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.