Review of Periodicals 42.2 Summer 1992 (pp. 35-36)

Hamlet, Macbeth and the Bible

Peter Milward (Sophia University, Tokyo) finds echoes of the Old Testament (particularly Job, Psalms and Ecclesiastes) in Macbeth’s “Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow” soliloquy and Hamlet’s “to be or not to be” soliloquy. These books are concerned with the presence of innocent suffering in the world, a problem which leads Ecclesiastes to its pessimistic conclusion that all is vanity. Hamlet’s problem is like Job’s, and presents similarities of phrasing and situation (e.g. “the arrows of the Almighty are in me,” Job 6:4; Job fears lest he be afflicted “with dreams…with visions,” Job 7:13-14). Macbeth also echoes Job (e.g. “…wilt thou bring me into dust again,” Job 10:9), but also Psalm 90 (“All our days are passed away in thy wrath… We spend our years as a tale that is told.” verse 9). In each case, the play provides a fuller Biblical context, in which this Old Testament pessimism is matched by New Testament emphasis on readiness and the Second Coming of Christ. Thus Hamlet’s “readiness is all” echoes Christ’s “Be ye also ready” (Matthew 24:44); while Macbeth’s fate is fixed, at the end of Act IV, by the readiness of Malcolm’s power and Macbeth’s being “ripe for shaking” (cf Revelation 14:15: the harvest of the earth is ripe”).

[“Two Biblical Soliloquies,” Notes and Queries, n.s., 38:4 (December 1991), 486-9]

Claudius’ Pearl

In the celebrated classical and modern instances of drinking pearls in wine (Sir Thomas Gresham’s drinking an expensive powdered pearl…