Reading Hamlet as a Murder Mystery

Paper Summary:

This paper analyzes William Shakespeare?s most famous play, Hamlet in terms of detective fiction narrative. Hamlet is examined against 19th and 20th century works such as the Sherlock Holmes and Philip Marlowe stories, while the text of the play is presented and backed up as evidence of an inherent detective narrative. Some of the evidence concerns the Queen?s guilt, and Hamlet?s confrontation of the Queen in Act III Scene IV - as well as Hamlet?s madness and his relationship with Ophelia.

From the Paper:

"Hamlet," says William Hazlitt, "is the one of Shakespeare's plays that we think of the oftenest." (Hazlitt, 197) The story, the plot of Hamlet is almost irrelevant: it is his character, and the way we interpret that character, that gives vital, universal meaning to Shakespeare's work over three hundred years later. As Hazlitt comments, "[Hamlet's] reality is in the reader's mind. It is we who are Hamlet." (196) Hazlitt's is a point of view I would like to discuss further. I would argue that Hamlet lends itself almost flawlessly to multiple interpretations, thus remaining a vital, active text that has become a cultural icon since it was first staged in 1600-1601."

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