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Hamlet
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Written 1599-1601
Longest of WS plays
Hamlet was apex of WS works until King Lear was written

Renaissance Publishing Practice
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Manuscripts from which plays were set may be:
o Script written by playwright/scribe’s copy of it
o ‘foul papers’ – copies used by actors/prompters
o Unauthorised pirate editions created from jottings of audience member/actor
Printer produced manuscript as quarto edition or folio edition
o Quarto
▪ Created by folding papers in 4 – small
▪ Mass produced – cheap
▪ Produced contemporary with productions
▪ Accurate reflection of dramatist’s work
o Folio
▪ Created by folding paper in 2 – large
▪ Elaborate publication with illustration – expensive
▪ Published long after performance/dramatist’s death
▪ Conditions additions/changes to author’s original
▪ First folio published in 1623, 6 years after his death
Hamlet publication
o 1603 – first quarto
o 1604-1605 – second quarto
o 1623 – first folio
o Different version of play changes interpretation – Jonathon Bates – originally
the delay Hamlet has in taking revenge isn’t a big issue but play has developed
Why is Hamlet popular?
o William Hazlitt – readers/audience should value as Hamlet’s debates in his
mind are prevalent to all individuals
o Ambiguous – multiple readings
o As a revenge tragedy
▪ Claudius – murderer
▪ Old Hamlet – victim
▪ Hamlet – revenger
o Hamlet’s delay is due to internal factors
Samuel Taylor Coleridge views Hamlet as a fully developed psychology
o Imbalance of contemplative faculty – loses power of action
AC Bradley rejects idea that Hamlet endures a “habitual excessive of reflectiveness”,
but suggests he’s suffering from a state of profound melancholy – nervous instability
Sigmund Freud formulated Odepius Complex in The Interpretation of Dreams, 1899
– hidden cause of Hamlet’s procrastination is his desire for his mother though this is
‘unconscious in Hamlet’s mind’ – explored further by Ernest Jones who developed

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psychoanalytic approach – Hamlet can’t kill Claudius because if he did then he would
have to admit his desire for his mother but can kill Claudius when Gertrude is dying
T
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Eliot claims Hamlet is aware of disparity between the 2 – “objective correlative”
to describe the disparity – Hamlet’s disgust at his mother is excessive – play is artistic
failure
Gertrude
o Speaks very little
o Ghost portrays her as both guilty (virtuous Queen) and victim of Claudius’ use
of witchcraft to seduce her – overall impression is of “lewdness” and “lust”
o Player-queen says what Gertrude should have vowed – Gertrude responds with
“the lady doth protest too much methinks”
Marxist criticism
o Bertold Brecht (1948)
▪ Fortinbras – old feudal system – owe allegiance to the baron
▪ Hamlet – new era of reason
▪ Hamlet does not act accordingly to code of old feudal system as he
kills Claudius
Structuralism
o Identifying underlying set of rules behind text – features that constitute
revenge tragedy as a genre
o But Hamlet’s complexity resists such simplification
Poststructuralism
o Concept of revenge has multiple inscriptions within play
o Aristocratic form of self-assertion
o Filial duty
o Populist form of justice necessitated by corruption at top of society
o Devolution of moral agency onto individual
o Not one simple reading of revenge but a wide range of ideas
New Historicist
o English failure to quell Irish Rebellion
o Threat of attach from Spain
o The succession – who would rule after Elizabeth I
o Censorship and intrigue – suspected coup by Earl of Essex
o Lisa Jardine, Reading WS Historically – claims unlawful in Renaissance to
marry one’s brother’s wife – not permitted by law – created problems of
heritage
▪ It deprives Hamlet of rightful succession but in play, Gertrude carries
moral taint rather than stigma of unlawful marriage
▪ Renaissance closet is intimate space into which wealthy could
withdraw
• Act 3 Scene 4, Hamlet invades his mother’s privacy
• Polonius is spying
• Ghost of old Hamlet
• Claudius and brother made present as portraits
• Presence of men in private space adds to Gertrude’s
‘unseemliness’

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Ophelia – critics have questioned whether she is a surrogate for Hamlet when he is
away
o Both have murdered fathers
o Both end up ‘mad’
o David Levernez, The Woman in Hamlet – Hamlet is ashamed of passivity as
he identifies it as ‘feminine’ in male-centred world view of play – expresses
this in outbursts against women and cruel treatment of Ophelia
Scepticism
o Scepticism – belief that it is impossible to view world as reality due to poor
reasoning
o Never know true reality – not make judgements
o In Renaissance, sceptics could not admit doubting existence of God and
thought religious truth was matter of faith which couldn’t be proved by reason
– heretical if you didn’t believe in God
o Hamlet questions about everything
Michel de Montaigne
o Developed free critical enquiry
o Believed we can learn about human nature if we pay attention to ourselves –
questions of acceptance of superiority of Western civilisation over savages
o James Shapiro suggests Hamlet’s soliloquies are like style of essays – private
meditation
Stoicism
o Being resolute in face of misfortune
o Stoics thought you must consider rationally what might happen – not give
emotion
o Reason is greatest authority – nature is governed by rational principles which
mankind cannot change
o Faced with mortality or personal misfortune, we should accept it
o Hamlet praises Horatio for stoicism – A3S2, 61-69
o Hamlet reaches stoic position in A5S2, 197-201
o Stoicism doesn’t tell us whole story of Hamlet
Terence Hawkes objects AC Bradley’s view of character – no single correct reading
of Shakespearean play – interpretation is contingent on time it is being interpreted –
can use plays to generate meaning



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