Paul Adrian Fried / HAMLET'S BIBLE

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...

I love Grace Tiffany’s sonnet “Gertrude and Ophelia” [1] for now it reimagines Gertrude as having drowned Ophelia. The sonnet explores a possibility for Gertrude’s agency that the play chooses not to explore. Grace recently introduced the poem, tongue-in-cheek, as depicting “what really happened.” Other plays, films and novels make similar claims, exploring alternative versions from different points of view, including the 2018 film, Ophelia ; a 2022 novel by Carly Stevens called Laertes: A Hamlet Retelling; a 2008 novel by Paul Griffiths made from Ophelia’s words, Let Me Tell You ; and many more. [2] On female agency, there is a reading of Ophelia’s death that wrestles with Ophelia’s apparent lack of agency, proposing not despair, but that Ophelia uses suicide to fiercely reclaim her own agency. [3]  IRRECONCILABLE DIFFERENCES This reading is hard to reconcile with Grace Tiffany’s poem: Ophelia probably cannot be both a victim of murder at Gertrude’s hands, and *also* a suicide. ...