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Shakespeare and Hamlet Background The most influential writer in all of English literature, William Shakespeare was born in 1564 to a successful middle-class glove-maker in Stratford-upon-Avon, England.As the Renaissance spread to other countries in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, however, a more skeptical strain of humanism developed, stressing the limitations of human understanding.The scholars who enthusiastically rediscovered these classical texts were motivated by an educational and political ideal called (in Latin) humanitas--the idea that all of the capabilities and virtues peculiar to human beings should be studied and developed to their furthest extent.For instance, whether Hamlet's mother, Gertrude, shares in

Claudius's guilt; whether Hamlet continues to love Ophelia even as he spurns her, in Act III; whether Ophelia's death is suicide or accident; whether the ghost offers reliable knowledge, or seeks to deceive and tempt Hamlet; and, perhaps most importantly, whether Hamlet would be morally justified in taking revenge on his uncle.The unprecedented admiration garnered by his works led to a fierce curiosity about Shakespeare's life, but the dearth of biographical information has left many details of

Shakespeare's personal history shrouded in mystery.Shakespeare's works were collected and printed in various editions in the century following his death, and by the early eighteenth century his reputation as the greatest poet ever to write in English was well established.Some people have concluded from this fact that Shakespeare's plays were really written by someone else--Francis Bacon and the Earl of Oxford are the two most popular candidates--but the support for this claim is overwhelmingly circumstantial, and the theory is not taken seriously by many scholars.A number of Shakespeare's plays seem to have transcended even the category of brilliance, becoming so influential as to profoundly affect the course of Western literature and culture ever after.Shakespeare went far beyond making uncertainty a personal quirk of Hamlet's, introducing a number of important ambiguities into the play that even the audience cannot resolve with certainty.By modifying his source materials in this way, Shakespeare was able to take an unremarkable revenge story and make it resonate with the most fundamental themes and problems of the Renaissance.The Renaissance is a vast cultural phenomenon that began in fifteenth-century Italy with the recovery of classical Greek and Latin texts that had been lost to the Middle Ages.The raw material that Shakespeare appropriated in writing Hamlet is the story of a Danish prince whose uncle murders the prince's father, marries his mother, and claims the throne.Shakespeare changed the emphasis of this story entirely, making his Hamlet a philosophically minded prince who delays taking action because his knowledge of his uncle's crime is so uncertain.Hamlet's famous speech in Act II, "What a piece of work is a man! How noble in reason, how infinite in faculty, in form and moving

how express and admirable, in action how like an angel, in apprehension how like a god--the beauty of the world, the paragon of animals!"(II.ii.293-297) is directly based upon one of the major texts of the Italian humanists, Pico della Mirandola's Oration on the Dignity of Man.At the time of Shakespeare's death, literary luminaries such as Ben Jonson hailed his works as timeless.In the absence of credible evidence to the contrary, Shakespeare must be viewed as the author of the thirty- seven plays and 154 sonnets that bear his name.Renaissance humanism, as this movement is now called, generated a new interest in human experience, and also an enormous optimism about the potential scope of human understanding.Wealthy and renowned, Shakespeare retired to Stratford and died in 1616 at the age of fifty-two.For the humanists, the purpose of cultivating reason was to lead to a better understanding of how to act, and their fondest hope was that the coordination of action and understanding would lead to great benefits for society as a whole.Shakespeare attended grammar school, but his formal education proceeded no further.His career bridged the reigns of Elizabeth I (ruled 1558-1603) and James I (ruled 1603-1625), and he was a favorite of both monarchs.Shakespeare makes it clear that the stakes riding on some of these questions are enormous--the actions of these characters bring disaster upon an entire kingdom.Public and critical success quickly followed, and Shakespeare eventually became the most popular playwright in England and part-owner of the Globe Theater.The prince pretends to be feeble-minded to throw his uncle off guard, then manages to kill his uncle in revenge.Around 1590 he left his family behind and traveled to London to work as an actor and playwright.Indeed, James granted Shakespeare's company the greatest possible compliment by bestowing upon its members the title of King's Men.The legacy of this body of work is immense.In 1582 he married an older woman, Anne Hathaway, and had three children with her.At the play's end it is not even clear whether justice has been achieved.

Shakespeare and Hamlet Background
The most influential writer in all of English literature,
William Shakespeare was born in 1564 to a successful
middle-class glove-maker in Stratford-upon-Avon,
England. Shakespeare attended grammar school, but his
formal education proceeded no further. In 1582 he married
an older woman, Anne Hathaway, and had three children
with her. Around 1590 he left his family behind and
traveled to London to work as an actor and playwright.
Public and critical success quickly followed, and
Shakespeare eventually became the most popular
playwright in England and part-owner of the Globe
Theater. His career bridged the reigns of Elizabeth I (ruled
1558–1603) and James I (ruled 1603–1625), and he was a
favorite of both monarchs. Indeed, James granted
Shakespeare’s company the greatest possible compliment
by bestowing upon its members the title of King’s Men.
Wealthy and renowned, Shakespeare retired to Stratford
and died in 1616 at the age of fifty-two. At the time of
Shakespeare’s death, literary luminaries such as Ben
Jonson hailed his works as timeless.
Shakespeare’s works were collected and printed in various
editions in the century following his death, and by the early
eighteenth century his reputation as the greatest poet ever
to write in English was well established. The
unprecedented admiration garnered by his works led to a
fierce curiosity about Shakespeare’s life, but the dearth of
biographical information has left many details of

Shakespeare’s personal history shrouded in mystery. Some
people have concluded from this fact that Shakespeare’s
plays were really written by someone else—Francis Bacon
and the Earl of Oxford are the two most popular
candidates—but the support for this claim is
overwhelmingly circumstantial, and the theory is not taken
seriously by many scholars.
In the absence of credible evidence to the contrary,
Shakespeare must be viewed as the author of the thirty-
seven plays and 154 sonnets that bear his name. The legacy
of this body of work is immense. A number of
Shakespeare’s plays seem to have transcended even the
category of brilliance, becoming so influential as to
profoundly affect the course of Western literature and
culture ever after.
The raw material that Shakespeare appropriated in writing
Hamlet is the story of a Danish prince whose uncle murders
the prince’s father, marries his mother, and claims the
throne. The prince pretends to be feeble-minded to throw
his uncle off guard, then manages to kill his uncle in
revenge. Shakespeare changed the emphasis of this story
entirely, making his Hamlet a philosophically minded
prince who delays taking action because his knowledge of
his uncle’s crime is so uncertain. Shakespeare went far
beyond making uncertainty a personal quirk of Hamlet’s,
introducing a number of important ambiguities into the play
that even the audience cannot resolve with certainty. For
instance, whether Hamlet’s mother, Gertrude, shares in

Claudius’s guilt; whether Hamlet continues to love Ophelia
even as he spurns her, in Act III; whether Ophelia’s death is
suicide or accident; whether the ghost offers reliable
knowledge, or seeks to deceive and tempt Hamlet; and,
perhaps most importantly, whether Hamlet would be
morally justified in taking revenge on his uncle.
Shakespeare makes it clear that the stakes riding on some
of these questions are enormous—the actions of these
characters bring disaster upon an entire kingdom. At the
play’s end it is not even clear whether justice has been
achieved.
By modifying his source materials in this way, Shakespeare
was able to take an unremarkable revenge story and make it
resonate with the most fundamental themes and problems
of the Renaissance. The Renaissance is a vast cultural
phenomenon that began in fifteenth-century Italy with the
recovery of classical Greek and Latin texts that had been
lost to the Middle Ages. The scholars who enthusiastically
rediscovered these classical texts were motivated by an
educational and political ideal called (in Latin)
humanitas—the idea that all of the capabilities and virtues
peculiar to human beings should be studied and developed
to their furthest extent. Renaissance humanism, as this
movement is now called, generated a new interest in human
experience, and also an enormous optimism about the
potential scope of human understanding. Hamlet’s famous
speech in Act II, “What a piece of work is a man! How
noble in reason, how infinite in faculty, in form and moving

how express and admirable, in action how like an angel, in
apprehension how like a god—the beauty of the world, the
paragon of animals!” (II.ii.293–297) is directly based upon
one of the major texts of the Italian humanists, Pico della
Mirandola’s Oration on the Dignity of Man. For the
humanists, the purpose of cultivating reason was to lead to
a better understanding of how to act, and their fondest hope
was that the coordination of action and understanding
would lead to great benefits for society as a whole.

As the Renaissance spread to other countries in the
sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, however, a more
skeptical strain of humanism developed, stressing the
limitations of human understanding. For example, the
sixteenth-century French humanist, Michel de Montaigne,
was no less interested in studying human experiences than
the earlier humanists were, but he maintained that the world
of experience was a world of appearances, and that human
beings could never hope to see past those appearances into
the “realities” that lie behind them. This is the world in
which Shakespeare places his characters. Hamlet is faced
with the difficult task of correcting an injustice that he can
never have sufficient knowledge of—a dilemma that is by
no means unique, or even uncommon. And while Hamlet is
fond of pointing out questions that cannot be answered
because they concern supernatural and metaphysical
matters, the play as a whole chiefly demonstrates the
difficulty of knowing the truth about other people—their

guilt or innocence, their motivations, their feelings, their
relative states of sanity or insanity. The world of other
people is a world of appearances, and Hamlet is,
fundamentally, a play about the difficulty of living in that
world.