A ttempts to read Hamlet biographically may be using the wrong person's biography. Critics have b... more A ttempts to read Hamlet biographically may be using the wrong person's biography. Critics have been tempted for more than a century to draw connections between Prince Hamlet's grief for his father and William Shakespeare's private griefs, especially the deaths of his son Hamnet in 1596 and his father John in 1601. Freud's Interpretation of Dreams, drawing upon earlier claims by Georg Brandes, makes these biographical events the cornerstone of his reading of Hamlet, and thus the foundation for subsequent Freudian criticism. In the twenty-first century it remains routine, as the editors of the Third Arden Hamlet attest, to connect John and Hamnet Shakespeare's deaths to the play, no matter how elusive the connection: "It is difficult to dismiss the relevance of these experiences to the writing of Hamlet, a play which begins with the death of a father and ends with the death of a son, though it is equally difficult to define the precise nature of that relevance with any confidence." 3 To rephrase this tactful summation less diplomatically: Shakespeareans are confident that the deaths of Shakespeare's son and father have influenced Hamlet, but inconvenient facts make it impossible to say quite how. The notion that Hamlet reflects Shakespeare's biography is not so much a hypothesis as a conviction, a presumed truth rather than a proved one. That presumption of truth is now firm and widespread, "difficult to dismiss," as the Arden 3 editors say, because so generally accepted.
Thomas Dekker, Rock Star: “Golden Slumbers,” the Beatles, and the Wages of Authorship
The lyric poem known as “Golden Slumbers,” from Dekker, Chettle and Haughton’s 1603 play Patient ... more The lyric poem known as “Golden Slumbers,” from Dekker, Chettle and Haughton’s 1603 play Patient Grissil, has been repeatedly appropriated over the past four hundred years, becoming at various points an “anonymous, traditional” folk song, a Beatles hit, a nursery rhyme, a minor Elizabethan anthology piece attributed to an established author, and a piece of gnomic folk wisdom. All of these identities continue to coexist today. The poem flourishes in a network of viral transmission, confounding conventional theories of literary canonization. The history of the poem’s transmission reveals Thomas Dekker’s peculiarly liminal role in the English canon and casts a startling light on how discourses of authorship and literary value function. The assignment of an author tends to stabilize the text itself, but also paradoxically strips away artistic complexity and obscures clear authorial intentions. Indeed, the poem does not function as a “work” at all. The various iterations of the text do not direct their audiences toward other uses of that text, or toward any sense of a stable, coherent literary object.
Biographical criticism of Hamlet has focused on the deaths of Shakespeare's father and son. Such ... more Biographical criticism of Hamlet has focused on the deaths of Shakespeare's father and son. Such criticism is underwritten by deep theoretical commitments to Shakespeare's authority, but undermined by the biographical evidence, which permits no clear link to Hamlet. There is a far clearer biographical connection between Hamlet and the actor who played him. Richard Burbage had lost his own father, the famous actor and playhouse-owner James Burbage, not long before the canonical texts of Hamlet were created. Some of Hamlet's audience would know that fact well.Some form of Hamlet had been performed at James Burbage's Theater in his lifetime, possibly with Richard Burbage as Hamlet. Reviving the part after James Burbage's death would invite at least some of the audience to view Richard's performance as transparently autobiographical. The play works to deflect such presumptions. Hamlet's emphasis on Hamlet's interiority and its insistence that theatrical expression is always incomplete, leaving some crucial residue of emotion unexpressed, artfully defuses its star actor's celebrity, allowing him space to distinguish between his self and his character. The Hamlet we know strategically denies biographical reading. [J. J. M.]
Renaissance Shakespeare/Shakespeare Renaissances: Proceedings of the Ninth World Shakespeare Congress, ed. Martin Procházka, Andreas Hoefele, Hanna Scolnicov and Michael Dobson. University of Delaware Press, 2014
Renaissance Drama 30: New Series XXX: …, Jan 1, 2001
Page 105. William Shakespeare's Sir John Oldcastle JAMES J. MARINO In 1619, William Jagg... more Page 105. William Shakespeare's Sir John Oldcastle JAMES J. MARINO In 1619, William Jaggard reprinted The First Part of Sir John Oldcastle with a falsified date, 1600, and added a new byline: William Shake-speare. Had ...
Renaissance Drama and the Politics of Publication: Readings in the English Book Trade (review)
Renaissance Quarterly, Jan 1, 2008
Page 1. The careful control of printed representations of Quaker belief and activity allowed the ... more Page 1. The careful control of printed representations of Quaker belief and activity allowed the dispersed and itinerant activity of Quaker preachers to seem, and sometimes to be, unified and consistent. The final and longest section ...
A ttempts to read Hamlet biographically may be using the wrong person's biography. Critics have b... more A ttempts to read Hamlet biographically may be using the wrong person's biography. Critics have been tempted for more than a century to draw connections between Prince Hamlet's grief for his father and William Shakespeare's private griefs, especially the deaths of his son Hamnet in 1596 and his father John in 1601. Freud's Interpretation of Dreams, drawing upon earlier claims by Georg Brandes, makes these biographical events the cornerstone of his reading of Hamlet, and thus the foundation for subsequent Freudian criticism. In the twenty-first century it remains routine, as the editors of the Third Arden Hamlet attest, to connect John and Hamnet Shakespeare's deaths to the play, no matter how elusive the connection: "It is difficult to dismiss the relevance of these experiences to the writing of Hamlet, a play which begins with the death of a father and ends with the death of a son, though it is equally difficult to define the precise nature of that relevance with any confidence." 3 To rephrase this tactful summation less diplomatically: Shakespeareans are confident that the deaths of Shakespeare's son and father have influenced Hamlet, but inconvenient facts make it impossible to say quite how. The notion that Hamlet reflects Shakespeare's biography is not so much a hypothesis as a conviction, a presumed truth rather than a proved one. That presumption of truth is now firm and widespread, "difficult to dismiss," as the Arden 3 editors say, because so generally accepted.
Thomas Dekker, Rock Star: “Golden Slumbers,” the Beatles, and the Wages of Authorship
The lyric poem known as “Golden Slumbers,” from Dekker, Chettle and Haughton’s 1603 play Patient ... more The lyric poem known as “Golden Slumbers,” from Dekker, Chettle and Haughton’s 1603 play Patient Grissil, has been repeatedly appropriated over the past four hundred years, becoming at various points an “anonymous, traditional” folk song, a Beatles hit, a nursery rhyme, a minor Elizabethan anthology piece attributed to an established author, and a piece of gnomic folk wisdom. All of these identities continue to coexist today. The poem flourishes in a network of viral transmission, confounding conventional theories of literary canonization. The history of the poem’s transmission reveals Thomas Dekker’s peculiarly liminal role in the English canon and casts a startling light on how discourses of authorship and literary value function. The assignment of an author tends to stabilize the text itself, but also paradoxically strips away artistic complexity and obscures clear authorial intentions. Indeed, the poem does not function as a “work” at all. The various iterations of the text do not direct their audiences toward other uses of that text, or toward any sense of a stable, coherent literary object.
Biographical criticism of Hamlet has focused on the deaths of Shakespeare's father and son. Such ... more Biographical criticism of Hamlet has focused on the deaths of Shakespeare's father and son. Such criticism is underwritten by deep theoretical commitments to Shakespeare's authority, but undermined by the biographical evidence, which permits no clear link to Hamlet. There is a far clearer biographical connection between Hamlet and the actor who played him. Richard Burbage had lost his own father, the famous actor and playhouse-owner James Burbage, not long before the canonical texts of Hamlet were created. Some of Hamlet's audience would know that fact well.Some form of Hamlet had been performed at James Burbage's Theater in his lifetime, possibly with Richard Burbage as Hamlet. Reviving the part after James Burbage's death would invite at least some of the audience to view Richard's performance as transparently autobiographical. The play works to deflect such presumptions. Hamlet's emphasis on Hamlet's interiority and its insistence that theatrical expression is always incomplete, leaving some crucial residue of emotion unexpressed, artfully defuses its star actor's celebrity, allowing him space to distinguish between his self and his character. The Hamlet we know strategically denies biographical reading. [J. J. M.]
Renaissance Shakespeare/Shakespeare Renaissances: Proceedings of the Ninth World Shakespeare Congress, ed. Martin Procházka, Andreas Hoefele, Hanna Scolnicov and Michael Dobson. University of Delaware Press, 2014
Renaissance Drama 30: New Series XXX: …, Jan 1, 2001
Page 105. William Shakespeare's Sir John Oldcastle JAMES J. MARINO In 1619, William Jagg... more Page 105. William Shakespeare's Sir John Oldcastle JAMES J. MARINO In 1619, William Jaggard reprinted The First Part of Sir John Oldcastle with a falsified date, 1600, and added a new byline: William Shake-speare. Had ...
Renaissance Drama and the Politics of Publication: Readings in the English Book Trade (review)
Renaissance Quarterly, Jan 1, 2008
Page 1. The careful control of printed representations of Quaker belief and activity allowed the ... more Page 1. The careful control of printed representations of Quaker belief and activity allowed the dispersed and itinerant activity of Quaker preachers to seem, and sometimes to be, unified and consistent. The final and longest section ...
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