Paul Adrian Fried / HAMLET'S BIBLE

In Shakespeare's England, the 3rd and 4th Sundays of Advent (before Christmas) featured John the Baptist [1], a prophet referred to in Hamlet. The name is feminized to "Baptista" and given to the player queen in 3.2. Hamlet claims "The Mousetrap" or "Murder of Gonzago" was an existing ("extant") historical tale [2]. In fact a Duke of Urbino (not Vienna) was poisoned; Eleanor Gonzaga was his wife. The wife of a predecessor was Battista Sforza [3]. Shakespeare made historical errors on purpose: Hamlet picks the duke’s predecessor’s wife’s name to borrow the name Baptista, so he can allude to John the Baptist, who condemned the marriage of Herod Antipas to his brother's divorced wife [4]. Hamlet wants to catch the king's conscience [5], but must avoid being too confrontational, so he borrows "Baptista" to subtly evoke (but also cleverly distract from) a biblical allusion to Jesus’ kinsman [6] who was beheaded for opposing a k...

Shakespeare catches the conscience of audiences impatient for action: 1. Speaking to the ghost, Hamlet says he’ll act with wings swift as... lightning? Nope. As “meditation or thoughts of love” [1.5.36]. In other words, NOT SWIFT. He's not planning swiftness but caution. 2. After the players arrive, Hamlet scolds himself for cowardice: "O, what a rogue and peasant slave am I! [...] A dull and muddy-mettled rascal, [...] I am pigeon-livered" [2]. Whether or not we condone revenge, we may admire Hamlet scolding himself for apparent cowardice.  3. Hamlet ends this speech saying he needs to be more certain of the ghost’s honesty and Claudius’ guilt, so he’ll put on a play to catch the conscience of the king [3]. This may inspire a public confession from Claudius. If not, then what should Hamlet do?  4. Next act: To be or not? Should Hamlet patiently tolerate the scandal of his father's murder and his mother's hasty remarriage - "suffer / The slings and arrows o...

Letter and Mousetrap, Twelfth Night and Hamlet: Shakespeare’s comedy, Twelfth Night, and his tragedy, Hamlet, were written around the same time: Certain details of themes, motifs, and plot mechanics suggest a variety of connections (in addition to Hamlet feigning madness and Viola feigning being a young man...). One of these is the function of the letter that brings about the demise of the steward Malvolio in Twelfth Night, and “The Mousetrap” playlet used by Hamlet to catch the conscience of his monarchs. Both are used to entrap a powerful person, both artifacts of writing (letter) or based on them (playlet). The letter in Twelfth Night is written in the hand of Maria for how it resembles that of Olivia, so it is like a forgery, but never called that. Some form of the word forgery occurs three times in Hamlet, spoken by the ghost, Polonius, and Claudius, usually in a metaphorical rather than literal sense [2]. Hamlet on the ship to England finds the letter from Claudius to England...

Shakespeare’s Hamlet famously contains a play-within-the-play, “The Mousetrap,” which (for some) calls to mind St. Augustine who said the cross of Christ was a mousetrap for the devil.[1] Ophelia refers to a folktale of a baker’s daughter changed into an owl, punishment for being ungenerous with a beggar (Jesus in disguise). Owls, as I have noted before [2], are living mousetraps. Shakespeare named Hamlet’s mother perhaps after St. Gertrude of Nivelles (c.628-659), famous for dealing with an infestation of mice in the convent’s larder [3]. I think of Gertrude at this time of year: Each autumn, we have had troubles with mice. We plugged holes, changed our cheap dryer vent years ago to an expensive one ($29-$39 - !) - which we assumed would keep mice out. We put heavy galvanized screen over a fireplace air intake, and checked the attached garage for openings where mice might get from the garage into the house. No luck. This fall, our expensive dryer vent cover had long since turned yel...

Ophelia and Hamlet influence Gertrude's final choices; they live in her: If we have followed Gertrude’s progress closely (allowing her to be at least as intelligent as the men in the play), we might note: She may have been deceived to marry Claudius, and done so as much for the safety of Denmark facing a threat from Norway [1], as for lust (contrary to what her son and the Ghost say [2]). She understands her son’s “Mousetrap” and its implications: Claudius poisoned his brother and wooed his brother’s wife [3]. Hamlet’s scolding in her closet has “cleft [her] heart in twain” [4]. She feels guilty facing Ophelia after her father’s death and her reported madness [5]. She reports Ophelia’s death not as suicide, but as an accident caused by crown-envy: the breaking of a sliver of willow envious for a crown [6], hinting at Claudius as the ultimate cause [7]. She probably suspects that Claudius poisoned the cup when dropping in a pearl and asking Hamlet to drink [8]. But she can’t know fo...

Last week [1] I shared my belated realization that, after seeing Hamlet’s playlet that he calls “The Mousetrap” [2], Ophelia refers to a folktale in which a baker’s daughter is turned into an owl [3], and that an owl is a “living mousetrap.” For now, I’d like to call mousetraps masculine and externalizing, and owls, female and internalizing. In Shakespeare’s Elizabethan slang, a man had a “thing” between his legs, an external organ; a woman had a “nothing,” an “O,” which could potentially receive a man’s “thing” and which led to her womb, another “O” of potential.[4] Hamlet’s mousetrap analogy for a play to catch the king’s conscience [5] is an external thing, as the script and players (like moving parts of a mousetrap) are external to his body. One sets a mousetrap and waits.[6] In contrast, the owl, a living mousetrap, consumes mice, takes them inside itself, later regurgitating bones and hair. Mousetraps are externalizing and male, like rapiers that Hamlet and Laertes use ...

OPHELIA: “They say the owl was a baker’s daughter.” What are owls famous for eating — even a dozen in a single night? Mice. What does Hamlet call the play by which he hopes to catch the conscience of the king? “The Mousetrap” [1]. Ophelia sat with Hamlet at his playlet, heard him call it “The Mousetrap.” She soon references a folktale in which a baker’s daughter is ungenerous with a beggar at the door (Jesus or a fairy in disguise), and as punishment, is changed into an owl [2]. Into a living mousetrap. (And the owl asks, “Who? Who?” First words of the play: “Who’s there?”) The name “Gertrude” may point to a Christian saint famous for getting rid of mice [3]. I have argued that, by drinking the poison cup, Gertrude builds a better mousetrap, catching the conscience of Claudius [4]. So there is a trilogy of mouse-trapping characters in the play: Hamlet, Ophelia, and Gertrude. But Ophelia’s owl reference is usually not viewed by scholars, critics, teachers and students as a reference t...

Today is Good Friday. In Shakespeare’s England, church rituals spoke of baptism as a dying to self in Christ, so as to be made new in him [1]. Contrary to some Shakespeare scholars who explicitly resist the idea of Christ-figures in the plays (including Harold Jenkins, Arden editor), all the baptized are called to be Christ-figures [2], imitators of Christ. The spiritual rhythm in medieval mystery, morality and miracle plays assumes all are sinners, but if they express sorrow for their sins, they can know God’s mercy and be saved. [3] Any drama in which a person who dies is saved, is a comedy; the only tragedies are those in which a sinner resists salvation. In her madness, Ophelia expresses regret through her story of the baker’s daughter [4]. Gertrude explains that Ophelia falls in the brook because of an “envious sliver” of willow [5]. Willows in Psalm 137 were incorporated weekly in Christian vespers and associated by St Benedict of Nursia [6] and Martin Luther [7] with the cruci...

Gertrude is more associated with “mousetrap” than many scholars have allowed. Previously [1], I argued that Gertrude suspects a poison cup but doesn’t know for certain, so she signals publicly that she will drink in order to mousetrap Claudius. He tells her not to drink; she replies, “I will, my lord; I pray you pardon me.” [2] Hamlet said he would catch the conscience of the king, but first, his playlet sought to catch Gertrude’s conscience. I am grateful to Federico La Sala for mentioning saints by the name of Gertrude whose legends were familiar in the middle ages and Shakespeare’s time. These included  Gertrude the Great from the monastery of Helfta, a mystic who, with other sisters, explored a spirituality in which they believed they were “brides of Christ.” In The Herald of Divine Love, she speaks of paying a debt, [3] which sounds like the widow helped by the prophet Elijah (2 Kings 4:1-7), which Hamlet associated with his mother. [4] Gertrude as a “bride of Christ” also rel...