Paul Adrian Fried / HAMLET'S BIBLE

FOR SHAKESPEARE, MUST AN ALLUSION TO THE INCARNATION IMPLY A DIVINE INFANCY NARRATIVE? Two weeks ago, I posted regarding how Hamlet 1.1 refers to many Christian mysteries: Incarnation, teachings, passion, resurrection, and end times. The allusion to the incarnation takes the form of an allusion to “that season... / Wherein our Saviour's birth is celebrated.” But the gospels show that the Christian idea of God can be incarnate in more ways than a Bethlehem-born infant: —The Emmaus tale shows how one can find the risen Jesus in the stranger who does for us things like those things that Jesus did. —Ophelia’s mention of the story about how “the owl was a baker’s daughter” is an example of how we sometimes reject the presence of Jesus in the stranger or beggar, with negative consequences. So we should not assume that mention of “our savior’s birth” is a foreshadowing of another infancy narrative in the play. That never comes. Hamlet finds God’s hand at work in the pirates; p...

Christianity's central mysteries & teachings in Hamlet 1.1: INCARNATION : Marcellus speaks of “ that season... / Wherein our Saviour's birth is celebrated.” The conception & birth of Christ claims God is not distant, but one like & among us (Emmanuel as "God-with-us," Mt1:22-23). TEACHINGS : Horatio says, “A mote it is to trouble the mind's eye,” which alludes to Mt 7:1-5 & Lk 6:41: take the plank from our own eye before taking the mote of dust from a neighbor’s eye; judge not that you be not judged. [P.S. The idea that we should judge ourselves before judging others is an extension of the second of two of the laws that Jesus identified as most important (love god, and love neighbor as self, or do unto others as you'd have them do unto you). The scripture passage that contains this "mote in the eye" reference also contains the "measure for measure" reference, a favorite of Shakespeare's, which became the title of ...

New article: The challenge of finding religiously inclusive ways to write about biblical allusions in Hamlet. E. M. W. Tillyard claims that the Elizabethan worldview was pretty strictly hierarchical, yet contrary to this, the biblical-Elizabethan view also recognized the prophet who speaks truth to power in unexpected (non-hierarchical) ways. What to do? Providing some historical context is a good first step. To wrestle with this and other related challenges, I borrow some ideas from Lewis Hyde (The Gift: Imagination and the Erotic Life of Property) regarding gift economies and "The Labor of Gratitude." I also examine what Karen Armstrong claims to be a common thread in many world religions, the Golden Rule, taken (in Christianity's case) from older Hebrew scriptures and from what Jesus says is one of the two most important laws in Judaism. Then I connect this to Ophelia's line: "They say the owl was a baker's daughter." I'll bet you were won...

BEING INCLUSIVE ABOUT RELIGIOUS ALLUSIONS IN HAMLET /&/ WHAT'S AN OWL GOT TO DO WITH A BAKER'S DAUGHTER? My goal in writing Hamlet’s Bible is to be as inclusive as possible in explaining biblical and religious allusions in the play. I hope to do this, not only to appeal to the broadest possible audience, but also because it simply helps if the goal is to understand Shakespeare’s rich use of religious and biblical allusions. It is my firm conviction that one does not have to be a Christian, or to have ever attended church, to understand the biblical allusions in the play once they're pointed out and explained. It just means that, for those unfamiliar with Christianity and the bible, it may take a bit more explaining. It is a basic fact that readers of Shakespeare today are much more diverse than in Elizabethan times. Even in nations with so-called Christian majorities, college and high school instructors of English Literature have students with a great variety of ...

FROM HANNIBAL HAMLIN'S INTRODUCTION (SEE PIC BELOW) to his book, "The Bible in Shakespeare," which offers a systematic study of Shakespeare's biblical allusions in a wide array of his plays - but no focused analysis of many/most such allusions in a single play (as I'm attempting with Hamlet). Even audience members and readers of the plays who notice some of the biblical allusions often do not recognize how profoundly biblical Elizabethan culture was, but Hamlin grasps this, as the following sample from the first page of his introduction shows. If you're a fan of Shakespeare and the bible, Hamlin's book is a good investment. If you can't afford it, try local libraries, or inter-library loans. The samples available on Google Books are incomplete, and a scholar like Hamlin deserves to have his work supported, and not to have Google Books reproduce major parts of it by way of legal loopholes. If you work in a college, university, or theater with a res...