Paul Adrian Fried / HAMLET'S BIBLE

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ INDEX OF POSTS IN THIS SERIES: https://pauladrianfried.blogspot.com/2023/01/index-hamlet-in-32-as-boy-jesus-lost.html ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ After the play-within-the-play, in conversation with Rosencrantz, Hamlet implies that he has amazed and astonished his mother like the boy Jesus did when his parents found him with the elders in the Temple. I’ve omitted some parts of the Hamlet text so as to focus more closely on the applicable parts below. Compare the text from the play, below, to the text from 2:46-52 (Geneva), which was read every January in Shakespeare's lifetime on the Sunday after Epiphany: [1] GUILDENSTERN: The King … Is …marvelous distempered.... The Queen your mother, in most great affliction of spirit, hath sent me to you. ...your behavior hath struck her into *amazement* and admiration. HAMLET: O wonderful son that can so *’stonish* [astonish] a mother! (3.2.325-356) [2] Compare Luke 2:46-52 (Geneva): 46 And i...

In many editions of Shakespeare's Hamlet, when the prince gives advice to the actors and says they should avoid the kind of bad acting that "out-Herods Herod," footnotes often explain it by referring to the older Herod I, supposedly responsible for a "slaughter of innocents," a killing of male children at the time of the Nativity of Jesus—and also a biblical literary allusion to the slaughter of male infants at the time of the birth of Moses as related in Hebrew scriptures. But Herod I is not the only Herod editors could have chosen: They could have noted a later Herod, Herod Antipas. Why might this be a poor editorial decision, to mention only Herod I, and omit mention of Herod Antipas? Because as the Christian scriptures tell the tale (Mk 6:14-29, Mt 14:1-12), Herod Antipas divorced his first wife and married Herodias, the divorced wife of his brother. When his new stepdaughter danced for Herod Antipas and his guests, she danced so well that he offered he...