"Rhodri Lewis comprehensively resituates Hamlet within the discursive parameters of late sixteenth-century humanism while making a significant contribution to recent reassessments of humanism's unintended consequences. Particularly noteworthy and arresting is his account of the many ways Hamlet stages, only to dismantle, received Roman ideals about persona, 'character,' and identity in public as well as private life." --Lynn Enterline, Vanderbilt University "Rhodri Lewis provides us with a brilliantly revisionary account of Shakespeare's Hamlet--the character, the play, and the place of both in modern culture. Lewis's Hamlet is an individual reflecting on his own emerging individuality, and Lewis excavates (through meticulous and often arresting scholarship) the philosophical, social, and imaginative origins and history of that individual. This is a book not just for Shakespeareans but for anyone concerned with how literature teaches us both how to be and not to be." --Seth Lerer, University of California, San Diego "This spectacular book teaches us to read Hamlet as a searing critique of the humanist verities that Shakespeare and his audience had mastered at school--principles and practices that had guided generations. Rhodri Lewis's reading of Hamlet revises both our intellectual and our literary histories of late Renaissance England." --Anthony Grafton, Princeton University "An absorbing and provocative book with a timely and important argument.

" --Raphael Lyne, University of Cambridge.