Plus choses changent

Long before Greenblatt and the New Historicists, Shakespeare had been interpreted as a commentator on the religious or political circumstances of Elizabethan England. Among the interpretations of Hamlet summarized by Ernest Jones in his essay on Oedipus and Hamlet (first published in 1910!) are the notions that the play is “an elaborate defense of Protantism,” “an expression of the revolt emanating in Wittenberg against Roman Catholicism and feutalism,” or “a defense of Catholicism.” Others “made out a case for the view that the figure of Hamlet was largely taken from that of James VI of Scotland, the heir to the English throne,” and some suggested the play dramatized the “domestic experiences” of the Earl of Essex and a defense of the Earl.