Buddhist Catholic Contemplative Evangelical General Christian Hindu Jewish Latter-day Saint Muslim New Visions Progressive Christian

Beliefs

Topics

Columnists

Resource Library

Research Tools

Video

Podcasts

Thought Readers

Faith In Media Tracker

Newsletters

Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In Subscription Support

Follow Patheos

Leithart

Home
Evangelical
More on Hamlet

More on Hamlet

Last updated on: September 7, 2017 at 12:10 am by Peter Leithart

More on Hamlet 2017-09-07T00:10:12+06:00 Peter Leithart

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

INTRODUCTION
As many critics have pointed out, Act 2 of Hamlet focuses on the efforts of both the “mighty opposites” – Hamlet and Claudius – to spy out the intentions and plans of the other. Thus begins the process of inserting various mediators between the two, all of whom end up dead – Polonius, Ophelia, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.

This fencing takes place in a world of illusion, deceptive rhetoric, and playacting. Though the players do not appear until the end of Act 2, there has already been a great deal of play-acting going on throughout the early scenes of the play. Claudius is playing at King, Gertrude at Queen; Hamlet decides to put on an antic disposition to deflect attention from the true cause of his defect. In acts 2-3, the playacting proceeds apace. Polonius is an actor, bumbling over lines and sometimes correcting his dialogue, but chiefly pretending to befriend Hamlet, and he turns director and audience when he looses his daughter to the prince. Later, Polonius is a spectator of the scene between Hamlet and Gertrude, until he becomes part of the scene – as a corpse (Marjorie Garber makes this point). Claudius also is director and audience, as he watches Hamlet and Ophelia behind the arras and directs Rosencrantz and Guildenstern to play the roles of Hamlet’s schoolfellows. Characters shift from audience to actor, and back again: At the beginning of Act 2 and again early in Act 3, Hamlet is on a stage prepared by Claudius and Polonius. But with the arrival of the players, Hamlet reverses this, becoming a literal director of a play and watching for the king’s reactions to the Murder of Gonzago. Claudius wishes to make of his court a panopticon, from which he can keep the entire population, and especially the Prince, under surveillance.

Not only is this a player’s court, a stage, but it is one where words have lost their normal meanings. From Claudius’ opening speech, we know that words have lost their significance. “Mirth in funeral and dirge in marriage” – he might as well say “fair is foul, and foul is fair.” Language is detached from reality, so that Hamlet can say of his book that it contains only “words, words, words.” Even Claudius’ words of prayer do not get to heaven, where they are directed. As Marjorie Garber says, “The Denmark of this play is a place of inversion and perversion, and there is no greater clue to that fact than the tenor and rhetoric of its language.”

The combination of this failure of language and this theatrical setting lends much of the action the air of a dumb show. As Garber puts it, “the appearance of the Ghost in the first scene is a dumb show, a ‘prologue to the omen coming on,’ a silent gesturing apparition that invites or demands interpretation.” It is no accident that the imperative “speak” is repeated throughout the opening scene, and no accident either that the Ghost ignores it. Garber: “This is the first of several dumb shows in Hamlet. Others, as we’ll see, will include Ophelia’s account of Hamlet’s visit to her chamber, and the literal dumb show that prefaces the crucial Mousetrap play in the third act.” The repeated “dumb show” motif is linked, as we shall see next week, to the play’s emphasis on the “ear.” In a world of spectacle, role-playing, and deceptive rhetoric, how can the truth be known and communicated?

ACT 2, SCENE 1
The theme of spying and eavesdropping is opened by the exchange between Polonius and Reynaldo at the beginning of scene 1. Polonius instructs his servant on the proper way to keep tabs on Laertes. Polonius’ method is indirect, employing white lies, gossip, half-truths to get to the truth. Polonius himself is among those of “wisdom and of reach” who “by indirections find directions out.” Claudius is going to employ similarly indirect methods to seek the cause of Hamlet’s lunacy. Further, this scene makes it clear that Polonius’ apparent support for Laertes’ departure from Elsinore was at least partly hypocritical. He does not trust his son to follow his advice when he gets to France, and needs to keep close tabs on his son even at a distance. The Polonius-Laertes relation is going to be like the relation of Hamlet-Hamlet (both fathers killed, both sons avengers). But for now, Polonius is to Laertes as Claudius is to Hamlet, for Claudius like Polonius will keep his nephew-son’s actions under close surveillance.

This scene also reintroduces the thread of the plot dealing with the love between Ophelia and Hamlet, first introduced in 1.3 as a matter of Ophelia’s and the family’s honor. Here, Ophelia comes to report to her father that Hamlet has come to her in strange apparel, held her sighing and staring, and gone without saying a word. Polonius, as always, considers this evidence of his pet theory that Hamlet is love sick, the very “ecstasy of love” (2.1.201) provoked by Ophelia’s dutiful rejection of Hamlet’s advances. This provides background for Polonius’ later plan to “loose” his daughter where Hamlet will find her, so that he and the king can test his theory.

Garber offers a number of helpful insights on this scene. First, she notes the symmetry between the opening and closing of the scene; 2.1 opens with Polonius seeking reports about his son from a servant, and closes with a report from his daughter about his prince. The scene hints that Ophelia will eventually play a similar role to Reynaldo, one of seeking directions by indirections. Second, she notes that Hamlet’s appearance to Ophelia is a dumb show. Third, she points to “familiar Shakespearean device of the ‘unscene,’ a vivid event that takes place offstage and is reported.” Finally, and most intriguingly, she notes the similarity of Hamlet’s appearance to Ophelia and the Ghost’s earlier appearance to the guards in 1.1: “In its way this is very like the first mysterious appearance of the Ghost: pale, silent, beckoning, waving his arms, disappearing into darkness. Hamlet has in effect become a ghost. And Ophelia’s report of his demeanor is enough of an ‘inexplicable dumb show’ to generate misinterpretations.” This scene might be played to lead the audience to anticipate that Ophelia has seen the ghost; she comes in “affrighted,” as if she had seen a ghost. After all, if Hamlet Sr. is haunting Denmark, why not Ophelia?

Is this antic disposition? Or genuine melancholy? Or the signs of love-sickness. Ophelia’s description of Hamlet’s condition and clothing have often been taken as standard signs of the ecstasy of love, but John Dover Wilson among others doubts that. Instead, he suggests that Hamlet dresses the part of the madman. More generally, the various symptoms Hamlet displays are recognizable as symptoms of melancholy. Bridget Lyons notes: “A mixture of styles was particularly appropropriate for the representation of melancholy, as Burton was also to show. Melancholy was a state that included violent opposites in feeling and behaviour, from total dejection and apathy to hysterical outbursts and frenzy, with swings from one to the other, as the Queen suggests in her descriptions of Hamlet’s supposed ‘fits.’”

ACT 2, SCENE 2
The second scene of Act 2 is huge and highly complicated. The scene changes several times during the course of the scene. It begins with a court scene where the king receives Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, hears Polonius’ theory concerning Hamlet, and receives the returned embassy to Norway. The order of this section sets it off neatly:

King and Queen receive Rosencrantz and Guildenstern
Polonius announces he has determined the cause of H

amlet’s behavior
King and Queen receive the report from the ambassadors to Norway
Polonius lays out his theory and priovides evidence for it

When Hamlet enters, the scene and cast of character changes, as Hamlet engages two of Claudius’ spies: Polonius first, and then Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. During the latter encounter, Hamlet learns of the arrival of the players, asks the Player King to deliver a speech from the story of Aeneas and Dido, and the scene ends with Hamlet alone on stage castigating himself for his lack of passion.

Mark Rose suggests that the scene is unified as a movement from Claudius, who is focused on figuring out the source of Hamlet’s behavior, toward Hamlet, who focuses on testing Claudius and the ghost: “The symmetrical organization encourages us to compare Claudius and Hamlet, for if Claudius is subtle and dangerous, Hamlet is even more so. The scene falls into three long segments: in the first, running 169 lines, Claudius prepares his instruments, Rosencrantz, Guildenstern, and Polonius; in the middle, running 241 lines, Hamlet parries Claudius’ indirect thrusts, meeting and defeating each of the spies; and in the final segment, running 181 lines, he prepares his own instruments, the actors.”

Harry Levin has offered this account of the organization of the latter part of: “the soliloquy is the mirror-opposite of the [Player’s] speech. Both passages are very nearly of the same length, and seem to be subdivided into three movements that run somewhat parallel. But where the speech proceeds from the slayer to the slain, and from the royal victim to the queenly mourner, the soliloquy moves from the suggestive figure to another king and finally toward another villain. And where the speech leads from action to passion, the soliloquy reverses this direction. Where the Player’s diction is heavily external, underlining the fundamental discrepancy between words and deeds, Hamlet’s words are by convention his thoughts, directing inward their jabs of self-accusation. Midway, where the Player curses Fortune as a strumpet, Hamlet falls ‘a’cursing like a very drab.’ Well may he hesitate, ‘like a neutral to his will and matter,’ at the very point where the rugged Pyrrhus paused and did nothing . . . . we may cite the precedent as a justification – if further justification still be needed – for Hamlet’s often criticized delay. While he must hold his tongue, so long as he cannot speak his genuine sentiments, the Player is vocal on his behalf.” This is too schematic, but does indicate that there are both structural and thematic elements binding the scene together.

COURT SCENE
Act 2, scene 2 begins with a king, and near the end there is a Player King. That structural similarity suggests that Claudius himself is being presented as something like a “Player King,” a king intent on keeping up the appearances of stability, strength, and legitimacy. He “seems” to be a king; but “is” he?

His opening remarks are addressed to Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, friends “brought up with him” (2.2.11). His goal is twofold: both to “draw him on to pleasures” and “gather so much as from occasion you may glean.” Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Claudius’ Reynaldo. Claudius’ description of Hamlet’s condition is that he has undergone a “transformation” that has left him entirely a different man – neither internally nor externally the same as he was. It is difficult to believe that Hamlet has really “much talked of you” (2.2.19), as Gertrude claims; nearly as soon as he sees them, he is suspicious. Their eagerness to obey the king’s command reminds us of Ophelia’s promise to obey her father, and sets up an expectation of later parallels between them, expectations that are fulfilled in their deaths. Claudius cannot “dream” of what might have caused the transformation of his nephew-son (2.2.10), and we are reminded that there is more in heaven and on earth than are dreamed of in Claudius’ policy.

The ambassadors from Norway arrive, but before they speak Polonius informs the king that he has determined the cause of Hamlet’s lunacy. He promises to tell them as “the fruit to that great feast” of the embassy’s report – the cherry on top of a day of good news. Dramatically, this creates anticipation to hear Polonius’ news; structurally, it sets the report on Fortinbras in the middle between two references to Hamlet’s state of mind; thematically, it means that the report on Fortinbras is overshadowed by the report on Hamlet, and, vice versa, Hamlet is implicitly compared to the Norweigian Prince.

The report of Voltemand is highly interesting. Not only does he report that Fortinbras was indeed intending an invasion of Denmark, but he reports that he did it deceptively, covering his intention by pretending to be invading Poland. Here, then, we have a vengeful son who intends to kill Claudius because of his father’s death, and who is covering his intention by pretending to be doing something else. Sound familiar? Claudius is to Hamlet as old Norway is to Fortinbras, and Claudius is attempting to figure out Hamlet’s intentions as Norway had done with Fortinbras. So the news about Fortinbras is very good news indeed, for it gives hope that another young prince can be brought to heel.

Polonius’ speech to the King and Queen is played for laughs, and it is a funny speech. The internal contradictions (“brevity is the soul of wit” is part of a verbose speech); the stops and starts (“Mad I call it”); his self-critical evaluation of his own and Hamlet’s language (“a foolish figure” and “‘beautified’ is a vile phrase”) – all combine to make the speech humorous. But the stops and starts have a more serious purpose and probably a more serious origin. Polonius is about to tell the King and Queen that his daughter has spurned Hamlet, and, perhaps more dangerously, that he had to intervene in a relationship that was already beginning to take form. Will the King and Queen take kindly to this? Or will they see it as an act of effrontery, and conclude Polonius has ambitions beyond his ken.

Claudius is not satisfied: He wishes to “try it further” (2.2.159), just as Hamlet himself is not satisfied with the ghost’s testimony. The test will involve pushing Ophelia into the middle of the conflict, so that she becomes, like Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, part of the king’s spy network. Polonius says he will “loose” his daughter (2.2.162), a construction normally used for animals but also used for prostitutes. With that plan, Polonius becomes Pandarus.

PARRY AND THRUST
Polonius shoos the king and queen from the room when Hamlet arrives, intent on trying his own hand at spying out the mystery of the prince. Hamlet’s wits are, however, far too much for the old counselor. John Dover Wilson suggests that Hamlet overheard the plan to “loose” Ophelia; whether that is the case or not, he surely is aware of Polonius’ own theories about his distemper, and takes every opportunity to play up that theme. Wilson also argues that Hamlet employs his antic disposition in order to confirm the various theories about him, all under the cover of his supposed madness.

The opening exchange between Hamlet and Polonius is of this sort. Hamlet initially calls Polonius a fishmonger, a slang term for a procurer of prostitutes. He knows or suspects that Polonius will attempt to use his daughter as a tool, as “bait” to catch Hamlet. When Polonius objects, Hamlet says that being an open pimp would be more “honest,” more straightforward and honorable than the skulking about that is so much a part of Polonius&#8
217; career. (He is always hiding in the wings to see what he can overhear, and it costs him his life.) Honesty is a rare commodity, Hamlet opines, and explains this by the fact that God who gives life can only produce human beings through “dead dogs,” the “carrion” of human beings who are in the grip of original sin. The hint of grotesque reproduction in the image of “maggots in a dead dog” shifts to the question about Ophelia, and the warning that she might “conceive” something very unpleasant. Hamlet of course returns to this in his nunnery rant.

The next exchange is about language. Hamlet claims to be reading satire on old age, which of course is a satire of the old, weak-hammed man with whom he is speaking. His final statement is difficult to grasp. It is not “honest to have it thus set down” in writing, he says, “for” – because – Polonius “shall grow old as I am if, like a crab, you could go backward.” On the surface this is merely an irrelevant crack about time. But Polonius clearly believes that there is something more to it, for this is the comment that provokes his “though this be madness, yet there is method in’t.”

As soon as Polonius leaves, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern appear, ready to play on the pipe that is Hamlet. They are poor players. They have exchanged only the merest pleasantries with Hamlet, sharing a joke about being in the “privates” of strumpet Fortune – whose affections rapidly shift from one favorite to another – when Hamlet begins to suspect their presence in Elsinore. They quickly accuse him of ambition, no doubt fed this line of inquiry by Claudius.

Hamlet’s loss of mirth is genuine; we have already seen it in the soliloquy in 1.2 – the unweeded garden possessed by things rank and gross. He expounds on the dignity of man in like Pico della Mirandola, but concludes that heaven is nothing but a “foul and pestilent congregation of vapors” and that man is nothing but a “quintessence of dust” that brings no delight. He has lost any delight either in the world, the macrocosm, or in man, the microcosm. The incomparable Burton captures this in his description of the sorrow suffered by melancholics: “No sooner are their eyes open, but after terrible and troublesome dreams their heavy hearts begin to sigh: they are still fretting, chafing, sighing, grieving, complaining, finding faults, repining, grudging, weeping . . . vexing themselves, disquieted in mind, with restless, unquiet thoughts, discontent, either for their own, other men’s or public affairs, such as concern them not; things past, present, or to come, the remembrance of some disgrace, loss, injury, abuse, etc. troubles them now being idle afresh, as if it were new done; they are afflicted otherwise for some danger, loss, want, shame, misery, that will certainly come, as they suspect and mistrust.”

PLAYER KING
Hamlet’s interrogation of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern is interrupted in turn by the appearance of the players, announced by Polonius. Hamlet continues his mockery, but here again there is method in ‘t, as Hamlet calls Polonius “Jephthah” after the judge who sacrificed his daughter. This both keeps Polonius focused on Hamlet’s supposed love-sickness and also offers another barely veiled warning about loosing his daughter.

Hamlet asks the First Player to recite a speech from Aeneas and Dido, a multiply appropriate selection. In some versions of the story, Dido’s love for Aeneas is a betrayal of her earlier marriage, and she is thus a Gertrude figure. The story that Aeneas tells, further, is about the fall of Troy, an appropriate cautionary tale for a Denmark where time is disjoint and out of frame. The particular scene is of Pyrrhus’ slaughter of Priam, Pyrrhus here playing the vengeful son who is responding to his father’s death by killing the king of Troy. He comes, like Hamlet himself, in an inky cloak, with “sable arms, black as his purpose.” Hamlet, however, is unable to finish the speech, leaving Pyrrhus poised to strike the blow that he cannot quite strike (the First Player likewise speaks of Pyrrhus standing “like a neutral” and doing nothing). Hamlet’s part of the speech is a perfect exemplar of his own situation. The players are indeed “the abstract and brief chronicles of the time” – not of all times in general, but of Denmark’s time in particular.

Ever the director, Polonius complains that the speech is too long, but Hamlet is also impatient, importantly, to get to Hecuba. The First Player describes a queen undone by the fall of her husband the king, her grief enough to “have made milch the burning eyes of heaven and passion in the gods” – the stars and gods join in her mourning, weeping at the sight. Hamlet is of course particularly interested in Hecuba because of his own mother’s apparent lack of sorrow at his father’s death. Trojan grief – those were the good old days, when men were avengers and women mourners.

ROGUE AND PEASANT SLAVE
The players have moved offstage, and Hamlet again is alone, his conscience stricken by the First Player’s speech. This second soliloquy is a self-castigating rant about his own inability to act. The First Player is able to summon passion and tears for “nothing,” for “Hecuba.” He tries to stir himself to a froth of rage, first by self-reproach and then by ranting against Claudius. But this is still acting, and Hamlet has become his own audience: “This is most brave,” he says, as he describes himself as a whore unpacking the heart with words and cursing like a drab and a stallion. By the end of the speech, he has confirmed his plot to catch Cladius, turning the tables on the surveillance. Hamlet will become audience.

Literature

Previous Post

February 7, 2006

Watts on Mark 1:1f

Next Post

February 7, 2006 Postmodern society

Browse Our Archives

Select a Category 1 Corinthians 1-2 Samuel 1968 Abelard Abortion Abraham Acedia AD 70 Adam Smith Addiction Advent Advertising Aeneid Aesthetics Africa African Christianity African Church African religion Age Aging Agriculture Airline industry Alabama Alasdair MacIntyre Albania Alcohol Allegory Alms Alternative Medicine Ambrose America American Christianity American culture American economy American Evangelicals American Foreign Policy American history American Literature American Military American Politics American Religion American Revolution Anagogy Analytic Philosophy Anamnesis Ancient Egypt Ancient Greece Ancient history Ancient Near East Ancient Religion Angels Anglican Church Anglicanism Animism Anointing of the Sick Anselm Anthropology Anthropomorphism anti-Catholicism Antiquities Antonio Lopez apocalypse Apocalyptic Apocalyptic language Apostles Creed Aquinas Archeology Architecture Arianism Aristotle Ark of the Covenant Art Art History Ascension Aseity Assurance Athanasius Atheism Athens atonement Attention Attributes Augustine Austin Farrer Authority autonomy Avant-garde Awe Bach Ballooning Balzac Banking Bankruptcy Baptism Baptists Baseball Basketball Bavinck Beatitudes Beauty Behavioral Economics Being Benedict XVI Benjamin Benjamin Franklin Beowulf Berkeley Bernie Sanders Bertrand Russell Bestiary Bible Bible - criticism Bible - NT Bible - NT - 1 Corinthians Bible - NT - 1 John Bible - NT - 1 Peter Bible - NT - 2 Corinthians Bible - NT - 2 Peter Bible - NT - Acts Bible - NT - Colossians Bible - NT - Ephesians Bible - NT - Galatians Bible - NT - Gospels Bible - NT - Hebrews Bible - NT - James Bible - NT - John Bible - NT - Jude Bible - NT - Luke Bible - NT - Mark Bible - NT - Matthew Bible - NT - Paul Bible - NT - Philippians Bible - NT - Revelation Bible - NT - Romans Bible - NT - Thessalonians Bible - NT - Timothy Bible - OT Bible - OT - Amos Bible - OT - Chronicles Bible - OT - Daniel Bible - OT - Deuteronomy Bible - OT - Ecclesiastes Bible - OT - Esther Bible - OT - Exodus Bible - OT - Ezekiel Bible - OT - Ezra-Nehemiah Bible - OT - Genesis Bible - OT - Habakkuk Bible - OT - Hosea Bible - OT - Isaiah Bible - OT - Jeremiah Bible - OT - Job Bible - OT - Joel Bible - OT - Jonah Bible - OT - Joshua Bible - OT - Judges Bible - OT - Kings Bible - OT - Lamentations Bible - OT - Leviticus Bible - OT - Malachi BIble - OT - Micah Bible - OT - Nehemiah Bible - OT - Numbers Bible - OT - Pentateuch Bible - OT - Proverbs Bible - OT - Psalms Bible - OT - Ruth Bible - OT - Samuel Bible - OT - Song of Songs Bible - OT - Torah Bible - OT - Zechariah Bible - OT - Zephaniah Biblical Law Biblicism Billy Graham biography Biology Biololgy Biotechnology Blasphemy Blindness Blog news Blogging Blogroll Bloomsbury Group Bob Dylan Body Body symbolism Boethius Boko Haram Bonhoeffer Book of Common Prayer Books Botany Boundary Brexit Britain British History British Politics Bruce Springsteen Buddhism Bureaucracy Burial Business C. S. Lewis C. S. Peirce Calendars Caliphate Calvin calvinism Camille Paglia Canon Capitalism Cappadocians Carl Schmitt Catholic Social Teaching Catholicism Catholicity Causation cemeteries Cervantes Charism Charismata Charity Charles Dickens Charles Hodge Charles Simeon Charles Taylor Charles Williams Chaucer Chermistry Chess Chesterton Chiasm children China Chinese Exclusion Act Chivalry Chopin Chretien de Troyes Christendom Christian Democracy Christian reconstruction Christianity in Britain Christianization Christmas Christology Chronology Church church and state Church architecture Church Calendar Church history Church of England Church Year Cicero Circumcision Cities City of God Civil Religion Civil Society Civil War Civility Classical Theism Classics Climate Change Clothing Coleridge Colloquy of Marburg Colonialism Color Comedy Comenius Commodity Communio Communism Community Comparative religions Computer Science Confederacy Confessionalization Conflict Congregations consciousness Consecration Conservatism Constantine Constitution consumerism Contra Faustum Conversion Coriolanus Cormac McCarthy Cosmology Cosmopolitanism Council of Trent Counter-culture Counter-insurgency Courage Courtly love Covenants Crafts Craftsmanship Cranach Creation Creativity Creator-creature Credit Crime Crime and Punishment Crisis Critical scholarship Criticism Cross Cubism Cultural theory Culture Culture War Dance Daniel Dennett Dante Darwin Dave Eggers David David Foster Wallace David Hume David Jones Deadly sins Death Debt Dechristianization Decolonization Deconstruction Defoe Deja vu Democracy Denis de Rougemont Denominationalism Derrida Descartes Developmental psychology Devils Diocletian Discipleship Disenchantment Disgust Diversion Diversity Divine energies Divine Impassibility Divine Simplicity Divine Warrior Doctrine dogma Dominion Donald Trump Dostoevsky Douglas Campbell Douglas Farrow Dreams Dualism Durkheim Dystopia E.M. Forster Early Christianity Early Modern Europe Easter Eastern Europe Eastern Orthodoxy Ecclesiology Ecclesiology Economics Economy Ecumenism Eden Edgar Allan Poe Edmund Spenser Education Egypt Election Elites Emergence Emma Emotion Empire England English History English Reformation Enlightenment Entertainment Entrepreneur environmentalism Envy Epic Epiphany Episcopals Epistemology Epistles Equality Erasmus Ernst Kantorowicz Eros Eschatology Eternity Ethics Eucharist Europe Evangelicalism Evangelicals and Catholics Together Events Evil Evolution Exile Face Fairie Queene Fairy Tales Faith family Family and Marriage Fantasy Farming Fashion Fasting Fatherhood Fear Femininity Feminism Fertility Fetishization Feud Feudalism Feuerbach Fiction Figs Film Finance Finland Fire Flag Flags Flannery O'Connor Flood myths Folly Food football Foreign Affairs Foreign Policy Foreknowledge Forgiveness Foucault Fracking France Francois Mauriac Franz Rosenzweig free will Freedom Freedom of God French Revolution Freud Funerals Future G. K. Chesterton Gambling Gaming Gay Marriage Gender gender identity Genealogy Geography George Berkeley George Eliot George Herbert; Poetry George Romanes Gerald Manley Hopkins Germany Gethsemane Gift Gifts Giorgio Agamben Global Christianity Global economics Globalism Globalization Glorious Revolution Gnosticism God's sovereignty Gods Goethe Golf Good Friday Gospel Gospels Gothic Gothic architecture Grace Grammar Gramsci Gratitude Greek Literature Greek Philosophy Greek Religion Greek Science Gregory of Nyssa Guillermo del Toro H. Richard Niebuhr Haiku hair Hamann Hamlet Handicap Handles Hands Hans Urs von Balthasar Happiness Harold Bloom Harper Lee Harvest healing Heaven Heavenly treasure Heavenly treasure Hebrew Bible Hebrew language Hegel Heidegger Hell Hellenism; Judaism; Revelation Henri de Lubac heresy Herman Dooyeweerd Hermeneutics Herod Heroic Heroism Hesiod Hidegard of Bingen Hierarchy Hieronymus Bosch Historicism Historiography History History - Early Modern History - Middle Ages Hoaxes Hobbes Holiness Holy Saturday Holy Spirit Home Homeless Homer Homosexuality Honor hope Horror Hospitality Housing Hugh of St. Victor Human Rights Humanism Humor hylomorphism Hymns Hypocrisy. Iago Iconoclasm Identity Ideology Idleness Idolatry Iliad Images Imagination Immigrant churches Immigrant Religion Immigration Imperialism Improvization Imputation Incarnation Incest India Individualism Indonesia Inequality Inerrancy Infant Baptism Infant mortality Infanticide Ingratitude Innovation Inspiration Institutions Insult Intellectual History Intellectuals Intelligent Design International Politics Internet Intimacy IQ Iran Iran-Iraq War Iraq Ireland Irony Islam Islamic State Islamism Ismail Kadare Israel Ivan Illich J. Gresham Machen J.N. Figgis Jacob Jacques Lacan James Bond James Jordan James Joyce James KA Smith James Wood Jane Austen Jane Jacobs Jealousy Jed Perl Jeff Koons Jeroboam Jesus Jewish War 66-70 AD Jihad Johann Georg Hamann Johannine Epistles John Ashbery John Behr John Bunyan John Calvin John Donne John Frame John Howard Yoder John Knox John Milbank John Milton John Owen John Rawls John Ruskin John Stuart Mill John the Baptist John Webster John Wesley John Williamson Nevin Jonathan Edwards Jorge Luis Borges Joseph Conrad Joseph Ratzinger Journalism Joy Judaism Judaize Judgment Judith Butler Jurgen Moltmann Justice Justification Kalevala Kant Karl Barth Karl Marx Karl Polanyi Karl Rahner Kazakhstan Kazuo Ishiguro Kenneth Lonergan Kierkegaard King Lear Kingdom of God Kitsch Knighthood Knowledge Korea Labor movement Lactantius Lamech Lament Landscape Language Latin America Laughter Law Law and Punishment Leftism Lent Les Murray Levi-Strauss Levites Leviticus Liber Mundi Liberal arts Liberal Theology Liberalism Light Lighthouse Linguistics LIstening Literacy Literary structure Literature Liturgics Liturgy Locke Logic Love Luther Lutheran Lutheranism Lying Lytton Strachey Macbeth Machiavelli Machines Madness Mainline Manhattan Manicheanism Manners Manufacturing Manuscripts Mao Zedong Maps Marcion Marilynne Robinson Marketing Marriage Martha Nussbaum Martin Bucer Martin Chemnitz Martyrdom Marx Marxism Mary Mary Douglas masculinity Mass Materialism Mathematics Maundy Thursday Max Weber Media Mediation Medication Medicine Medieval Church Medieval exegesis Medieval Literature Medieval theology Medieval Thought Medievalism Memory Merchant of Venice Mesopotamian Religion Messianic Metaphor Metaphysics Methodist Mexican-American War Michel de Montaigne Michel Faber Middle Ages Middle East Midwifery Mikhail Bulgakov Military Millennium Mind Miracles Miscellaneous Mission missionaries Mixed constitution Modern self modernism Modernity monasticism Monotheism Monroe Doctrine Monsters Montaigne's Essays Moral philosophy Mormonism Moses Mother Teresa Motherhood Motive Mount of Olives Movies Multiculturalism Murder Music Musicals Mutability Mutability Mystery Mysticism myth N. T. Wright Narrative Nation-State Nationalism Natural Law Natural-Supernatural Nature Nature and culture Nature and Grace Nazi Nazirite Necrophilia Nero Nestorianism Neuroscience Nevin Lectures New Atheism New Testament New York City Newbigin News NGOs Nibelungenlied Nicholas of Cusa Nicholas of Lyra Nietzsche Nigeria Nihilism Nobel Prize Nobility Nominalism Norbert Elias Norman MacCaig nostalgia Novels Numerology Obama Objectivity and subjectivity Occasionalism Odysseus Oil Old Testament Oliver O'Donovan Ontology Origen original sin Orthodoxy Othello Owen Barfield Pacifism Pactum salutis Paedocommunion Paganism Pain Painting Paleoconservatism Palm Sunday Pannenberg Parenting Pascal Passions Passivity Pastoral Care Pastoral theology Patrick Modiano Patristics Patronage Paul Peace of God Peace of Westphalia Penal substitution Pentecost Pentecostalism Perichoresis Pericles Persecution Person Peter Peter Enns Petrarch Philip K. Dick Philip Melanchthon Philosophy Philosophy of Action Philosophy of History Philosophy of language Philosophy of science Phone booth Photography Physics Pictures Pierre Bourdieu Place Planned Parenthood Plants plato Play Plot Plotinus Pluralism Pneumatology Poetics poetry Poetry & Stories Poland police Political Philosophy Political theology Political Theory Politics Pop Culture Pope Francis Popular Culture Populism Pornography Porphyry Post-Colonial Theory Post-Structuralism Postmodernism Postmodernity Potential Poverty Power Practice Pragmatism Prayer Preaching Predestination Prediction Prehistory Premillennialism Presbyterian Priesthood Prince Charles Prison Reform privacy Private Prodigal Son Progress Progressivism Property Prophecy Prophet Propitiation Prosperity gospel Prostitution Protectionism Protestantism Providence Prudentius psalms Pseudo-Dionysus Psychological Warfare Psychology Public intellectual Public Life Public Philosophy Public Theology Publishing Punk Rock Pure nature Puritanism Purity Pushkin Putin Pythagoreanism R.J. Rushdoony Race Racism Radical Orthodoxy Rape Rationality Reactionary reading Realism Reason Red State Blue State Reformation Reformational Catholicism Reformational Philosophy Reformed theology refugees reinhold niebuhr Relationality Relativism Relics Religion Religion and science Religions Religious Freedom Religious Liberty Religious Right Renaissance Rene Girard Republican Party Resurrection Resurrection. Revelation Revelations Revenge Revivalism Revolution rhetoric Richard Flannagan Richard II Richard III Richard Wagner Richard Wilbur Righteousness Ritual Robert Frost Robert Herrick Robert Jenson Robert Mugabe Robert Spaemann Robinson Crusoe Rock n' Roll Rod Dreher Rodin Roman Catholicism Roman Empire Roman Religion Romance Romanticism Rome Rootedness Rosenstock-Huessy Rousseau Rowan Williams Rural America Russia Russian literature Russian Orthodoxy Rusty Reno Rwanda S. Y. Agnon Sabbath Sacrament Sacramental theology Sacraments Sacred Sacred Space Sacrifice saints Salt Sam Harris Same-sex marriage Sanctuary Satan Satire Saudi Arabia Scapegoat Scarcity Schism Schleiermacher Scholarship Science Science and Theology Science Fiction Scopes trial Scotland Scott Adams Scott Cairns Scottish Reformation Scotus Scripture and tradition sculpture Sea Second temple Secularism Secularization Self-Help Self-trust Semiotics Semper reformanda separation of church and state Sermon on the Mount Sex Sex Trafficking Sexual abuse Sexual Politics Sexual Revolution Sexuality Shakespeare Shame Culture Shema Sherlock Shopping Silence Simone Weil Simplicity Simpsons Sin Sincerity Sixties Skepticism Slavery Slavoj Zizek Sleep Sloth Social capital Social change Social Imaginary Social Science Socialism Socialization Sociology Sociology of Knowledge Sociology of Religion Sola scriptura Sonnets Sophocles Soteriology Soviet Union Space Spain Speculation Spinoza Spirit Sport Sports Star Trek State State-formation Stephen Masty Steven Bannon Strangers Structuralism structure Subject-object Substitution Suburbs Suffering Suicide Super-Rich Superheroes Supersessionism Supplication Supreme Court Surveillance Symbol Synagogue Taberancle Tabernacle Tax Taxes Tears Technology Teens Teleology Television Temple Ten Commandments Terence Terrence Malick Terrorism Thanksgiving The South The West Theodore Roosevelt Theogony Theological Education Theological Language Theology Theology - Anthropology Theology - Christology Theology - Covenant Theology - Creation Theology - Ecclesiology Theology - Eschatology Theology - Liturgical Theology - Pneumatology Theology - Soteriology Theology - Trinity Theology proper Theopolis Theopolis Institute Theosis Theresa May Thomas A. Clark Thomas Aquinas Thomas Carlyle Thomas Mann Threshing Thucydides Time Tocqueville Tolerance Toleration Tolstoy Tom Wolfe Tools Torah Torture Toscanini Totalitarianism Trade Tradition Tragedy Transhumanism Translation Transubstantiation Travel Trees Trinitarianism Trinity Trinity House Tristan Troilus and Creysede Trump Trump Truth Turkey Twelfth Night Two Kingdoms Typology Ukraine Ulysses Uncanny Uncategorized Uniform Union with Christ United States Unity University Usury Utilitarianism Utopia Value Vatican II Vengeance Vico Victorian Age Victorian Literature Vienna Violence Virgil Virgin Birth Virginia Woolf Vladimir Nabokov Vladimir Solovyev Vladimir Solovyov W.H. Auden Walls Walt Disney Walt Whitman Walter Benjamin Walter Lippmann War Wars of Religion Washington DC Wealth Weddings Will William Carlos Williams William Gilpin William Golding Wine Wisdom wonder Word of God Wordsworth Work Works World Council of Churches World History World War I World War II Worldview Worship Wrath Writing Youth Youth Ministry Yuja Wang Yves Congar Zimbabwe Zwingli Zygmunt Bauman

Select a Month January 2019 December 2018 November 2018 October 2018 September 2018 August 2018 July 2018 June 2018 May 2018 April 2018 March 2018 February 2018 January 2018 December 2017 November 2017 October 2017 September 2017 August 2017 July 2017 June 2017 May 2017 April 2017 March 2017 February 2017 January 2017 December 2016 November 2016 October 2016 September 2016 August 2016 July 2016 June 2016 May 2016 April 2016 March 2016 February 2016 January 2016 December 2015 November 2015 October 2015 September 2015 August 2015 July 2015 June 2015 May 2015 April 2015 March 2015 February 2015 January 2015 December 2014 November 2014 October 2014 September 2014 August 2014 July 2014 June 2014 May 2014 April 2014 March 2014 February 2014 January 2014 June 2013 May 2013 April 2013 March 2013 February 2013 January 2013 December 2012 November 2012 October 2012 September 2012 August 2012 July 2012 June 2012 May 2012 April 2012 March 2012 February 2012 January 2012 December 2011 November 2011 October 2011 September 2011 August 2011 July 2011 June 2011 May 2011 April 2011 March 2011 February 2011 January 2011 December 2010 November 2010 October 2010 September 2010 August 2010 July 2010 June 2010 May 2010 April 2010 March 2010 February 2010 January 2010 December 2009 November 2009 October 2009 September 2009 August 2009 July 2009 June 2009 May 2009 April 2009 March 2009 February 2009 January 2009 December 2008 November 2008 October 2008 September 2008 August 2008 July 2008 June 2008 May 2008 April 2008 March 2008 February 2008 January 2008 December 2007 November 2007 October 2007 September 2007 August 2007 July 2007 June 2007 May 2007 April 2007 March 2007 February 2007 January 2007 December 2006 November 2006 October 2006 September 2006 August 2006 July 2006 June 2006 May 2006 April 2006 March 2006 February 2006 January 2006 December 2005 November 2005 October 2005 September 2005 August 2005 July 2005 June 2005 May 2005 April 2005 March 2005 February 2005 January 2005 December 2004 November 2004 October 2004 September 2004 August 2004 July 2004 June 2004 May 2004 April 2004 March 2004 February 2004 January 2004 December 2003 November 2003 October 2003 September 2003 August 2003

TAKE THE

Religious Wisdom Quiz

True or False: Mark's Gospel is the shortest of the four Gospels.

Select your answer to see how you score.

FALSE TRUE