Paul Adrian Fried / HAMLET'S BIBLE

The word “Herod” [1] occurs NINE times in Shakespeare, in four plays:  Once in in 𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘔𝘦𝘳𝘳𝘺 𝘞𝘪𝘷𝘦𝘴 𝘰𝘧 𝘞𝘪𝘯𝘥𝘴𝘰𝘳;  twice in 𝘏𝘢𝘮𝘭𝘦𝘵 (“out-herod’s Herod,” 3.2.14-15, and given the name of the player queen, “Baptista,” also a nod to Herod Antipas [2], who had John the Baptist beheaded for condemning his incestuous marriage);  and once in 𝘏𝘦𝘯𝘳𝘺 𝘝 as a reference to Herod the Great’s slaughter of innocents:  “Your naked infants spitted upon pikes Whiles the mad mothers with their howls confused Do break the clouds, as did the wives of Jewry At Herod’s bloody-hunting slaughtermen (3.3.38-41). “Herod” occurs five times in 𝘈𝘯𝘵𝘰𝘯𝘺 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘊𝘭𝘦𝘰𝘱𝘢𝘵𝘳𝘢 (Cleopatra lived at the same time as Herod the Great.) In the second scene, a servant says, “Let me be married to 𝘁𝗵𝗿𝗲𝗲 𝗸𝗶𝗻𝗴𝘀 in a forenoon, and widow them all: let me have a child at fifty, to whom 𝗛𝗲𝗿𝗼𝗱 of Jewry may do homage.” (1.2.27-30) We hear not only “Herod” bu...

From a 2023 post [1]: ...Balthazar (the dark-skinned magi of the evolving Epiphany tradition) became a kind of touchstone or symbol of otherness, diversity, and tolerance. And so it is also perhaps no surprise that the name Balthasar occurs five times in Shakespeare’s plays, twice as servants (in Romeo and Juliet, and in The Merchant of Venice), once as a singer in Much Ado About Nothing, once as a merchant in The Comedy of Errors, and once as a lawyer, Portia’s courtroom disguise in The Merchant of Venice, where she is called a "Daniel"; a play in which Portia considers suitors from many lands. Shakespeare also has a play named after the night before the Epiphany, Twelfth Night. The three Magi are outsiders, foreigners, and so are the siblings in Twelfth Night who are shipwrecked on the island of Illyria, the land of their enemies. But by the end of that play, the siblings both marry leading personages from Illyria, contributing to themes of diversity, tolerance, reconcili...