Hamlet in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries

We do not have any contemporary reviews of the first performances of Hamlet or records of box office receipts. But what evidence we do have suggests that the play captivated audiences from the start. At least Shakespeare's fellow playwrights thought so: the way they began almost immediately imitating Hamlet suggests that they were trying to capitalise on the success of an unusually popular play. Donald Joseph McGinn has devoted a book of over 200 pages just to tracing the influence of Hamlet on plays written between 1600 and 1642. McGinn catalogues hundreds of allusions to Hamlet, as well as many imitations of individual characters and scenes from the play. Eastward Hoe! (1605), a collaborative effort by John Marston, George Chapman and Ben Jonson, even contains a character named Hamlet. He is a footman, and when he rushes in asking for his lady's coach, he is greeted with the words: ‘Sfoot! Hamlet, are you mad?’ (III.ii.6). The fact that other dramatists could rely on their audience's familiarity with Hamlet to make such jokes work is one index of the initial popularity of the play.

When the Puritans forced the closing of the London theatres in 1642, they interrupted the stage history of Hamlet, but they could not keep the play off the boards for more than a few years. With the Restoration, the London theatres were reopened in 1660, and it did not take long for someone to decide to revive Hamlet.