This second edition of Hamlet features a new section on recent dramatic and critical interpretations.

Presents William Shakespeare's play adapted into graphic novel format about a Danish prince who seeks vengeance for his father's murder after being visited by his ghost.

This fictional re-writing of the Hamlet story is set in a time somewhere between the Scandinavian Dark Ages (out of which the tale of Hamlet came), and the Renaissance society of Shakespeare's play. The novel searches past and future, in T.S. Eliot phrase, looking before and after. Beginning at the end of Shakespeare's play, where the Norweigian prince Fortinbras takes over the empty throne of Denmark, its then backtracks to the year of Hamlet's birth, and the great duel fought between his father King Amled and Fortinbras' father Prince Fortenbrasse. in the light of this history, as a new ruler takes over Denmark after Hamlet's death, the conflicts and alliances between ancient Viking chivalry, Renaissance realpolitik and Christian forgiveness are dramatically explored.

Shakespeare's famous tragedy is helpfully annotated and framed within several exciting contexts: contemporary accounts of a spirit world, purgatory, revenge, and suicide, and reports of readers and critics fascinated with the character and dramatic performance of this most famous of Shakespeare's heroes. Elaborating upon the historical setting and the cultural ideas that helped shape "Hamlet", Constance Jordan summons the issues and anxieties of the early sixteenth century to show why the play, and especially its hero, speaks so powerfully and so vitally to our own time. -- From publisher's description.