Who Knows Who Knows Who’s There? An Epistemology of Hamlet (Or, What Happens in the Mousetrap)

Who Knows Who Knows Who’s There? An Epistemology of Hamlet (Or, What Happens in the Mousetrap)

Roth, Steve

Early Modern Literary Studies 10.2 (September, 2004)

Abstract

There is one singular and important item about Hamlet that I believe has never been recognized. Unlike all previous revenge tragedies (Elizabethan and classical), and unlike the play’s source in Belleforest’s Histoires Tragique, in Hamlet nobody even knows that the primal murder has occurred. Claudius knows, of course. Hamlet knows (sort of). And Horatio knows (even more sort of). But no other character knows that King Hamlet was murdered—even (especially) at the end of the play. To repeat: this is not true of any other revenge tragedy before Hamlet. In all those plays, the characters’ knowledge of the murder is the driving force of the drama. In Hamlet it is exactly the opposite.

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