Paul Adrian Fried / HAMLET'S BIBLE

2025 WAS A VERY GOOD YEAR for the “Hamlet’s Bible” blog… VIEWS FOR THE YEAR came to about 77.6k, averaging about 1.5k views per week. This was a significant increase over the average for the past eight years, which was about 23.5k per year and .45k  per week, out of an eight-year total of 188k views from more than 80 countries since 2018. In 2025, I completed two series begun the previous year: One on Claudius [1], and one on the Twelve Days of Christmas - including Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night [2]. See also MASTER INDEX (for series) [3].  In all of my posts and research, I strive to welcome the strange, and to let my curiosity lead my research to new insights. Among my three favorite posts: New realizations about how references to classical gods and deified Roman Caesars should be reconsidered in conjunction with references to Jesus: All of these involve divinity claims, sometimes in stark contrast with one another. See my post, Hamlet's Christmas, Caesar, Taxes, and Conte...

In the final scene, why does Hamlet tell Horatio, “We defy augury” [1]?  Hamlet refers to scripture often in this part of the scene - “The readiness is all” [2], “the fall of a sparrow” [3]. But augury? What might that have meant to Elizabethan audiences?  Generally, augury is related to the belief in omens and signs, as mentioned by Horatio in the first scene of the play when he speaks of omens in Roman graveyards and in the heavens,  “the like precurse of feared events, As harbingers preceding still the fates And prologue to the omen coming on”. [4]  Augury in the story of the founding of Rome involved Romulus and Remus observing birds to determine fate or the will of the gods: The two had survived their great uncle’s attempt to drown them (and are adopted by a she-wolf, perhaps as Laertes is figuratively adopted and manipulated by Claudius?); they argued about where to locate the city. They decided to use augury to settle the dispute, but still argued about the ou...

What if we consider Claudius, uncle of Hamlet, through the lens of Philip II of Spain, or vice versa?  Philip was married to Mary I, older half-sister of Elizabeth I, and as such, he also enjoyed the title of King of England.  As Elizabeth’s brother-in-law, she was Philip’s “sometime-sister,” a phrase Claudius uses to describe Gertrude, widow of his brother King Hamlet [1].  Philip had offered a marriage proposal to Elizabeth (1559) two months after the death of Mary I (hasty remarriage), in spite of being the widower of Elizabeth’s half-sister (which would have required special dispensation from Rome, as did the marriage of Henry VIII to his first wife, Katherine of Aragon, mother of Mary I); this would have been considered a biblically incestuous marriage.  [Edit: Elizabeth *did not accept*. ]  There were coins of England during the monarchy of Mary I that featured images of Mary and Philip, some of which are still in existence, although Elizabeth had a majo...

Last week I posted [1] about a 1948 journal article by E. G. Berry [2], arguing that Shakespeare’s Hamlet resembled Roman Emperor, Claudius I. [3]. Berry argued that these resemblances are stronger in Shakespeare than in the 1200 A.D. source story from Saxo Grammaticus. What Berry doesn’t emphasize, but makes clear: 1. Saxo did not fashion his prince as a mirror image of his murderous uncle, although Amleth does resemble aspects of Claudius I. No similarity between prince and uncle is emphasized by Saxo. 2. By naming the uncle “Claudius,” Shakespeare invites audiences to view the prince and uncle in a radically revised relationship. Instead of a simple opposition between hero and villain, by changing the uncle’s name from “Feng” to “Claudius,” Shakespeare creates a new mirror effect between the two that was not present in Saxo’s older source tale. By pointing to Claudius I, Shakespeare points to Rome, which has an origin story involving a twin, Romulus, who kills his brother Remus [4...