Philosophy and Literature

Abstract:

Did Shakespeare read Plato? In Hamlet, Claudius proposes that reason's "common theme" is the "death of fathers." This allusion to Plato's Sophist casts the ghost as the dead "father" Parmenides, Claudius as the sophist who eludes capture in the Eleatic stranger's net of words, and Hamlet as the philosopher who can only catch him through an act of pure thought. After considering the literary scholarship on this line I show how Claudius's portrayal closely matches Plato's description of the tyrant, and I assess the implications of these references for both Plato's theory of representation and the play.