Hamlet: The Undiscovered Country

This book reads like a cross between a literary detective novel and a personal conversation with a passionate Shakespeare scholar, unpacking the play that Roth calls “the seminal text of the humanist religion.” It unveils new realities about the play―some of which have have lain hidden since Shakespeare’s day―untangles centuries of commentary and criticism, and delivers the punch lines for a whole raft of Shakespeare’s remarkably involved in-jokes. Roth’s scholarship tackles old arguments like Hamlet’s age (he’s sixteen), lays out the intricate time structure that’s embedded in the play, and unravels several of the play’s endless allusions that so “puzzle the will.” He depicts a dense, ironic, and multivalent web of political and dramatic tension in Elsinore (plus a great deal of humor), and delivers one “aha”moment after another for lovers of the Bard’s greatest tragedy.