Paul Adrian Fried / HAMLET'S BIBLE

At the Sixteenth Century Society Conference convention in Minneapolis last week, I had many serendipitous meetings with scholar/authors. In a Friday session, “Literature and Religion in Early Elizabethan England,” one presenter cited a source claiming God the Father as defending the masculinity of Jesus. I was reminded of parts of Debora K. Shuger’s book, The Renaissance Bible: Scholarship, Sacrifice, and Subjectivity .[1] During Q&A time, I mentioned how Shuger’s book seemed to offer an alternative view. The presenter replied, “Do you know you are sitting right behind Debora Shuger?” So that is how I met Debora Shuger ,[2] who was kind and generous to talk with me then and later in the conference. I attended a roundtable on Thursday night called “Crisis And Refuge: Historical Reflections On War, Persecution, And Exile.” I had started reading Nicholas Terpstra’s book, Religious Refugees in the Early Modern World: An Alternative History of the Reformation .[3] Terpstra[4] wa...

With, hoo! such bugs and goblins in my life... Hamlet 5.2.25 [1] This is my favorite Halloween-themed line in Hamlet , from the last scene, at the start of which Hamlet describes to Horatio how he discovered the letter with orders from Claudius for England to execute Hamlet (by beheading) upon their ship's arrival there. In the USA, we are approaching Halloween, the evening of 31 October, "All Hallows Eve," before All Saints Day. Children dress in costumes, go door to door and ask, "Trick or treat?" and often receive a treat of some kind. Usually too much manufactured sugary-candy (one of the reasons the USA has so many diabetics...). 2022 SCSC, Minneapolis: This Year, the Sixteenth Century Society and Conference has its convention in Minneapolis, Minnesota, only about an hour's drive from where I live. I will be giving a paper/presentation touching on how Shakespeare had to carefully encode his critique of government and the state religion, and h...