Paul Adrian Fried / HAMLET'S BIBLE

[Paapa Essiedu as Hamlet in 2016 RSC production, screen capture] Some may think that countless high school students believe Shakespeare's Hamlet is a play about a girl whose dad won't let her date a certain boy, and the boy is later very, very mean to her, and he later kills her dad accidentally, and she later commits suicide, and later many other people die too, including the boy, his mom, and his uncle. Oh, and his mom's the queen of the country, and it turns out that she had wished her son would marry the girl (yes, the same girl whose dad prohibited her from seeing him). Ironic! What's with that? [Image via me.me ] Many scholars still believe Hamlet is mostly a play about a prince with mommy issues (ignoring the political contexts and frame). So what might average white people make of a mostly-black-cast, African-themed, 2016 RSC production of Hamlet, with Claudius in western military garb? What shall we make of the ghost of the king, the brother th...

Thanks to readers for the past week, which the blog's analytics show as being from the following countries: Australia Finland France Indonesia Italy Pakistan Sweden Switzerland United Arab Emirates United Kingdom United States Unknown Region The analytics feature is limited, so unless I check it daily, I may miss some 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.

This week, with the world still impacted by Black Lives Matter protests triggered by the shooting death of George Floyd in Minneapolis (about an hour north of where I live in Minnesota), I have been watching and thinking about the 2016 RSC production of Hamlet, with its mostly-black cast. [Viral BLM image, from Facebook ] Also this past week, people in the UK were able to view this production for free (and elsewhere, it can be rented or purchased for a reasonable fee ). In those 2016 performances and on tour internationally, Paapa Essiedu played the starring role as Prince Hamlet. This past week (21 June, 2020) on Twitter, he offered to hold a Q&A with viewers of the film, which you can find here . This week, rather than share many of my own thoughts on these things, I want to share excerpts from that Q&A and to amplify some of those voices. I include them here for those who are not on Twitter (and perhaps don't wish to be, or to use Twitter). I'll list nam...

Thanks to readers for the past week, which the blog's analytics show as being from the following 23 countries: Australia Brazil Belgium Canada Egypt France Georgia Germany Hungary India Indonesia Iraq Italy Japan Malta Portugal South Africa Spain Switzerland Tunisia United Kingdom United States United Arab Emirates The analytics feature is limited, so unless I check it daily, I may miss some 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 yo...

SAA Seminar-by-Zoom This past Saturday (13 June) I participated in a Zoom meeting for the seminar, “Shakespeare and the Mind: Cognition, Emotion, Affect,” which had been postponed due to COVID-19 and the demands it created for those switching to online instruction. The seminar was for the 2020 conference of the Shakespeare Association of America, which had been scheduled for 15-18 April 2020 in Denver, Colorado, but the in-person element of the conference had been canceled because of the pandemic. Many of the events met over Zoom, and some posted these on social media for others to audit, but this was a bonus not in the original job description for seminar and workshop leaders (no one expected last June that there would be a pandemic, so familiarity with Zoom or other online conferencing platforms was not a requirement, and doing the extra work of managing auditors was also not expected, understandably, but it was unfortunate to miss out on so many of the conference events). Sem...

Thanks to readers for the past week, which the blog's analytics show as being from the following 18 countries: Australia Canada France Germany Hong Kong Hungary India Japan Netherlands Poland Portugal Saudi Arabia Spain Sweden Tunisia United Arab Emirates United Kingdom United States Unknown Region The analytics feature is limited, so unless I check it daily, I may miss some 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 ...

"A house divided" is a phrase famously associated not only with Abraham Lincoln and the US Civil War, but also with King David and divisions with his sons. - It could describe England, split between Catholics and Protestants. - But it could also describe Christianity more basically, divided between some like St. Francis of Assisi who preached and lived nonviolence and love of enemies, and others like St. Bernard of Clairvaux, who helped found the Knights Templar and preached in favor of the Second Crusade. - The fact that Shakespeare named his sentinels after two Catholic saints may not indicate a Catholic allegiance, but instead, attention to the "house divided" of Christianity, where some wished to follow the path of Francis, willing to "suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune," and others preferring to follow the path of Bernard, and to "take up arms against a sea of troubles."  QUESTION: Why would Shakespeare - at a time of English...