Hamlet Book

Series Introduction     ix
Volume Introduction   Harold Bloom     xi
Biography of William Shakespeare     1
Summary of Hamlet     5
Key Passages in Hamlet     19
List of Characters in Hamlet     35
Criticism Through the Ages     39
Hamlet in the Seventeenth Century     41
1605-George Chapman, and John Marston. From Eastward Ho   Ben Jonson     45
1608-Chapters 2-5 from The Hystorie of Hamblet   Francois de Belleforest     48
1619-From A Funeral Elegy on the Death of Richard Burbage$dAnonymous     66
1661-1668-From The Diary of Samuel Pepys   Samuel Pepys     67
1679-From "The Preface to the Play," in Troilus and Cressida   John Dryden     67
1698-From A Short View of the Immorality and Profaneness of the English Stage   Jeremy Collier     75
1699-From The Antient and Modern Stages Survey'd   James Drake     76
Hamlet in the Eighteenth Century     81
1709-From Some Account of the Life of Mr. William Shakespear   Nicholas Rowe     86
1734-"On Tragedy," from Letters Concerning the English Nation   Voltaire     88
1735-From The Prompter   WilliamPopple     92
1736-From Some Remarks on the Tragedy of Hamlet Prince of Denmark   Thomas Hanmer     98
1748-From "Discourse on Ancient and Modern Tragedy"   Voltaire     105
1749-From Tom Jones   Henry Fielding     106
1765-From "The Preface to Shakespeare" and "Notes on the Plays," in The Plays of William Shakespeare   Samuel Johnson     110
1768-From A Sentimental Journey Through France and Italy   Laurence Sterne     117
1776-From "A Letter from M. Voltaire to the French Academie Containing an Appeal to That Society on the Merits of Shakespeare, Translated from the Original"   Voltaire     121
1780-From The Mirror   Henry Mackenzie     124
1795-From Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship   Johann Wolfgang von Goethe     131
Hamlet in the Nineteenth Century     137
1809-From Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature   August Wilhelm von Schlegel     141
1811-"On the Tragedies of Shakespeare"   Charles Lamb     144
1814-"Mr. Kean's Hamlet," from Morning Chronicle   William Hazlitt     146
1817-"Hamlet," from Characters of Shakespear's Plays   William Hazlitt     150
1818-From Lectures and Notes on Shakspere and Other English Poets    Samuel Taylor Coleridge     156
1845-From "William Hazlitt"   Edgar Allan Poe     161
1860-"Hamlet and Don Quixote: The Two Eternal Human Types"   Ivan Turgenev     162
1864-From William Shakespeare   Victor Hugo     175
1868-"Shakespeare Once More"   James Russell Lowell     181
1871-From The Birth of Tragedy   Friedrich Nietzsche     192
1875-"The Elder Hamlet"   George Macdonald     200
1880-From "Hamlet," in A Study of Shakespeare   Algernon Charles Swinburne     206
1884-"Hamlet Once More"   Matthew Arnold     210
1884-From The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn   Mark Twain     211
1886-"Hamlet at the Comedie-Francaise"   Anatole France     215
1897-"Letter to Lord Alfred Douglas"   Oscar Wilde     218
Hamlet in the Twentieth Century     221
1901-"The True Hamlet"   G. K. Chesterton     226
1902-"Polonius," "Ophelia," and "Hamlet"   Walter de la Mare     228
1904-From Shakespearean Tragedy   A. C. Bradley     230
1909-"Reading Hamlet"   Anna Akhmatova     247
1919-"Hamlet and His Problems"    T. S. Eliot     248
1922-From Ulysses   James Joyce     252
1930-"The Embassy of Death: An Essay on Hamlet"   G. Wilson Knight     264
1951-"Hamlet When New," from The Sewanee Review   William Empson     277
1951-From The Meaning of Shakespeare   Harold C. Goddard     307
1957-"The Character of Hamlet's Mother," from Shakespeare Quarterly   Carolyn Heilbrun     318
1958-"Hamlet," from Doctor Zhivago   Boris Pasternak     326
1969-"On the Value of Hamlet"   Stephen Booth     327
1985-"Hamlet: Letters and Spirits," from Shakespeare and the Question of Theory   Margaret Ferguson     349
1986-"Introduction," from Hamlet (Bloom's Modern Critical Interpretations)   Harold Bloom     366
1987-"Hamlet and the Art of Grafting," from Shakespeare's Scepticism   Graham Bradshaw     375
1990-"Introduction," from Hamlet (Major Literary Characters)   Harold Bloom     398
1995-"Introduction," from Hamlet (Bloom's Notes)   Harold Bloom     404
Hamlet in the Twenty-first Century     407
2005-From A Year in the Life of William Shakespeare, 1599   James Shapiro     410
Bibliography      413
Key Editions     413
Modern Hamlet Editions     414
Hamlet Through the Ages: An Essential Bibliography     415
General Bibliography     419
Acknowledgments     427
Index     429