Paul Adrian Fried / HAMLET'S BIBLE

If we are to believe Roland Frye (1963) [1], what was later called “The Turn to Religion in Early Modern English Studies” [2] may actually have been more of a *return* to religion on renewed terms, after a turning away that was aided in part by Frye and a bit of Protestant gatekeeping. Frye writes, “In the train of [G. Wilson] Knight’s influence, we have had and continue to have a great wave of supposedly theological analyses of Shakespeare: again and again we are informed of the discovery of some new Christ-figure or Christ-allusion in the plays, or we are advised as to the eternal destiny in a future life of Shakespeare’s stage characters, or we are introduced to some doctrine which serves as a theological structure upon which an entire plays is built.” (5) At least at that time, Frye believed there was too much “supposedly theological analyses of Shakespeare,” marked by sloppy or ill-supported religious claims, and poorly thought out theology, often for not being Protestant enou...

Does Shakespeare’s Hamlet depict religiously shaped or motivated regicide? [1] Given its many religious and biblical allusions and plot echoes, I would argue that it does. [David Tennant (L) as Hamlet and Patrick Stewart (R) as Claudius in the 2009 film, Hamlet , dir. Gregory Doran. Source: IMDB . Fair use.] Dr. Arthur F. Marotti gave a talk at Fordham in late October of 2013 in which he noted, “In the last years of Elizabeth’s rule people believed something was rotten in England—though perhaps not rotten enough to justify regicide. ” [2] Marotti has written numerous books [3] about Early Modern literature and religion, including a 2004 essay with Ken Jackson on “The Turn to Religion” in Shakespeare studies. In an abstract for a more recent (2017) essay [4], Marotti notes that “Shakespeare's plays may not stage religiously motivated regicides…,” with “may” being the operative word here: Scholars may disagree on this point. But what about Hamlet? Recognizing that H...