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...

From a 2023 post [1]: ...Balthazar (the dark-skinned magi of the evolving Epiphany tradition) became a kind of touchstone or symbol of otherness, diversity, and tolerance. And so it is also perhaps no surprise that the name Balthasar occurs five times in Shakespeare’s plays, twice as servants (in Romeo and Juliet, and in The Merchant of Venice), once as a singer in Much Ado About Nothing, once as a merchant in The Comedy of Errors, and once as a lawyer, Portia’s courtroom disguise in The Merchant of Venice, where she is called a "Daniel"; a play in which Portia considers suitors from many lands. Shakespeare also has a play named after the night before the Epiphany, Twelfth Night. The three Magi are outsiders, foreigners, and so are the siblings in Twelfth Night who are shipwrecked on the island of Illyria, the land of their enemies. But by the end of that play, the siblings both marry leading personages from Illyria, contributing to themes of diversity, tolerance, reconcili...

In a December 2020 article, Jonathan Jones explained how the idea of a black Balthazar among the magi or wise men visiting Jesus was an idea that began to blossom in the Renaissance among painters who portrayed the scene.[1] "Balthazar" was a new name given to the biblical Daniel. In a text attributed to the Venerable Bede of Northumbria (672/3 – 735), Balthazar was identified as coming from Africa, yet Jones claims that many in Bede’s time had little concept of what color skin an African might have. As Renaissance Europeans became more exposed to people from other parts of the world, the imagining of Balthazar as black expanded with the help of paintings. Jones notes, “Behind those dark daubs of paint lay a new curiosity about people and about peoples: the ‘humanist’ thinking of the Renaissance that inspired the great French philosopher Montaigne to declare that all global customs and beliefs are equally valid.” Given this expanding awareness, it is perhaps no surp...