Paul Adrian Fried / HAMLET'S BIBLE

On June 19 of this year, The Public Theater of New York published on YouTube their fine video of black actors from across the US reading Hamlet's speech, "To be or not to be." It's powerful and provocative, evoking the sense of cognitive dissonance and mystery that Hamlet feels he faces in the play. You can view it here: This video has been on my mind this week as I read of George Floyd/police protests in Portland, Oregon, and President Trump sending federal troops there, where Black Lives Matter protesters had occupied an area of the city. At first protesters were mostly peaceful, but Portland police used teargas, pepper spray, flash-bang grenades, and other devices that inspired an outcry and a restraining order from a judge, a sign of early progress. Yet after Trump sent in federal troops, violent methods were used again, as well as snatching demonstrators and detaining them indefinitely without charges. Oregon Public Broadcasting has an good account of the...

I was born on the 5th of July, thankfully missing by just a day the opportunity to have the line from the patriotic and vacuous George M. Cohen song, “I'm a Yankee Doodle Dandy,” applied to my birth: I'm a Yankee Doodle Dandy A Yankee Doodle, do or die A real live nephew of my Uncle Sam Born on the Fourth of July I've got a Yankee Doodle sweetheart She's my Yankee Doodle joy Yankee Doodle came to London Just to ride the ponies I am the Yankee Doodle Boy Instead, I am pleased to know that this date also marks the historic occasion of Frederick Douglass’ 1852 speech, “"What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?" given to the Rochester Ladies Anti-Slavery Society in the state of New York. [ Image of Frederick Douglass from Wikipedia . Image of Romans 8:18 from Archive.org, The Bishops Bible, 1568, which the 1599 Geneva translation renders, "For I count that the afflictions of this present time are not worthy of the glory, which shall be showed un...

[Paapa Essiedu as Hamlet in 2016 RSC production, screen capture] Some may think that countless high school students believe Shakespeare's Hamlet is a play about a girl whose dad won't let her date a certain boy, and the boy is later very, very mean to her, and he later kills her dad accidentally, and she later commits suicide, and later many other people die too, including the boy, his mom, and his uncle. Oh, and his mom's the queen of the country, and it turns out that she had wished her son would marry the girl (yes, the same girl whose dad prohibited her from seeing him). Ironic! What's with that? [Image via me.me ] Many scholars still believe Hamlet is mostly a play about a prince with mommy issues (ignoring the political contexts and frame). So what might average white people make of a mostly-black-cast, African-themed, 2016 RSC production of Hamlet, with Claudius in western military garb? What shall we make of the ghost of the king, the brother th...