Paul Adrian Fried / HAMLET'S BIBLE

Sometimes a single word can be politically subversive. BAPTISTA: Prince Hamlet claims the wife of the player queen (actually of a poisoned Italian duke) was named "Baptista," an Italian name in an otherwise mostly English play. An actual, historical figure, he claims. But this is not true. "Battista" was the wife of a predecessor of the poisoned duke, not the wife of the poisoned duke himself. [See the long note, p. 507, bottom, in the 1982 Arden Hamlet edited by Jenkins.] Did Hamlet and Shakespeare mess up the history, or is something else going on here? Something else, I think. Hamlet makes a point of it to mention her name because she is named after John the Baptist, the prophet mentioned in the gospels who opposed the marriage of Herod Antipas to his brother's divorced wife. Hamlet wants to use this name because, like John the Baptist who opposed an incestuous marriage, Hamlet opposes the incestuous marriage of Claudius and Gertrude. Shakespeare's ...

Thanks to readers for the past week, which the blog's analytics show as being from the following countries and perhaps more: Argentina Canada Denmark Georgia Germany India Ireland Italy Mexico Netherlands New Zealand Russia Turkey Ukraine United Kingdom United States Unknown Region The analytics feature is limited, so unless I check it daily, I may miss others that pop up. Some may get cut off or listed as from "Unknown Region." Listed or not, thanks for your interest. I am grateful and humbled. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ My current project is a book tentatively titled “Hamlet’s Bible,” about biblical allusions and plot echoes in Hamlet. Below is a link to a list of some of my top posts (“greatest hits”), including a description of my book project (last item on the list): https://pauladrianfried.blogspot.com/2019/12/top-20-hamlet-bible-posts.html I post every week, so please visit as often as you like and consider subscribing.

MARY JO KIETZMAN's book, The Biblical Covenant in Shakespeare (Palgrave Macmillan, 2018) To introduce some thoughts on Mary Jo Kietzman's fine book and its good chapter on Hamlet, I need to say a few words about my own relative unfamiliarity with certain books of the Hebrew scriptures, and to do that, some observations about the scripture readings people heard in church in Shakespeare's England, as compared to Catholic churchgoers of the last 50-75 years. Why? Because Kietzman's book helped me realize some gaps in what scripture readings I had internalized during my years growing up Catholic, and later, as a church choir director and liturgist. REQUIRED BY LAW, OR CATHOLIC "OBLIGATION"? In Shakespeare's lifetime, Sunday church attendance was required by law, so if one were a law-abiding citizen, one tended to hear the entire Sunday cycle of readings as listed in the Book of Common Prayer. I was raised Catholic, a strand of Christianity in which th...

Thanks to readers for the past week, which the blog's analytics show as being from the following countries and perhaps more: Canada Georgia Germany Hungary India Ireland Italy Mexico Netherlands New Zealand Oman Qatar Sri Lanka Slovakia Switzerland Tunisia Ukraine United Kingdom United States The analytics feature is limited, so unless I check it daily, I may miss others that pop up. Some may get cut off or listed as from "Unknown Region." Listed or not, thanks for your interest. I am grateful and humbled. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ My current project is a book tentatively titled “Hamlet’s Bible,” about biblical allusions and plot echoes in Hamlet. Below is a link to a list of some of my top posts (“greatest hits”), including a description of my book project (last item on the list): https://pauladrianfried.blogspot.com/2019/12/top-20-hamlet-bible-posts.html I post every week, so please visit as often as you like and consider subsc...

There are ten angels in Shakespeare's Hamlet and one cherub, a changeling with an angel in its heart, strangely, strangely.... What does it all mean? [Cherubs from Raphael's "Triumph of Galatea," detail. Image source: Wikipedia ] Friday of this week is Valentine's day, bringing with it many images of that angelic and mischievous little guy, son of Venus, the goddess of love. Yes, you guessed it: Cupid is coming. Cupid, often depicted as a crossover between Greek mythology and those baby Christian angels, cherubs. It didn't have to be that way, but that's what we've got. There are ten angels in Shakespeare's Hamlet  (or instances of the word, perhaps many others implied), and one cherub - though an unnamed cupid may have left his mark on Hamlet, as we see from his love-gushing letters, and on Ophelia, whose attention for Hamlet her father Polonius describes as follows: 'Tis told me he hath very oft of late Given private time ...

Thanks to readers for the past week, which the blog's analytics show as being from the following countries and perhaps more: Argentina Australia Brazil Canada Costa Rica Denmark Egypt Faroe Islands France Georgia Germany Hungary India Italy Japan Mexico Netherlands Oman Panama Poland Russia South Africa Spain Turkey United Arab Emirates United Kingdom United States The analytics feature is limited, so unless I check it daily, I may miss others that pop up. Some may get cut off or listed as from "Unknown Region." Listed or not, thanks for your interest. I am grateful and humbled. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ My current project is a book tentatively titled “Hamlet’s Bible,” about biblical allusions and plot echoes in Hamlet. Below is a link to a list of some of my top posts (“greatest hits”), including a description of my book project (last item on the list): https://pauladrianfried.blogspot.com/2019/12/top-20-hamlet-bible-post...

IF HAMLET SCHOLARS tried to interpret the play too exclusively in terms of the slim biographical facts we know about Shakespeare, expanding that understanding through perhaps baseless speculation on what we don't know about the playwright, we might be correct to criticize them as perhaps guilty of the biographical fallacy, a kind of reductionism that views work too exclusively as commentary about the author. If scholars did the same too exclusively with certain historical facts - about the "incestuous marriage" of Henry VIII that led to the English Reformation, or Elizabeth I's Lord Treasurer, William Cecil, or Cecil's daughter who, like Ophelia, died under suspicious circumstances - then we might do well to criticize the approach as a kind of historical reductionism - as if the meaning of the play is "nothing but" veiled commentary on certain historical events. (Some readers seem reductionist in this way, claiming the prince is nothing but a kind of...

Thanks to readers for the week, which the blog's analytics show as being from the following countries and perhaps more: Argentina Belgium Canada France Georgia Hungary India Italy Kenya Kuwait Nigeria Pakistan Romania Russia Serbia Sweden Switzerland Taiwan Ukraine United Arab Emirates United Kingdom United States Unknown Region The analytics feature is limited, so unless I check it daily, I may miss others that pop up. Some may get cut off or listed as from "Unknown Region." Listed or not, thanks for your interest. I am grateful and humbled. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ My current project is a book tentatively titled “Hamlet’s Bible,” about biblical allusions and plot echoes in Hamlet. Below is a link to a list of some of my top posts (“greatest hits”), including a description of my book project (last item on the list): https://pauladrianfried.blogspot.com/2019/12/top-20-hamlet-bible-posts.html I post every week, so please vis...