Peter Lake on the four genres represented in Hamlet
If Hamlet is NOT a revenge tragedy, what is it?
Peter Lake [1] shares his ideas on this topic and more in his 2020 book, Hamlet’s Choice: Religion and Resistance in Shakespeare's Revenge Tragedies.[2]
Lake claims Hamlet is not *merely* a revenge tragedy, but much more, bending and mixing genres.
If Hamlet is not *merely* a revenge tragedy, what is it?
In a (Senecan, or heroic/Homeric) revenge tragedy like The Spanish Tragedy (1587, Thomas Kyd), injustices occur, and a victim of wrongs decides to take revenge. Eventually there’s a lot of plotting of violence, and the revenge is worse than the original injustice.
Not in Hamlet, Lake observes.
Shakespeare had already written the successful Titus Andronicus (1594), a more traditional revenge tragedy, which ends like The Spanish Tragedy, with the main character killing the heirs of the villains and cooking them, and then making the villains eat it.
Yuck.
Nothing like that happens in Hamlet.
Lake observes: By the time Shakespeare wrote or rewrote his own version of Hamlet, he had already written Julius Caesar, which, like Hamlet, has to do with corruption in government.
But unlike Hamlet, who has a strong conscience that keeps him from suicide, the Romans had no problem with suicide as an honorable death after fighting for one’s ideals.
And unlike Hamlet, who only plots to catch the conscience of the king in a play (“The Mousetrap,” or “The Murder of Gonzago”), characters in Julius Caesar plot carefully to kill Caesar, and do so, because they think he’s a tyrant.
It doesn’t end well, leading in part to the fall of the Roman Empire.
The ending of Hamlet, in contrast, preserves public order.
Lake claims that Shakespeare wanted Hamlet to be more than a revenge tragedy, so he toys with audience expectations.
Lake claims (98-109) that Hamlet mixes genres:
- REVENGE TRAGEDY (modified, with other genres below):
- HISTORY PLAY: Something rotten in the state is overcome, often with the help of foreign intervention (as in Richard III).
- MURDER PAMPHLET: A murder is exposed, and the murderer brought to justice, executed by the state, sometimes repenting before death (human and divine justice).
- CONVERSION NARRATIVE: Where someone converts to another religion, or branch of Christianity, or repents of sin.
Lake explains: these genres were familiar to Elizabethan and Jacobean audiences, and Shakespeare masterfully combines them in Hamlet.
In the end, Hamlet does not plot revenge, but trusts Providence: “Let be.” Before the duel, he is more concerned about apologizing to Laertes than about plotting. “The readiness is all.”
In a play like The Spanish Tragedy, it is assumed that the avenger (who takes terrible revenge) will go to hell for his crimes. But that may not be Hamlet’s fate.
Claudius is unrepentant, damned.
While guilty of manslaughter (Polonius) and perhaps murder in self defense (Rosencrantz & Guildenstern) Hamlet may be among the elect (saved).
~~~~~~
NOTES:
[1] Peter Lake is University Distinguished Professor of History, Professor of the History of Christianity, Divinity School; Martha Rivers Ingram Chair of History, Vanderbilt University.
- He is a member of the Institute for Advanced Study.
- While on leave academic year 2021- 2022, he is also a corresponding Fellow of the British Acadamy. Image via British Acadamy. Fair use. Image via British Acadamy. Fair use.
https://www.thebritishacademy.ac.uk/media/images/peter-lake.2e16d0ba.fill-400x400.format-png.png
Lake has written numerous books and edited various collections of essays.
Books include
- Hamlet’s Choice: Religion and Resistance in Shakespeare's Revenge Tragedies (2020)
- All Hail to the Archpriest: Confessional Conflict, Toleration, and the Politics of Publicity in Post-Reformation England (with Michael Questier, 2019)
- How Shakespeare Put Politics on the Stage (2016)
- Bad Queen Bess?: Libels, Secret Histories, and the Politics of Publicity in the Reign of Queen Elizabeth I (2015)
- The Trials of Margaret Clitherow: Persecution, Martyrdom and the Politics of Sanctity in Elizabethan England (2011)
- The Anti-Christ`s Lewd Hat: Protestants, Papists and Players in Post-Reformation England (2002)
- The Boxmaker’s Revenge: ‘Orthodoxy,’ ‘Heterodoxy,’ and the Politics of the Parish in Early Stuart London (2001)
- Anglicans and Puritans?: Presbyterianism and English conformist thought from Whitgift to Hooker (1988)
- Moderate Puritans and the Elizabethan Church (1982)
Books edited by Peter Lake and others:
Editor with Stephen Pincus,
The Public Sphere in Early Modern England, (Manchester University Press, 2007).
Editor with Ken Fincham,
Religious politics in post reformation England (Boydell and Brewer, 2006)
Editor with Tom Cogswell and Richard Cust,
Politics, religion and popularity (Cambridge University Press, 2002)
Editor with Michael Questier,
Orthodoxy and Conformity in the English Church, Boydell and Brewer, 2000.
Editor with Kevin Sharpe
Culture and Politics in early Stuart England, Macmillan and Stanford University Press, 1994.
Editor with Maria Dowling
Protestantism and the National Church in Sixteenth Century England, Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1987.
[2] Hamlet’s Choice: Religion and Resistance in Shakespeare's Revenge Tragedies (2020).
Book cover image via Yale Books:
https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300247817/hamlets-choice/
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Disclaimer: If and when I quote or paraphrase bible passages or mention religion in many of my blog posts, I do not intend to promote any religion over another, nor am I attempting to promote religious belief in general; only to explore how the Bible and religion influenced Shakespeare, his plays, and his age.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Thanks for reading!
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
My current project is a book tentatively titled Hamlet’s Bible, about biblical allusions and plot echoes in Hamlet.
Below is a link to a list of some of my top posts (“greatest hits”), including a description of my book project (last item on the list):
https://pauladrianfried.blogspot.com/2019/12/top-20-hamlet-bible-posts.html
I post every week, and occasionally more than once a week, so please visit as often as you like, and consider subscribing.
You can subscribe from the menu in the upper left, and also find there a menu to translate to languages other than English.
Peter Lake [1] shares his ideas on this topic and more in his 2020 book, Hamlet’s Choice: Religion and Resistance in Shakespeare's Revenge Tragedies.[2]
If Hamlet is not *merely* a revenge tragedy, what is it?
In a (Senecan, or heroic/Homeric) revenge tragedy like The Spanish Tragedy (1587, Thomas Kyd), injustices occur, and a victim of wrongs decides to take revenge. Eventually there’s a lot of plotting of violence, and the revenge is worse than the original injustice.
Not in Hamlet, Lake observes.
Shakespeare had already written the successful Titus Andronicus (1594), a more traditional revenge tragedy, which ends like The Spanish Tragedy, with the main character killing the heirs of the villains and cooking them, and then making the villains eat it.
Yuck.
Nothing like that happens in Hamlet.
Lake observes: By the time Shakespeare wrote or rewrote his own version of Hamlet, he had already written Julius Caesar, which, like Hamlet, has to do with corruption in government.
But unlike Hamlet, who has a strong conscience that keeps him from suicide, the Romans had no problem with suicide as an honorable death after fighting for one’s ideals.
And unlike Hamlet, who only plots to catch the conscience of the king in a play (“The Mousetrap,” or “The Murder of Gonzago”), characters in Julius Caesar plot carefully to kill Caesar, and do so, because they think he’s a tyrant.
It doesn’t end well, leading in part to the fall of the Roman Empire.
The ending of Hamlet, in contrast, preserves public order.
Lake claims that Shakespeare wanted Hamlet to be more than a revenge tragedy, so he toys with audience expectations.
Lake claims (98-109) that Hamlet mixes genres:
- REVENGE TRAGEDY (modified, with other genres below):
- HISTORY PLAY: Something rotten in the state is overcome, often with the help of foreign intervention (as in Richard III).
- MURDER PAMPHLET: A murder is exposed, and the murderer brought to justice, executed by the state, sometimes repenting before death (human and divine justice).
- CONVERSION NARRATIVE: Where someone converts to another religion, or branch of Christianity, or repents of sin.
Lake explains: these genres were familiar to Elizabethan and Jacobean audiences, and Shakespeare masterfully combines them in Hamlet.
In the end, Hamlet does not plot revenge, but trusts Providence: “Let be.” Before the duel, he is more concerned about apologizing to Laertes than about plotting. “The readiness is all.”
In a play like The Spanish Tragedy, it is assumed that the avenger (who takes terrible revenge) will go to hell for his crimes. But that may not be Hamlet’s fate.
Claudius is unrepentant, damned.
While guilty of manslaughter (Polonius) and perhaps murder in self defense (Rosencrantz & Guildenstern) Hamlet may be among the elect (saved).
~~~~~~
NOTES:
[1] Peter Lake is University Distinguished Professor of History, Professor of the History of Christianity, Divinity School; Martha Rivers Ingram Chair of History, Vanderbilt University.
- He is a member of the Institute for Advanced Study.
- While on leave academic year 2021- 2022, he is also a corresponding Fellow of the British Acadamy. Image via British Acadamy. Fair use. Image via British Acadamy. Fair use.
https://www.thebritishacademy.ac.uk/media/images/peter-lake.2e16d0ba.fill-400x400.format-png.png
Lake has written numerous books and edited various collections of essays.
Books include
- Hamlet’s Choice: Religion and Resistance in Shakespeare's Revenge Tragedies (2020)
- All Hail to the Archpriest: Confessional Conflict, Toleration, and the Politics of Publicity in Post-Reformation England (with Michael Questier, 2019)
- How Shakespeare Put Politics on the Stage (2016)
- Bad Queen Bess?: Libels, Secret Histories, and the Politics of Publicity in the Reign of Queen Elizabeth I (2015)
- The Trials of Margaret Clitherow: Persecution, Martyrdom and the Politics of Sanctity in Elizabethan England (2011)
- The Anti-Christ`s Lewd Hat: Protestants, Papists and Players in Post-Reformation England (2002)
- The Boxmaker’s Revenge: ‘Orthodoxy,’ ‘Heterodoxy,’ and the Politics of the Parish in Early Stuart London (2001)
- Anglicans and Puritans?: Presbyterianism and English conformist thought from Whitgift to Hooker (1988)
- Moderate Puritans and the Elizabethan Church (1982)
Books edited by Peter Lake and others:
Editor with Stephen Pincus,
The Public Sphere in Early Modern England, (Manchester University Press, 2007).
Editor with Ken Fincham,
Religious politics in post reformation England (Boydell and Brewer, 2006)
Editor with Tom Cogswell and Richard Cust,
Politics, religion and popularity (Cambridge University Press, 2002)
Editor with Michael Questier,
Orthodoxy and Conformity in the English Church, Boydell and Brewer, 2000.
Editor with Kevin Sharpe
Culture and Politics in early Stuart England, Macmillan and Stanford University Press, 1994.
Editor with Maria Dowling
Protestantism and the National Church in Sixteenth Century England, Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1987.
[2] Hamlet’s Choice: Religion and Resistance in Shakespeare's Revenge Tragedies (2020).
Book cover image via Yale Books:
https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300247817/hamlets-choice/
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Disclaimer: If and when I quote or paraphrase bible passages or mention religion in many of my blog posts, I do not intend to promote any religion over another, nor am I attempting to promote religious belief in general; only to explore how the Bible and religion influenced Shakespeare, his plays, and his age.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Thanks for reading!
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
My current project is a book tentatively titled Hamlet’s Bible, about biblical allusions and plot echoes in Hamlet.
Below is a link to a list of some of my top posts (“greatest hits”), including a description of my book project (last item on the list):
https://pauladrianfried.blogspot.com/2019/12/top-20-hamlet-bible-posts.html
I post every week, and occasionally more than once a week, so please visit as often as you like, and consider subscribing.
You can subscribe from the menu in the upper left, and also find there a menu to translate to languages other than English.
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