Paul Adrian Fried / HAMLET'S BIBLE

Names, common themes, and similar incidents in Homer* and Hamlet are too explicit and numerous to avoid (Laertes, Hyperion, Pyrrhus, Priam, Hecuba... See my previous posts in this series).[1] The text of Hamlet expects readers and audiences to view Hamlet through the lens of Homer, both for its similarities and for the ways it diverges from the old heroic texts. (*When I say Homer in this instance, it's shorthand for all the sources Shakespeare used, including Virgil, Ovid; Chaucer, and Chapman's partial translation of the Iliad, as well as other secondary sources.) Bruce Louden observes [2] that among the many new characters and plot elements in Hamlet that are not found in the Saxo Grammaticus and Belleforest sources, four of them are found in Homer: 1. the Ghost; 2. the coming of the actors to Elsinore; 3. the play-within-the-play; 4. the pirates who intercept the ship…. (33-34) Louden notes that Hamlet identifies with Pyrrhus, who wears black in mourning for the d...

In Hamlet , the prince says that, compared to his Uncle Claudius, his dead father was “So excellent a king, that was to this Hyperion to a satyr” (1.2.143-4). [1] He compares his father to Hyperion and three other pagan gods (Jove, Mars, Mercury) with his mother in the closet scene. (3.4.66-8) What are the implications of comparing his father, the dead king, to Hyperion? Are some of the implications affirmed by another allusion, to the skin-sores of the beggar Lazarus? In The Odyssey, against his advice, Odysseus' men kill and eat the cattle of Hyperion/Helios. [2] The fact that they’re hungry sailors on a long journey home doesn’t matter so much to Hyperion as their disrespect. Are they not like bread-stealing Jean Valjean in Victor Hugo's Les Misérables, starving, to be pitied? [3] Hyperion seems ungenerous, greedy, unmerciful toward the hungry sailors. As punishment, they never make it home. Consider: Hyperion and the sailors resemble the Rich Man and L...

Federico La Sala recently reminded me that the name Laertes in Hamlet comes from Homer's Odyssey. [1] I am grateful to him for pointing me in this direction. Allusions for Shakespeare are usually not all-encompassing, and don’t align on every point, but seem chosen for what limited light they shed. I usually focus on biblical allusions, but here’s a detour (some possible Odyssey allusions or influences): 1. DEFENDER OF WOMEN AND PRINCES: ODYSSEY: Laertes defends Penelope, wife of his son Odysseus (gone 20 years), from suitors who believe he is dead. HAMLET: Laertes defends his sister from a possible affair with Prince Hamlet, and defends the prince, in case Hamlet must marry to secure a foreign alliance (1.3). (Polonius is widely believed to be a satire of William Cecil, and therefore Laertes may be a satire of his son Robert Cecil, who became a key advisor to Elizabeth even before his father's death; to call a satire of Robert Cecil "Laertes," may be the ...