The Ghosts of Hamlet

If the aim of criticism is, in Arnold's phrase, 'to see the object as in itself it really is', what 'is' Hamlet, when every age has seen the play quite differently? Despite certain notable accounts, there is no single reading that seems to have interpreted the play for our time. This book approaches the play through its influence on the work of some writers of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Separate chapters show their different responses to Hamlet either as an object of their direct criticism or as a source of myth, symbol, mask and allusion in their own creative works. The aspects of Hamlet that preoccupy the different writers are reflected in their literature. They provide a new perspective in which to see the writers themselves, and contribute to the author's own critical reading of Hamlet in Part II.