Paul Adrian Fried / HAMLET'S BIBLE

At Christmas be mery, and thanke god of all: and feast thy pore neighbours, the great with the small. Yea, al the yere long, have an eie to the poore: and god shall sende luck, and bring you much more. - Thomas Tusser, 1557   Via Brigitte Webster on Instagram @tudor_experience https://www.instagram.com/p/DD9Apq-oIOF/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ YOU CAN SUPPORT ME on a one-time "tip" basis on Ko-Fi: https://ko-fi.com/pauladrianfried IF YOU WOULD PREFER to support me on a REGULAR basis, you may do so on Ko-Fi, or here on Patreon: https://patreon.com/PaulAdrianFried ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Disclaimer: If and when I quote or paraphrase bible passages or mention religion in many of my blog posts, I do not intend to promote any religion over another, nor am I attempting to promote religious belief in general; only to explore how the Bible and re...

INDEX: Character Arcs: Labors of Gratitude & Regret in Hamlet (Aug. - Dec. 2019) In the second half of 2019, I did a series in which I considered character arcs in Hamlet, using ideas adapted from a Lewis Hyde chapter on “The Labor of Gratitude,” expanding this to include also labors of regret. Posts in this series: Part 1: Gifts & Labors of Gratitude in Hansel & Gretel - (before Hamlet) - 8/12/19 https://pauladrianfried.blogspot.com/2019/08/lewis-hyde-on-labor-of-gratitude.html Part 2: Hamlet's Descent & Arc Toward Mercy (Labors of Gratitude and Regret) - 8/19/19 https://pauladrianfried.blogspot.com/2019/08/labors-of-gratitude-and-regret-in-hamlet.html Part 3: Polonius' Labor of Regret - 8/26/19 https://pauladrianfried.blogspot.com/2019/08/polonius-his-labor-of-regret.html Part 4: Into Dad's Circle of Fear & Flattery: Laertes' Labors of Gratitude & Regret, 1.2 - 9/3/19 https://pauladrianfried.blogspot.com/2019/09/laertes-dyna...

Next week I will be part of a seminar at a conference: the annual meeting of the Shakespeare Association of America, which will be held this year in Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA.[1] I’ve attended before: 2018: I attended the 2018 meeting in Los Angeles, California, where I met Gayle Gaskill, editor of the New Kitteridge edition of Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night, as well as other scholars, young and old, with interesting tales to tell.[2] Gayle and I went on to present papers at the SCSC conference in the fall of 2018.[3] 2020: I was part of a seminar on “Mind, Cognition, and Affect” in 2020,[4] held on Zoom due to the pandemic. My paper was about labors of gratitude and regret in Hamlet, exploring how these emotions were instrumental in character arcs. See my series on that topic. [5] 2023: This year, I am taking part in the seminar, “Reconsidering Science and Religion,” on Thursday, 30 March, 3:30 to 5:30 p.m. CST. My paper is called “Kuhnian Paradigm Shifts and Emmaus Untet...

Usually when summer begins, views to my blog fall off as students and instructors take a break at the end of the spring term. But unexpectedly, in a 12-hour period this past day, I had 640 views of one of my blog posts from October of 2019 called " Gertrude as Recipient and Source of Gifts ." This was part 9 in a multi-part series on "Labors of Gratitude and Regret in Hamlet exploring how interactions between characters either offered (non-material) gifts that might inspire them to change, or how interactions sometimes moved characters to regret and change. (If you have not yet read that post, please feel free to visit the blog and give it a read at this link: https://pauladrianfried.blogspot.com/2019/10/gertrude-as-recipient-giver-of-gifts.html Here is a screen shot of the increased views over the last 24 hours associated with that post: When there is a surge in views like that, it might be caused by an instructor who teaches multiple sections of a class whose s...

When Hamlet tells Polonius he is a "fishmonger" (which many read as also meaning "flesh-monger" or pimp), and later associates Polonius with Jephthah (son of a harlot or prostitute), we might paraphrase the title of the Tina Turner song, "What's Love Got to Do With It?" In our case, we might ask: What's prostitution got to do with it? At least one way of viewing prostitution is that it takes what may be at best relationships of mutual and reciprocal gift-giving, and corrupts them by reducing them to market transactions, this-for-that, without nurturing ongoing and transcendent bonds on which communities depend if they are to have a future. Some may view this reading of prostitution as moralistic and oppressive, as if to assert that sex belongs only in marriage, and that perhaps all transactions of the marketplace are evil, whereas only gift-exchange that builds community is good. That is not my objective here, as I hope will become more clea...

SAA Seminar-by-Zoom This past Saturday (13 June) I participated in a Zoom meeting for the seminar, “Shakespeare and the Mind: Cognition, Emotion, Affect,” which had been postponed due to COVID-19 and the demands it created for those switching to online instruction. The seminar was for the 2020 conference of the Shakespeare Association of America, which had been scheduled for 15-18 April 2020 in Denver, Colorado, but the in-person element of the conference had been canceled because of the pandemic. Many of the events met over Zoom, and some posted these on social media for others to audit, but this was a bonus not in the original job description for seminar and workshop leaders (no one expected last June that there would be a pandemic, so familiarity with Zoom or other online conferencing platforms was not a requirement, and doing the extra work of managing auditors was also not expected, understandably, but it was unfortunate to miss out on so many of the conference events). Sem...

This is the latest installment in a multi-part series examining how characters interact in Hamlet, offering opportunities, gifts, planting seeds for future inspiration, or for changes of heart & mind. It follows ideas from Lewis Hyde (“The Labor of Gratitude,” a chapter in his book, The Gift: Imagination and the Erotic Life of Property) . For more notes on the series and an index of previous posts in this series, see the end of this post. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~ WHY GIFT-DYNAMICS MATTER FOR HAMLET & THE BIBLE Why might it matter whether, or how, characters in Shakespeare’s Hamlet demonstrate labors of gratitude and regret, or interact in ways that seem to conform to the transformative dynamics of gift exchange? Why does it matter that Claudius repeatedly refuses such moments of grace? What does it matter that so many other characters seem inclined toward some kind of transformation? And how might such interactions relate to biblical influences in the play? The answer to these questi...