Paul Adrian Fried / HAMLET'S BIBLE

The First Commandment, "THOU SHALT HAVE NO OTHER GODS BUT ME,” doesn’t mention pride, but Christian tradition considered it to be like playing god, the worst of the seven deadly sins from which the others proceed [1].  By apocryphal tradition it was the sin of Satan and the fallen angels, who in their pride believed they were equal to God or might usurp God’s throne [2].  KING HAMLET & OLD FORTINBRAS: Horatio in 1.1 notes pride: […] our last king, [...] Was, as you know, by Fortinbras of Norway, Thereto pricked on by a most emulate *pride,* Dared to the combat… (1.1.92-96)  King Hamlet was “Dared to the combat”; instead of humbly urging peace instead of violence, “pricked on by… emulate pride,” he accepted the challenge and killed the Norwegian king, both of them gambling their lives and sons’ inheritance – and the future of their countries – on pride.  No “sealed compact,” “law” or “heraldry” (1.1.98-101) can excuse this sin of pride, and it may be among t...

2025 WAS A VERY GOOD YEAR for the “Hamlet’s Bible” blog… VIEWS FOR THE YEAR came to about 77.6k, averaging about 1.5k views per week. This was a significant increase over the average for the past eight years, which was about 23.5k per year and .45k  per week, out of an eight-year total of 188k views from more than 80 countries since 2018. In 2025, I completed two series begun the previous year: One on Claudius [1], and one on the Twelve Days of Christmas - including Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night [2]. See also MASTER INDEX (for series) [3].  In all of my posts and research, I strive to welcome the strange, and to let my curiosity lead my research to new insights. Among my three favorite posts: New realizations about how references to classical gods and deified Roman Caesars should be reconsidered in conjunction with references to Jesus: All of these involve divinity claims, sometimes in stark contrast with one another. See my post, Hamlet's Christmas, Caesar, Taxes, and Conte...

In Hamlet 4.3, instead of “Long live King Claudius!” Hamlet names worms as emperors [1]: Eventually, worms will overcome every king, after which even a beggar might eat, digest, and defecate a monarch. In the end, the meek (including beggars and worms) inherit the earth and its kingdoms [2].  But how can a beggar defecate a king?  (Some people in the USA, terrorized by ICE, may be asking the same thing.)  Hamlet explains the food chain to Claudius, who has lied consistently in the play about a key murder for which he is responsible:  KING  Now, Hamlet, where’s Polonius? HAMLET  At supper. KING  At supper where? HAMLET  Not where he eats, but where he is eaten. A certain convocation of politic worms are e’en at him. Your worm is your only emperor for diet. We fat all creatures else to fat us, and we fat ourselves for maggots. Your fat king and your lean beggar is but variable service—two dishes but to one table. That’s the end. KING  Alas, ala...

How might a 21st century view of Sir Thomas More differ from Hamlet’s?  Catholic worship was illegal in England until 1791 [1]. More was beatified in 1886, canonized a saint in 1935.  In 1960 JFK became the first Catholic US president [2].  Robert Bolt's “A Man for All Seasons,” a play about More that won a 1962 Tony Award, had by the time of JFK’s 1963 assassination finished a successful Broadway run of 637 shows since 1961 after its London debut [3]. The hero of the play, More would not support Henry VIII's quest for a divorce from his first wife, resulting in his execution, a martyr for conscience.  Henry had sought special permission (‘dispensation’) to marry his dead brother’s widow (the church usually considered such marriages incestuous), but after 24 years of marriage and a daughter, Henry famously changed his mind after his affair with Anne Boleyn, and no thriving male heirs.  Shakespeare used More’s historical writing as a basis for Richard III, and ...

If we think the main reason that Shakespeare named Hamlet’s uncle “Claudius” was because it was the English Renaissance – so things associated with ancient Rome were fashionable – we might miss the main point [1].  To have Claudius be a murderous, usurping, incestuous, unrepentant sinner, and to have Hamlet mention Nero [2], reveals a great deal about religious-political assumptions of Shakespeare’s time. Claudius is in fact like the Rome of Protestant polemics: MURDEROUS, POISONING, CONSPIRING, UNREPENTANT: Catholic Rome was viewed as corrupt and unrepentantly sinful, resisting reform. Rome excommunicated Elizabeth I (1570, 1588) [3]; English Catholics made numerous efforts to assassinate her [4]. Reformers associated the Mass with poison [5]; scholars call the poison cup of Claudius a “black Mass” [6]. INCESTUOUS: Rome had approved the “incestuous marriage” of Henry VIII to his brother’s widow, and if Elizabeth had accepted the marriage proposal of her brother-in-law Philip II of...

What if we consider Claudius, uncle of Hamlet, through the lens of Philip II of Spain, or vice versa?  Philip was married to Mary I, older half-sister of Elizabeth I, and as such, he also enjoyed the title of King of England.  As Elizabeth’s brother-in-law, she was Philip’s “sometime-sister,” a phrase Claudius uses to describe Gertrude, widow of his brother King Hamlet [1].  Philip had offered a marriage proposal to Elizabeth (1559) two months after the death of Mary I (hasty remarriage), in spite of being the widower of Elizabeth’s half-sister (which would have required special dispensation from Rome, as did the marriage of Henry VIII to his first wife, Katherine of Aragon, mother of Mary I); this would have been considered a biblically incestuous marriage.  [Edit: Elizabeth *did not accept*. ]  There were coins of England during the monarchy of Mary I that featured images of Mary and Philip, some of which are still in existence, although Elizabeth had a majo...

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...

Depending on who is pope at the time – either the time of the writing of a Shakespeare play, or a during a given production, or work of scholarship – the way people feel about Hamlet’s Uncle Claudius and his various sins or vices may vary greatly.  Elizabeth I had been excommunicated by Pope Pius V (1570) [1]. Under Sixtus V, Rome encouraged Spain to launch three Armada invasions of England (1588, 1596, 1601). (How would you feel?) During the English Civil Wars (1642 to 1651), in part about religion, Pope Innocent X (1644-1655) supported Ireland, against objections of the exiled Henrietta Maria, English Queen living in Paris.  So before 1660, it was easier to connect Claudius and his sins and vices with Rome and a Catholic church that resisted reform.  Fast forward to the 1800s: Charles Dickens publishes Oliver Twist (1837-1839), A Christmas Carol (1843), and Hard Times (1854); Marx and Engles publish Das Kapital (1867-1894), and Pope Leo XIII publishes Rerum Novarum (1...