Paul Adrian Fried / HAMLET'S BIBLE

2025 WAS A VERY GOOD YEAR for the “Hamlet’s Bible” blog… VIEWS FOR THE YEAR came to about 77.6k, averaging about 1.5k views per week. This was a significant increase over the average for the past eight years, which was about 23.5k per year and .45k  per week, out of an eight-year total of 188k views from more than 80 countries since 2018. In 2025, I completed two series begun the previous year: One on Claudius [1], and one on the Twelve Days of Christmas - including Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night [2]. See also MASTER INDEX (for series) [3].  In all of my posts and research, I strive to welcome the strange, and to let my curiosity lead my research to new insights. Among my three favorite posts: New realizations about how references to classical gods and deified Roman Caesars should be reconsidered in conjunction with references to Jesus: All of these involve divinity claims, sometimes in stark contrast with one another. See my post, Hamlet's Christmas, Caesar, Taxes, and Conte...

2024 was a very good year for the Hamlet’s Bible blog… VIEWS FOR THE YEAR came to about 17k, averaging about 326 views per week over the year. This was slightly more than a 90% increase over the average for the past six years, which was about 9k per year and 172 per week, out of a six-year total of 53.6 k views (and possibly higher [1]) from more than 80 countries since January 1, 2019. So overall, views have been steadily increasing. 17 SERIES SO FAR: Since I started posting (first on LinkedIn in 2017), I have done 17 series [2], for an average slightly more than two series per year. OPHELIA In 2024, I finished my series on Ophelia (my longest) [3]. CLAUDIUS This past year I started a new series on Claudius (to be continued at greater length in 2024) [4]. TWELVE DAYS OF CHRISTMAS I did a brief series on the twelve days of Christmas (concluding soon) [5]. POSTS WITH HIGHEST VIEWS Views of posts from the Ophelia series dominated the year, as might be expected for a long series, but o...

2023 was a good year for the “Hamlet’s Bible” blog, and I’m most grateful to my readers who follow my posts, either through the blog itself, or through other social media. - The blog received 21.3k new views in 2023 out of a total of 56k views since January of 2019. - These figures do not include views between June 2017-December 2018 when I was initially posting every week on LinkedIn (before the switch to the blogger platform). In early January, I posted about "13 Handles on Hamlet 's Mousetrap," a post that had many views: https://pauladrianfried.blogspot.com/2023/01/13-handles-on-hamlets-mousetrap.html In 2023, I did two longer series of posts: - In late January, 2023, I began a 12-part series of posts about Hamlet in 3.2 after The Mousetrap, ironically comparing himself to the boy Jesus, lost and found in the temple, amusing and astonishing the temple elders and his parents. This biblical allusion had not been identified by the major scholars...

Last year was a good year for the “Hamlet’s Bible” blog! Thank you to all who have read and followed. My favorite multi-part series to research and write last year were about: Holy Week/Easter/Emmaus/Pentecost, Hamlet and Jacob, Hamlet and the Odyssey, and “When you are desirous to be blest, I’ll blessing beg of you.” My favorite single posts were about the lunar eclipse mentioned in Hamlet 1.1, and “Poison cups & Martyrs: Gertrude, Medea, and Matt 20:20-24.” If you want to re-read, or if you’re new to the blog, check it out (link below). SERIES Scholarly Biases: Jan. 11,18,25 Feb 1,8,15,22 March 1,8,15,22,29 April 5,10 Holy Week/Easter/Emmaus/Pentecost: April 10 Palm Sunday April 12 Foot-washing April 14 Eucharistic Allusions April 15 Good Friday/Passion April 16 Christ in the tomb, sign of Jonah April 16 Holy Week (summary/Index) Easter: Missing Body of Jesus/Polonius - April 19, 26 Emmaus: May 10,12,20,24,26,31 Pentecost: June 6 Elizabeth Jonas: Ma...

What Would Yogi Bera say? If I were at production of an Early Modern play about a ruler named Theseus and his bride, Hippolyta, I might think the play was A Midsummer Night’s Dream . If the plot involved three females, along with a war-inclined man’s wife, urging a the man to violence, I might guess that the play was Macbeth . If it involved a young woman who falls in love with a young man that her father believes is beyond her reach, and she later goes mad and is at risk of drowning, I’d think it was Hamlet . If it involved a rag-tag bunch of amateur actors putting on a show for their ruler, I’d think we were back in A Midsummer Night’s Dream . If the plot involved a love and possible betrothal confused or complicated by mistaken identities, I’d think the play might be Twelfth Night or Much Ado About Nothing . If the play involved a ruler named Creon dishonoring the dead by prohibiting the burial of certain corpses, I’d think it was a production of Sophocles’ play, Anti...

Below are some of my most essential posts about biblical echoes in Shakespeare, most of them beyond those listed by Naseeb Shaheen & predecessors ( Biblical References in Shakespeare's Plays , which focuses mostly on explicit biblical name- and verse-allusion). A description of my book project is included at the very end. This is not intended to replace Naseeb Shaheen's reference book, but to compliment it, especially with plot echoes that are less explicit and may have been more thoroughly internalized by the writer, or used in more subtle ways for artistic or political reasons. Most of these are short reads, especially early in the list, with a few longer posts toward the end, and a few of them including links for more details. I've tried to illustrate all of these with paintings and drawings from Shakespeare's time or earlier in most instances. Where credits for the images are missing here, see the link for each section. On the one hand, a part of me...