ABSTRACT
The play in which Shakespeare explored most directly the tensions arising out of violence was Hamlet. Ernest Jones and others have analysed the play’s psychological dimensions, and it has been examined from a number of other perspectives, all of which have brought out its great richness and complexity. What has yet to be undertaken, is a sociological analysis of the context of the play, something which will enable us to examine certain key strands in Shakespeare’s own biography. Although there are a number of themes in the play, the interplay between murder and suicide is one of its central ones. Hamlet has mainly been interpreted in terms of the motivations of individual characters, but Shakespeare expressed much more than the personal in the play. It reflected a general cultural shift which was taking place at the time: a historical decline in the overall level of overt violence which occurred in England from about the thirteenth century onwards.1
