Concept

Hamlet

Overview

tragedy by William Shakespeare

Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).

In the original texts

Passages from public-domain books where Hamlet is discussed.

1. And all being now accomplished, he himself died. And those who stood by saw him die, with prayers and tears, for his friends and his people loved him with their whole hearts. Thus ends the tragic tale of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark.

   E. Nesbit, Beautiful Stories from Shakespeare

   names the idea; a chapter is titled for it; opens on it

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2. The King ordered the goblets of wine to be set in readiness, and commanded that if Hamlet gave the first or second hit a salute should be fired from the guns on the battlements. Then, with hypocritical friendliness, he pretended, in honour of Hamlet, to drop a pearl of great value into the goblet, but it was in reality some deadly poison. At first the fencers seemed pretty evenly matched, but Hamlet secured the…

   Mary Macleod, The Shakespeare Story-Book

   names the idea; a chapter is titled for it; opens on it

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3. A STUDY WITH THE TEXT OF THE FOLIO OF 1623 "What would you gracious figure?" A LITTLE _LESS_ THAN KIN, AND _MORE_ THAN KIND TO WHOM I OWE IN ESPECIAL THE TRUE UNDERSTANDING OF THIS EFFORT TO GIVE HAMLET AND SHAKSPERE THEIR DUE _Christmas_, 1884 Summary: The Tragedie of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark: a study of the text of the folio of 1623 By George MacDonald [Motto]: "What would you, gracious figure?" Dr. Greville…

   William Shakespeare, Hamlet

   the book is about it; names the idea

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4. The structure of the scenes and the conspicuous images reveal a deeper wisdom than the poet himself can put into words and concepts: the same being also observed in Shakespeare, whose Hamlet, for instance, in an analogous manner talks more superficially than he acts, so that the previously mentioned lesson of Hamlet is to be gathered not from his words, but from a more profound contemplation and survey of the whole.

   Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, The Birth of Tragedy

   states what it is; names the idea; author linked in the graph

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5. But he delays and delays. Critics have made this inactivity a matter of reproach to Shakespeare, blamed him, in fact, as though for this reason the play to some extent never gets properly off. But we must remember Hamlet is not a strongly practical nature, rather a finely strung one, with emotions held in persistent reserve; a nature which finds it difficult to tear itself from its internal harmony; melancholy too…

   Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, The Philosophy of Fine Art, volume 1

   names the idea; states what it is

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Philosophers who discussed Hamlet

• Friedrich Nietzsche
• Lucian
• Hélène Cixous
• Claude Lévi-Strauss
• Renaissance
• Harold Bloom
• Simon Critchley
• Samuel Taylor Coleridge
• Carl Schmitt

Related ideas

• Macmillan Publishers
• Yale University Press
• Francis Bacon
• Harvard University Press
• Princeton University Press
• Geoffrey Chaucer
• George Eliot
• Herman Melville
• Homer
• Giovanni Pico della Mirandola
• James Joyce
• Greenwood Publishing Group
• Jacques Lacan
• John Milton
• Essays (Montaigne)
• The Wall Street Journal
• Massachusetts Institute of Technology
• Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
• The Guardian
• Metaphor
• Norway
• Longman
• Odyssey
• The Times of India

Place in the tradition

Part of Existentialism.

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