Changing Interpretations Over Time: Voltaire
Over the next few weeks we are going to consider some different critical perspectives of Hamlet . First, it is worth considering why interpretation of the same words on the page and stage have come to be viewed so differently across the ages. There is a good explanation in one of my favourite books on poetry: ‘ Different historical periods have made very different assumptions about what literature is and have consequently come up with startlingly different accounts of the ‘same’ texts .. . historical pluralism can be graphically illustrated by the history of critical interpretations of a text such as Hamlet . In the four-hundred year period since it was written, critics and theatre producers have tried to solve the puzzle of Hamlet and have come up with a huge range of differering ‘solutions’. Each period has viewed the play differently, and critics within each period have disagreed over it. The actual text of the play - the words on the page or the stage - clearl...