Context for A-Level English Lit: Hamlet
Here is a comprehensive list of contextual material you can deploy in essays, organised by
category.
Historical & Political Context
The Essex Rebellion (1601): The Earl of Essex, a favourite of Elizabeth I, led a
failed uprising. Shakespeare's company was paid to perform Richard II (a play about
deposing a king) the night before — suggesting Shakespeare's circle was aware of the
political dangers of succession and regicide. Hamlet was written the same year.
The Elizabethan/Jacobean succession crisis: Elizabeth I had no heir, creating
widespread anxiety about who would rule after her. Hamlet's Denmark, with its
unstable, corrupted throne, reflects this national anxiety.
James I's accession (1603): Hamlet was likely revised under James I, whose interest
in witchcraft, the supernatural, and kingship (he wrote Daemonologie) would have
shaped audience reception.
The Divine Right of Kings: The monarch was seen as God's appointed representative
— making regicide not just murder but a cosmic sin. Claudius's crime therefore
corrupts all of Denmark ("something is rotten in the state of Denmark").
Political spying and surveillance: Elizabethan/Jacobean courts were full of spies.
Polonius's use of Reynaldo to spy on Laertes, and his eavesdropping, reflects the
paranoid political climate of the court of Elizabeth I, where figures like Francis
Walsingham ran intelligence networks.
The Northern Rebellion (1569) and fears of Catholic plots: Catholic conspiracies
to overthrow Protestant monarchs were a genuine fear. The Ghost's purgatorial origins
have Catholic overtones in a Protestant England, which would have been deeply
unsettling.
Religious Context
The Reformation: England had undergone a dramatic shift from Catholicism to
Protestantism. The Ghost's description of purgatory ("I am thy father's spirit, /
Doomed for a certain term to walk the night") is explicitly Catholic theology — yet
Protestant doctrine denied purgatory's existence. This leaves the Ghost's nature
theologically ambiguous for a Protestant audience.
Protestant anxiety about ghosts: Protestant theology held that ghosts could be
demonic deceptions, not souls of the dead. Hamlet's uncertainty about the Ghost
("The spirit that I have seen / May be the devil") reflects genuine Protestant doctrinal
anxiety.
The sin of suicide: Ophelia's burial rites are curtailed because of suspected suicide —
a mortal sin denying full Christian burial. Hamlet's "To be or not to be" soliloquy
references "the Everlasting had not fixed / His canon 'gainst self-slaughter," showing
religious prohibition shapes his inaction.
, Providence: The play ends with Hamlet accepting divine providence — "There's a
divinity that shapes our ends" and "The readiness is all" — reflecting a Calvinist
acceptance of God's plan.
Memento mori tradition: The graveyard scene and Yorick's skull engage with a
widely understood tradition of meditating on death as a reminder of mortality.
Philosophical & Intellectual Context
Renaissance Humanism: The Renaissance celebrated human potential and reason.
Hamlet's famous lines — "What a piece of work is a man! How noble in reason, how
infinite in faculty!" — echo humanist ideals, but he then undercuts them: "And yet, to
me, what is this quintessence of dust?" This disillusionment shows the failure of
Renaissance optimism.
Montaigne's Essays (translated 1603): Shakespeare read Montaigne's sceptical, self-
examining essays. Hamlet's introspection, self-doubt, and philosophical questioning
closely mirror Montaigne's style of thought. "To be or not to be" echoes Montaigne's
essay That to Philosophise is to Learn to Die.
Machiavelli: Claudius is arguably a Machiavellian prince — he achieves power
through cunning and ruthless pragmatism. Elizabethan audiences would have
recognised this "Machiavel" type as a stock villain.
Scepticism and epistemology: The Renaissance saw a revival of classical scepticism
(can we know anything with certainty?). Hamlet consistently doubts — the Ghost,
Claudius's guilt, his own motives — embodying a deeply sceptical intellectual
posture.
The Chain of Being: The Elizabethan worldview placed everything in a strict
hierarchy from God down to minerals. Claudius's murder breaks this chain, causing
natural and moral disorder across the whole kingdom.
Literary & Theatrical Context
Sources — Ur-Hamlet: There was likely an earlier play called the Ur-
Hamlet (possibly by Thomas Kyd), now lost, which Shakespeare reworked. This
suggests he was deliberately transforming a revenge tragedy into something
psychologically far more complex.
Saxo Grammaticus's Gesta Danorum (c.1200): The ultimate source — a Norse
legend of Amleth, a prince who feigns madness to avenge his father. Shakespeare
inherited the plot but transformed its morality and interiority.
Thomas Kyd's The Spanish Tragedy (c.1587): The founding text of the Elizabethan
revenge tragedy genre. Hamlet consciously engages with and subverts its conventions
(the ghost demanding revenge, the play-within-a-play, the feigned madness, the final
bloodbath).
The revenge tragedy genre conventions: Audiences expected: a ghost demanding
revenge, a protagonist feigning madness, a corrupt court, a play-within-a-play, mass
death in the finale. Shakespeare fulfils and interrogates all of these.
Here is a comprehensive list of contextual material you can deploy in essays, organised by
category.
Historical & Political Context
The Essex Rebellion (1601): The Earl of Essex, a favourite of Elizabeth I, led a
failed uprising. Shakespeare's company was paid to perform Richard II (a play about
deposing a king) the night before — suggesting Shakespeare's circle was aware of the
political dangers of succession and regicide. Hamlet was written the same year.
The Elizabethan/Jacobean succession crisis: Elizabeth I had no heir, creating
widespread anxiety about who would rule after her. Hamlet's Denmark, with its
unstable, corrupted throne, reflects this national anxiety.
James I's accession (1603): Hamlet was likely revised under James I, whose interest
in witchcraft, the supernatural, and kingship (he wrote Daemonologie) would have
shaped audience reception.
The Divine Right of Kings: The monarch was seen as God's appointed representative
— making regicide not just murder but a cosmic sin. Claudius's crime therefore
corrupts all of Denmark ("something is rotten in the state of Denmark").
Political spying and surveillance: Elizabethan/Jacobean courts were full of spies.
Polonius's use of Reynaldo to spy on Laertes, and his eavesdropping, reflects the
paranoid political climate of the court of Elizabeth I, where figures like Francis
Walsingham ran intelligence networks.
The Northern Rebellion (1569) and fears of Catholic plots: Catholic conspiracies
to overthrow Protestant monarchs were a genuine fear. The Ghost's purgatorial origins
have Catholic overtones in a Protestant England, which would have been deeply
unsettling.
Religious Context
The Reformation: England had undergone a dramatic shift from Catholicism to
Protestantism. The Ghost's description of purgatory ("I am thy father's spirit, /
Doomed for a certain term to walk the night") is explicitly Catholic theology — yet
Protestant doctrine denied purgatory's existence. This leaves the Ghost's nature
theologically ambiguous for a Protestant audience.
Protestant anxiety about ghosts: Protestant theology held that ghosts could be
demonic deceptions, not souls of the dead. Hamlet's uncertainty about the Ghost
("The spirit that I have seen / May be the devil") reflects genuine Protestant doctrinal
anxiety.
The sin of suicide: Ophelia's burial rites are curtailed because of suspected suicide —
a mortal sin denying full Christian burial. Hamlet's "To be or not to be" soliloquy
references "the Everlasting had not fixed / His canon 'gainst self-slaughter," showing
religious prohibition shapes his inaction.
, Providence: The play ends with Hamlet accepting divine providence — "There's a
divinity that shapes our ends" and "The readiness is all" — reflecting a Calvinist
acceptance of God's plan.
Memento mori tradition: The graveyard scene and Yorick's skull engage with a
widely understood tradition of meditating on death as a reminder of mortality.
Philosophical & Intellectual Context
Renaissance Humanism: The Renaissance celebrated human potential and reason.
Hamlet's famous lines — "What a piece of work is a man! How noble in reason, how
infinite in faculty!" — echo humanist ideals, but he then undercuts them: "And yet, to
me, what is this quintessence of dust?" This disillusionment shows the failure of
Renaissance optimism.
Montaigne's Essays (translated 1603): Shakespeare read Montaigne's sceptical, self-
examining essays. Hamlet's introspection, self-doubt, and philosophical questioning
closely mirror Montaigne's style of thought. "To be or not to be" echoes Montaigne's
essay That to Philosophise is to Learn to Die.
Machiavelli: Claudius is arguably a Machiavellian prince — he achieves power
through cunning and ruthless pragmatism. Elizabethan audiences would have
recognised this "Machiavel" type as a stock villain.
Scepticism and epistemology: The Renaissance saw a revival of classical scepticism
(can we know anything with certainty?). Hamlet consistently doubts — the Ghost,
Claudius's guilt, his own motives — embodying a deeply sceptical intellectual
posture.
The Chain of Being: The Elizabethan worldview placed everything in a strict
hierarchy from God down to minerals. Claudius's murder breaks this chain, causing
natural and moral disorder across the whole kingdom.
Literary & Theatrical Context
Sources — Ur-Hamlet: There was likely an earlier play called the Ur-
Hamlet (possibly by Thomas Kyd), now lost, which Shakespeare reworked. This
suggests he was deliberately transforming a revenge tragedy into something
psychologically far more complex.
Saxo Grammaticus's Gesta Danorum (c.1200): The ultimate source — a Norse
legend of Amleth, a prince who feigns madness to avenge his father. Shakespeare
inherited the plot but transformed its morality and interiority.
Thomas Kyd's The Spanish Tragedy (c.1587): The founding text of the Elizabethan
revenge tragedy genre. Hamlet consciously engages with and subverts its conventions
(the ghost demanding revenge, the play-within-a-play, the feigned madness, the final
bloodbath).
The revenge tragedy genre conventions: Audiences expected: a ghost demanding
revenge, a protagonist feigning madness, a corrupt court, a play-within-a-play, mass
death in the finale. Shakespeare fulfils and interrogates all of these.
