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    Historical Context: Hamlet

    Uploaded by

    Irina Felea
    - Revenge tragedies were popular in Elizabethan England in the late 1500s, though audiences grew less bloodthirsty by the early 1600s when Shakespeare likely wrote Hamlet around 1601. - Shakespeare drew on the 12th century story of Amleth, which first appeared in 1514, about a man whose uncle murders his father and marries his mother. Shakespeare adapted this story into the tragedy of Hamlet. - While keeping the basic plot of revenge, Shakespeare introduced innovations like the murder becoming secret, a ghost appearing, and characters like Laertes and Fortinbras to add depth, resulting in a play of great drama and character complexity.

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    Historical Context: Hamlet

    Uploaded by

    Irina Felea
    98 views1 page
    - Revenge tragedies were popular in Elizabethan England in the late 1500s, though audiences grew less bloodthirsty by the early 1600s when Shakespeare likely wrote Hamlet around 1601. - Shakespeare drew on the 12th century story of Amleth, which first appeared in 1514, about a man whose uncle murders his father and marries his mother. Shakespeare adapted this story into the tragedy of Hamlet. - While keeping the basic plot of revenge, Shakespeare introduced innovations like the murder becoming secret, a ghost appearing, and characters like Laertes and Fortinbras to add depth, resulting in a play of great drama and character complexity.

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    Hamlet Jiffy

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    - Revenge tragedies were popular in Elizabethan England in the late 1500s, though audiences grew less bloodthirsty by the early 1600s when Shakespeare likely wrote Hamlet around 1601. - Shakespeare drew on the 12th century story of Amleth, which first appeared in 1514, about a man whose uncle murders his father and marries his mother. Shakespeare adapted this story into the tragedy of Hamlet. - While keeping the basic plot of revenge, Shakespeare introduced innovations like the murder becoming secret, a ghost appearing, and characters like Laertes and Fortinbras to add depth, resulting in a play of great drama and character complexity.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as docx, pdf, or txt
    98 views1 page

    Historical Context: Hamlet

    Uploaded by

    Irina Felea
    - Revenge tragedies were popular in Elizabethan England in the late 1500s, though audiences grew less bloodthirsty by the early 1600s when Shakespeare likely wrote Hamlet around 1601. - Shakespeare drew on the 12th century story of Amleth, which first appeared in 1514, about a man whose uncle murders his father and marries his mother. Shakespeare adapted this story into the tragedy of Hamlet. - While keeping the basic plot of revenge, Shakespeare introduced innovations like the murder becoming secret, a ghost appearing, and characters like Laertes and Fortinbras to add depth, resulting in a play of great drama and character complexity.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as docx, pdf, or txt
    of 1

    Hamlet:

    Historical Context
    Revenge tragedies were all the rage in Elizabethan England. In the early to mid-1590s,
    the taste dictated that the bloodier the better: Shakespeare's own early Titus Andronicus,
    Thomas Kyd's The Spanish Tragedy and John Marston's Antonio's Revenge all testify
    to this. Near the turn of the century, however, audiences were less bloodthirsty than
    before and thus dramatists began to tone down the brutality a bit. Shakespeare is
    generally believed to have written Hamlet around 1601, for it seems to allude to his
    own Julius Caesar (1599) and we have a record of its entry for publication in mid-1602.
    Furthermore, the strange digression in Act 2, Scene 2 (lines 313-333) about children
    actors most likely refers to the "war of the theaters" in London dating to 1601; the
    revived children's acting companies were hugely successful at this time, preferred over
    the adult players. The exact date of Hamlet's composition and performance is, however,
    not
    without
    dispute
    among
    scholars.
    In writing Hamlet, Shakespeare drew mostly on the twelfth-century story of Amleth
    (just move the final "h" to the front of the word and you get "Hamlet"!) which first
    appeared in Saxo Grammaticus' Historie Danicae of 1514. The similarities of the two
    versions are striking: Amleth's father is murdered by his brother, Feng, who
    subsequently marries his brother's widow, Gerutha. Amleth plays the madman, kills a
    spy who has been overhearing his conversation with Gerutha, and finally is packed off
    to England with two escorts. Skillfully avoiding execution, Amleth stays in England a
    while before returning to Denmark hell-bent on revenge. Once back home, Amleth sets
    fire to the royal palace and kills Feng in his bed. Not long thereafter Amleth is crowned
    king by the people. This story is, of course, far from tragic, but it nonetheless provided
    Shakespeare with the basic foundation for his own great tragedy.
    This is not to suggest, however, that Shakespeare did not introduce his own innovations
    to the tale. Quite the contrary. In Shakespeare's version, for instance, the previously
    public murder becomes a secret, a ghost appears and urges revenge, and figures like
    Laertes and Fortinbras - completely absent in Grammaticus - add significant depth to
    the play. The cumulative effect of these alterations is a heightened sense of drama and a
    new level of character complexity, so extreme and miraculous that some have argued
    (Harold Bloom, for one) that Shakespeare in fact "invented" humanity. Nevertheless, it
    remains unclear what Shakespeare might have drawn from other reworkings of the
    Hamlet story between Grammaticus' version and his own from 1601. We know, for
    example, that the Lord Admiral's men and the emerging Lord Chamberlain's men Shakespeare's very own company - performed a play called Hamlet on June 9, 1594.
    This is only one of many contemporary references to a play called Hamlet that no
    longer exists and whose author is unknown. Unfortunately almost nothing is known
    about the contents of this version, traditionally referred to as the Ur-Hamlet because it
    was a direct predecessor to Shakespeare's later masterpiece. Whatever the case,
    Shakespeare no doubt reworked the materials in his own brilliant and original way,
    producing one of the most esteemed and poignant dramas of all time.

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