SOURCE: Cole, Susan Letzler. “‘Maimèd Rites’: Shakespeare's Hamlet.” In The Absent One: Mourning Ritual, Tragedy, and the Performance of Ambivalence, pp. 41-60. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1985.
In the following essay, Cole compares Hamlet to Xerxes, the protagonist of Aeschylus's The Persians, arguing that because Hamlet has been denied the catharsis of traditional funeral rites, he becomes obsessed with replacing his father rather than forging his own, separate identity.
