Paul Adrian Fried / HAMLET'S BIBLE

English audiences - after recent attempted invasions by the Spanish Armada, and anticipating more - may have felt Hamlet was their hero, to change Claudius’ secret letter that ordered Hamlet's death so that Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are executed instead. Early audiences may have opposed any suggestion of oppression by a foreign power, Spanish or Danish. Hamlet and his former school-friends-turned-spies had been sent by Claudius, who claimed they must collect England’s "neglected tribute" (3.1), like insurance payments to organized crime: Pay, and we won't hurt you. It may have seemed to them satisfying that the rebellious, "mad" Danish prince would change the letter intended to bring about his own death, so that Rosencrantz and Guildenstern would be executed by the very English from whom the three were told to collect this tribute. Although Elizabeth prohibited speculation about her successor, many knew that James of Scotland, who had married Princess A...

We have raspberries in our backyard: red, black, and purple,[1] including four varieties of reds. They grow on canes: First year canes don't bear fruit; patience is required. Once fruited, old canes can be cut out to make room for next year's harvest. Berries start green, turn white-yellow, then pink, then slowly become their final color. Pick them too early, and they are bitter, hard; too late, fermented (yum!) or bug-infested (yuck!). Our purples are largest; blacks, smallest. Some varieties (reds, purples) send out roots that sprout new canes. They are surprisingly good at seeking fertile soil. More often than not, black raspberries spread when long first-year canes reach out like arching fishing poles, whose ends bend down to the ground where the tips send out tendrils to root. If you want to keep them from taking over a garden or a part of the yard, it's important to direct where the canes touch the ground so that the new plants stay in their rows. (These canes are lik...