Paul Adrian Fried / HAMLET'S BIBLE

Shakespeare's Hamlet offers glimpses of two ways of transcending dysfunctional parentage: a) The limited path of Freud's Oedipal complex, or b) Yorick and the paths of Francis of Assisi and Bernard of Clairvaux. In the first, the son kills the father-figure to reclaim a lost closeness to the mother. If the father is a tyrant and the son resorts to violence to replace him, this is a very limited, temporary transcendence, with the son too much like the father he replaces [1]. Francisco and Bernardo are the names of sentinels, the first two characters on stage in the play. Together, they are the names of the Pazzi assassins [2], but individually they are names of saints: - Francis of Assisi and Bernard of Clairvaux didn't kill their fathers, but Francis famously renounced his abusive father before the bishop, stripping off his clothes and giving them back to his father, saying that he had a father in heaven. - St. Bernard’s biological father and brothers eventually joined t...

Does Shakespeare use Hamlet’s remarks about women’s “painted faces” to expose misogyny in official English Protestant sermons? Hamlet complains to Ophelia that he knows of the “paintings” she, and women in general, make when they take the one face God gave them and make themselves another. This may represent more than merely a cruel and misogynistic Hamlet, mistreating a former love. Hamlet is quoting almost word-for-word similar statements in a homily of the time. Not by a fringe preacher who made misogynistic remarks about women: An official Elizabethan homily [1]. Claudius uses the analogy of “The harlot's cheek, beautied with plast'ring art,” to describe his “deed” of having killed his brother, covered by lies (3.1.59-62). All acted out by actors who put on faces other than those God gave them, with make-up. This theme may be very related to England’s iconoclasm and the white-washing of old images in churches [2]. Shakespeare - who created many strong female characters in...

English audiences - after recent attempted invasions by the Spanish Armada, and anticipating more - may have felt Hamlet was their hero, to change Claudius’ secret letter that ordered Hamlet's death so that Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are executed instead. Early audiences may have opposed any suggestion of oppression by a foreign power, Spanish or Danish. Hamlet and his former school-friends-turned-spies had been sent by Claudius, who claimed they must collect England’s "neglected tribute" (3.1), like insurance payments to organized crime: Pay, and we won't hurt you. It may have seemed to them satisfying that the rebellious, "mad" Danish prince would change the letter intended to bring about his own death, so that Rosencrantz and Guildenstern would be executed by the very English from whom the three were told to collect this tribute. Although Elizabeth prohibited speculation about her successor, many knew that James of Scotland, who had married Princess A...

MORE PARTICIPANTS AT SAA DENVER 2026 My previous post named members in my seminar (Shakespeare and the Forms of Religion), but I met many other wonderful scholars in Denver for The Shakespeare Association of America 2026 conference. Here are six more:  TOP (L-R):  EVELYN GAJOWSKI is an author and one of the most prolific Shakespeare essay collection editors today. [1]  ARNIE PERLSTEIN has long been a strong supporter of my work, and was presenting in a workshop on the afterlives of The Taming the Shrew. His focus was on Shakespeare’s influence on Jane Austen in works like Pride and Prejudice and he has a blog about Jane Austen’s works. [2] RICHARD STRIER (emeritus, U. of Chicago) has written a number of books that have had a profound effect on my thinking [3]. Strier nicely distinguishes between common scholarly assumptions and facts related to texts:  “Interpretive conclusions, even widely held ones, do not become facts. That Hamlet delays in killing Claudius is a...