Paul Adrian Fried / HAMLET'S BIBLE

Ophelia in Hamlet represents a paradox about both the injustice and virtue of nothing, emptiness, poverty: Ophelia is an intelligent young woman [1], lectured, silenced [2], taken for granted [3], told what to do, where to go [4], and whose death is linked to crown-envy [5], a cautious way for Gertrude to blame the envious actions of Claudius for Ophelia’s death. When Hamlet makes bawdy remarks at the playlet, “The Mousetrap,” Ophelia says, “I think nothing” [6]. In Elizabethan slang, women have “nothing” between their legs, while men have a “thing.”[7] “Nothing” is a theme in other Shakespeare plays: - A self-centered Richard II, losing his throne, says, “I must nothing be” [8]. - King Lear wants his favorite daughter Cordelia to be best at expressing her love for her father, but she refuses to play the game. Lear tells her “Nothing can come of nothing” [9]. By the end, Lear will be emptied and learn poverty. Many world religions emphasize the virtue of humility and spiritual povert...

Last week my post addressed the anxiety of characters in Hamlet about the missing body of Polonius, compared to that of the women at the tomb regarding the corpse of Jesus . [Images: Illuminations from Folio 117r of the Pericopes of Henry II, Reichenau, c. 1002–1012: The Three Marys, and the Angel at the Empty Tomb. Public domain, via Wikipedia , and fair use, via Flickr .] If Shakespeare is satirizing William Cecil as Polonius (and as *the antithesis of Jesus*), the point is not to affirm belief in a resurrection of Christ, but to perform political satire. But there is more to this missing body business (as there usually is with Shakespeare). Consider certain claims about William Cecil and the Privy Council before we return to Polonius: Robert Persons, a Jesuit priest, claimed in 1592 that there was a "school of atheism" in England centered on Sir Walter Raleigh . Atheism in Elizabethan England was a label for many things, including those (like later US Pres...