1. An entry in the Stationer’s Register (where recorded works were authorized for publication) stated that in July 26, 1962, “a booke called the Revenge of Hamlet Prince Denmarke…” was published although many scholars believe it had been composed earlier, probably as far back as 1598. The story of Hamlet goes far back in Scandinavian legend, in this respect bearing comparison with the Anglo-Saxon account of Beowulf. The First Quarto edition of Shakespeare’s tragedy (1603), was basically a distorted version of Hamlet meaning it resembled more of a representation of Hamlet being in a transitional stage of composition while the Second Quarto edition (1604) that had minor additions and corrections was acknowledged as the definitive version of Hamlet. Illustrious scholars depicted it as the source for the version included in the First Folio or acting version where the majority of the modern texts within it is located in the Tragedy of Hamlet. As the Renaissance spread to other countries in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, however, a more skeptical strain of humanism developed, stressing the limitations of human understanding that the world of experience was a world of appearances. 2. 3. Hamlet takes place in …show more content…
Yorick’s skull, which Hamlet discovers in the graveyard in the first scene of Act V. He is fixated on the concept of death’s inevitability that no one can avoid death and is particularly fascinated by the appearance of the disintegration of a body. An example is when he traced the skull’s mouth and says, “Here hung those lips that I have kissed I know not how oft,” indicating his fascination with the physical consequences of death. It is an important symbol because throughout the play, Hamlet frequently makes comments referring to every human body’s eventual decay, noting that Polonius will be eaten by worms, that even kings are eaten by worms, and that dust from the decayed body of Alexander the Great might be used to stop a hole in a beer