Hektoen International

A Journal of Medical Humanities

Tag: Hamlet

  • The sweet smell of success

    Howard FischerUppsala, Sweden “You shall nose him . . .”— Hamlet, Act IV, scene III It was July 1977. After having done a rotating internship, I was starting my pediatric residency at the academic children’s hospital. My first rotation was in the outpatient clinic, an old, run-down building a few blocks from the main hospital.…

  • Madness and gender in Gregory Doran’s Hamlet

    Sarah Bahr Indianapolis, Indiana, United States   John Everett Millais, Ophelia, 1851-52, Tate Britain, London. In director Gregory Doran’s 2009 film adaptation of Shakespeare’s Hamlet, David Tennant’s Hamlet becomes a bawdy lunatic who consciously or unconsciously uncouples himself from reality. The intentionality of Hamlet’s madness is more muddled than in Shakespeare’s text because of the…

  • Resounding silence: The trouble with Hamlet’s body and soul

    Mary ValloGlastonbury, Connecticut, United States Central to medieval and Renaissance thought was the divide between the carnal body and the transcendent soul. As the only earthly beings to possess a soul, humans integrated the animal and the spiritual—a unique status that was both a blessing and a source of intense inner conflict.1 Shakespeare’s Hamlet addresses…

  • Anatomical ghosts in The Merchant of Venice

    Mauro Spicci Antonio and the dangers of self-diagnosis In the last few years the steadily growing number of attempts to read Shakespeare’s plays from a medical perspective has been justified by the idea that they are not simply the immortal fruits of a genius, but also documents reflecting the historical, cultural, and social background of…