Paul Adrian Fried / HAMLET'S BIBLE

Three official Cranmer & Jewell homilies mention the beggar Lazarus - and have many other connections to Hamlet. Shakespeare heard these homilies many times during his life. The first, “An Exhortation Against The Fear Of Death” (Cranmer) comes uncomfortably close to conflating beggars and thieves (not necessarily synonymous). I will consider these three homilies in upcoming weeks, but for this week, will focus on a few key ideas from this one. Some consider Shakespeare an atheist, but he probably didn’t (always) work secretly on poems and plays while homilies were read in church; in fact, he utilized their ideas and vocabulary in his writing, making them his own. Yes, if one is an atheist and wishes to view Shakespeare as an atheist because of certain things certain characters say, it's possible to find evidence for that. And it's certainly possible to sit in church while a priest is talking, and to have one's thoughts on other things instead of listening. But

Thank you to readers of this blog this past week, which the blog's analytics say came to 136 views from the following 16 countries: Whether your country is listed or not, thank you 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.    

Having identified the ghost's "lazarlike" remark as an allusion to the tale of the beggar Lazarus and the rich man in Luke 16 , and having shown how the Lazarus tale might be a mirror held up to Polonius and the players in 2.2 , we might consider other moments in the play that present a contrast between a beggar-like person, and another, or others, who have some wealth they withhold. In Act 1, scene 3, Ophelia bears a remarkable resemblance to aspects of the Lazarus tale, in relation both to her brother Laertes, and also to her father Polonius. [L-R: Michael Maloney as Laertes; Kate Winslet as Ophelia in Hamlet (1996), dir. Kenneth Branagh. Image via fanpop.com . Fair use.] OPHELIA AND LAERTES IN 1.3 At the beginning of the scene, it's clear that Laertes knows of Ophelia and Hamlet's mutual romantic interest. As the son of Denmark's chief counselor, Laertes has been given permission to return to France, where perhaps his father has sent him so that he can

Thank you to readers of this blog this past week, which the blog's analytics say came to 118 views from the following 17 countries: Whether your country is listed or not, thank you 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.    

IF SHERLOCK HOLMES had been assigned to investigate a murder (perhaps of a king?), and if the evidence included multiple references to the tale of "Lazarus and the Rich Man," both explicit and subtle, implicit, or veiled, he would be remiss if he neglected to review one of the main sources of the tale, the 16th chapter of the Gospel of Luke (reprinted here from the Geneva translation at the end of this blog post). [Sherlock Holmes image via Public Domain Images-dot-net . Geneva Bible front page via Wikimedia Commons .] If the murder involved Shakespeare references to the Lazarus tale, he might check both the Bishop's Bible translation (which was read in church in Shakespeare's lifetime), and the Geneva translation, most common in home copies of at the time. Representations of the tale of Lazarus and the Rich Man were manifest in many ways in Shakespeare's England, in church art and architecture, in song and official sermons, and transformed in folk