Reading Experience Database
1450-1945

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Record 783

Reading Experience:

Evidence:
Macaulay's marginalia by the editorial notes in his copy of Hamlet in the scene where Hamlet declines to kill his uncle in the act of praying. Johnson comments that the speech in which, "not content with taking blood for blood, he contrived damnation for his enemy, was too horrible to be read or uttered." Macaulay responds: "Johnson does not understand the character. Hamlet is irresolute; and he makes the first excuse that suggests itself for not striking. If he had met the King drunk, he would have refrained from avenging himself lest he should kill both soul and body."
Century: 1800-1849, 1850-1899
Date: Between 1800 and 1859
Country: n/a
Time: n/a
Place: n/a
   
Type of Experience (Reader):
silent aloud unknown
solitary in company unknown
single serial unknown
Type of Experience (Listener):
solitary in company unknown
single serial unknown

Reader/Listener/Reading Group:

Reader:Thomas Babington Macaulay
Age Adult (18-100+)
Gender Male
Date of Birth 25 Oct 1800
Socio-economic group: Professional / academic / merchant / farmer
Occupation: Historian and Critic
Religion: Church of England
Country of origin: England
Country of experience: n/a
Listeners present if any:
(e.g. family, servants, friends, workmates)
n/a
Additional comments: n/a

 

Text Being Read:

Author: William Shakespeare
Title: Hamlet
Genre: Drama
Form of Text: Print: Book
Publication details: The edition edited by Warburton, which included the textual notes of Dr Johnson
Provenance: owned

 

Source Information:

Record ID: 783  
Source - Print  
  Author: Thomas Babington Macaulay
  Editor: George Otto Trevelyan
  Title: The Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay
  Place of Publication: Oxford
  Date of Publication: 1978
  Vol: 2
  Page: 414
  Additional comments: In chapter on Macaulay's marginal notes

Citation: Thomas Babington Macaulay, George Otto Trevelyan (ed.), The Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay (Oxford, 1978), 2, p. 414, http://can-red-lec.library.dal.ca/Arts/reading/recorddetails2.php?id=783, accessed: 29 March 2024

Additional comments:

 

 

Reading Experience Database version 2.0.  Page updated: 27th Apr 2016  3:15pm (GMT)