Shakespeare's play Hamlet is considered a revenge play. Revenge plays typically involve a ghost revealing a murder, a hero who seeks revenge for the murder, and a chain of events that leads to confrontation and the death of the murderers. Hamlet follows this pattern, with Hamlet seeking revenge for the murder of his father, as revealed to him by his father's ghost. The play draws on earlier revenge play traditions from Roman playwrights and English predecessors like Thomas Kyd. While building on these established conventions, Shakespeare's genius is seen in his innovative character development and psychological complexity that elevate the play beyond its revenge plot origins.

1. Shakespeare’s Hamlet
A Revenge Play
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2. Definition
• Shakespearian scholar Ashley Thorndike
defines a revenge play as this:
• “A tragedy whose leading motive is revenge
and whose main action deals with the
progress of this revenge, leading to the death
of the murderers and often to the death of the
avenger himself” (125).

3. Earliest precursor
• Roman Playwright
– Playwright Lucius
Seneca (4BC – 65AD)
– The Renaissance:
Latin plays were
popular at English
universities during
the latter half of the
sixteenth century http://media-1.web.britannica.com/eb-media/33/9433-
004-DD3A0405.jpg

4. Typical features
• Roman revenge plays included:
– Graphic violence
– Blood revenge for murder
– Characters tricked into becoming accomplices in
the act of revenge
– Ghosts of the dead clamor for revenge

5. Chain of events
• Exposition (usually by the ghost)
• Anticipation (detailed planning)
• Confrontation (of the avenger and the
intended victim)
• Partial Execution (or temporary thwarting of
the plan)
• Completion (of the act of vengeance)

6. Precursors to Hamlet
• Thyestes by Lucius
Seneca
• Gorboducby Thomas
Norton and Thomas
Sackville
• The Spanish Tragedy
by Thomas Kyd
• Titus Andronicus by
William Shakespeare http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/4/46/Spani
sh-tragedy.gif/220px-Spanish-tragedy.gif

7. Early Modern revenge plays featured:
• A hesitating revenger
• A villain
• Complex plotting
• Murderers
• Characters of noble birth
• A play within a play
• A ghost
• A suffering heroine
• Madness, real and feigned
• Lust
• Physical violence, such as torture and poisoning

8. Likely plot source
• “Amleth”
• HistoricaeDanicae: Latin history of Denmark
• Plot closely matches that of Hamlet
– King murdered by brother (Feng), marries sister in law,
Gerutha
– Prince Amleth feigns madness; tested by “fair woman”
– Kills and eavesdropping friend of Feng’s
– Sent to Britain with two companions who carry a
letter ordering his execution
– He alters the letter and returns to Denmark
– He kills Feng and is accepted as the rightful ruler

9. Shakespeare’s genius
• Thorndike writes, “We may conclude that in
building on an old story and reconstructing an old
play [the original Hamlet, possibly authored by
Thomas Kyd], Shakespeare used the old dramatic
motives because they were still popular on the
stage and because they stirred him as they did
other poets to imaginative expression. He
developed these motives without fundamental
change but with a power of expression and
characterization which they tried in vain to
attain *emphasis mine+” (206).

10. Leaning on his forefathers
• “Shakespeare’s Hamlet is final, not only in the
sense that he is made for all time, but also in
the sense that he is the complete and final
representative of a type that grew up among
peculiar stage conventions and was developed
by poets of no mean imaginative power. The
final Hamlet is the result of a growth which
other men than Shakespeare planted and
which others fostered” (Thorndike 217).

11. Works Cited
Mellor, Bronwyn. Reading Hamlet. Urbana, IL:
National Council of Teachers of English, 1999.
Print.
Thorndike, Ashley H. "The Relations of Hamlet to
Contemporary Revenge Plays.” PMLA 17.2
(n.d.): 125-220. JSTOR. Web. 10 Dec. 2012.