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Summary Hamlet: Context
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Hamlet: Context (historical, literature and personal)
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ContextShakespeare:
Born to the middle-class to a Catholic father, he was educated from the age of seven.
However, financial difficulty meant he had to stop, though he kept up his reading and
theatrical interests. Professional theatre was new when he started- first playhouse opened in
1567, and he was born in 1564.
He married a woman when he was 18, and she was 7 years older than him. She was also
pregnant. They had a daughter and twins, though his son Hamnet, died young. This possibly
inspired the name ‘Hamlet.’ He lived apart from his wife for most of their marriage, and
despite people claiming he was an ‘unstart crow,’ he became incredibly successful.
Both Elizabeth and James liked Shakespeare, and James even adopted Shakespeare’s
company, which became known as the King’s Men. He often set his plays away from
England to talk about English issues without angering Royalty. Also, it meant it could avoid
censorship. He was free to talk about an aging Queen. Also, by setting it in Denmark he could
challenge the stereotype that Danish people were Drunkards.
Censors were big in Elizabethan England, as in 1581 she ordered all plays to be performed
were to be checked. No suicide, no bawdy women, no politically sensitive content, so sexual
references. Shakespeare’s plays were often censored, with a passage between Rosencrantz
and Hamlet being cut due to the fear it’d upset Queen Anne.
Context affecting the writing of ‘Hamlet’:
Hamlet includes the uneasiness about religion and succession, which reflects the time he was
writing. The spying in Hamlet also has a contextual basis! Also, Hamlet shares a lot of
similarities with a Norse folktale.
Succession:
Shakespeare was born into the Elizabethan era, and Hamlet was written in 1601. Queen
Elizabeth I died in 1603, thus, the English people were nervous about succession. Hamlet was
performed for the first time in July 1602 and was printed in 1603- the first year of the
Jacobean era.
Elizabeth’s father, King Henry VIII, had broken with the Catholic Church and created the
Church of England. After his son died, Mary I took over, killing non-Catholics like crazy.
After Elizabeth took the throne, she reverted England to Anglicanism. Elizabeth was less
violent than her sister, but still executed hundreds of Catholics.
The Virgin Queen, Elizabeth had no heir and as she grew ill there was great uneasiness in
England over who the next monarch would be and what kind of religious atmosphere they
would create.
People already didn’t like Elizabeth because she was a woman, but she was generally
respected. In 1558, John Knox wrote a misogynistic pamphlet called ‘The First Blast of the
Trumpet Against the Monstrous Regiment of Women.’ It was aimed at 3 Catholic Queen.
‘Monstrous regiment’ in Latin meant ‘unnatural rule.’
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