This Is Shakespeare

by Emma Smith

Part of the charge of this play written around 1600 must have been the issue of succession. Elizabeth I was approaching seventy, and childless. Most people in England could not remember another monarch, but the question of who would succeed her preoccupied late Elizabethan society and theatre, as discussed in the chapter on Richard II. It is particularly explored on stage in history plays, and Hamlet has some particular affinities with this genre. Shakespeare’s history plays interweave patrilineal and fraternal rivalries within the family and state, marginalizing women and rehearsing versions of regime change. Seen in this context, Hamlet exists as a belated history play, and a rather apocalyptic one. Mysteriously, Hamlet himself, despite being evidently old enough, does not inherit the throne on his father’s death. The play itself does not adequately explain why he is supplanted by his uncle, but in a cultural atmosphere in which succession was such a hot topic, it’s hard to imagine that this puzzling element would have gone unnoticed. What unfolds is the self-destruction of a royal dynasty, leaving the kingdom to fall into foreign hands: one nightmare scenario for England at the end of Elizabeth’s long reign. Fortinbras marches on Denmark and is able, suavely, and without shedding a single drop of his own soldiers’ blood, to enter the throne room and take over.