.1 does not at first reveal to the gravedigger that he is the “mad” prince [2]: Sermons urged that monarchs should be obeyed like God’s representatives on earth, but king and prince purposefully conceal their identities, like spies. The trope was in medieval tales: King Arthur goes among his people disguised [3], as he does centuries later in Mark Twain's novel, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court (1889). Shakespeare was fond of Ovid’s Metamorphoses in which the gods Zeus and Hermes, disguised like spi...

With more foresight, if Shakespeare had wanted to be more accessible for all ages, he might have realized that once Protestants questioned the Catholic idea of Eucharist as “transubstantiation,” religion would be on its way out (especially in some countries), and he might not have included as many as 1,300 biblical references in his plays [1]. 😉 One example is in King Lear 4.4.  Cordelia, newly returned to England from France, alludes to Luke 2:41-52:  CORDELIA: O dear *father,* It is thy *business* that I go about.    (4.4.26-27)  (*emphasis* mine) This alludes to the tale of the boy Jesus, lost in Jerusalem, later found in the temple, conversing with, astonishing, and amazing temple elders.  Shakespeare also has Hamlet in 3.2 allude to this with his former school friends after The Mousetrap, with his mother amazed and “astonied” [2]. Yes, spelled “astonied” in Shakespeare and in the 1599 Geneva translation:  47 And all that heard him, were astonie...