Paul Adrian Fried / HAMLET'S BIBLE

Whether or not Hamlet violates the First or Second Commandment (or none at all) in comparing his father to classical gods, through these comparisons, what might Hamlet's analogies reveal? 1. By comparing his father to four classical gods, this implies that Prince Hamlet is like a son of a god [1]. 2. By starting with Hyperion – among the Titans whose divine reign was overthrown – this echoes his father having been killed by Claudius [2]. 3. The overturning of the old divine order – the rule of Hyperion and the Titans – also echoes the Reformation, which sought to break bonds with Rome and the old Christian order, and to embody a new, reformed order. In this way, English Renaissance fascination with Titans and gods may have been an analogical way to write about what was sometimes forbidden, restricted, discouraged [3]. 4. Comparing his father to Mars, god of war, makes sense, given the dead king’s reputation as a warrior; this also contrasts with Claudius, the cowardly...

KING LEAR begins like a folktale: There was a king who had three daughters. He wished to retire and divide his kingdom among them, so he asked which loved him best. Two daughters, dishonest and greedy, flattered him, while the third refused, so he banished her. The divided kingdom descended into violence, while the king, expecting still to be treated as such, is shuffled back and forth, finally homeless. The story’s themes resonate with any age. Audiences will see in the play reflections of their own time: reckless aging leaders in a bleak world brightened occasionally by the compassion of the oppressed. What were some of the divisions in Shakespeare’s time that may have inspired the play, and resonated most with its first audiences? FLATTERY OF FAVORITES: Leaders are always tempted to surround themselves with those who say what they want, instead of need, to hear. England was no different. James was known to have charming, flattering favorites rewarded with wealth and status but w...

HOW IS SHAKESPEARE’S HAMLET A REFORMATION PLAY, pointing to efforts by Catholics and Protestants to reform Christian institutions and hearts? 1. First on stage is Francisco. Francis of Assisi was a famous church reformer [1] (demonstrating that "reformation" - reforming the church - was a popular  topic centuries before Martin Luther). 2. Second is Bernardo. Bernard of Clairvaux was a famous Cistercian monastic reformer [2]. 3. Hamlet goes to university at Wittenberg, where Martin Luther nailed his theses to the door [3]. 4. The ghost tells Hamlet that he is being purged of sins (purgatory, believed in by many Catholics, doubted by many Protestants) [4]. 5. Hamlet tells the players not to overact. The actors say they have "reformed" that; Hamlet replies, "reform it altogether" [5], reformation wordplay. 6. Hamlet mentions a "convocation of politic worms," ‘your only emperor for diet” [6]: A council, the “Diet of Worms,” questioned Luther’s orthod...

Hamlet is in part about a contested succession, a hot topic in Elizabethan England. The first line in Hamlet, “Who’s there?” sounds like “who’s th’ heir?” [1]. Hamlet believes Claudius is a murderous usurper, an illegitimate successor to his father. Contested succession applies not only to politics, but also to religion in Shakespeare’s time and Christianity in general, and to scientific authority as well. At least some people in Shakespeare’s time would have noticed that the story of Jesus is one of contested succession in which Jesus is heaven’s prince [2]. After the Roman occupation in 63 BCE, Jewish authorities were corrupted in Rome’s favor [3]. Some of these used the letter of the law to condemn the preacher and miracle-worker, Jesus, who like John the Baptist had attracted the attention and concern of Roman authorities. The gospels claim that Jesus associated with revolutionaries (zealots), and that he was crucified with a sign that mocked him as “King of the Jews.” [4] After ...

If we think the main reason that Shakespeare named Hamlet’s uncle “Claudius” was because it was the English Renaissance – so things associated with ancient Rome were fashionable – we might miss the main point [1].  To have Claudius be a murderous, usurping, incestuous, unrepentant sinner, and to have Hamlet mention Nero [2], reveals a great deal about religious-political assumptions of Shakespeare’s time. Claudius is in fact like the Rome of Protestant polemics: MURDEROUS, POISONING, CONSPIRING, UNREPENTANT: Catholic Rome was viewed as corrupt and unrepentantly sinful, resisting reform. Rome excommunicated Elizabeth I (1570, 1588) [3]; English Catholics made numerous efforts to assassinate her [4]. Reformers associated the Mass with poison [5]; scholars call the poison cup of Claudius a “black Mass” [6]. INCESTUOUS: Rome had approved the “incestuous marriage” of Henry VIII to his brother’s widow, and if Elizabeth had accepted the marriage proposal of her brother-in-law Philip II of...

Depending on who is pope at the time – either the time of the writing of a Shakespeare play, or a during a given production, or work of scholarship – the way people feel about Hamlet’s Uncle Claudius and his various sins or vices may vary greatly.  Elizabeth I had been excommunicated by Pope Pius V (1570) [1]. Under Sixtus V, Rome encouraged Spain to launch three Armada invasions of England (1588, 1596, 1601). (How would you feel?) During the English Civil Wars (1642 to 1651), in part about religion, Pope Innocent X (1644-1655) supported Ireland, against objections of the exiled Henrietta Maria, English Queen living in Paris.  So before 1660, it was easier to connect Claudius and his sins and vices with Rome and a Catholic church that resisted reform.  Fast forward to the 1800s: Charles Dickens publishes Oliver Twist (1837-1839), A Christmas Carol (1843), and Hard Times (1854); Marx and Engles publish Das Kapital (1867-1894), and Pope Leo XIII publishes Rerum Novarum (1...

"Bohemia and English literature? Everybody who sees this title will instantly think if Shakespeare's Winter's Tale and the sea-coast of Bohemia..." - RENÉ WELLEK [1] If Shakespeare critics mention one thing about Bohemia, it's that Shakespeare got the geography wrong: You can't get there by boat. For example, Susan Halstead writes , "This glaring geographical error – attributing a sea-shore to the landlocked territory of Bohemia – has frequently been cited as an instance of Shakespeare’s ignorance of Central European topography..." [2] But what if the thing we read and heard most often was that Bohemia was the land of Jan Hus, who advocated communion under both kinds (bread and wine), something very common today even in Roman Catholic parishes. Yet Jan Hus was burned at the stake for it. What if we heard that the ideas of Jan Hus influenced the "Confesio Bohemica" (Czech Confession), "the first ecumenical confession," and...

In Shakespeare’s lifetime (as in ours for some), there was an anti-Semitic tendency among Christians to view Judaism as an inferior faith and to view Jesus, Son-figure of a Trinitarian God, as Judaism’s promised messiah sent to redeem humanity from their sins, establishing a "one true faith." An alternative view: Jesus was a Jew, and a reformer, who lived and preached at a time when Judaism had been corrupted in large part by the Roman occupation. Reformers like Jan Hus, Luther and Calvin may have thought it too proud to consider their own reformer-roles analogous to that of Jesus (Luther once referred to tales of medieval monks, including one about a monk who destroyed a chair he had made because he believed he had become too proud of it). But in fact we might consider that they attempted to do for Christianity something analogous to what Jesus attempted to do for Judaism. Hamlet contains references to many reformers: - St. Gis (Jesus). - Wittenberg, where Luthe...

This week I pull together various sources that may seem unrelated. A Facebook forum member * posted a link to a good essay in the Hudson Review that (somewhat tangential to its main topic, but not entirely) contained a number of references to Shakespeare as a kind of religion . This prompted me to think a bit more about my own work on Biblical allusions in Hamlet in the larger context of literary studies, specialists in the field, nationalism, and all of that within the context of religious reforms and reformation. On the topic of Shakespeare as religion, the essay quoted Arthur Murphy, Voltaire, and David Garrick: Here’s Brooke Allen, in Hudson Review , “The Shakespeareans,” referencing English playwright Arthur Murphy: “There had been a gradual elevation of Shakespeare from just one among several popular Elizabethan and Jacobean playwrights to the one and only national treasure: ‘a kind of established religion in poetry,’ as the playwright Arthur Murphy was already describin...

Many readers and viewers of Shakespeare's Hamlet don't notice the Catholic and Protestant rules and expectations that seem to govern Hamlet's outlook and that of his uncle Claudius and his father, the dead King Hamlet. But if we pay attention, we might wonder how the prince can survive so long in a state of religious whiplash. Very different rules apply to the Ghost and to Claudius: The ghost wants Hamlet to believe he is from purgatory - only there for a time (a Catholic belief), and that he’s there because he was caught unawares, sleeping in his garden, when he was poisoned, and therefore did not have time to receive the last sacraments from a priest before going to the final judgment. In the Catholic understanding, a priest would be necessary to hear his last confession, because Catholics believed only priests were empowered to help penitent sinners fully recognize their sins and be ready to be forgiven. [Brian Blessed as Ghost in Hamlet directed by Kenneth Branag...