Paul Adrian Fried / HAMLET'S BIBLE

“Conscience” in Hamlet is often in dialectic, or even process of formation; in Cicero, more idealized. Compare: HAMLET : O...that the Everlasting had not fix'd His canon 'gainst self-slaughter! (1.2.133-6) HAMLET : The play’s the thing Wherein I’ll catch the conscience of the King. (2.2.633-4) POLONIUS : We are oft to blame in this (’Tis too much proved), that with devotion’s visage And pious action we do sugar o’er The devil himself. CLAUDIUS (aside): ’tis too true! How smart a lash that speech doth give my conscience. (3.1.52-8) HAMLET : Thus conscience does make cowards of us all, And thus the native hue of resolution Is sicklied o’er with the pale cast of thought, And enterprises of great pitch and moment With this regard their currents turn awry And lose the name of action. (3.1.91-6) LAERTES : ...I’ll not be juggled with. To hell, allegiance! Vows, to the blackest devil! Conscience and grace, to the profoundest pit! I dare damnati...

Thanks to readers, 23-30 August, 2022 This blog recently surpassed 30,000 views! Thanks for your support! Thank you to readers of this blog for this past week, which the blog's analytics say came to 303 views from the following countries: 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. To find the subscribe button, see the drop-down menu with three horizontal lines = in the upper left.

Names, common themes, and similar incidents in Homer and Hamlet are too explicit and numerous to avoid (Laertes, Hyperion, Pyrrhus, Priam, Hecuba... See my previous posts in this series).[1] The text of Hamlet expects readers and audiences to view Hamlet through the lens of Homer, both for its similarities and for the ways it diverges from the old heroic texts. Bruce Louden observes [2] that among the many new characters and plot elements in Hamlet that are not found in the Saxo Grammaticus and Belleforest sources, four of them are found in Homer: 1. the Ghost; 2. the coming of the actors to Elsinore; 3. the play-within-the-play; 4. the pirates who intercept the ship…. (33-34) Louden notes that Hamlet identifies with Pyrrhus, who wears black in mourning for the death of his father, and who hesitates before killing Priam (35). He also finds parallels between the following: Hamlet, and Telemachus’ “skepticism, initial inability to act, and cunning” (36); The Ghost (supern...

Thanks to readers, 16-23 August, 2022 This blog recently surpassed 30,000 views! Thanks for your support! Thank you to readers of this blog for this past week, which the blog's analytics say came to 133 views from the following countries: 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. To find the subscribe button, see the drop-down menu with three horizontal lines = in the upper left.

The list of similar incidents and themes in Hamlet and The Iliad and The Odyssey is long. It is one thing to read one work of literature through the lens of another, or scenes Hamlet through the analogy of certain passages in Homer. But how do we discern what similarities are coincidental [1], as compared to evidence that Shakespeare knew and was influenced by his first- or second-hand knowledge of Homer’s texts? (This may be a topic for a future post). For now, here is a new list: 1. Odysseus swears an oath to Tyndareus to defend whoever wins Helen; Hamlet swears an oath to avenge Claudius having taken Gertrude from his father. 2. Paris takes Helen from Menelaus. Claudius takes Gertrude from King Hamlet. 3. Odysseus feigns madness , delays keeping his oath to Tyndareus; Hamlet feigns madness, delays keeping his oath to the ghost. 4. Hyperion/Helios is unsympathetic to Odysseus’ hungry men who steal his cattle. The ghost’s skin was made “ Lazar -like,” (ref. to a rich man ...

Thanks to readers, 9-16 August, 2022 This blog recently surpassed 30,000 views! Thank you to readers of this blog for this past week, which the blog's analytics say came to 229 views from the following countries: 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. To find the subscribe button, see the drop-down menu with three horizontal lines = in the upper left.

In Hamlet , the prince says that, compared to his Uncle Claudius, his dead father was “So excellent a king, that was to this Hyperion to a satyr” (1.2.143-4). [1] He compares his father to Hyperion and three other pagan gods (Jove, Mars, Mercury) with his mother in the closet scene. (3.4.66-8) What are the implications of comparing his father, the dead king, to Hyperion? Are some of the implications affirmed by another allusion, to the skin-sores of the beggar Lazarus? In The Odyssey, against his advice, Odysseus' men kill and eat the cattle of Hyperion/Helios. [2] The fact that they’re hungry sailors on a long journey home doesn’t matter so much to Hyperion as their disrespect. Are they not like bread-stealing Jean Valjean in Victor Hugo's Les Misérables, starving, to be pitied? [3] Hyperion seems ungenerous, greedy, unmerciful toward the hungry sailors. As punishment, they never make it home. Consider: Hyperion and the sailors resemble the Rich Man and L...

Perhaps one way to view the corruption in Denmark in Shakespeare's Hamlet, and to view Hamlet's madness as well, is that it has to do with slavery to time and to impatience. As I mentioned in my previous post, Hamlet makes some of his worst mistakes (killing Polonius), not because he delays, but because he is impatient. Claudius kills his brother, not only because he wants the throne, and wants Gertrude for his wife, but because he is impatient. Michael Grenke's Fall 2016 essay, “Penelope: The Odyssey’s Creative Thinker,” includes rich reflections on the character of Penelope from Homer's Odyssey, and about Nietzsche and the madness of impatience, or slavery to time. I would suggest that Hamlet feels a similar pressure and impatience about revenge due to images of masculinity that he has learned from his father and his culture, and which he has internalized. Grenke writes: ~~~ Human beings become slaves to the clock mostly because other human beings put them on...

Many people ask regarding Shakespeare's Hamlet , "Why does the prince delay for so long to kill Claudius?" In a number of places in the play, Hamlet scolds himself for delaying his killing of Claudius. These include his "To be or not to be" speech (3.1.64-96), and also in his speech, "How all occasions do inform against me" (4.4.34-69). In 2.2 (577-634), he is especially harsh with himself. By the end of the speech, he weaves his way to a solution. He is held back by conscience: He wants wants to be more sure that Claudius is guilty of murder, and that the ghost is being honest. In the fall of 2016, Michael Grenke published an article about the character of Penelope from Homer's Odyssey, and about the significance of her patient weaving and unweaving. [1] Some scholars [2] have suggested that Hamlet is right to delay, and at his worst when he impatiently scolds Ophelia, worried perhaps for her eternal fate, telling her to get to a nunner...

This blog recently surpassed 30,000 views! Thank you to readers of this blog for this past week, which the blog's analytics say came to 144 views from the following countries: 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. To find the subscribe button, see the drop-down menu with three horizontal lines = in the upper left.

In The Odyssey, the weaving of Penelope, as a ruse to avoid her 108 suitors* later seems to find parallels not only in Ophelia and her sewing and reading, but also in Prince Hamlet. (Penelope and others fending off 108 suitors makes me think of the Buddhist idea of the importance of quieting the "monkey mind" of distractions!) Katherine Goodland has noted: Polonius wants Ophelia reading, to look like common images of Mary at the Annunciation. ( See this post .) [1] So now we have to think loosely, of Ophelia as associated in her sewing with Penelope, and in her reading, with Mary at the Annunciation; In a way, we might consider Penelope's weaving as a kind of compromised involvement with the world (to fend off suitors) and then a kind of prayer or repenting (unweaving, undoing the work), but also a kind of scheming for survival. Hamlet and Ophelia both have rhythms of compromised involvement in their world, followed by types of repenting or undoing: They weave...

Can anyone recommend good books or articles that explore connections between Laertes in Hamlet and Laertes in The Odyssey ? Yesterday (8/4/2022) I posted about Shakespeare’s choice of the name Laertes for the son of Polonius . [1] (If that link doesn't work, try here: https://pauladrianfried.blogspot.com/2022/08/laertes-in-hamlet-odyssey-part-1.html ) I observed: - in The Odyssey , Laertes and his funeral shroud are the alleged excuse Penelope uses for fending off suitors; Laertes helps Odysseus deal with the families of Penelope’s suitors; - in Hamlet, Laertes and Polonius fend off Hamlet as suitor for Ophelia, and fend off Ophelia as love interest for Hamlet, perhaps similar to the way William Cecil and other advisors micromanaged suitors for Elizabeth, preferring foreign princes over domestic suitors; - like Penelope at her weaving, Ophelia is at her sewing when Hamlet visits her in her closet, perhaps disguised in feigned madness; - like Odysseus disguised as beggar...

Federico La Sala recently reminded me that the name Laertes in Hamlet comes from Homer's Odyssey. [1] I am grateful to him for pointing me in this direction. Allusions for Shakespeare are usually not all-encompassing, and don’t align on every point, but seem chosen for what limited light they shed. I usually focus on biblical allusions, but here’s a detour (some possible Odyssey allusions or influences): 1. DEFENDER OF WOMEN AND PRINCES: ODYSSEY: Laertes defends Penelope, wife of his son Odysseus (gone 20 years), from suitors who believe he is dead. HAMLET: Laertes defends his sister from a possible affair with Prince Hamlet, and defends the prince, in case Hamlet must marry to secure a foreign alliance (1.3). 2. WEAVING AND SEWING AS FEMININE DISGUISE: ODYSSEY: To delay 108 suitors, Penelope says she is weaving a burial shroud for her father-in-law, Laertes, but she undoes her work and begins anew each day, drawing out her labor and excuse for resisting suitors, bu...