Paul Adrian Fried / HAMLET'S BIBLE

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...

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...

WHAT DOES IT MEAN for Elizabethan England, and for its queen and head of England’s church, that Shakespeare’s Hamlet portrays a queen defending Ophelia’s death as not of her own choosing, but fearless and accepted in faith? The play portrays two main attitudes about suicide: Christianity condemned it, while “antique Romans” embraced it as an option for honorable death. Hamlet prevents Horatio from drinking poison [1]; some scholars and productions have proposed that Hamlet offers Claudius the poison cup, and he takes it of his own volition.[2] The play presents gravediggers [3] and a “churlish priest” [4] who assume Ophelia killed herself; before these, no eyewitness accounts, but a queen who asks all to believe that Ophelia’s fall into the brook was not of her own choosing (but due to the crown-envy of a sliver of willow, like the crown envy of Claudius), and that Ophelia accepted her approaching death fearlessly, and in faith. Significantly, this play was written at the end of Eli...

Shakespeare’s Hamlet can be read as offering not mere variations, but transformations of suicide [1]: After Hamlet wishes that God had not made laws against suicide, he later feels called by heaven and hell to avenge his father’s death [2], a kind of suicide mission. If he kills Claudius as God’s vengeful scourge [3], Hamlet may be hell-bound. He later realizes: it may be more damnable not to kill him, and for Claudius to cause Denmark further harm [4]; Hamlet may not survive, but his death might be transformed by a higher purpose. Ophelia’s is the first alleged suicide, in 4.7, transformed by her own madness in 4.5 [5] and by Gertrude’s account in three ways: 1. She says it was caused by the breaking of an “envious sliver” of willow [6], envious that it had no crowns like other willow branches (envious, like Claudius of his brother’s crown and wife). 2. Gertrude implies that, in the water, Ophelia seemed to surrender to the unfolding will of God [7]. 3. Her account may be...

Shakespeare’s Hamlet is radical in a religious sense. Shakespeare hints that Ophelia, Gertrude, and Hamlet—apparently damned for different reasons—are not only saved, but in fact are Christ-figures [1]. The texts support such a reading. Yet even if Shakespeare uses religion mostly for dramatic (not religious)  purposes [2], it is safe to say that a majority of scholars today might reject this idea, or at least be quite disinterested in it. Ophelia is apparently damned as a suicide [3], but Gertrude blames her death in part on an “envious sliver” of willow [4], envious — like Claudius — that it didn’t get a crown. Ophelia was generous in bestowing crowns (coronets) [5], like Christian scriptures which claim that all people can be adopted sons and daughters of God, and can inherit a heavenly crown [6]. Gertrude is apparently damned for her “incestuous marriage” to her dead husband’s brother [7], scandalous and forbidden, especially after the divorce of Henry VIII from his first wife ...

[In an earlier post , I mentioned four contrasting interpretations of Gertrude, the third being a suicidal Gertrude as portrayed by Lia Williams in a 2018 BBC production with Andrew Scott as Hamlet, dir. Icke. This post considers that third reading of Gertrude.] Some consider Gertrude drinking the poison cup in Hamlet 5.2 as an act of suicide. But for it to be suicide, Gertrude at least needs to suspect that the cup has been poisoned: If she is ignorant of poison and unsuspicious, it cannot be suicide; a reaction of surprise would then make sense. If she merely suspects and is testing the cup for poison intended for her son, an act of risk and selflessness, it is not strictly suicide.[1] For suicide as sole intention, she must not merely suspect, but know for certain that the cup has been, poisoned. The texts of the play do not support certainty for Gertrude that the cup has been poisoned: Claudius and Laertes conspired about the poison apart from her; she had no way of knowing. But a...

Shakespeare’s Hamlet begins with Horatio acting like a doubting Thomas [1], not believing in ghosts, converted to belief after witnessing a ghost first-hand. But unmentioned is the lesson Jesus gives in John’s gospel after Thomas comes to belief: “...blessed are they that have not seen, and have believed.” [Jn 20:29] Are we invited to wait for this other shoe to drop? Shakespeare constructed his play so that Ophelia’s death, and Gertrude’s account of it, requires of all a leap of faith: Not seeing, but believing. Gertrude describes it not as a death in despair, but in charity (generously bestowing crowns) [2] and in faith (chanting sacred hymns) [3] after falling in the brook by accident, not intent.[4] In Gertrude’s account, Ophelia floats toward her death without struggle, as if to accept the risk of her own death in faith, like Hamlet: “Let be.”[5] We have not seen her death, yet we are invited to believe. The play invites cognitive dissonance between the expected damnation of sui...

In 2023 I started a new series on Ophelia, beginning with the controversy of her death. The following index has links to all the posts in the series, and will be updated as new posts in the series are added and available . It also includes key posts on Ophelia from previous years. INDEX OF OPHELIA POSTS: My 2023 series on Ophelia begins here: Part 1: The Controversy over Ophelia's Death in Hamlet https://pauladrianfried.blogspot.com/2023/06/the-controversy-over-ophelias-death-in.html Part 2: Ophelia’s drowning shrouded in lies, like other deaths in Hamlet https://pauladrianfried.blogspot.com/2023/06/part-2-ophelias-drowning-shrouded-in.html Part 3: Ophelia, Gertrude, and mutually exclusive agency https://pauladrianfried.blogspot.com/2023/06/part-3-ophelia-gertrude-and-mutually.html Part 4: Ophelia wronged by monarch, inquest, and priest https://pauladrianfried.blogspot.com/2023/07/part-4-ophelia-wronged-by-monarch.html Part 5: Ophelia Drowning in Conflicting Aut...