ABSTRACT
The Hamlet represents Faulkner’s genius at its peak: funny, fantastic, passionate, profound, tragic, and true. Faulkner’s imagination soars in this great novel like one of his own unreined hobgoblin horses. The vigor and originality come from a mature writer who knows what he can do and who does not stint in doing it. In compiling these annotations, I have been aware of the impossibility of explaining, or reining in, true genius. Faulkner was an omnivorous reader who acknowledged a debt to many of his literary predecessors, but the scope and depth of his achievement cannot be suggested by a compendium of analogues, quotes, and echoes from other works. It is my aim, then, not to reduce Faulkner to the sum of his sources, but through identification of sources, to expand and illuminate understanding of his art.
