THE FOLIO OF THIS WORLD

“The playwright who wrote the folio of this world and wrote it badly (He gave us light first and the sun two days later), the lord of things as they are whom the most Roman of catholics call dio boia, hangman god, is doubtless all in all in all of us, ostler and butcher, and would be bawd and cuckold too but that in the economy of heaven, foretold by Hamlet, there are no more marriages, glorified man, an androgynous angel, being a wife unto himself.”

JAMES JOYCE, ULYSSES

When we speak English, whether we are in New York, New Delhi or New South Wales, we cannot help but speak Shakespeare, just as we cannot help but speak in allusions to the Bible. Whether we venerate him or reject him, Shakespeare has a status that is almost scriptural, written on our hearts.

That’s partly because Shakespeare himself emerged from a Bible-soaked culture, his work replete with scriptural allusions. It’s also because of Shakespeare’s prominence at the start of modern English, and because of the sheer strength of his writing. But it’s also due to a transcendent quality in the work, the sense, as his friend Ben Jonson said, that he wrote not for an age but for all time.

What, though, if we took that idea of Shakespeare as scripture literally? What if we read Shakespeare as a commentary on the Bible, transforming it and rewriting it almost in the way that rabbinic midrash radically transforms and rewrites the Jewish scriptures?

The Folio of This World does just that—but with a twist. Shakespeare came from a deeply religious culture, but he was also profoundly affected by the metaphysical disorientation engendered by the Reformation, what critic Stanley Cavell identifies as a new spirit of skepticism. The project of the book is to link that moment of disorientation to an earlier moment, when the Hebrew Bible itself first took form.

Placing Shakespeare’s work in dialogue with the Hebrew Bible, The Folio of This World sheds new light on both, and on how both were, and continue to be, the product of revision.

A book proposal is available upon request. A number of already-published essays of mine, listed below, will form the basis for the heart of the book.

ESSAYS RELATED TO
THE FOLIO OF THIS WORLD

  • Tamar, Helen, and Love’s Ambition

    The Jewish Review of Books
    Winter 2024
    What can All’s Well That Ends Well, Shakespeare’s most unlikely love story, tell us about the biblical Tamar’s similarly-audacious "bed trick" — and therefore, about the destiny of the People of Israel? Read

  • The Danish Prince and the Israelite Preacher

    The Jewish Review of Books
    Fall 2021
    Hamlet, Shakespeare’s most peculiar tragedy, repeatedly echoes Ecclesiastes, one of the most peculiar books in the Hebrew Bible. Does it also hold the key to unlocking its wisdom? Read

  • Sitting with shylock on yom kippur

    The Jewish Review of Books
    Fall 2019
    Any attempt to read Shakespeare in dialogue with the Hebrew Bible must ask why Shylock, a proud Jew, would choose to play the villain in a contest devised for Christian polemic purposes. Does the answer lie in the Book of Jonah, another Jew strained (as Shakespeare put it) to display the quality of mercy towards his enemies? Read

  • Hidden Faces and Dark Corners: Megillat Esther and Measure for Measure

    The Jewish Review of Books
    March 18, 2019
    The Book of Esther is famously the only book of the Bible without the name of God. Ironically, this absence has long been interpreted as proof of God’s hidden hand in history. In, Measure for Measure, Shakespeare exposes the absurdities of this idea by making the hidden hand all too visible. But this has not prevented his play from being similarly reinterpreted as a pious allegory of God’s providence. Read

  • Upon Such Sacrifices: King Lear and the Binding of Isaac

    The Jewish Review of Books
    Fall 2017
    God’s command to Abraham to prove his love by killing his son, even though it is withdrawn at the last moment, is so unassimilable that it has been repeatedly revised interpretively to escape its terrifying implications. Is Shakespeare’s King Lear another of these revisions, the love test sprung on Cordelia at the start a version of God’s test of Abraham’s love and fealty? If so, what does it mean that Shakespeare’s story has itself been repeatedly revised? Read

  • Whence Comes Legitimacy

    The American Conservative
    March/April 2017
    The biblical accounts of the reigns of Saul, David and Solomon describe the foundation of a new political order: a monarchy, legitimized by explicit divine sanction. Is Shakespeare’s Henriad — the series of plays from Richard II through Henry V — an ironic retelling of that same story that ultimately exposes the lack of foundation to the political system of his day, and of ours? Read