Hamlet

Series introduction

Volume introduction / Harold Bloom

Biography of William Shakespeare

Summary of Hamlet

Key passages in Hamlet

List of characters in Hamlet

Criticism through the ages

Hamlet in the seventeenth century

From Eastward Ho / Ben Jonson, George Chapman, and John Marston 1605

Chapters 2-5 from The Hystorie of Hamblet / François de Belleforest 1608

From A Funeral Elegy on the Death of Richard Burbage / Anonymous 1619

From The Diary of Samuel Pepys / Samuel Pepys 1661-1668

From "The preface to the play," in Troilus and Cressida / John Dryden 1679

From A Short View of the Immorality and Profaneness of the English Stage / Jeremy Collier 1698

From The Antient and Modern Stages Survey'd / James Drake 1699

Hamlet in the eighteenth century

From Some Account of the Life of Mr. William Shakespear / Nicholas Rowe 1709

"On tragedy," from Letters Concerning the English Nation / Voltaire 1734

From The Prompter / William Popple 1735

From Some Remarks on the Tragedy of Hamlet Prince of Denmark / Thomas Hanmer 1736

From "Discourse on Ancient and Modern Tragedy" / Voltaire 1748

From Tom Jones / Henry Fielding 1749

From "The preface to Shakespeare" and "Notes on the plays," in The Plays of William Shakespeare / Samuel Johnson 1765

From A Sentimental Journey Through France and Italy / Laurence Sterne 1768

From "A letter from M. Voltaire to the French Académie containing an appeal to that society on the merits of Shakespeare, translated from the original" / Voltaire 1776

From The Mirror / Henry Mackenzie 1780

From Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship / Johann Wolfgang von Goethe 1795

Hamlet in the nineteenth century

From Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature / August Wilhelm von Schlegel 1809

"On the tragedies of Shakespeare" / Charles Lamb 1811

"Mr. Kean's Hamlet," from Morning Chronicle 1814

"Hamlet," from Characters of Shakespear's Plays / William Hazlitt 1817

From Lectures and Notes on Shakspere and Other English Poets / Samuel Taylor Coleridge 1818

From " William Hazlitt" / Edgar Allan Poe 1845

"Hamlet and Don Quixote : the two eternal human types" / Ivan Turgenev 1860

From William Shakespeare / Victor Hugo 1864

"Shakespeare once more" / James Russell Lowell 1868

From The Birth of Tragedy / Friedrich Nietzsche 1871

"The elder Hamlet" / George Macdonald 1875

From "Hamlet," in A Study of Shakespeare / Algernon Charles Swinburne 1880

"Hamlet once more" / Matthew Arnold 1884

From The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn / Mark Twain 1884

"Hamlet at the Comedie-Française" / Anatole France 1886

"Letter to Lord Alfred Douglas" / Oscar Wilde 1897

Hamlet in the twentieth century

"The true Hamlet" / G.K. Chesterton 1901

"Polonius," "Ophelia," and "Hamlet" / Walter de la Mare 1902

From Shakespearean Tragedy / A.C. Bradley 1904

"Reading Hamlet" / Anna Akhmatova 1909

"Hamlet and his problems" / T.S. Eliot 1919

From Ulysses / James Joyce 1922

"The embassy of death : an essay on Hamlet" / G. Wilson Knight 1930

"Hamlet when new," from The Sewanee Review / William Empson 1951

From The Meaning of Shakespeare / Harold C. Goddard 1951

"The character of Hamlet's mother," from Shakespeare Quarterly / Carolyn Heilbrun 1957

"Hamlet," from Doctor Zhivago / Boris Pasternak 1958

"On the value of Hamlet" / Stephen Booth 1969

"Hamlet : letters and spirits," from Shakespeare and the Question of Theory / Margaret Ferguson 1985

"Introduction," from Hamlet (Bloom's Modern Critical Interpretations) / Harold Bloom 1986

"Hamlet and the art of grafting," from Shakespeare's Scepticism / Graham Bradshaw 1987

"Introduction," from Hamlet (Major Literary Characters) / Harold Bloom 1990

"Introduction," from Hamlet (Bloom's Notes) / Harold Bloom 1995

Hamlet in the twenty-first century

From A Year in the Life of William Shakespeare, 1599 / James Shapiro 2005

Bibliography

Key editions

Modern Hamlet editions

Hamlet through the ages : an essential bibliography

General bibliography

Acknowledgments

Index.

The analysis of character / Harold Bloom

Hamlet / William Hazlitt

Hamlet / A.C. Bradley

Hamlet / Harold C. Goddard

Superposed plays: Hamlet / Richard A. Lanham

Hamlet / William Empson

Hamlet / Northrop Frye

Readiness, ripeness: Hamlet, Lear / Yves Bonnefoy

Truant dispositions: Hamlet and Machiavelli / Julia Lupton

The melancholy Dane / Bert O. States

Hamlet and the ghost of purgatory: intimations of killing the father / Anthony Low

A king of infinite space / John Lee.