Hamlet: Context & Background
Context Profile – At a Glance
- Date Written: Around 1599–1601, late in the reign of Elizabeth I.
- Genre: Revenge Tragedy.
- Primary Source: The Scandinavian legend of Amleth, recorded by Saxo Grammaticus.
- The "Ur-Hamlet": A lost earlier play, probably by Thomas Kyd, that Shakespeare reworked.
- Religious Tension: The play sits between the old Catholic world of ghosts and Purgatory and the new Protestant one of Wittenberg and doubt.
- Political Backdrop: Written near the end of Elizabeth I's reign, when England feared an uncertain succession.
The Origins: From Legend to Stage
Shakespeare did not invent the story of Hamlet. As he did with most of his plays, he took an existing tale and transformed it, turning a crude revenge story into a study of the human mind.
The oldest source is the Scandinavian legend of Amleth, written down by the Danish historian Saxo Grammaticus in the twelfth century. In that version the young prince pretends to be a simpleton in order to survive after his uncle kills his father. But the legendary Amleth has none of Hamlet's hesitation: he feels no guilt, burns down the hall, kills his uncle, and becomes king. Scholars also believe Shakespeare drew on a lost play known as the "Ur-Hamlet", most likely written by Thomas Kyd, author of The Spanish Tragedy. This earlier play seems to have introduced the Ghost and the play-within-a-play, the very conventions of Elizabethan Revenge Tragedy that Shakespeare would later complicate.
Exam tip: When a question asks how Shakespeare transformed his sources, focus on the hero rather than the plot. The shape of the story stays much the same; what changes is the man at its centre. Amleth's certainty becomes Hamlet's doubt, and his swift revenge becomes Hamlet's long delay. Make that single change your argument, and you can explain almost everything that is original about the play.
The Religious Crisis: Purgatory and the Reformation
To understand Hamlet you have to understand the religious upheaval of the Reformation. England had recently turned from Catholic to Protestant, leaving people deeply uncertain about death and the afterlife.
That uncertainty is built into the Ghost. It says it has come from a place of suffering where it is "confined to fast in fires" – the Catholic idea of Purgatory, where souls are cleansed of their sins. Yet Prince Hamlet studies at Wittenberg, the German university where Martin Luther had launched the Protestant Reformation. Protestant teaching rejected Purgatory altogether and warned that any apparent ghost was more likely a devil in disguise, sent to tempt the living into sin. This is exactly Hamlet's fear: he cannot be sure whether the figure on the battlements is a "spirit of health or goblin damned", and he worries that "The spirit that I have seen / May be the devil". His hesitation is not simple cowardice but a genuine theological problem – a Protestant scholar haunted by a Catholic ghost.
Exam tip: Hamlet's hesitation is one of the most-discussed problems in the play, and a strong essay will not reduce it to weakness. Theologically, he is right to pause: a Protestant scholar genuinely cannot trust a ghost from Purgatory without risking his soul. Framing the delay as a religious dilemma turns a supposed flaw into a coherent position, and sharpens any answer on the soliloquies.
Political Anxiety: The End of an Era
Hamlet was written around 1600, in the final years of Queen Elizabeth I's reign. The queen was old and childless, and England faced the frightening prospect of having no clear heir. Fear of civil war, foreign invasion and a disputed succession hung over the country.
That mood seeps into the play. Denmark is arming for war, the guards on the walls are tense, and the question of who rules – and who ought to rule – runs through every act. When Marcellus says "Something is rotten in the state of Denmark", the rottenness is political as well as personal: a whole court and kingdom are sick, not just one guilty man. The play even spells out how the fall of a ruler drags everyone down with him, warning that "The cease of majesty / Dies not alone; but, like a gulf, doth draw / What's near it with it".
Exam tip: Strong essays read Hamlet politically as well as personally. The "rotten state of Denmark" is not only a metaphor for Claudius's private sin; it is Shakespeare diagnosing a court, a succession and a nation under threat. Connecting Hamlet's grief to the instability of his world – and Shakespeare's – opens up readings that go well beyond character study.
Renaissance Humanism and the First Modern Mind
Hamlet is often called the first truly modern character in literature, and the reason is Renaissance Humanism. Unlike the action heroes of older drama, Hamlet is a scholar who prizes reason, philosophy and the sheer complexity of the human mind, marvelling that "What a piece of work is a man!"
He is caught between two value systems. The old medieval code of blood revenge demands action, honour and violence; the new Humanist outlook prizes thought, conscience and analysis. Hamlet's tragedy is that he is a man of reflection trapped in a story that demands brutal, immediate action. The gap between the two is where the whole play lives.
Exam tip: The Humanist framing is one of the most flexible tools you have for Hamlet. It explains why he thinks instead of acting, why he philosophises instead of fighting, and why he is remembered as the first modern character in literature. Place Hamlet at the meeting point of medieval honour and Renaissance reason, and you can answer almost any question about his behaviour.
Key Takeaways
- The story is borrowed, the mind is new: Shakespeare took an old revenge legend and gave its hero doubt.
- Religion shapes the Ghost: A Catholic ghost meets a Protestant scholar, and Hamlet cannot trust what he sees.
- The politics are real: Denmark's "rotten" state mirrors England's fear of an uncertain succession.
- Humanism makes Hamlet modern: He values reason over action, which is both his gift and his curse.
- Context explains the delay: Religion, politics and philosophy all help explain why Hamlet hesitates.
Hamlet Context – Frequently Asked Questions
What is the "Ur-Hamlet"?
The "Ur-Hamlet" is the name scholars give to a lost play that came before Shakespeare's Hamlet. The prefix "ur-" simply means "original" or "earliest". It is thought to have been staged in the late 1580s and is usually attributed to Thomas Kyd, the author of The Spanish Tragedy.
No copy survives, so we know it only from passing references by contemporaries, one of whom recalled a ghost crying "Hamlet, revenge!" Those references suggest it already contained a ghost demanding vengeance and the basic revenge plot. Shakespeare seems to have used this earlier play as a skeleton, then transformed it by adding the psychological depth and philosophical reflection that make his version unique.
Why is the University of Wittenberg significant?
Shakespeare makes a point of telling us that Hamlet and Horatio study at Wittenberg, and the choice is deliberate. Wittenberg was the German university where Martin Luther began the Protestant Reformation in 1517, nailing his theses to the church door. To an Elizabethan audience the name instantly signalled the new, reformed, sceptical world of Protestant thought.
By placing Hamlet there, Shakespeare marks him as a modern Protestant intellectual who values reason and doubt. That puts him in direct tension with the Ghost, who speaks of Purgatory, a Catholic idea that Protestant teaching rejected. The detail helps explain why Hamlet cannot simply accept what the Ghost tells him: his education has taught him to question exactly this kind of apparition.
How does the play reflect the anxieties of 1600?
Written at the close of Elizabeth I's reign, the play is shadowed by fear of an uncertain succession. The queen was old and had no heir, and many in England dreaded civil war or foreign invasion once she died – an external threat mirrored in the play by the army of Fortinbras of Norway, poised on Denmark's border.
The line "Something is rotten in the state of Denmark" captures that national mood: a sense of a country waiting for its ruler to die and fearing that the whole political order might collapse with her. Reading the play this way shows that its talk of disease and decay is not only about Claudius's guilt but about the health of an entire state.
What is a Revenge Tragedy?
Revenge Tragedy was a hugely popular genre in Elizabethan theatre, shaped by the Roman playwright Seneca and made fashionable by Thomas Kyd's The Spanish Tragedy. Its conventions were well known to audiences: a secret murder, a ghost demanding vengeance, a hero who hesitates, episodes of real or feigned madness, a play-within-a-play, and a bloody finale in which most of the cast dies.
Hamlet contains every one of these ingredients, which is why it is the most famous example of the form. But Shakespeare also turns the genre inside out. Where a typical revenge play drives towards its killings, Hamlet keeps stopping to think, so the real drama moves inside the hero's mind. The play both fulfils the genre and quietly questions it.
Did Shakespeare's audience believe in ghosts?
Belief was genuinely divided, and Shakespeare exploits the division. Traditional Catholics held that a ghost could be a soul returning from Purgatory to ask for prayers or to set something right. Protestants rejected Purgatory entirely and taught that such apparitions were demons sent by the Devil to deceive the living, often into deadly sin like murder or suicide.
This is why the Ghost is so unsettling rather than simply frightening: the audience, like Hamlet, cannot be certain what it is. The critic Stephen Greenblatt, in his 2001 study Hamlet in Purgatory, argues that the play is haunted by the very Catholic beliefs the Reformation had tried to abolish, so that the Ghost carries the unfinished business of a whole lost religious world. Hamlet's hesitation, in this light, is not cowardice but a reasonable fear that the spirit may be a "goblin damned" trying to trap his soul.