Paul Adrian Fried / HAMLET'S BIBLE

QUEEN: [...] for your part, Ophelia, I do wish That your good beauties be the happy cause Of Hamlet’s wildness. So shall I hope your virtues Will bring him to his wonted way again, To both your honors. OPHELIA  Madam, I wish it may.  (3.1.42-47)   Queen Gertrude expresses hope that Ophelia’s father Polonius may be correct in thinking that Hamlet is mad for the loss of Ophelia’s love. Shakespeare often described love as a madness in need of a cure.[1] This may be more significant than one might assume at first glance, for at least three reasons.   First, Gertrude’s comments apply not only to her son but also to her new husband, even if she doesn’t know it. For Claudius to kill his brother and take the throne and his brother’s wife seems a kind of madness. Gertrude’s “virtues” were not enough to cure him. Secondly, “The face that launched a thousand ships” is the famous Christopher Marlowe line describing the beauty of Helen of Troy. To steal her, Paris risked war, w...

Hamlet's references to Jephthah and Hecuba may have more to do with each other in the broader context of the tales of the Trojan War than Hamlet footnotes lead one at first to believe. Many students today make up the largest group of fresh audiences or readers of Shakespeare's Hamlet . As such, most come to the play without knowing who Jephthah or Hecuba were (I certainly did not when I first read the play in high school). Both Jephthah and Hecuba are alluded to by the prince in Act 2, scene 2, a long scene.* Hamlet remains on stage consistently from the Jephthah reference through all the Hecuba speech and references ("What's Hecuba to him, or he to Hecuba?").                [Dame Judi Dench as Hecuba in Hamlet , 1996, directed by Kenneth Branagh. Image via HamletsCloud . Fair use.] Shakespeare's original audiences fresh to the play would have included a greater percent of people more familiar with the Bible and ...