In service of art: How visual arts may have influenced the Lazarus theme in Hamlet - part 18
VISUAL ART INFLUENCING THE LAZARUS THEME IN HAMLET Scholars often think of how texts influence other texts. But what about other arts influencing texts? Some scholars consider this, but it seems that they are not in the majority. By the time Shakespeare wrote or revised his version of Hamlet for the stage, the Luke 16 tale of the rich man and Lazarus already had centuries of history of being interpreted in many forms, perhaps not only for a folksong-ballad whose origins may be older than Shakespeare ,* but also by sculptors and artists. * ( Another reference regarding an Elizabethan version of the ballad, noted by Bronson : "Bronson (Vol. II, p. 17) writes: "CHILD NO. 56: As Child's note informs us, something on the order of this ballad was in print in early Elizabethan times, and seventy-five years later was still matter for common allusion as 'the merry ballad of Diverus and Lazarus.' No early text survived, how ever, and Child had to resort to nineteenth-c...