Shakespeare and Biblical Allusion: A Conversation with Paul Fried - Part 2

**Philip Rowe** (0:09)
Welcome to The History Of European Theatre podcast, and thanks for joining me on this journey through millennia of theatrical history. Episode 225 Shakespeare and Biblical Allusion A Conversation with Paul Fried, Part 2 Last time, my guest Paul Fried and I discussed Biblical Allusion in Shakespeare with particular reference to Hamlet. This is the second part of our conversation, so please do make sure that you've listened to part one before continuing here. Things will make a lot more sense if you do.
I first came across Paul's blog, Hamlet's Bible, when I was researching my episodes on King Lear. And I was very pleased to find that not only was it very useful for those episodes, but was a series of very interesting posts related to Biblical Allusion in Shakespeare. So of course, I asked Paul if he would like to come on to the podcast to share some of his insights into the subject. Paul is a retired college lecturer who has devoted years of study to Shakespeare and the Bible. And his blog, now in its 10th year, has become his way of sharing his research prior to what he hopes will be a published volume on Biblical Allusion in Hamlet. He has also contributed several papers to Shakespeare conferences, most recently at the Shakespeare Association of America conference held in Denver in April 2026
I spoke to Paul from his home in Minnesota over a Zoom call. So we've discussed lots of different sources, the Bible itself, the Common Prayer Book, sermons, etc. That would have been commonly known that added depth to characters and the language in the plays. But I'm sure you'll agree that the Biblical Allusion also features in plots themselves.

**Paul Fried** (1:54)
Yes, definitely. And I would mention two, one involving the Jonah story, Jonah and the fish, and another involving Emmaus, the two disciples on the road to Emmaus. So Jonah, about a dozen years ago, I had a student that I mentioned in the previous episode who asked to see a map of England and Denmark when we were talking about Hamlet's sea voyage. And so I projected it up on the screen and I looked, oh, he's going westward from Denmark toward England. He doesn't make it to England. He changes mode of transportation to a pirate ship. And I thought, oh, I had this aha moment that Hamlet's sea voyage is very much like that of Jonah. So the more that I looked at the details, Hamlet has a prophetic soul, as I've mentioned before, he says that to, in the scene, Act 1, scene 5, to his father.
He heads west, like the prophet Jonah, toward Tarshish instead of Nineveh. Something happens in the Jonah story, something happens to that ship. There's a storm on Hamlet's ship. The storm is actually inner turmoil for the prince.
He's having difficulty sleeping. So he uses the word Bilbo's in that wonderful, maybe an influence on Tolkien.

**Philip Rowe** (3:28)
Yeah, maybe.

**Paul Fried** (3:31)
Other people in Jonah's ship, they ask, who has displeased the gods enough to send this storm? Jonah says, it was me. It was me. I'm sorry. So he admits it's probably his fault, and he volunteers to be thrown into the sea to save the others. So save yourself.
Throw me overboard. I'm the one. I'm so sorry. Hamlet volunteers to board the pirate ship to save the others. So this is kind of like Jonah volunteering to be thrown overboard.
He doesn't wait for somebody to ask him.
The pirate ship comes up alongside and he jumps onto the boat to save the others.
Jonah is swallowed by a fish after he is thrown into the sea. Hamlet is swallowed by the pirate ship. And so they both change mode of transport mid-sea, which is somewhat unusual. Not, you know, sometimes done. You know, if the sea was calm enough, you could do that. But both of them change direction then. So Jonah is taken by the fish back in the direction of his destiny toward Nineveh where he's going to deliver his prophecy. And Hamlet is taken by the pirates back to Denmark to fulfill his destiny. So this change of mode of transport and direction are not, are not in the original Saxo Grammaticus source. In the source, Hamlet or Amleth, he makes it to England and he actually gets married twice there.
So all kinds of adventures in England, but this doesn't happen in Shakespeare's Hamlet. So the plot echo is important because the Jonas story was important in the English preaching certainly mentioned often. And another reason is Elizabeth named one of her ships in her Navy, the Elizabeth Jonas, and that ship served against the Spanish Armada.