SOURCE: Andrews, Michael Cameron. “Hamlet: Revenge and the Critical Mirror.” English Literary Renaissance 8, no. 1 (winter 1978): 9-23.

In the following essay, Andrews challenges the notion that Shakespeare's plays adhere to orthodox religious and ethical precepts that condemn the pursuit of personal revenge. Using Titus Andronicus as his chief example, the critic maintains that Elizabethan audiences might have responded sympathetically to revenge figures if their cause was just and that Shakespeare himself withheld moral judgment in the case of at least some of his blood revengers.

Hamlet is a highly personal play. We bring to it all that we are. As L. C. Knights has observed, “more than with any other play, critics are in danger of finding reflected what they bring with them.”¹ The gratifications of interpretation may turn out to be gratifications of another sort; instead of serving the play, we are likely to make it serve us...