The entries range from famous adaptations and quotations to oblique allusions and Hamlet phrases that are used like anonymous idioms. The variety and quantity of the available material (highbrow to popular from several centuries) accommodates a wide range of interests. Hamlet fans as well as academics working in literary and cultural studies, Shakespeare reception studies, discourse studies, historical linguistics and phraseology may find material to suit their interests, as may undergraduate students or teachers designing high school assignments.
… to find quotations of Hamlet lines from the last 410 years, but also extracts from earlier texts which may have inspired a particular phrase. Simply find a line in the Hamlet text and click on the icon on its right.
… using the QUICK SEARCH window, find characters and famous scenes like Yorick's skull or Ophelia's death via the MOTIF OR NAME menu described in the search options.
… which are more sophisticated by using and combining further search options. HyperHamlet offers a diachronic database of nearly 9'000 references with a multi-dimensional annotation.
Please acknowledge your use of HyperHamlet in any academic work.
…to enrich HyperHamlet further. Any research project on Hamlet references may throw up more material, so you are also invited to add entries to this open-ended database. Learn here how to contribute an entry. to upload your findings. Our editorial staff will edit and annotate them fully and make them available to the public. Finding new references may also be an integral part of teaching projects and assignments.
… to relax teenagers who are overawed by Hamlet. They may find "irreverent" recyclings useful as ice-breakers. High school projects focused on a famous passage or on a contemporary genre could convey a sense of the continuing interest of the play. HyperHamlet also offers a wide range of opportunities for undergraduate coursework in literature and linguistics.
Please use the following information when you or your students cite the corpus in assignments, conference papers or academic publications:
HyperHamlet. Corpus of references to and quotations from Shakespeare's Hamlet. Available online at www.hyperhamlet.unibas.ch.
In the first reference to the corpus in your paper, please use the full name. After that reference, feel free to use something shorter, like HyperHamlet (for example: "...and as seen in HyperHamlet, there are...").
For suggestions and requests please contact us at hyperhamlet-englsem(at)unibas.ch.
If you are interested in a detailed description of the annotation policy, please contact us for a copy of the editor's manual.