Paul Adrian Fried / HAMLET'S BIBLE

Old King Hamlet as Caesar figure, not Christ figure After the death of King Hamlet, the sentinels are nervous confronting one another at the end of Francesco’s shift and the start of Bernardo’s. They are also anxious about why Denmark is so busy preparing for war. Shakespeare’s play was written at a time when many Protestants thought biblical prophecies in the biblical books of Revelations and Daniel were coming true (see Apocalypse & Armada in Kyd's Spanish Tragedy by Frank R. Ardolino); many believed the end times were approaching, and that Rome was the Whore of Babylon. The Dover Straits earthquake of 1580, a 1598 appearance of Haley’s Comet, and a 1598 total eclipse visible across much of England and Scotland (“disasters in the sun”) only increased such speculation. Bernardo and Marcellus tell Horatio about the hour of the night when the ghost had appeared and begin describing the positions of the stars, when the ghost appears again. After the ghost leaves, as Horatio...

In a Shakespeare anatomy joke, men have a “thing” between their legs; women have a “nothing.” So “Much Ado about Nothing” jokes about female anatomy and the wooing, wedding, & bedding of women. Much ado. Yet when Hamlet says, “The king is a thing [...] of nothing” (4.2), No Fear Shakespeare paraphrases it, “...of no importance.” That's (G-rated) meaning #1. Some critics say “...of nothing” is nihilist: Monarchy as existential nothingness! "Not to be"! Meaning #2 (similar, philosophical) . In Christian doctrine, the church claims God created the heavens & earth out of nothing, not out of preexisting stuff. So Claudius echoes creation: A "thing" out of nothing. Meaning #3 (theological/cosmological). It could also mean the king is a male (with a thing/phallus), born of a woman’s “nothing.” Meaning #4 (biological). Some of these may be examples of "overthink" (Hamlet: "thinking too precisely on the event"). But...

Horatio: A piece of him / Eucharistic controversy pamphlet joke In Shakespeare's Hamlet, Horatio's line on the cold night is curious: BERNARDO: Say, / What, is Horatio there? HORATIO: A piece of him. Stephen Greenblatt's "Hamlet in Purgatory" gives examples of Tudor-era Protestant pamphlets about Eucharist and their humorous phrasing of skepticism about Roman Catholic ideas of transubstantiation, where bread and wine supposedly become the body and blood of Christ: ~ If priests consecrate hosts at thousands of masses worldwide at the same time, how many tons of Jesus does that make? ~ And which part of Jesus do I get today? Etc. Greenblatt doesn't mention it, but Horatio's line, "A piece of him," COULD point (in part) to then-familiar Protestant humor about Catholic Eucharist. Some jokes become so familiar that we know opening lines, punch lines, & basic structure by heart: "A [ ], a [ ], and a [ ] walked into a bar.......

Hamlet, the Mystical Body, & the Body Politic /or/ Everybody's Got a Mystical Body, but Some are Bigger &/or Better Than Others Shakespeare’s Hamlet contains many references to the mystical body and well as to the body politic. Early in the play, Laertes warns his sister Ophelia not to set her hopes too high on a relationship with Prince Hamlet. He warns her, not only because she could get pregnant and bring scandal to their family, but also because Hamlet may have to marry some foreign princess, say, to secure a treaty, or taking popular opinion into account so that his choice of a bride doesn't inspire resentment in a body politic that would at times be expected to yield to him as well (factors Elizabeth also faced): Laertes: He may not, as unvalued persons do, / Carve for himself; for on his choice depends / The safety and health of this whole state; / And therefore must his choice be circumscribed / Unto the voice and yielding of that body / Whereof he is t...

Fortinbras & redating Hamlet to 1603 In Jan. 2017, news sites noted that (some) scholars re-dated Shakespeare’s Hamlet to 1603, not 1601. Many mention Fortinbras, a prince from the north to whom Hamlet gives his dying voice to be the next king of Denmark, and how Fortinbras is like James, a king from the north who becomes the next king of England after Elizabeth’s death and the end of the House of Tudor. This is gratifying, not for any certainty about new dating of the play, but because for years I’d been telling literature students that Hamlet (who idolizes his father through much of the play) is like Elizabeth (who idolized her father and called herself a prince), and that giving Denmark to Fortinbras is like giving England to James. (More details in comments below.) A greater mystery: How most published editions for centuries failed to state this explicitly as the historical background to the writing of a play that touches on many Tudor-era royal scandals. They prefe...

New article: The challenge of finding religiously inclusive ways to write about biblical allusions in Hamlet. E. M. W. Tillyard claims that the Elizabethan worldview was pretty strictly hierarchical, yet contrary to this, the biblical-Elizabethan view also recognized the prophet who speaks truth to power in unexpected (non-hierarchical) ways. What to do? Providing some historical context is a good first step. To wrestle with this and other related challenges, I borrow some ideas from Lewis Hyde (The Gift: Imagination and the Erotic Life of Property) regarding gift economies and "The Labor of Gratitude." I also examine what Karen Armstrong claims to be a common thread in many world religions, the Golden Rule, taken (in Christianity's case) from older Hebrew scriptures and from what Jesus says is one of the two most important laws in Judaism. Then I connect this to Ophelia's line: "They say the owl was a baker's daughter." I'll bet you were won...

BEING INCLUSIVE ABOUT RELIGIOUS ALLUSIONS IN HAMLET /&/ WHAT'S AN OWL GOT TO DO WITH A BAKER'S DAUGHTER? My goal in writing Hamlet’s Bible is to be as inclusive as possible in explaining biblical and religious allusions in the play. I hope to do this, not only to appeal to the broadest possible audience, but also because it simply helps if the goal is to understand Shakespeare’s rich use of religious and biblical allusions. It is my firm conviction that one does not have to be a Christian, or to have ever attended church, to understand the biblical allusions in the play once they're pointed out and explained. It just means that, for those unfamiliar with Christianity and the bible, it may take a bit more explaining. It is a basic fact that readers of Shakespeare today are much more diverse than in Elizabethan times. Even in nations with so-called Christian majorities, college and high school instructors of English Literature have students with a great variety of ...