Paul Adrian Fried / HAMLET'S BIBLE

In light of Taylor Swift’s new album on which her song “The Fate of Ophelia” appears, Emily Rome (creator of the podcast @shakespearesshadows) has good reflections: Why in the song does Ophelia have to be rescued by a man? Shakespeare borrowed and adapted freely, so if we’re going to revise Ophelia, why not do so in ways that imagine her having more agency? On Instagram, Emily has a short video in which she mentions the 2018 film, “Ophelia,” starring Daisy Ridley; the 2006 book by Lisa Klein on which it was based; the Lauren M. Gunderson stage play, “A Room in the Castle,”; and the 2019 video game, “Elsinore,” all of which adapt Ophelia’s story in creative ways. (And yes, video games are no longer merely ping-pong, but contain complex plots and characters, with interesting original soundtracks and visual effects, as well as effective voice actors; they generate more revenue than new releases in TV and Film, so an Ophelia video game may make interesting, significant impressions on new...

Ophelia and Laertes know their father’s burial was abbreviated and secretive [1]. Claudius says, For good Polonius’ death, and we have done but greenly In hugger-mugger to inter him… [2] Claudius confides in Laertes that Hamlet killed his father [3]: This suits his purposes, to enlist the help of Laertes to kill Hamlet without Claudius revealing that he killed his brother, the king. But Claudius does not reveal to Ophelia how her father died. While he confides in Laertes, Ophelia is drowning [4]. There is no scene in Hamlet in which a character tells Ophelia that Hamlet killed her father. None. No character refers to Ophelia having been told, or knowing it, or finding out via gossip from Elsinore guards or servants. This may *not* be a small point: It is one thing to assume that Ophelia should be defined mostly by her familial and romantic relationships, and to have gone mad merely because of them. Yet it is very different for her to be defined by political awakenings, to have - lov...

OPHELIA'S VALENTINE & CLAUDIUS.... In Shakespeare’s time, it was widely assumed that the martyr St. Valentine (d. 269 AD) was executed under orders from the Roman Emperor Claudius II, an idea not lost on many in his early audiences when Ophelia sings her Valentine song. They would make the connection: Claudius II ordered the execution of St. Valentine; Claudius of Denmark secretly ordered the execution of Ophelia’s Valentine, Hamlet. CONSIDER: Some form of “Valentine” occurs 70 times across seven Shakespeare plays [1]. “Saint Valentine” is mentioned only twice: once in A Midsummer Night’s Dream , and once in Hamlet . The only St. Valentine’s Day song is sung by Ophelia (taken from a familiar folk-song of the time) with interjections from Claudius. The pagan precursor of Valentine’s Day, Lupercal, is mentioned twice in Julius Caesar. It is often claimed that Pope Gelasius I disliked the pagan feast, and in 496 AD, set the feast of the martyr St. Valentine to be on February 14 to...

PRECEDENTS FOR HAMLET PLOT ELEMENTS—AND A VILLAIN NAMED CLAUDIUS— IN ARTHURIAN LEGENDS: One of the villains in the Arthurian legends is named Claudas, a variant of Claudius, the main villain in Shakespeare’s Hamlet . But in fact, the Arthurian legends contain many of the essential plot elements of Hamlet . Instead of “All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten,” we could say, many of the things Shakespeare and Saxo Grammaticus needed to know to write Hamlet , they could have learned from the Arthurian legends: - The ghost of a parent [1] and warrior [2]; - a prince (or king) who relates to soldiers and close friends as equals [3]; - questions of marital infidelity [4] and of broken marriage promises [5]; - knightly codes of honor and violence that conflict at times with courtesy and Christian values [6] - suicidal, love-forsaken women [7]; - the living body or dead corpse of a heartbroken woman, floating in a river or stream [8]; - contrast between characters who interpret ...

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...

In Thomas Malory's collected Le Morte D'Arthur tales, the Lady of the Lake, an unnamed damsel, and two figures named Elaine resemble various dynamics in Hamlet and Ophelia. This is not to say that Hamlet alludes to Malory (he never does explicitly), but that knowledge of the tales was one among many aspects of the cultural-literary fabric that informed the shaping of Hamlet as distinct from its older sources. 1. Ophelia’s Valentine song in 4.5 implies Hamlet had broken his oaths to her, in spite of her having broken off the relationship first in obedience to her father. - The Lady of the Lake [1] acts as if an oath had been broken or a debt unpaid related to the sword, but she is killed. 2. An unnamed damsel falls in love with Lanceor (not Lancelot) but she is in such sorrow at his death that she kills herself, falling on a sword.[2] 3. Lancelot is deceived by sorceress Brisen who disguises Elaine, daughter of King Pelles, to appear as Guinevere. Elaine seduces Lancelot (simil...

In 2020, Connor Hanratty [1] posted about “the owl was a baker’s daughter” [2], touching only briefly on the folktale allusion (not mentioning its strong resemblance to the gospel tale of Lazarus and the rich man [3]). Hanratty mentions an 1851 source about an ancient connection between baker's daughters and prostitutes. Presumably, prostitutes waited for customers at bakeries, and "On certain festivals, the master bakers sold nothing but sacrificial breads, and at the same time they had slave girls or servant maids who prostituted themselves day and night in the bakery.” [4] This, like many Freudian readings, may seem a sexually reductionist explanation. But note: Both the baker's daughter in the tale, and the prostitute, are concerned with monetary profit, when what they offer might also be considered a gift: In a healthy relationship, sexual pleasure might best be a mutual gift, not a for-profit exchange. In a healthy community, beggars get fed (as do potential prostitu...

THANK YOU for following my series on Ophelia! This is the 15th (and longest!) series I have done on my blog; For a list of the other 14 series, see footnote [1]. In the fourth part of her poem, “Sometimes,” Mary Oliver offers this (often-quoted) stanza: Instructions for living a life: Pay attention. Be astonished. Tell about it. I don’t start or end my series thinking that I’m an expert, but rather, a seeker with a hunger to fill gaps in my understanding. It’s good to chip away at a topic a little at a time, like the saying: a long journey is made up of many small steps. I try to pay attention, and am frequently astonished. I’m grateful that a few others follow along as I share questions and reflections. There are always new questions, new perspectives, new angles for considering even very old ideas. Ophelia is a mystery to me. For some reason (explored in some posts of this series), Gertrude presents Ophelia’s drowning as something other than suicide. Some are struck with disbelief to...

My favorite things about Ophelia? 1. By obeying her father too much, she demonstrates the failure of over-valued Elizabethan parental [and political] authority, but also displays heroic patience and self-control. 2. She calls out the potential hypocrisy of her brother. 3. She understands (although her father and brother do not) that “almost all the holy vows of heaven” from Hamlet are most probably a marriage betrothal, and that she could be Denmark’s next queen. 4. She reveals her love for Hamlet even while giving back his love poems, obeying her father. 5. She talks back to Hamlet in the nunnery scene and at “The Mousetrap” play, bold to act this way with the prince. 6. She uses coded meanings of flowers to criticize her king and queen. 7. She sings a bawdy song, perhaps mourning her unspent virginity like Jephthah’s daughter, or mourning the loss of Hamlet as lover, expressing disappointment at being denied access to Hamlet by her father, and then by Hamlet as well.    8. S...

While Ophelia and Hamlet are watching “The Mousetrap,” Hamlet is very talkative with running commentary for the court and especially for Claudius, whose conscience he hopes to catch as the players reenact something like the circumstances of King Hamlet’s poisoning.[1]  Ophelia says to Hamlet, “You are as good as a chorus, my lord.” (3.2.269) The chorus served in Greek plays in many ways, including to comment on the actions on and off stage, and to serve as the voice of fear or of conscience.[2] One way to read Ophelia’s statement is that she is simply describing what Hamlet is doing in the immediate context of the scene. But critics and scholars have always loved to explore how a line in a narrow context may apply to larger contexts. THOUGHT EXPERIMENT: What if Shakespeare uses Ophelia’s line to signal to audiences and readers that, in fact, one could read the whole play as if the very talkative Hamlet is a kind of chorus throughout, who sheds light on other characters, who at so...

Many biblical allusions (or biblical plot and theme echoes) associated with Ophelia overlap in her character. All of these were well-known in Elizabethan times. (Not an exhaustive list): 1. Hebrews 12: 6-11 (suffering as a sign of God’s love for the “chosen” who will be “saved).[1] 2. JACOB, ESAU, AND RACHEL (lower right): the “double blessing” for Laertes, and the frustration of Hamlet and Ophelia’s hopes for a match, point to the bible tale of how Jacob wins the birthright by deceit, Esau gets the second blessing, and Jacob’s hopes to marry Rachel are at first frustrated.[2] 3. SALOME (top left): Claudius wants Ophelia and her brother Laertes to dance to his tune and serve his purposes: He uses Ophelia a bait to spy on Hamlet, and Laertes as co-conspirator to to kill Hamlet, who protests the incestuous marriage. Salome danced pleasingly for her stepfather, Herod Antipas, who offered almost any reward. His wife, Salome’s mother (divorced wife of his brother) told her to ask for the he...