Preface

Summary

I have left the text of the first edition largely unchanged (I have corrected a few typographical and other minor errors and altered a few passages). I have used the supplement to the ‘Guide to further reading’ to come to terms with recent developments in the study of Hamlet.

I would have hesitated to add another book to the vast literature on Hamlet if the conception of this series had not offered an opportunity to take a fresh look at the play by considering it in the context of world literature. Accordingly, my discussion ranges from Homer to Tom Stoppard. I believe that our understanding of Hamlet can benefit from this kind of wide-angled approach: it seems to be uniquely situated at the intersection of ancient and modern literature. On the one hand, Hamlet strikes us as the most modern of Shakespeare's heroes, caught up in a kind of questioning and doubt that seems all-too-familiar to us in the twentieth century. On the other hand, the story of Hamlet has its roots in the most primitive strata of the imagination, a tale of blood feuds and vengeance, the kind of legend found at the fountainhead of many of the great literatures of the west, including Greek and Norse. Thus Hamlet has a peculiarly rich texture: it has passages that sound as though they could have come from an Elizabethan translation of the Iliad, but at other times the dialogue seems to anticipate a work like Waiting for Godot. Recognition of this hybrid character of Hamlet provides a profound clue to the sort of questions Shakespeare is exploring in the play.