SOURCE: Foakes, R. A. “Hamlet's Neglect of Revenge.” In Hamlet: New Critical Essays, edited by Arthur F. Kinney, pp. 85-99. New York: Routledge, 2002.

In the following essay, Foakes argues that Hamlet is not a revenge tragedy but a play about whether or not violence is an acceptable choice in a world caught between the ancient heroic code of retaliation and the Christian commandments that reject it.

Hamlet has commonly been regarded as a revenge tragedy, its early impact being marked by works that capitalized on its success, like John Marston's Antonio's Revenge and the anonymous Revenger's Tragedy, possibly written by Thomas Middleton. In the twentieth century, critics from A. C. Bradley, writing in 1904, to the editors of the three editions that appeared in the 1980s, all have had much to say about Hamlet's “task” or “duty” to carry out his revenge. Hamlet could be seen as having to...