Paul Adrian Fried / HAMLET'S BIBLE

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...

With more foresight, if Shakespeare had wanted to be more accessible for all ages, he might have realized that once Protestants questioned the Catholic idea of Eucharist as “transubstantiation,” religion would be on its way out (especially in some countries), and he might not have included as many as 1,300 biblical references in his plays [1]. 😉 One example is in King Lear 4.4.  Cordelia, newly returned to England from France, alludes to Luke 2:41-52:  CORDELIA: O dear *father,* It is thy *business* that I go about.    (4.4.26-27)  (*emphasis* mine) This alludes to the tale of the boy Jesus, lost in Jerusalem, later found in the temple, conversing with, astonishing, and amazing temple elders.  Shakespeare also has Hamlet in 3.2 allude to this with his former school friends after The Mousetrap, with his mother amazed and “astonied” [2]. Yes, spelled “astonied” in Shakespeare and in the 1599 Geneva translation:  47 And all that heard him, were astonie...

Many have commented on how the image at the end of the play, of King Lear holding the corpse of his daughter Cordelia, resembles the Pieta, in which the Virgin Mary holds the corpse of Jesus. Modernist critics often dismiss any religious implication [1] [2]. Jesus was allegedly in the tomb for three days, but if Cordelia doesn't revive by the end of the last scene, then to them, there is no resurrection (literal or figurative) and to them, God (literal or figurative) does not exist. Some view the reverse-gender pieta simply as an allusion to the traditional Christian Pieta, and perhaps as pointing to a life after death in some metaphysical realm. But what of the gender reversal, with father holding daughter? Is this significant, even radical? If we view it in a near-vacuum, then it may seem to carry possibly radical implications, where the human father Lear is no sinless virgin, but a sinner purged of his pride in the crucible of profound suffering, holding the daughter of God, n...

Shakespeare scholars often note the changes from the First Quarto of King Lear (1607), to the Folio version (1623), especially the dying Lear, holding the corpse of Cordelia in his arms, hoping for a sign that she is still breathing, and in the Folio, attention to her lips: “Do you see this? Looke on her? Looke her lips, Looke there, looke there.” Many in the last four centuries (including Benson, 2009 [1], and de Grazia, 2021 [2], both of whom cite many others) have pondered whether this hints at a resurrection theme, or delusion. Perhaps there was a topical-historical-political reason for adding the comment about Cordelia’s lips: Had any daughter of King James died around this time? In fact, three of James’ four daughters had died before 1610: Princess Margaret Stuart (24 December 1598 - March 1600) had died before the play was written; Princess Mary Stuart (8 April 1605 - 16 September 1607) died at about the age of two and a half years. Sophia Stuart (22 June 1606 – 23 June 1606) ...

The second day of Christmas, the 26th of December, in Shakespeare’s time as now, was the Feast of St. Stephen [1], the first Christian martyr, reminding Christendom that this infant allegedly born in Bethlehem was born to die for the salvation of all humankind, and that others would be persecuted and killed in his name. Bible readings for the feast include Acts 7 (first lesson), telling the tale of Stephen’s martyrdom, and Matthew 23, a prophesy and history of the killing of prophets. Of course there were other tales of martyrdom or self-sacrifice available to people in Shakespeare’s time, not found in the Bible [2], including the Greek tale of Alcestis, willing to die in place of her husband. English law did not require people to read or hear Greek, non-biblical tales. It did, however, require church attendance, so the tale of the martyrdom of Stephen was required, a non-optional element of the broad fabric of religious and literary stories and literature that would have informed Sh...

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ INDEX OF POSTS IN THIS SERIES: https://pauladrianfried.blogspot.com/2023/01/index-hamlet-in-32-as-boy-jesus-lost.html ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ This series has considered Hamlet’s allusion to Luke 2:46-52, the tale of the boy Jesus amazing temple elders and his parents.[1] Last week we considered a similar thematic echo in Macbeth , when the son of Lady Macduff amazes and humors his mother with wit and grace while also catching her conscience, like a court fool. But Hamlet and Macbeth are not the only Shakespeare plays that echo or allude to the Luke 2 story: King Lear contains an allusion to this gospel story, spoken by Lear’s exiled daughter, Cordelia.[2] We might recall how in Luke 2, Jesus tells his parents that he went to the temple because he had to be about his (heavenly) “father’s business.” Hamlet also believes he must be about his father’s business, but he is confused, at first striving reluctantly to be about the ghost’...