Sources of Hamlet

Last updated
Saxo Grammaticus' Gesta Danorum (Angers Fragment), page 1, front Saxo original 001.jpg
Saxo Grammaticus' Gesta Danorum (Angers Fragment), page 1, front

The sources of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark , a tragedy by William Shakespeare believed to have been written between 1599 and 1601, trace back as far as pre-13th century. The generic "hero-as-fool" story is so old and is expressed in the literature of so many cultures that scholars have hypothesized that it may be Indo-European in origin. A Scandinavian version of the story of Hamlet (called Amleth or Amlóði, which means "mad" or "not sane" in Old Norse) was put into writing around 1200 AD by Danish historian Saxo Grammaticus in his work Gesta Danorum (the first full history of Denmark). It is from this work that Shakespeare borrowed to create Hamlet . Similar accounts are found in the Icelandic Saga of Hrolf Kraki and the Roman legend of Lucius Junius Brutus, both of which feature heroes who pretend to be insane in order to get revenge. A reasonably accurate version of Saxo's story was translated into French in 1570 by François de Belleforest in his Histoires Tragiques. Belleforest embellished Saxo's text substantially, almost doubling its length, and introduced the hero's melancholy.

Contents

After this point, the ancestry of Shakespeare's version of Hamlet becomes more difficult to trace. Many literary scholars believe that Shakespeare's main source was an earlier play—now lost—known today as the Ur-Hamlet . Possibly written by Thomas Kyd, the Ur-Hamlet would have been in performance by 1589 and was seemingly the first to include a ghost in the story. Using the few comments available from theatre-enthusiasts at the time, scholars have attempted to trace exactly where the Ur-Hamlet might have ended and the play popular today begins. A few scholars have suggested that the Ur-Hamlet is an early draft of Shakespeare's, rather than the work of Kyd. Regardless of the mysteries surrounding the Ur-Hamlet, though, several elements of the story changed. Unlike earlier versions, Shakespeare's Hamlet does not feature an omniscient narrator of events and Prince Hamlet does not appear to have a complete plan of action. The play's setting in Elsinore also differs from legendary versions.

Scandinavian legend

The story of the prince who plots revenge on his uncle (the current king) for killing his father (the former king) is an old one. Many of the story elements—the prince feigning madness and his testing by a young woman, the prince talking to his mother and her hasty marriage to the usurper, the prince killing a hidden spy and substituting the execution of two retainers for his own—are found in a medieval tale by Saxo Grammaticus called Vita Amlethi (part of his larger Latin work Gesta Danorum ), which was written around 1200 AD. [1] Older written and oral traditions from various cultures may have influenced Saxo's work. Amleth (as Hamlet is called in Saxo's version) probably derived from an oral tale told throughout Scandinavia. Parallels can be found with Icelandic legend, though no written version of the original Icelandic tale survives from before the 16th century. Torfaeus, a scholar in 17th-century Iceland, made the connection between Saxo's Amleth and local oral tradition about a Prince Ambales ( Amlóði ). [lower-alpha 1] Torfaeus dismissed the local tradition as "an old wive's tale" due to its incorporation of fairy-tale elements and quasi-historical legend and Torfaeus' own confusion about the hero's country of origin (not recognizing Cimbria as a name for Denmark). [4] [5]

Similarities include the prince's feigned madness, his accidental killing of the king's counsellor in his mother's bedroom, and the eventual slaying of his uncle. [6]

The original Amlóði story has been surmised to be derived from a "10th-century" Old Icelandic poem, [7] but no such poem is known.

The "hero as fool" story has many parallels (Roman, Spanish, Scandinavian and Arabic) and can be classified as a universal, or at least common Indo-European, narrative topos. [8]

The Spanish Tragedy, by Thomas Kyd. This popular revenge tragedy may have influenced Hamlet. Its author may have also written the Ur-Hamlet. Kyd, Spanish Tragedy.jpg
The Spanish Tragedy , by Thomas Kyd. This popular revenge tragedy may have influenced Hamlet. Its author may have also written the Ur-Hamlet .

Influences on Saxo Grammaticus

The two most popular candidates for written works that may have influenced Saxo, however, are the anonymous Scandinavian Saga of Hrolf Kraki and the Roman legend of Brutus, which is recorded in two separate Latin works. In Saga of Hrolf Kraki, the murdered king has two sons—Hroar and Helgi—who assume the names of Ham and Hráni for concealment. They spend most of the story in disguise, rather than feigning madness, though Ham does act childishly at one point to deflect suspicion. The sequence of events differs from Shakespeare's as well. [9]

In contrast, the Roman story of Brutus focuses on feigned madness. Its hero, Lucius ('shining, light'), changes his name and persona to Brutus ('dull, stupid'), playing the role to avoid the fate of his father and brothers, and eventually slaying his family's killer, King Tarquinius. In addition to writing in the Latin language of the Romans, Saxo adjusted the story to reflect classical Roman concepts of virtue and heroism. [10] A reasonably accurate version of Saxo's story was translated into French in 1570 by François de Belleforest in his Histoires Tragiques. [11] Belleforest embellished Saxo's text substantially, almost doubling its length, and introduced the hero's melancholy. [12]

The Ur-Hamlet

Shakespeare's main source is believed to be an earlier play—now lost—known today as the Ur-Hamlet . Possibly written by Thomas Kyd or a 25 year-old Shakespeare himself, [13] the Ur-Hamlet would have been in performance by 1589, and was seemingly the first to include a ghost in the story. [14] [15] Shakespeare's company, the Chamberlain's Men, may have purchased that play and performed a version, which Shakespeare reworked, for some time. [16] Since no copy of the Ur-Hamlet has survived, it is impossible to compare its language and style with the known works of any candidate for its authorship. Consequently, there is no direct evidence that Kyd wrote it, nor any evidence that the play was not an early version of Hamlet by Shakespeare himself. This latter idea—placing Hamlet far earlier than the generally accepted date, with a much longer period of development—has attracted some support, though others dismiss it as speculation. [lower-alpha 2] Francis Meres's Palladis Tamia (published in 1598, probably October) provides a list of twelve named Shakespeare plays, but Hamlet is not among them. This is not conclusive, however, as other then-extant Shakespeare plays were not on Meres' list either.

The upshot is that scholars cannot assert with any confidence how much material Shakespeare took from the Ur-Hamlet (if it even existed), how much from Belleforest or Saxo, and how much from other contemporary sources (such as Kyd's The Spanish Tragedy ). No clear evidence exists that Shakespeare made any direct references to Saxo's version (although its Latin text was widely available at the time). However, elements of Belleforest's version do appear in Shakespeare's play but are not in Saxo's story, so whether Shakespeare took these from Belleforest directly or through the Ur-Hamlet remains unclear. [23]

It is clear, though, that several elements did change somewhere between Belleforest's and Shakespeare's versions. For one, unlike Saxo and Belleforest, Shakespeare's play has no all-knowing narrator, thus inviting the audience to draw their own conclusions about the motives of its characters. And the traditional story takes place across several years, while Shakespeare's covers a few weeks. Belleforest's version details Hamlet's plan for revenge, while in Shakespeare's play Hamlet has no apparent plan. [24] Shakespeare also adds some elements that locate the action in 15th-century Christian Denmark instead of a medieval pagan setting. Elsinore, for example, would have been familiar to Elizabethan England, as a new castle had been built recently there, and Wittenberg, Hamlet's university, was widely known for its Protestant teachings. [25] Other elements of Shakespeare's Hamlet absent in medieval versions include the secrecy that surrounds the old king's murder, the inclusion of Laertes and Fortinbras (who offer parallels to Hamlet), the testing of the king via a play, and Hamlet's death at the moment he gains his revenge. [26] [lower-alpha 3]

Elizabethan court

For more than a century, Shakespearean scholars have identified several of the play's major characters with specific members of the Elizabethan court. In 1869, George Russell French theorized that Hamlet's Polonius might have been inspired by William Cecil (Lord Burghley)—Lord High Treasurer and chief counsellor to Queen Elizabeth I. [28] French also speculated that the characters of Polonius's children, Ophelia and Laertes, represented two of Burghley's children, Anne and Robert Cecil. [29] In 1930, E. K. Chambers suggested that Polonius's advice to Laertes may have echoed Burghley's to his son Robert, [30] and in 1932, John Dover Wilson commented "the figure of Polonius is almost without doubt intended as a caricature of Burleigh, who died on 4 August 1598". [31] In 1963, A. L. Rowse said that Polonius's tedious verbosity might have resembled Burghley's, [32] and in 1964, Joel Hurstfield wrote that "[t]he governing classes were both paternalistic and patronizing; and nowhere is this attitude better displayed than in the advice which that archetype of elder statesmen William Cecil, Lord Burghley—Shakespeare's Polonius—prepared for his son". [33]

Lilian Winstanley thought the name Corambis (Polonius's name in the 1st Quarto) suggested Burghley, [34] though Krystyna Kujawinska Courtney has pointed out that the name "Corambis" translates to "reheated cabbage" in Latin, i.e. "a boring old man". [35]

In 1921, Winstanley claimed "absolute" certainty that "the historical analogues exist; that they are important, numerous, detailed and undeniable" and that "Shakespeare is using a large element of contemporary history in Hamlet." [36] She compared Hamlet with both the Earl of Essex and James I. She also identified Polonius with Burghley parallels, and noted a "curious parallel" in the relationship between Ophelia and Hamlet with that of Burghley's daughter, Anne Cecil, and her husband, Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford. Winstanley noted similar parallels in the relationship of Elizabeth Vernon and Henry Wriothesley, 3rd Earl of Southampton. [37]

Harold Jenkins criticised the idea of any direct personal satire as "unlikely" and "uncharacteristic of Shakespeare", [38] while G. R. Hibbard hypothesized that differences in names (Corambis/Polonius; Montano/Raynoldo) between the first quarto and subsequent editions might reflect a desire not to offend scholars at Oxford University, since Polonius was close to the Latin name for Robert Pullen, founder of Oxford University, and Reynaldo too close for safety to John Rainolds, the President of Corpus Christi College. [39]

Shakespeare's son

In Belleforest's version the hero's name had been Amleth, and in Saxo's version Amlethus. The author of the Ur-Hamlet, perhaps Shakespeare himself, seems to have been the first to drop the final H (originally indicating a Scandinavian TH-sound) and to attach an H to the front of the name. [lower-alpha 4] Most scholars, including Harold Bloom, [41] dismiss the idea that Hamlet is in any way connected with Shakespeare's only son, Hamnet Shakespeare, who died at age eleven. Conventional wisdom holds that Hamlet is too obviously connected to legend, and the name Hamnet was quite popular at the time. [42] However, Stephen Greenblatt has argued that the coincidence of the names and Shakespeare's grief for the loss of his son may lie at the heart of the tragedy. He notes that the name of Hamnet Sadler, the Stratford neighbor after whom Hamnet was named, was often written as Hamlet Sadler and that, in the loose orthography of the time, the names were virtually interchangeable. [43] [44]

Giordano Bruno

Benno Tschischwitz  [ de ], a nineteenth-century translator of Shakespeare's works into German, was the first to note the similarities between Bruno's philosophy and phraseology with the play Hamlet, in his "Shakespeares Hamlet, nach historischen Gesichtspunkten erläutert" of 1868. [45] The editor of the New Variorum edition of Hamlet, H. H. Furness, considered the similarities to be slight, and not meaningful given Shakespeare's eclectic mind. [46] John Mackinnon Robertson, writing in 1897, suggested that the similarities in wording between Bruno's comedy Il Candelajo and Hamlet were completely commonplace for the time, and actually were within the text of "Ur-Hamlet" (above), rather than Shakespeare's later play: "drafted by a much lesser man than Shakespere.[ sic ]". [47]

Notes and references

Notes

  1. ↑ The etymology of the name is unknown, and there are various suggestions. In 1948, Ferdinand Holthausen suggested it is based on the "fool, simpleton" interpretation of the name, composing the name from Old Norse ama "to vex, annoy, molest" and óðr "fierceness, madness" (also in the theonym Odin ). [2] A more recent suggestion, by L. A. Collinson in The Review of English Studies , is based on the kenning associating Amlóði with the mythological mill grotti, and derives it from the Old Irish name Admlithi "great-grinding", attested in Togail Bruidne Dá Derga . [3]
  2. ↑ In his 1936 book The Problem of Hamlet: A Solution Andrew Cairncross asserted that the Hamlet referred to in 1589 was written by Shakespeare; [17] Peter Alexander, [18] Eric Sams [19] and, more recently, Harold Bloom [20] [21] have agreed. However Harold Jenkins, the editor of the second series Arden edition of the play, considers that there are not grounds for thinking that the Ur-Hamlet is an early work by Shakespeare, which he then rewrote. [22]
  3. ↑ Harold Jenkins, in the Arden Shakespeare second series edition of Hamlet, includes a detailed discussion of many possible influences that may have found their way into the play. [27]
  4. ↑ The 1608 translation of Belleforest into English calls this story the Hystorie of Hamblet, presumably because the name Hamlet was now well-known in England, because of the play. [40]

Related Research Articles

<i>Gesta Danorum</i> 12th century work of Danish history

Gesta Danorum is a patriotic work of Danish history, by the 12th-century author Saxo Grammaticus. It is the most ambitious literary undertaking of medieval Denmark and is an essential source for the nation's early history. It is also one of the oldest known written documents about the history of Estonia and Latvia.

<i>Hamlet</i> Tragedy by William Shakespeare

The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, usually shortened to Hamlet, is a tragedy written by William Shakespeare sometime between 1599 and 1601. It is Shakespeare's longest play. Set in Denmark, the play depicts Prince Hamlet and his attempts to exact revenge against his uncle, Claudius, who has murdered Hamlet's father in order to seize his throne and marry Hamlet's mother. Hamlet is considered among the "most powerful and influential tragedies in the English language", with a story capable of "seemingly endless retelling and adaptation by others". It is widely considered one of the greatest plays of all time. Three different early versions of the play are extant: the First Quarto ; the Second Quarto ; and the First Folio. Each version includes lines and passages missing from the others.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">William Shakespeare</span> English playwright and poet (1564–1616)

William Shakespeare was an English playwright, poet and actor. He is widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's national poet and the "Bard of Avon". His extant works, including collaborations, consist of some 39 plays, 154 sonnets, three long narrative poems and a few other verses, some of uncertain authorship. His plays have been translated into every major living language and are performed more often than those of any other playwright. Shakespeare remains arguably the most influential writer in the English language, and his works continue to be studied and reinterpreted.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Shakespearean tragedy</span> Tragedies written by William Shakespeare

Shakespearean tragedy is the designation given to most tragedies written by playwright William Shakespeare. Many of his history plays share the qualifiers of a Shakespearean tragedy, but because they are based on real figures throughout the history of England, they were classified as "histories" in the First Folio. The Roman tragedies—Julius Caesar, Antony and Cleopatra and Coriolanus—are also based on historical figures, but because their sources were foreign and ancient, they are almost always classified as tragedies rather than histories. Shakespeare's romances were written late in his career and published originally as either tragedy or comedy. They share some elements of tragedy, insofar as they feature a high-status central character, but they end happily like Shakespearean comedies. Almost three centuries after Shakespeare's death, the scholar F. S. Boas also coined a fifth category, the "problem play," for plays that do not fit neatly into a single classification because of their subject matter, setting, or ending. Scholars continue to disagree on how to categorize some Shakespearean plays.

Thomas Kyd was an English playwright, the author of The Spanish Tragedy, and one of the most important figures in the development of Elizabethan drama.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Saxo Grammaticus</span> Danish historian (c. 1150 – c. 1220)

Saxo Grammaticus, also known as Saxo cognomine Longus, was a Danish historian, theologian and author. He is thought to have been a clerk or secretary to Absalon, Archbishop of Lund, the main advisor to Valdemar I of Denmark. He is the author of the Gesta Danorum, the first full history of Denmark, from which the legend of Amleth would come to inspire the story of Hamlet by Shakespeare.

<i>Hamlet</i> (1996 film) 1996 film directed by Kenneth Branagh

Hamlet is a 1996 British epic historical drama film and an adaptation of William Shakespeare's play Hamlet, adapted and directed by Kenneth Branagh, who also stars as Prince Hamlet. The film also features Derek Jacobi as King Claudius, Julie Christie as Queen Gertrude, Kate Winslet as Ophelia, Michael Maloney as Laertes, Richard Briers as Polonius, and Nicholas Farrell as Horatio. Other cast members include Robin Williams, Gérard Depardieu, Jack Lemmon, Billy Crystal, Rufus Sewell, Charlton Heston, Richard Attenborough, Judi Dench, John Gielgud and Ken Dodd.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Polonius</span> Character in Hamlet

Polonius is a character in William Shakespeare's play Hamlet. He is the chief counsellor of the play's ultimate villain, Claudius, and the father of Laertes and Ophelia. Generally regarded as wrong in every judgment he makes over the course of the play, Polonius is described by William Hazlitt as a "sincere" father, but also "a busy-body, [who] is accordingly officious, garrulous, and impertinent". In Act II, Hamlet refers to Polonius as a "tedious old fool" and taunts him as a latter day "Jephtha".

The Ur-Hamlet is a play by an unknown author, thought to be either Thomas Kyd or William Shakespeare. No copy of the play, dated by scholars to the second half of 1587, survives today. The play was staged in London, more specifically at The Theatre in Shoreditch as recalled by Elizabethan author Thomas Lodge. It includes a character named Hamlet; the only other known character from the play is a ghost who, according to Thomas Lodge in his 1596 publication Wits Misery and the Worlds Madnesse, cries, "Hamlet, revenge!"

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Amleth</span> Figure in medieval Scandinavian romance

Amleth is a figure in a medieval Scandinavian legend, the direct inspiration of the character of Prince Hamlet, the hero of William Shakespeare's tragedy Hamlet, Prince of Denmark. The chief authority for the legend of Amleth is Saxo Grammaticus, who devotes to it parts of the third and fourth books of his Gesta Danorum, completed at the beginning of the 13th century. Saxo's version is supplemented by Latin and vernacular compilations from a much later date. In all versions, prince Amleth (Amblothæ) is the son of Horvendill (Orwendel), king of the Jutes. It has often been assumed that the story is ultimately derived from an Old Icelandic poem, but no such poem has been found; the extant Icelandic versions, known as the Ambales-saga, or Amloda-saga are considerably later than Saxo. Amleth's name is not mentioned in Old-Icelandic regnal lists before Saxo. Only the 15th-century Sagnkrønike from Stockholm may contain some older elements.

Gertrude (<i>Hamlet</i>) Character in Hamlet

In William Shakespeare's play Hamlet, Gertrude is Hamlet's mother and Queen of Denmark. Her relationship with Hamlet is somewhat turbulent, since he resents her marrying her husband's brother Claudius after he murdered the king. Gertrude reveals no guilt in her marriage with Claudius after the recent murder of her husband, and Hamlet begins to show signs of jealousy towards Claudius. According to Hamlet, she scarcely mourned her husband's death before marrying Claudius.

<i>Gertrude and Claudius</i> 2000 novel by John Updike

Gertrude and Claudius is a novel by John Updike. It uses the known sources of William Shakespeare's Hamlet to tell a story that draws on a rather straightforward revenge tale in medieval Denmark, as depicted by Saxo Grammaticus in his twelfth-century Historiae Danicae. It also incorporates extra plot elements added by François de Belleforest in his Histoires tragiques, published in 1576, and furthermore brings in various elements from Shakespeare's play itself, including the name "Corambis" for Polonius from the "bad quarto" of 1603. This story, in its three forms, is primarily concerned with Hamlet avenging his father's murder, but the story starts earlier. The novel is concerned with that earlier life of Gertrude, Claudius, and old Hamlet, and it ends at the close of Act I, scene ii of Hamlet.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Prince Hamlet</span> Character in Hamlet

Prince Hamlet is the title character and protagonist of William Shakespeare's tragedy Hamlet (1599–1601). He is the Prince of Denmark, nephew to the usurping Claudius, and son of King Hamlet, the previous King of Denmark. At the beginning of the play, he is conflicted whether, and how, to avenge the murder of his father, and struggles with his own sanity along the way. By the end of the tragedy, Hamlet has caused the deaths of Polonius, Laertes, Claudius, and Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, two acquaintances of his from childhood. He is also indirectly involved in the deaths of his love Ophelia (drowning) and of his mother Gertrude.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Hamnet Shakespeare</span> Son of William Shakespeare

Hamnet Shakespeare was the only son of William Shakespeare and Anne Hathaway, and the fraternal twin of Judith Shakespeare. He died at the age of 11. Some Shakespearean scholars speculate on the relationship between Hamnet and his father's later play Hamlet, as well as on possible connections between Hamnet's death and the writing of King John, Romeo and Juliet, Julius Caesar, and Twelfth Night.

Critical approaches to <i>Hamlet</i> Critical approaches to Hamlet

From its premiere at the turn of the 17th century, Hamlet has remained Shakespeare's best-known, most-imitated, and most-analyzed play. The character of Hamlet played a critical role in Sigmund Freud's explanation of the Oedipus complex. Even within the narrower field of literature, the play's influence has been strong. As Foakes writes, "No other character's name in Shakespeare's plays, and few in literature, have come to embody an attitude to life ... and been converted into a noun in this way."

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Thomas Pavier</span> English publisher and bookseller

Thomas Pavier was a London publisher and bookseller of the early seventeenth century. His complex involvement in the publication of early editions of some of Shakespeare's plays, as well as plays of the Shakespeare Apocrypha, has left him with a "dubious reputation."

What follows is an overview of the main characters in William Shakespeare's Hamlet, followed by a list and summary of the minor characters from the play. Three different early versions of the play survive: known as the First Quarto ("Q1"), Second Quarto ("Q2"), and First Folio ("F1"), each has lines—and even scenes—missing in the others, and some character names vary.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ophelia</span> Character in Shakespeares drama Hamlet

Ophelia is a character in William Shakespeare's drama Hamlet (1599–1601). She is a young noblewoman of Denmark, the daughter of Polonius, sister of Laertes and potential wife of Prince Hamlet, who, due to Hamlet's actions, ends up in a state of madness that ultimately leads to her drowning.

<i>Hamlet</i> Q1 First printed edition of "Hamlet"

Q1 of Hamlet is a short early text of the Shakespearean play. The intended publication of the play is entered in the Stationers' Register in 1602 by James Roberts, but Q1 was not published until summer or autumn 1603. It was published by the booksellers Nicholas Ling and John Trundle, and printed by Valentine Simmes. Roberts later printed the "Second Quarto" (Q2).

Fratricide Punished, or The Tragedy of Fratricide Punished: or Prince Hamlet of Denmark, is the English name of a German-language play of anonymous origins and disputed age. Because of similarities of plot and dramatis personae, it is considered to be a German variant of the English play Hamlet, though possibly not William Shakespeare's Hamlet, and is a problematic figure in discussions of Hamlet Q1 and the so-called Ur-Hamlet. Such discussions have helped to raise interest in the text, which primarily lived in obscurity before the discovery of Q1 in 1823. Fratricide Punished was first published in German from a written manuscript in 1781 and translated to English by Georgina Archer in 1865. Though the play is readily available online both in English and in German, the manuscript has been lost since its initial publication, and all subsequent editions of the text are, as such, at a remove from the original. Fratricide Punished is often referred to by its German title Der Bestrafte Brudermord, or Tragoedia der bestrafte Bruder-mord oder: Prinz Hamlet aus Dännemark.

References

  1. ↑ Saxo & Hansen 1983, pp. 1–5.
  2. ↑ Holthausen 1948.
  3. ↑ Collinson 2011.
  4. ↑ Saxo & Hansen 1983, p. 7.
  5. ↑ Gollancz 1898, pp. 3–13.
  6. ↑ Saxo & Hansen 1983, pp. 5–15.
  7. ↑ Harrison & Harrison 1912, p. 184.
  8. ↑ Saxo & Hansen 1983, pp. 36–37.
  9. ↑ Saxo & Hansen 1983, pp. 16–25.
  10. ↑ Saxo & Hansen 1983, pp. 25–37.
  11. ↑ Edwards 1985, pp. 1–2.
  12. ↑ Saxo & Hansen 1983, pp. 66–67.
  13. ↑ Bloom 2001, p. 386.
  14. ↑ Bloom 2001, pp. 387–405.
  15. ↑ Jenkins 1982, pp. 82–85.
  16. ↑ Saxo & Hansen 1983, p. 67.
  17. ↑ Cairncross 1975.
  18. ↑ Alexander 1964.
  19. ↑ Jackson 1991, p. 267.
  20. ↑ Bloom 2001, pp. xiii, 383.
  21. ↑ Bloom 2003, p. 154.
  22. ↑ Jenkins 1982, p. 84 n4.
  23. ↑ Saxo & Hansen 1983, pp. 66–68.
  24. ↑ Saxo & Hansen 1983, pp. 69–72.
  25. ↑ Saxo & Hansen 1983, pp. 83–85.
  26. ↑ Edwards 1985, p. 2.
  27. ↑ Jenkins 1982, pp. 82–122.
  28. ↑ French 1975, p. 301.
  29. ↑ French 1975, pp. 299–310.
  30. ↑ Chambers 1930, p. 418.
  31. ↑ Wilson 1932, p. 104.
  32. ↑ Rowse 1995, p. 323.
  33. ↑ Hurstfield 1964, pp. 27–47.
  34. ↑ Winstanley 1921, p. 114.
  35. ↑ Courtney 2003, p. 2.
  36. ↑ Winstanley 1921, pp. 165–166.
  37. ↑ Winstanley 1921, pp. 122–124, 131–135.
  38. ↑ Jenkins 1982, p. 142.
  39. ↑ Hibbard 1987, pp. 74–75.
  40. ↑ Gollancz 1926, pp. 319–320.
  41. ↑ Bloom 2001, pp. 389ff.
  42. ↑ Saxo & Hansen 1983, p. 6.
  43. ↑ Greenblatt 2004a, p. 311.
  44. ↑ Greenblatt 2004b.
  45. ↑ von Reichlin-Meldegg, Carl Alexander (1868). "Tschischwitz: Shakespeare-Forschungen". Heidelberger Jahrbücher der Literatur (19). Heidelberg University: 284–295. doi:10.11588/diglit.51353.
  46. ↑ Furness, Horace Howard. A New Variorum Edition of Shakespeare: Hamlet. Vol. IV Appendix I. Philadelphia: Lippincott. p. 332. OCLC   871785531. To me this similarity of phrases, or of the principles of philosophy, is of the faintest. […Shakespeare…] was myriad-minded.
  47. ↑ Robertson, J. M. (1897). Montaigne and Shakspere. London: The University Press. p. 82. OCLC   458047163. …the bases of the hypothesis are of the scantiest and the flimsiest.

Sources

Editions of Hamlet

Secondary sources

This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.