Commentary

• Shakespearean Tragedy: Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, and Macbeth

  - A.C. Bradley, Shakespearean Tragedy: Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, and Macbeth (London: Macmillan, 1904)
  Excerpt: “In these lectures I propose to consider the four principal tragedies of Shakespeare from a single point of view. Nothing will be said of Shakespeare’s place in the history of either English literature or of the drama in general. No… More

• Hamlet: The Cosmopolitan Prince

  - Paul A. Cantor, “Hamlet: The Cosmopolitan Prince,” Interpretation: A Journal of Political Philosophy, 12, no. 1 (1984): 15-29
  Excerpt: Few critics have trouble themselves over the question: Would Prince Hamlet have made a good King of Denmark? Preoccupied with the problem of why Hamlet fails to act for much of the play, critics have understandably been reluctant to speculate about… More

• Hamlet, or the Slave-Moralist Turned Ascetic Priest

  - Ekbert Fass, “Hamlet, or the Slave-Moralist Turned Ascetic Priest,” in Tragedy and After: Euripides, Shakespeare, Goethe (Kingston & Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1984), 111–28

• Deadly Thought: Hamlet and the Human Soul

  - Jan H. Blits, Deadly Thought: Hamlet and the Human Soul (Lanham, MD: Lexington, 2001)
  Summary from the Publisher: The human soul is for pre-modern philosophers the cause of both thinking and life. This double aspect of the soul, which makes man a rational animal, expresses itself above all in human action. Deadly Thought: Hamlet and the Human… More

• Hamlet or Hecuba: The Intrusion of the Time Into the Play

  - Carl Schmitt, Hamlet or Hecuba: The Intrusion of the Time Into the Play, trans. David Pan and Jennifer R. Rust (New York: Telos, 2009)
  Summary from the Publisher: Though Carl Schmitt is best known for his legal and political theory, his 1956 Hamlet or Hecuba provides an innovative and insightful analysis of Shakespeare’s tragedy in terms of the historical situation of its creation.… More

• Philosophy and the Puzzles of Hamlet: A Study of Shakespeare’s Method

  - Leon Harold Craig, Philosophy and the Puzzles of Hamlet: A Study of Shakespeare’s Method (New York: Bloomsbury, 2014)
  Summary from the Publisher: Shakespeare’s famous play, Hamlet, has been the subject of more scholarly analysis and criticism than any other work of literature in human history. For all of its generally acknowledged virtues, however, it has also been… More