Hamlet in Purgatory (Magill’s Literary Annual 1991-2005)
At a glance:
- Author: Stephen Greenblatt
- First Published: 2001
- Type of Work: History and literary criticism
- Time of Work: c. 1200-1650
- Setting: France and England
- Principal Characters: Simon Fish, William Tyndale, John Donne, Simon Marmion of Valenciennes, H. of Sawtry, Jean Gobi, Sir Thomas More, William Shakespeare
- Genres: Criticism, Nonfiction, History
- Subjects: France or French people, Europe or Europeans, Literature, England or English people, Seventeenth century, Fifteenth century, Sixteenth century, Afterlife, Renaissance, Middle Ages, Shakespeare, William, or Shakespearean plays, Thirteenth century, Fourteenth century, Literary criticism
- Locales: France, England
Stephen Greenblatt begins Hamlet in Purgatory with a personal anecdote. The Greenblatt family are Jews, and when his father died at age eighty-seven Greenblatt learned that he had left money to an organization that would say kaddish—the Aramaic prayer for the dead—for him. Since the prayer is usually said by a close family member, Greenbatt surmised his father did not trust either him or his brother with the duty, and this realization determined Greenblatt to recite the prayer after all. The experience taught him much about Judaism’s conception of the afterlife, a belief...
[The entire page is 1999 words long]
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