Abstract

ExcerptAnd therefore as a stranger give it welcome … Shakespeare, Hamlet, 1.5.165At the end, in a role-reversal at once desperate and sublime, Hamlet stills the unaccustomed passion of his stoical friend Horatio by reminding him he's a man first, before being a Dane or antique Roman. He recalls him to himself out of his suicidal flurry by simultaneously appealing to his love and assigning him a duty: in this harsh world to remain and “tell my story”—an echo of the parting words of his father's spirit near the beginning of the play (“Remember me”). Hamlet…