Hamlet
Subtitle: an authoritative text, intellectual backgrounds, extracts from the sources, essays in criticism
By: William Shakespeare ; edited by Cyrus Hoy.
Contributors: Hoy, Cyrus Henry.
Edition: 2nd ed. (5)
Series: A Norton Critical Edition
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Published: 1992
Place of publication: New York, USA
Language: eng
Format: Paperback
Number of pages: 297
Copyright date: 1992
Subjects: Shakespeare, William, 1564-1616; Hamlet (Legendary character) -- Drama; Kings and rulers -- Succession -- Drama; Murder victims' families -- Drama; Fathers -- Death -- Drama; Revenge -- Drama; Princes -- Drama; Denmark -- Drama
Genres: Drama.
Description: This revised Norton Critical Edition of one of the series' most widely read texts is based on the second quarto (1604-05). Where necessary, the editor has also drawn from the folio text, recording all departures from the quarto in the Textual Notes. Punctuation and stage directions for the play have been refined, and textual annotations have been revised and expanded.

The "Intellectual Backgrounds" and "Extracts from the Sources" sections, both highly praised, remain as germane as ever. Intellectual Backgrounds includes important readings on melancholy, demonology, the nature of man, and death, including works by Peter de la Primaudaye, Timothy Bright, Lewes Lavater, G. Gifford, Michel de Montaigne, and Heironymous Cardanus. Extracts from the Sources provides pre-Shakespearean accounts of the story of Hamlet, reprinting substantial excerpts from Saxo Grammaticus's Historia Danica and Belleforest's Histoires Tragiques.

"Criticism" has been revised to accommodate the most significant recent interpretations of Hamlet while retaining the seminal essays of the First Edition. Twenty-three critical analyses are featured, including those by Samuel Johnson, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, William Hazlitt, A. C. Bradley, D. H. Lawrence, T. S. Eliot, G. Wilson Knight, C. S. Lewis, Harry Levin, Peter J. Seng, Rebecca West, Arnold Kettle, Margaret W. Ferguson, Jacqueline Rose, and William Empson.

An updated Selected Bibliography is also included.

(back cover)
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. [295]-297).