Paul Adrian Fried / HAMLET'S BIBLE

The FEAST of the EPIPHANY in churches of Shakespeare’s time [1], JANUARY 6, celebrates the magi “from the east” who followed a star, met with Herod, paid homage to Jesus, and were warned in a dream to go home by another way [2]. City-dwellers may neglect the stars, but in Shakespeare they can be foreboding or determine fate; one can be “star-crossed” ( Romeo and Juliet ), or out of another’s star (Ophelia/ Hamlet ), or one might guide a ship by them; Shakespeare mentions them more than 100 times (a sample): “Look, the unfolding star calls up the shepherd.” - Measure for Measure “That I should love a bright particular star” - All's Well That Ends Well “O eastern star!” - Antony and Cleopatra “Our Jovial star reign'd at his birth” - Cymbeline “When yond same star that's westward from the pole Had made his course t' illume that part of heaven Where now it burns…” - Hamlet      “I am constant as the northern star” - Julius Caesar In the gospel, and in sleepless dreams of...

Tony Tambasco has a good blog post about Shakespeare's play, All's Well That Ends Well, a play title which he notes could be paraphrased as "the ends justify the means," suggesting the play is humorously critical of such thinking. You can read his blog post here . Tambasco explains that the plot of this play involves a woman, Helena, who wishes to marry Bertram, and who tricks him into non-consensual sex, which many countries today would consider rape. He opens his blog post with a comment about how the #MeToo movement and other cultural developments have made Shakespeare's play, Measure for Measure, much more popular, but we should also be considering the rape of Bertram by Helena at this time in history. He notes that because of patriarchy in Shakespeare's England, women often lacked agency (a theme, I would add, that also comes up in Jane Austin's novels regarding the limited options for women and the way they often depended on advantageous marr...