Hamlet

“Take Hamlet’s soliloquy where he’s thinking about killing the king who is also his uncle: it’s modelled on Atreus’ soliloquies in Thyestes. That whole soliloquy echoes the nervous interrogative rhythms, the disgust at delay, and the self-loathing in Seneca: “Am I a coward? / Who calls me ‘villain’? / Breaks my pate across?” And of course, in that play, Polonius says, “Seneca can not be too heavy or Plautus too light”, which indicates who the two great models for tragedy and comedy are for Shakespeare.” Read more...

Robert S Miola on Shakespeare’s Sources

Robert S Miola,

“Ann Radcliffe puts her finger on that in her essay ‘On the Supernatural in Poetry’, published posthumously in 1826. In this essay, she suggests that all the ghosts in the recent English literary tradition have their origin in the ghost of Hamlet’s father. Why is Hamlet’s father such a problematic ghost? Because it’s a Catholic ghost in a Protestant tradition. Protestantism runs deep throughout Hamlet—Hamlet studied at Wittenberg, for example. The ghost expresses Protestant anxiety over the Reformation. Protestantism is more democratic than Catholicism—it is not exactly rational, but it enlists scientific developments. It razes the priories and abbeys. And yet it can only account for so much: ‘There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, / Than are dreamt of in your philosophy’, Hamlet says. Something else is going on. There are dreams; we are haunted. But where are we haunted from?” Read more...

The best books on The Gothic

Nick Groom, Literary Scholar

” I love the speech when Hamlet’s uncle Claudius admits to being inflicted with “the primal eldest curse” for killing his brother, and begs on his knees for forgiveness for this ultimate violation of the law of nature.” Read more...

The best books on Brothers

Tim Lott, Novelist