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    Historical Context Hamlet

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    Marcela Sava
    - Revenge tragedies were popular in Elizabethan England in the late 16th century, including plays like Titus Andronicus and The Spanish Tragedy that featured graphic violence. By around 1601, audiences had become less bloodthirsty and plays toned down the brutality. - Shakespeare is believed to have written Hamlet around 1601, as it references his play Julius Caesar from 1599 and was entered for publication in 1602. The play draws on the 12th century Scandinavian story of Amleth, featuring a murdered king and prince who feigns madness in revenge. - While Shakespeare took the basic plot from Amleth, he added his own innovations, such as

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    Historical Context Hamlet

    Uploaded by

    Marcela Sava
    306 views2 pages
    - Revenge tragedies were popular in Elizabethan England in the late 16th century, including plays like Titus Andronicus and The Spanish Tragedy that featured graphic violence. By around 1601, audiences had become less bloodthirsty and plays toned down the brutality. - Shakespeare is believed to have written Hamlet around 1601, as it references his play Julius Caesar from 1599 and was entered for publication in 1602. The play draws on the 12th century Scandinavian story of Amleth, featuring a murdered king and prince who feigns madness in revenge. - While Shakespeare took the basic plot from Amleth, he added his own innovations, such as

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    - Revenge tragedies were popular in Elizabethan England in the late 16th century, including plays like Titus Andronicus and The Spanish Tragedy that featured graphic violence. By around 1601, audiences had become less bloodthirsty and plays toned down the brutality. - Shakespeare is believed to have written Hamlet around 1601, as it references his play Julius Caesar from 1599 and was entered for publication in 1602. The play draws on the 12th century Scandinavian story of Amleth, featuring a murdered king and prince who feigns madness in revenge. - While Shakespeare took the basic plot from Amleth, he added his own innovations, such as

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as DOC, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as doc, pdf, or txt
    306 views2 pages

    Historical Context Hamlet

    Uploaded by

    Marcela Sava
    - Revenge tragedies were popular in Elizabethan England in the late 16th century, including plays like Titus Andronicus and The Spanish Tragedy that featured graphic violence. By around 1601, audiences had become less bloodthirsty and plays toned down the brutality. - Shakespeare is believed to have written Hamlet around 1601, as it references his play Julius Caesar from 1599 and was entered for publication in 1602. The play draws on the 12th century Scandinavian story of Amleth, featuring a murdered king and prince who feigns madness in revenge. - While Shakespeare took the basic plot from Amleth, he added his own innovations, such as

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as DOC, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as doc, pdf, or txt
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    Historical Context

    Revenge tragedies were all the rage in


    Elizabethan England. In the early to mid1590s, 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 UrHamlet 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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