Paul Adrian Fried / HAMLET'S BIBLE

2025 WAS A VERY GOOD YEAR for the “Hamlet’s Bible” blog… VIEWS FOR THE YEAR came to about 77.6k, averaging about 1.5k views per week. This was a significant increase over the average for the past eight years, which was about 23.5k per year and .45k  per week, out of an eight-year total of 188k views from more than 80 countries since 2018. In 2025, I completed two series begun the previous year: One on Claudius [1], and one on the Twelve Days of Christmas - including Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night [2]. See also MASTER INDEX (for series) [3].  In all of my posts and research, I strive to welcome the strange, and to let my curiosity lead my research to new insights. Among my three favorite posts: New realizations about how references to classical gods and deified Roman Caesars should be reconsidered in conjunction with references to Jesus: All of these involve divinity claims, sometimes in stark contrast with one another. See my post, Hamlet's Christmas, Caesar, Taxes, and Conte...

SOME HISTORICAL BACKGROUND OF THE JONAH ECHO in HAMLET The Jonah echo is perhaps better understood with consideration for the following (not an exhaustive list):  a) The success of A Looking Glass for London and England (c. 1590); see Hannibal Hamlin, Staging prophecy: A Looking Glass for London and the Book of Jonah,"Part III, chapter 10 in Enacting the Bible in Medieval and Early Modern Drama, Eds. Eva Von Contzen and Chanita Goodblatt, Manchester University Press, 2020. b) Elizabeth’s having dedicated one of her naval ships “Elizabeth Jonas” (1559) with a speech that exhibited poor biblical exegesis than propaganda;  "The 3 day of July, 1559, the Queen's Grace took her barge at Greenwich unto Woolwich to her new ship, and there it was named Elizabeth Jonas, and after her Grace had a goodly banquet, and there was great shooting of guns, and casting of fire about made for pleasure ' (Diary of Henry Machin, Camden Society, p. 203). The ship ' was so named by her G...

On the Significance of HAMLET 3.4 and 1-2 KINGS Elijah/Elisha, widow tales Here are some of the possibilities for this allusion’s significance:  - If Gertrude (aware of her sick soul and guilt in 4.5) desires to be blessed, then we must ask: What blessings do Hamlet (or his surrogates) beg of her, or what blessings does she offer, perhaps without even being asked (as mothers are sometimes prone to do)?  - Gertrude is faithful to her promise to keep Hamlet’s secret from Claudius (3.4.219-221).  - She overcomes her own reluctance and greets an apparently mad Ophelia (4.5.21).  - When Ophelia drowns, she portrays it not as suicide, but as a holy death, with Ophelia chanting lauds (4.7.202); Gertrude blames crown-envy for Ophelia’s fall into the brook: Ophelia had been placing “coronet weeds” (4.7.197, small floral crowns) on branches, and the sliver on which she stood was envious (4.7.98 envious about not receiving a crown like others). Gertrude figuratively and careful...

O n the Significance of Hamlet as Boy Jesus in 3.2, Lost and Found in Luke 2 Here are some of the possibilities for this allusion’s significance:  - Hamlet jokes that he is a wonderful son like the boy Jesus, amazing and astonishing elders and parents.  - A proud, blasphemous, “mad” Hamlet dares to compare himself to Jesus, blind to his own faults (like his blind stabbing of Polonius in the closet scene).  - Hamlet feels he “must go about [his] father’s business,” and feels “Prompted to [his]  revenge by heaven and hell” (2.2.613). - There is irony in the fact that the allusion equates Hamlet with the boy Jesus who was conceived by the Holy Ghost, with the Virgin Mary as mother and Joseph as his stepfather; Gertrude (“whored” by Claudius, her second husband) parallels the Virgin Mary, and stepfather Claudius parallels St. Joseph, perhaps an ironic probing of the Protestant questioning the Catholic tradition of the perpetual virginity of Mary. - Hamlet wants very...

A FEW IMPORTANT BOOKS ON SHAKESPEARE, RELIGION, AND THE BIBLE Attempts to catalogue biblical allusions in Shakespeare in the last century and a half , more often than not, have been focused on the words of the Word, seeking mostly names and key phrases and words from the Bible, and sometimes official homilies, in the playwright’s work. Others have mentioned paraphrased references, and still others, what some call plot echoes.  This is especially true of efforts by Charles Wordsworth (1864) Thomas Carter (1905), Richmond Noble (1935) and Naseeb Shaheen (1999). Bishop Wordsworth’s book, Shakespeare's Knowledge and Use of the Bible…, was published only a few years after Darwin published On the Origin of Species (1859) and tried to argue that Shakespeare was evangelizing and catechizing with his use of scripture.  Peter Milward Biblical Influences in Shakespeare's Great Tragedies in 1987, but did not follow it with other play genres. Milward notes that Horatio, presenting himself ...

What does it feel like to be wrong? In Shakespeare's Hamlet, Claudius had conspired with Laertes to poison Hamlet with a rapier and a chalice of wine. Hamlet apologizes for the death of Polonius: “I shot mine arrow over the house and hurt my brother” - an accident, blaming madness [1]. Laertes sees the queen drink deeply from the poison chalice. Laertes knows she will die. Witnessing her, Laertes hesitates. Kill Hamlet, now? He says in an aside:  “yet it is almost against my conscience.” (5.2.324) But he is too committed to the plan, so he goes ahead. What does it feel like to be Laertes in that moment?  In her book, “Being Wrong” (2010), award-winning author Kathryn Schulz notes that being wrong often feels exactly like being right. When Laertes goes ahead with the murderous poisoning plan, when the crucifier follows orders and nails Jesus to the cross, when the Nazi starts up the gas chamber, some people are so committed to a false ideology that they don’t realize (as Lae...

 “Exit, pursued by bear.”  - The Winter’s Tale (3.3.64). And by the ghost of Hermione? [1] This stage direction, sadly, is often quoted as a punchline to a Shakespeare joke. This may totally miss the point.  In the play, King Leontes is jealous, paranoid to the point of madness. His actions lead to the estrangement of friends, the death of a son and presumably of his queen, Hermione – and the loss of an infant daughter, Perdita [2].  Leontes commands Antigonus to kill the infant, but Antigonus begs for mercy. Leontes orders him to abandon the child to the gods (as King Laius did with his infant son Oedipus).  Antigonus tells the infant of a dream in which Hermione appears as a sorrowful “creature” in white (3.3.23-26). Hermione says that for his part in all of this, he will never see his wife again (39-40).  He is soon chased and eaten by a bear.  (Some will protest: Antigonus was merely a servant of his king, a footsoldier following orders in a war ...

In Hamlet 4.3, instead of “Long live King Claudius!” Hamlet names worms as emperors [1]: Eventually, worms will overcome every king, after which even a beggar might eat, digest, and defecate a monarch. In the end, the meek (including beggars and worms) inherit the earth and its kingdoms [2].  But how can a beggar defecate a king?  (Some people in the USA, terrorized by ICE, may be asking the same thing.)  Hamlet explains the food chain to Claudius, who has lied consistently in the play about a key murder for which he is responsible:  KING  Now, Hamlet, where’s Polonius? HAMLET  At supper. KING  At supper where? HAMLET  Not where he eats, but where he is eaten. A certain convocation of politic worms are e’en at him. Your worm is your only emperor for diet. We fat all creatures else to fat us, and we fat ourselves for maggots. Your fat king and your lean beggar is but variable service—two dishes but to one table. That’s the end. KING  Alas, ala...

What's Herod to Hamlet? My last post* surveyed occurrences of “Herod” in five Shakespeare plays. The word occurs only twice in Hamlet. (Herod had sons named after him, so Hamlet might say, What are Herods to Hamlet?)** Like King Hamlet (with an “H”) and his son Prince Hamlet [1], Herod the Great had many sons, some also named Herod. Herod means “heroic.” King Hamlet was considered heroic in battle [2]. Herod the Great had at least three of his sons executed, one for conspiring to poison him [3]. As depicted in Matthew 2:16, he was thought to be mad for seeking to have all boys less than two years old killed, after a visit from Magi who told him of signs in the heavens indicating a new king’s birth. King Hamlet kills King Fortinbras, a competitor for his lands [4]; Claudius poisoned his brother, King Hamlet, to take the throne [5]. So an allusion to Herod the Great is appropriate. But Christopher Taylor notes, “The figure of Herod loomed so large in the Christian imagination that of...

The word “Herod” [1] occurs NINE times in Shakespeare, in four plays:  Once in in 𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘔𝘦𝘳𝘳𝘺 𝘞𝘪𝘷𝘦𝘴 𝘰𝘧 𝘞𝘪𝘯𝘥𝘴𝘰𝘳;  twice in 𝘏𝘢𝘮𝘭𝘦𝘵 (“out-herod’s Herod,” 3.2.14-15, and given the name of the player queen, “Baptista,” also a nod to Herod Antipas [2], who had John the Baptist beheaded for condemning his incestuous marriage);  and once in 𝘏𝘦𝘯𝘳𝘺 𝘝 as a reference to Herod the Great’s slaughter of innocents:  “Your naked infants spitted upon pikes Whiles the mad mothers with their howls confused Do break the clouds, as did the wives of Jewry At Herod’s bloody-hunting slaughtermen (3.3.38-41). “Herod” occurs five times in 𝘈𝘯𝘵𝘰𝘯𝘺 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘊𝘭𝘦𝘰𝘱𝘢𝘵𝘳𝘢 (Cleopatra lived at the same time as Herod the Great.) In the second scene, a servant says, “Let me be married to 𝘁𝗵𝗿𝗲𝗲 𝗸𝗶𝗻𝗴𝘀 in a forenoon, and widow them all: let me have a child at fifty, to whom 𝗛𝗲𝗿𝗼𝗱 of Jewry may do homage.” (1.2.27-30) We hear not only “Herod” bu...