Paul Adrian Fried / HAMLET'S BIBLE

HAMLET: PRIEST, PROPHET, & KING (part 1) Shakespeare links Hamlet to an ancient tradition that viewed Jesus as priest, prophet, and king, which all Christians share by baptism. This came to be known as the “threefold office.” PROPHET: Like the prophet Nathan who tries to catch King David's conscience in a story, Hamlet attempts this with Claudius in a play. He later has a Jonah-like sea voyage, and his condemnation of Denmark's sins has been compared to language used by other prophets. Like John the Baptist, he opposes a king's incestuous marriage. KING: “It is I, Hamlet the Dane,” he says in the graveyard, revealing himself to the funeral party. Many believe Hamlet here claims his heritage as rightful king. He comes to terms with death and, after the sea-voyage, thinks Providence is on his side. PRIEST: “Let be.” / “The readiness is all.” In conversation with Horatio who is worried that the sword-duel may be a trap, Hamlet shows that he is ready to offer up his...

(Or general harassment of people fined by the crown?) ~ Prof. Glyn Parry of U. Roehampton searched the National Archives for more evidence of John Shakespeare's legal troubles. His discoveries expand our potential for understanding how the family life and legal/political troubles of his father may have shaped the thinking of William Shakespeare: "The documents Parry found include multiple writs against John Shakespeare, and record his debts to the Crown, including one for £132 – around £20,000 today. They reveal how his property remained at risk of seizure by the Crown, hampering his credit as an entrepreneur, and that this continued until 1583. "They also connect Shakespeare’s family with what Parry calls “a national scandal: the use of informers to enforce economic and social legislation”. Professional informers were part of a corrupt system which ultimately enriched the Queen and her courtiers…. "Parry believes that the situation would have influenced the...

Biblical allusions are not the only kinds in Shakespeare—there are many— and Hamlet invites us to consider many texts in light of others, as Julia Kristeva and Bakhtin would say regarding intertextuality; Robert Alter (“The Art of Biblical Narrative”) notes that allusion opens windows to other texts, inviting us to revisit/rethink each in new dialectics. Hamlet includes allusions to Horace and to Virgil’s Aeneid, a founding myth for Rome, founded by outsiders (Trojans), like England, settled/raided/conquered by many outsiders (including Danes). Like Aeneas, Hamlet has a kind of sacred duty. Rome later fell, suggesting in the play that, just as Rome fell, Shakespeare’s England, too, could fall. By the end, Hamlet’s idolatry of his father, voiced in Greek/Roman mythological allusions, effectively stops after his Jonah-like sea-voyage. Suicide, the “Roman” way out, is also rejected. Why? So that Horatio might tell Hamlet’s tale (spread his gospel?). In Hamlet, the potent...

WHICH HAMLET? Many choices, Shakespeare fans: 1. The First (“bad”/unauthorized) Quarto (1602-3) reflects perhaps an early draft, or a shorter script for countryside touring while playhouses were closed? 2. Later came the Second (expanded, approved) Quarto (1604). 3. Still later came the First Folio (1623). 4. Eventually, some scholars created editions of Hamlet that combined most of the unique passages from both the Second Quarto and the First Folio, making a MUCH longer text overall— as if each word from Shakespeare were from an angel. (The Kenneth Branagh version uses this long, combined text.) But Shakespeare was no angel. Some prefer the First Folio because it might represent Shakespeare’s “last word” on the final (best?) text. This is also limiting: Perhaps he tailored each reversion to his changing times, and the last draft was not the best/last word, but more relevant to its times—and careful of its censors? 5. So this justifies what #dramaturgs and #directo...