SOURCE: Hedrick, Donald K. “‘It Is No Novelty for a Prince to Be a Prince’: An Enantiomorphous Hamlet.” Shakespeare Quarterly 35, no. 1 (spring 1984): 62-76.

In the following essay, Hedrick argues that Hamlet is both a heroic and a satiric play, and notes that in both Renaissance England and Hamlet's Denmark satire is used by the powerless to undermine the unscrupulous acts of the powerful.

I shall begin by quarreling with a formulation by R. A. Foakes that has an unassuming and unprovocative appearance, namely that Hamlet is “basically an heroic tragedy … in spite of the elements of satire.”¹ What I take exception to is not the view of the play as heroic rather than “dark,” but the phrase “despite the satire,” which implies that satiric and heroic characterization, satiric and heroic temperaments, are essentially incompatible. I wish here to offer historical, literary, and theoretical evidence to the contrary, providing...