Paul Adrian Fried / HAMLET'S BIBLE

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...

Ophelia hangs coronets on a willow . Why a willow? One of the older known willow poems is Psalm 137,[1] about Israelites taken captive to Babylon, forced to sing for their captors. They hung their harps on willows [2]: "How shall we sing [...] a song of the Lord in a strange land?" [3] “Babylon” became a Protestant metaphor for the corruption of Roman Catholicism in continental Europe and in England under Catholic monarch Mary I. Protestants were internal religious refugees, captives in their own lands. When Protestant Elizabeth became queen, Catholics and Puritans became the new internal religious refugees. [4] Hamlet wants to go back to Wittenberg (associated with Luther), but Claudius and Gertrude oppose it. The censors and master of revels would never allow a play about England’s internal religious refugees (Protestant, Catholic, or Puritan), but Shakespeare could have his prince and internal refugee say,  “Denmark’s a prison.” (2.2.262) For internal religious refugees ...