Good Friday/Christ’s Passion Allusions in Hamlet
Christianity has long used the Friday before Easter to commemorate the story of the betrayal, torture, crucifixion, and death of Jesus. These stories are retold in the Bible (Mark 14-15, Matthew 26-27, Luke 22-23, John 18-19). [Image: David Tennant in 2008 RSC production of Hamlet, directed by Gregory Doran. Via BBC . Fair use.] Shakespeare’s Hamlet echoes a number of details from these stories and from larger Christian tradition. (See also Shaheen.) A few examples: [1] 1.1.125-137: Horatio describes the dead rising and strange signs in the heavens upon the death of Julius Caesar, but Matthew 27:53 similarly describes the dead raised at the moment of Jesus' death, and Luke 23:44-45 describes an eclipse. 1.1.162 and 163-4: The ghost hears the cock crow, and Horatio comments, “it started like a guilty thing / Upon a fearful summons.” Each of the gospels tells of Jesus predicting that Peter will deny him, and later, that the prediction comes true, marked by the crowing of a...