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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ruin Explorer" data-source="post: 6312716" data-attributes="member: 18">I disagree, very strongly, because as noted by Thaumaturge, because without the context of the body of Shakespeare's work, and in fact it's entirely possible Hamlet would have been largely dismissed or forgotten. I mean, don't you know your literary history? Even WITH Shakespeare's body of work, Hamlet was seen as a poor piece of work in the late 1700s (and loved largely for it's show-y-ness before that!), and could easily, as a single work, have been forgotten at that time.It's totally wrong to think Hamlet has always been well-regarded, and works that go through a period of being poorly regarded frequently largely disappear, or cease to have influence. They may later be excitingly rediscovered, or may be rediscovered but that may interest only a tiny group of specialist literary historians or the like.Further, Shakespeare profoundly influenced the English language (and, I would argue, the culture of English-speaking countries and even some non-English-speaking ones), and the vast majority of that influence is in his other works, not in Hamlet. Without all that, he could easily have been lost to history or regarded as a very minor figure, less important than, say, Marlowe (!!!).</blockquote>