"Alas, poor Yorick! I knew him..." (Nicholas Cage with junk football helmet)
If you ask people to identify the six most famous words from Hamlet, most might reply, "To be or not to be" (from Act 3, scene 1), but a close contender would probably be, "Alas, poor Yorick! I knew him" from Act 5, scene 1.
[Nicholas Cage in Prisoners of the Ghostland, 2021, directed by Sion Sono. Screen capture image (cropped) from YouTube. Fair use.]
In a 2021 horror film, Prisoners of the Ghostland (which received many negative reviews), Nicholas Cage, in the starring role, has a brief Hamlet moment in which he is given a beat-up football helmet from a pile of junk, and he addresses it the way that Prince Hamlet addressed the skull of his beloved court jester in the graveyard in 5.1.
You can view the 17-second clip from Youtube at this link <https://youtu.be/FbPZC8V8TnE> or here:
What about "Alas, poor Henry VIII! I knew him!"?
Earlier this week (on June 28 and June 30), I did two posts related to the allegedly "incestuous" marriages of Henry VIII and of Claudius in Hamlet.
The first of these included an important passage from John Erskine Hankins about the political and historical context of Elizabethan England after Henry VIII as a context for Shakespeare's Hamlet. You can read that here:
https://pauladrianfried.blogspot.com/2022/06/hamlet-and-incestuous-marriages-of.html
The second focused more on the two main biblical passages related to Henry's claims about wanting to divorce his first wife, with whom he had had a daughter. Although he had married the widow of his brother Arthur Tudor, and although he had special permission from the pope to do so, and although a passage from the biblical book of Deuteronomy would seem not only to allow the marriage, but to require it, Henry argued nonetheless that a passage from the biblical book of Leviticus prohibited the marriage, so he claimed he was being punished with no thriving male children by his first wife due to the alleged incest according to Leviticus. You can read that post, and more about the two Bible passages, here:
https://pauladrianfried.blogspot.com/2022/06/the-bible-henry-viii-claudius-and.html
I will be posting more soon about this historical context to the play, and the challenges in teaching about it, as well as about what seems to have been Shakespeare's genius and rhetorical strategy for the way he uses this theme, and some of the implications of how it was received by the play's early audiences.
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Disclaimer: If and when I quote or paraphrase bible passages or mention religion in many of my blog posts, I do not intend to promote any religion over another, nor am I attempting to promote religious belief in general; only to explore how the Bible and religion influenced Shakespeare, his plays, and his age.
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~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Thanks for reading!
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
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.
In a 2021 horror film, Prisoners of the Ghostland (which received many negative reviews), Nicholas Cage, in the starring role, has a brief Hamlet moment in which he is given a beat-up football helmet from a pile of junk, and he addresses it the way that Prince Hamlet addressed the skull of his beloved court jester in the graveyard in 5.1.
You can view the 17-second clip from Youtube at this link <https://youtu.be/FbPZC8V8TnE> or here:
What about "Alas, poor Henry VIII! I knew him!"?
Earlier this week (on June 28 and June 30), I did two posts related to the allegedly "incestuous" marriages of Henry VIII and of Claudius in Hamlet.
The first of these included an important passage from John Erskine Hankins about the political and historical context of Elizabethan England after Henry VIII as a context for Shakespeare's Hamlet. You can read that here:
https://pauladrianfried.blogspot.com/2022/06/hamlet-and-incestuous-marriages-of.html
The second focused more on the two main biblical passages related to Henry's claims about wanting to divorce his first wife, with whom he had had a daughter. Although he had married the widow of his brother Arthur Tudor, and although he had special permission from the pope to do so, and although a passage from the biblical book of Deuteronomy would seem not only to allow the marriage, but to require it, Henry argued nonetheless that a passage from the biblical book of Leviticus prohibited the marriage, so he claimed he was being punished with no thriving male children by his first wife due to the alleged incest according to Leviticus. You can read that post, and more about the two Bible passages, here:
https://pauladrianfried.blogspot.com/2022/06/the-bible-henry-viii-claudius-and.html
I will be posting more soon about this historical context to the play, and the challenges in teaching about it, as well as about what seems to have been Shakespeare's genius and rhetorical strategy for the way he uses this theme, and some of the implications of how it was received by the play's early audiences.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Disclaimer: If and when I quote or paraphrase bible passages or mention religion in many of my blog posts, I do not intend to promote any religion over another, nor am I attempting to promote religious belief in general; only to explore how the Bible and religion influenced Shakespeare, his plays, and his age.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Thanks for reading!
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
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.
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