Paul Adrian Fried / HAMLET'S BIBLE

Stephen Booth has said that Hamlet “frustrates and fulfills [audience] expectations simultaneously" [1]. It asks many questions, and leaves many unanswered. As Valaria Wagner has noted, from the start the play includes many displacements and substitutions. [2] This proliferation of displacements and substitutions in the play made me think of St. Anselm of Canterbury: I came across him recently in my research simply by wondering about the history of substitutionary atonement (when researching, sometimes one question leads to another...). [ Image from Wikipedia Commons ] Anselm was a famous English bishop who developed the idea of substitutionary atonement, and who, it so happens, was also known for opposing not only incestuous marriage, but also for opposing lay investiture (or in other words, kings and lords appointing priests and bishops to bestow favors and control the church, instead of the church choosing priests and bishops most suited for the job in their eyes. Wh...

Many readers and viewers of Shakespeare's Hamlet don't notice the Catholic and Protestant rules and expectations that seem to govern Hamlet's outlook and that of his uncle Claudius and his father, the dead King Hamlet. But if we pay attention, we might wonder how the prince can survive so long in a state of religious whiplash. Very different rules apply to the Ghost and to Claudius: The ghost wants Hamlet to believe he is from purgatory - only there for a time (a Catholic belief), and that he’s there because he was caught unawares, sleeping in his garden, when he was poisoned, and therefore did not have time to receive the last sacraments from a priest before going to the final judgment. In the Catholic understanding, a priest would be necessary to hear his last confession, because Catholics believed only priests were empowered to help penitent sinners fully recognize their sins and be ready to be forgiven. [Brian Blessed as Ghost in Hamlet directed by Kenneth Branag...

In Hamlet, after the prince hears news from Horatio about the sighting of a ghost that appears to be Hamlet's father, Hamet says to Horatio: HAMLET: I would I had been there. This reminds me of what The Misfit in a Flannery O'Connor story says to the grandmother just before he shoots her: "I wisht I had of been there..." [Image via USPS.com] In Flannery O'Connor's famous short story, "A Good Man is Hard to Find" - a favorite of many fiction writers, including the late Raymond Carver - the Grandmother asks the Misfit to pray to Jesus. The Misfit comments that Jesus messed things up by rising from the dead: MISFIT: "I wasn't there so I can't say He didn't," The Misfit said. "I wisht I had of been there," he said, hitting the ground with his fist. "It ain't right I wasn't there because if I had of been there I would of known. Listen lady," he said in a high voice, "if I had of been th...

I am realizing that, more often, I should highlight some of the books I've enjoyed and benefitted from regarding Hamlet studies. One of these recently is called Thinking with Shakespeare: Essays on Politics and Life , by Julia Reinhard Lupton , and more specifically, her chapter called "The Hamlet Elections." Lupton begins the chapter explaining how she is borrowing some ideas from Carl Schmitt, including ideas about similarities between Hamlet the prince and James the king. She also explores a variety of meanings and implications of the word "election" in the play, and discusses Hamlet's first meeting with the ghost as a dark retelling of Moses going up on the mountain to receive the law from God (Hamlet says he will erase all else from the tables of his memory and remember only what the Ghost has told him). Moses Breaking the Tablets of the Law - 1659, by Rembrandt, via Google Cultural Institute I have mentioned in the past on this blog the possib...