Paul Adrian Fried / HAMLET'S BIBLE

FOUR APPROACHES to the names of sentinels Francisco & Bernardo at the opening of Shakespeare’s Hamlet: 1. Pay no attention to the names. Just enjoy. 2. Assume (as Joseph Ritson did, writing in 1783) that Shakespeare didn’t know his Latin or Italian well and sometimes chose such names randomly. This may imply permission to ignore these names (as in 1, above), but you can feel you’ve taken the playwright down a notch in the process, avoiding Bardolatry (à la Ritson). 3. Assume (as C. Elliott Browne did, writing in 1876) that these names point to two key assassins in the Pazzi conspiracy of 1478. The allusion therefore points to papal corruption and Machiavellian scheming, which could seem anti-Catholic, justifying England’s break from Rome. Scholars with a Protestant bias can feel self-satisfied with this one and look no further. Or the connection to names of Pazzi assassins may be cover (out-wit the censors) for #4: 4. Consider that the names point to Saints Francis of A...

TOP SIX REASONS #Shakespeare probably named the sentinel Francisco (first character on stage in Hamlet ) after Francis of Assisi: 6. "Get thee to a nunnery!": Clare, friend of Francis, founded the Poor Clares; the source stories for Hamlet had no parallel "to a nunnery!" rejection of a lover. 5. Fortinbras' lost land: Franciscan friars are usually positive figures for Shakespeare; many Franciscan monasteries, named after Francis, were dissolved by Henry VIII (lost land!), who married his brother's wife, as did Claudius in Hamlet. 4. Heart-sick: Francisco complains of heart-sickness in 1.1, as does Hamlet in 5.2; Francis was described as often being heart-sick with compassion for the sick and poor. 3. World-weary: Hamlet complains (2.2) of being world-weary in language similar to that used by biographer [hagiographer] Thomas of Celano to describe Francis. 2. Father issues: Hamlet and Francis both refocus on [a heavenly father or] "P...

Shakespeare's Hamlet has father issues, and only after being spared by pirates at sea does he refocus from his father's ghost to what he sees as the hand of Providence. It might have been better if he'd made the break sooner. But Shakespeare chose to name the first character on stage Francisco, a sentinel, and a possible allusion to Francis of Assisi, who also had father issues, and whose monasteries spread all over Europe and to England, where hundreds of monasteries were "dissolved" during the reign of Henry VIII - a nice way of saying land was stolen to be sold off by the crown and for political favors. [April 12, 2024 note: We may also observe that, just as Francis of Assisi had father issues - and famousely sought to separate himself from an abusive father in favor of a heavenly one - Bernard of Clairvaux was famous for having said to have had a dream in which he was fed on milk from the breast of the Virgin Mary, a vision portrayed in various paintings....

Did Shakespeare choose the names Francesco and Bernardo as the first two characters in Hamlet, sentinels, because he named them after Saints Francis of Assisi and Bernard of Clairvaux, two saints associated with hundreds of Franciscan and Cistercian monasteries that were lost during the reign of Henry VIII? And might Shakespeare's parents have remembered wall paintings in churches or chapels near or on these monastery grounds, which depicted events from the lives of these saints - as many frescoes do in other parts of Europe? A number of churches in Florence, the location of the Pazzi conspiracy, have frescoes that depict Francis, cutting ties with his father, or Francis going to visit the sultan (leader of the enemy forces) during a crusade. These were well-known stories and may have some relevance to the plot of Hamlet. [April 12, 2024 note: Much is made of the fact that Hamlet is upset with his mother for marrying his uncle, considered a scandalously incestuous marriage i...