Paul Adrian Fried / HAMLET'S BIBLE

Shakespeare’s Hamlet could have unfolded differently from Gertrude’s closet scene onward (3.4): Instead of following the Danish tale, it could have followed Nero’s story [1]. Shakespeare makes the tales overlap, grafting on references to Claudius and Nero; then he rejects that potential plot line and what such historical characters represent. To be a play based on an old Danish tale, or not? To be a play based on Rome’s Claudius I, Julia Agrippina, and her son Nero – or not? (Or in modern productions: To have Hamlet played by Ringo Starr, Nero’s doppelganger – or not? [See collage images….]) In Shakespeare’s time, what were Nero and Agrippina famous for? - Agrippina poisoned her husband, Claudius I, so that her son Nero could be emperor. - Nero later arranged for his mother’s death and attended her autopsy. - In Shakespeare’s 1 Henry VI , Lord Talbot claims that Nero played a lute while Rome burned, and Shakespeare refers to the Claudius-Agrippina-Nero tale in two other plays [...

“...there's not a hair on [his] head but 'tis a Valentine.” Two Gentlemen of Verona (3.1.195-195) This line is spoken about Valentine, one of the two main characters in the play. Two Gentlemen of Verona is an early Shakespeare play based on a Spanish source among others. It also contains many elements that show up in his later plays: - A woman (Julia) disguised as a man (Sebastian), an element also found in Twelfth Night , As You Like It , The Merchant of Venice , and Cymbeline ; - A character who (sometimes) goes by the name Sebastian (as in Twelfth Night ); - Talk of a couple eloping with a rope ladder (sort of like Romeo and Juliet ); - Couples escaping to the woods (also a theme in As You Like It and A Midsummer Night’s Dream ). - A resolved love triangle: Proteus who had been engaged to Julie thinks he is in love with Silvia (similar to Demetrius in A Midsummer Night’s Dream , who had been in love with Helena, but who thinks he loves Hermia, and Hermia’s love, Lysande...

PRECEDENTS FOR HAMLET PLOT ELEMENTS—AND A VILLAIN NAMED CLAUDIUS— IN ARTHURIAN LEGENDS: One of the villains in the Arthurian legends is named Claudas, a variant of Claudius, the main villain in Shakespeare’s Hamlet . But in fact, the Arthurian legends contain many of the essential plot elements of Hamlet . Instead of “All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten,” we could say, many of the things Shakespeare and Saxo Grammaticus needed to know to write Hamlet , they could have learned from the Arthurian legends: - The ghost of a parent [1] and warrior [2]; - a prince (or king) who relates to soldiers and close friends as equals [3]; - questions of marital infidelity [4] and of broken marriage promises [5]; - knightly codes of honor and violence that conflict at times with courtesy and Christian values [6] - suicidal, love-forsaken women [7]; - the living body or dead corpse of a heartbroken woman, floating in a river or stream [8]; - contrast between characters who interpret ...