Paul Adrian Fried / HAMLET'S BIBLE

Why does Hamlet hate the women he loves - his mother Gertrude, and Ophelia? My last post [1] claimed that Hamlet is harsh with Gertrude and Ophelia, at least in part, because he loves them and wants them to avoid sin (Ophelia) or repent (Gertrude), to avoid the pains of purgatory (like his father) or eternal damnation. He fears for their eternal fate. But this is not the whole story. Hamlet may have many motivations for being so harsh,[2] for hating the women he loves (as noted by many critics). Just a few: WHY HATE HIS MOTHER? Personal reasons: He wanted the throne to pass to him, not his uncle. When Gertrude married her brother-in law, for whatever reasons (passion; fear of attack from Norway), this ruined Prince Hamlet’s chances to become the next king after his father. He may hate her for that reason. Cultural/Religious reasons: Shakespeare’s culture was misogynistic: Henry VIII wanted a son to succeed him, not a daughter. Many agreed. Many assumed women were the “w...

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...

“My goal, in short, is to help explain Shakespeare, not to endorse the religion he had or the religion he became. But we cannot fully grasp Shakespeare’s own aims, I argue, until we come to terms with those religions too.” Jeffrey Knapp, 2002, Shakespeare's Tribe There is a sort of hinge in Shakespeare’s Hamlet , built on a contrast or sometimes proposed complementarity of love and fear. There is also a universe of Yoda memes on the internet, many of them dealing with Master Yoda’s thoughts on the dangers of fear and the Dark Side. What might Yoda and Hamlet have in common regarding the themes of love and fear? Early in the play, we learn that Hamlet would rather speak of mutual love with his sentinels and his friend Horatio, than hear them profess anything about their duty to serve him. We also learn of Hamlet’s great love expressed in letters to Ophelia. It seems Prince Hamlet would, by far, prefer to dedicate himself to love rather than to revenge. Laertes, howeve...