Paul Adrian Fried / HAMLET'S BIBLE

On the Significance of HAMLET 3.4 and 1-2 KINGS Elijah/Elisha, widow tales Here are some of the possibilities for this allusion’s significance:  - If Gertrude (aware of her sick soul and guilt in 4.5) desires to be blessed, then we must ask: What blessings do Hamlet (or his surrogates) beg of her, or what blessings does she offer, perhaps without even being asked (as mothers are sometimes prone to do)?  - Gertrude is faithful to her promise to keep Hamlet’s secret from Claudius (3.4.219-221).  - She overcomes her own reluctance and greets an apparently mad Ophelia (4.5.21).  - When Ophelia drowns, she portrays it not as suicide, but as a holy death, with Ophelia chanting lauds (4.7.202); Gertrude blames crown-envy for Ophelia’s fall into the brook: Ophelia had been placing “coronet weeds” (4.7.197, small floral crowns) on branches, and the sliver on which she stood was envious (4.7.98 envious about not receiving a crown like others). Gertrude figuratively and careful...

It's good sometimes to pay special attention to things that we don't understand. This was the case for me with a statement that Hamlet makes to his mother Gertrude in her closet: "When you are desirous to be blest, I'll blessing beg of you." (3.4.192-3) It seems counter-intuitive, that Hamlet would tell his mother that when she is in need of blessing, he would beg one of her. But it occurred to me that a similar dynamic happens in the Bible, as when the disciples notice that the crowd to which Jesus is preaching is becoming hungry (the hungry desire to be blessed with food), and instead of creating a miracle, he first asks what food they do have: a few fish and loaves (he begs a blessing of them). Something similar and perhaps even more relevant happens in 1 and 2 Kings, in tales about Elijah (and later, his successor prophet, Elisha) and a widow or widows. In 1 Kings, a widow is hungry or in need, and 2 Kings, a widow's late husband left the family ...

[This is a re-posting of a post that would not post on LinkedIn, perhaps because of the word "Whore" in the original title - ?] Does it matter that Hamlet says to his mother, "when you are desirous to be blest, I’ll blessing beg of you" (3.4.192-3)? Some Shakespeare critics think that Gertrude in Shakespeare’s Hamlet is damned, and that she stands for the Book of Revelation’s "Whore of Babylon," which to Catholics represented worldliness (Augustine’s City of Man, as compared to the City of God), and to Protestants a way of viewing a corrupt Catholic Church. [1] This may be an example of critics "botch[ing] the words up fit to their own thoughts" as Horatio says (4.5.12).[2] Is Gertrude really the "whore of Babylon," and doomed to hell? I don't think so: - She keeps Hamlet's secret from Claudius, and shows compassion to Ophelia, though reluctant at first, at Horatio's urging (yes, Horatio urges her, more for polit...