Of all the figures Nietzsche was likened to—modern mystic, Christ, Faust, Prometheus—the one that resonated the most was Nietzsche as a present-day Hamlet. The unfulfilled longings and haunted imagination, which thrust him into madness, recalled the tragic fate that befell Shakespeare’s Danish prince. Comparing Nietzsche to Hamlet would remain a perennial feature of Nietzsche interpretation in the United States among thinkers reflecting on the perils of their enterprise.
