Paul Adrian Fried / HAMLET'S BIBLE

In Shakespeare’s Henry V (F1), "Hostesse" describes the death of Falstaff (2.3.832-847), claiming not that Falstaff is in heaven in the bosom of Abraham (like the beggar Lazarus of Luke 16:19-31), but in the bosom of Arthur. She also offers: "his Nose was as sharpe as a Pen, and a Table of greene fields." (2.3.838-9) Adam Roberts [1] notes:  - Lewis Theobald (1733) "amends Table to babbled, giving us: ‘his nose was as sharp as a pen and [he] babbled of green fields’."  - Most editions follow Theobold, but Gary Taylor’s Oxford edition considers other options. Dobson notes that the RSC edition (eds. Bate and Rasmussen) make it ‘for his nose was as sharp as a pen on a table of green fields.’ [2]  Mark Alcamo offers that "Nose" might have at least a double meaning, both literal and also that his "knows" (his knowing) was sharp at his death [3]. Roberts considers that "table" might also mean "tableau," image. Roberts and ...

When Lear speaks with Cordelia in 5.3 of being "God's spies" [1], this draws on a common trope, which activates a kind of cognitive framing. The trope is present in the tale to which Ophelia alludes in Hamlet 4.5: “the owl was a baker’s daughter,” a tale about Jesus or a fairy in disguise as a beggar at the baker’s door.  It is also present when Henry V (in 4.1) moves disguised among his troops on the eve of the Battle of Agincourt, and when Hamlet in 5.1 does not at first reveal to the gravedigger that he is the “mad” prince [2]: Sermons urged that monarchs should be obeyed like God’s representatives on earth, but king and prince purposefully conceal their identities, like spies. The trope was in medieval tales: King Arthur goes among his people disguised [3], as he does centuries later in Mark Twain's novel, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court (1889). Shakespeare was fond of Ovid’s Metamorphoses in which the gods Zeus and Hermes, disguised like spi...

Emily Dickinson famously wrote, “Tell the truth, but tell it slant” [1]. In the character of Claudius, Shakespeare does this in a number of ways: He retells an old Danish tale about a murderous king who married his brother’s widow (echoes of Henry VIII [2]). He changes the uncle’s name from Feng to Claudius, associating him not only with literary villains in Arthurian tales [3.a., 3.b.] and in Chaucer [4], but also with Rome and two Roman emperors - Claudius II, who ordered the execution of St. Valentine (as King Claudius ordered the execution of Ophelia’s Valentine) [5], and Claudius I, who married his niece and invaded England [6]. Shakespeare associated the uncle with Rome in these ways during the English Reformation, when Protestantism and Rome were at odds, executing traitors and heretics; when Elizabeth had been excommunicated by two Roman Catholic popes [7]; and when Rome enlisted Philip II of Spain (who had proposed to Elizabeth in 1559) and its Armada to attempt invasions of...

In Hamlet 1.4, Marcellus says, “Something is rotten in the state of Denmark” [1]. The rottenness in Denmark involves not only the lies of the murderous usurper Claudius and his “incestuous marriage,” but perhaps also the animosity between Denmark and Norway resulting from King Hamlet having killed Old Fortinbras in single combat decades earlier.[2] Denmark’s rottenness may feel related to the wastelands referenced in the Arthurian legends:   Uther Pendragon had attacked parts of what is now France and laid waste to it, where Claudas was later king and sometimes an enemy of Arthur and the knights of the Round Table. Like King Hamlet, Uther died by poison, leaving a son (Arthur). King Pellas is also a wasteland king: Pellas’ brother had been killed by Sir Balin while at a feast in Pellas’ castle. Pellas wanted revenge. Merlin had prophesied that Sir Balin would make a “dolorous stroke” whose harm would be exceeded only by that of the spear that pierced the side of Christ. Balin unk...

PRECEDENTS FOR HAMLET PLOT ELEMENTS—AND A VILLAIN NAMED CLAUDIUS— IN ARTHURIAN LEGENDS: One of the villains in the Arthurian legends is named Claudas, a variant of Claudius, the main villain in Shakespeare’s Hamlet . But in fact, the Arthurian legends contain many of the essential plot elements of Hamlet . Instead of “All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten,” we could say, many of the things Shakespeare and Saxo Grammaticus needed to know to write Hamlet , they could have learned from the Arthurian legends: - The ghost of a parent [1] and warrior [2]; - a prince (or king) who relates to soldiers and close friends as equals [3]; - questions of marital infidelity [4] and of broken marriage promises [5]; - knightly codes of honor and violence that conflict at times with courtesy and Christian values [6] - suicidal, love-forsaken women [7]; - the living body or dead corpse of a heartbroken woman, floating in a river or stream [8]; - contrast between characters who interpret ...

In Thomas Malory's collected Le Morte D'Arthur tales, the Lady of the Lake, an unnamed damsel, and two figures named Elaine resemble various dynamics in Hamlet and Ophelia. This is not to say that Hamlet alludes to Malory (he never does explicitly), but that knowledge of the tales was one among many aspects of the cultural-literary fabric that informed the shaping of Hamlet as distinct from its older sources. 1. Ophelia’s Valentine song in 4.5 implies Hamlet had broken his oaths to her, in spite of her having broken off the relationship first in obedience to her father. - The Lady of the Lake [1] acts as if an oath had been broken or a debt unpaid related to the sword, but she is killed. 2. An unnamed damsel falls in love with Lanceor (not Lancelot) but she is in such sorrow at his death that she kills herself, falling on a sword.[2] 3. Lancelot is deceived by sorceress Brisen who disguises Elaine, daughter of King Pelles, to appear as Guinevere. Elaine seduces Lancelot (simil...

INDEX and INTRODUCTION (this post: see INTRODUCTION following this index) https://pauladrianfried.blogspot.com/2024/11/index-why-claudius-not-feng-whats-in.html PART 1: Hamlet's uncle "Claudius" as lame, satyr, & polysemous - 26 Nov, 2024 https://pauladrianfried.blogspot.com/2024/11/part-1-hamlets-uncle-claudius-as-lame.html PART 2: Hamlet, Claudas, and Arthurian legends (Claudius series) https://pauladrianfried.blogspot.com/2024/12/hamlet-claudas-and-arthurian-legends.html PART 3: Arthurian Wastelands and rotten Denmark under Claudias https://pauladrianfried.blogspot.com/2024/12/arthurian-wastelands-and-rotten-denmark.html PART 4: Claudius, Hamlet, and Chaucer's Physician's Tale (Part 4, Claudius series) https://pauladrianfried.blogspot.com/2025/02/claudius-hamlet-and-chaucers-physicians.html PART 5: Ophelia's Valentine and Claudius - February 10, 2025 https://pauladrianfried.blog...