Why has this one tragedy become the archetypal Shakespeare play in modern times? Although Hamlet met with success when it was first performed, it was rarely regarded as Shakespeare's most note-worthy play in the late-sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and many readers found it deeply flawed: as Abraham Wright put it in the 1630s, Hamlet was “an indifferent play, the lines but mean”. The story of death and intrigue at the Danish court was not new – as with nearly all of Shakespeare's plays, Hamlet was adapted from other sources. The Norse folk tale of Amleth – recorded by the Danish historian Saxo Grammaticus (c.1200), the French writer Belleforest in Histoires tragiques (1559-80), and in an anonymous play (now lost) provisionally called the ur-Hamlet (c.1580s?) – provided Shakespeare with the main characters and much of the...
4342 words
Citation: Roberts, Sasha. "Hamlet". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 30 June 2002; last revised 10 September 2019. [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=4833, accessed 06 December 2025.]
