So what exactly is this play all about? The possibilities are endless…

Hamlet is an enigma • It is probably evident to you

by now that Hamlet is puzzling and difficult to understand.

• People have been trying to interpret the play for centuries and, to make it more confusing… a variety of interpretations are possible.

• Many regard the play through a contextual lens. This means they believe that literature is a reflection of the values and worldviews of the world from which it comes.

• Current trends in literary criticism lean toward deconstructionist and dialectical criticism, both of which revolve around this belief. This trend is a logical extension of critical interest in the issues of slant and bias of the media in a worldview dominated by television.

• Dialectical criticism is a result of the twentieth century’s interest in social revolution - through such movements as Marxism and Feminism but also has ties to Ancient Greece.

• It is concerned with the reflection of the individual in the mirror of the collective society; or, conversely, the way the individual is influenced by the society they live in.

Various Interpretations • Over the centuries Hamlet has been

interpreted by a range of critics from a great variety of schools of thought.

• William Hazlitt a Romantic (1800), focussed on the tragic character flaw of Hamlet.

• Northrop Frye used Archetypal Criticism through the 1970’s and 1980’s to connect patterns in Shakespeare to those in the bible, tying meaning in texts to the universal motifs and allusions that reflect human experience and shape culture.

And of course there’s Freud• Freudian criticism is another

school of thought worth mentioning in relation to Hamlet.

• The psychoanalytic approach Freud pioneered has been applied to the character of Hamlet, resulting in explorations of his ‘oedipal complex’.

• In the previous lesson you worked through the concept of allusions, which lends itself to another popular reading of Hamlet: as an allegory or analogy for the religious conflicts prevalent in England and Europe in the years following the Reformation.

Hamlet as an Allegory The Reformation was a period in Europe during which Christianity was being ‘re-formed’. Theologians like Martin Luther and John Calvin, were questioning the Catholic theology. They challenged the idea that one could atone for one’s sins (through the practice of confession for instance). Calvin challenged the existence of the church - its opulence and ritual and advocated for a quieter, more pure form of reverence and worship.

Shakespeare set Hamlet in Denmark, which was a Lutheran state at the time the play was written in England in 1601. This is further support for the idea that Hamlet was in part a political parody. Hamlet attended ‘Wittenberg’, understood by the Elizabethans to be a Protestant university.

Martin Luther was a professor there. Dr. Faustus, by Christopher Marlowe, was set in Wittenberg. Elsinore and the Kingdom of Denmark in Hamlet, however, appear to have been Catholic, or in transition - like Elizabethan England.

The tension between the Protestant idea of self-determinism and personal responsibility and the Catholic ideology of divine power - or fate - is personified in Hamlet, the Prince of Denmark. If this were so, what would Shakespeare want his audience to understand regarding the politics of religion?

Hamlet as an Allegory