Paul Adrian Fried / HAMLET'S BIBLE

On the 6th day of Christmas (December 30) if Shakespeare attended church for morning or evening prayer, what Bible passages would he have heard? MORNING: Psalm 30 - The House of David [1]. Isaiah 63 - A vengeful God [2]. Acts 27 - Paul shipwrecked.* EVENING: Isaiah 64 - Divine intervention [3]? 3 John 1 - Welcome strangers [4]? “Demetrius” [5]? * Acts 27 is about St. Paul and a shipwreck, reminding us of Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night , but also of the Shakespeare collaboration, 𝘗𝘦𝘳𝘪𝘤𝘭𝘦𝘴, which echoes the geography of Paul’s travels. Hannibal Hamlin refers to the play as “The Acts of 𝘗𝘦𝘳𝘪𝘤𝘭𝘦𝘴” for all of its resemblances to Paul’s journeys [6]. After Paul’s shipwreck, Roman soldiers at first want to execute all prisoners so they don’t escape, but one wants Paul to be spared, an act of mercy. Paul argues that they can all swim to shore: Paul takes the gift of the soldier’s mercy and expands it to include all of the prisoners, not just himself (like a figurative multiplica...

Excerpt: ...getting playgoers and readers to imagine a pregnant, or carnal, Ophelia amounts to a dramatic benefit because, at some point (usually a retrospective moment), the recollection of this identity obviously compounds the pathos of her personal tragedy. At the same time, those contemporary consumers of Hamlet aware of an Elizabethan aesthetics of the pregnant imagination are likely to question their reconstruction of Ophelia’s sexual status, simply be- cause they know that her supposed pregnancy could be the result of the operation of their pregnant minds on the elements of Shakespeare’s play. In other words, Shakespeare calls attention to the challenging plastic quality of mind that he generally seems always to require of his educated theater readers and playgoers. Every play in the Shakespeare canon, virtually every Shakespearean character, becomes richly enjoyable and instructive to the degree that pregnant minds animate them. Shakespeare’s urging the pregnant mind to make ...

 “Shakespeare is not treating us to an imaginative presentation of theology. He is testing theology with his imagination and using theology for his artistic purpose.” (105) - Robert G. Hunter “Shakespeare and the Mystery of God’s Judgments” (1976) ~~~~~ This is one of my favorite quotes from this book, and sums up an important perspective. It contrasts with the assumption by some scholars such as Charles Wordsworth (1864) - a position strongly disliked by many others - that Shakespeare used biblical references and religious themes to demonstrate and evangelize for the Christian faith. Other scholars such as Maurice Hunt (Shakespeare's Religious Allusiveness: Its Play and Tolerance) sometimes assume biblical references might be sorted into binary opposition between apparent Protestant and Catholic references, perhaps proving Shakespeare was one or the other, or that he at least conformed to the Protestant inclinations of his time. But "testing theology with his imagination...