Looking for HamletA mysterious, melancholic, brooding Hamlet has gripped and fascinated four hundred years' of readers, trying to "find" and know him as he searches for and avenges his father's name. Setting itself apart from the usual discussions about Hamlet, Hunt here demonstrates that Hamlet is much more than we take him to be. Much more than the sum of his parts--more than just tragic, sexy youth and more than just vain cruelty--Hamlet is a reflection of our own aspirations and neuroses. Looking for Hamlet investigates our many searches for Hamlet, from their origins in Danish mythology through the complex problems of early printed texts, through the centuries of shifting interpretations of the young prince to our own time when Hamlet is more compelling and perplexing than ever before. Hunt presents Hamlet as a sort of missing person, the idealized being inside oneself. This search for the missing Hamlet, Hunt argues, reveals a present absence readers pursue as a means of finding and identifying ourselves. |
From inside the book
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... Hamlet's world and his troubled mind , Marvin W. Hunt gets to the heart of what gives the play its power , offers a revelatory look at Shakespeare's most popular creation , and sheds new light on why he has been such an enduring ...
... play from the period . Uncut , it runs more than four hours on the stage . At 212 minutes , William Wyler's screen epic Ben - Hur : A Tale of the Christ comes in well under the running time of the uncut Hamlet . A play so long and so ...
... played Hamlet , may be close to the truth . If English stages were the main venues for Hamlet in the seventeenth century , the play had also traveled far and wide in esoteric venues . A version of Hamlet , which survives in a manuscript ...
... Hamlet doesn't know that for two nights running the ghost of his father has ... Hamlet's best friend from college , makes his appearance . Horatio joins the watch and the ghost appears again ... play within the play ( so Introduction 5.
Marvin W. Hunt. resolving to use this play within the play ( so , at least , he declares ) to " catch the con ... Hamlet's soliloquies . This one , beginning " To be , or not to be — that is the question , " is perhaps the most famous set ...
Contents
13 | |
Two The Three Hamlets | 31 |
Relocating Reality in Hamlet | 71 |
Four Dead Son Hamlet | 85 |
Five Contrarians at the Gate | 93 |
A Brief History of Grief | 105 |
Hamlet and Melancholy | 115 |
Eight Hamlet among the Moderns | 129 |
Nine Postmodern Hamlet | 165 |
Ten Looking for Hamlet | 199 |
Bibliographic Essay | 209 |
Index | 223 |