Hamlet: The Undiscovered Country by Steve Roth. An exploration of William Shakespeare's Hamlet, Prince of Denmark.

This site provides additional material and links to support and expand on Hamlet: The Undiscovered Country by Steve Roth.

Both the book and the site are devoted to exploring Hamlet’s complex weave of references and allusions, and putting the punch line to some of the most involved and imaginative jokes ever conceived—revelling in the depths of the “play” in Hamlet.

A scholarly version of Chapter Two, “Abstract and Brief Chronicles of the Time,” has been published in the peer-reviewed journal, Early Modern Literary Studies. It expands on Hamlet's relationships to the Elizabethan revels calendar and the associated “lords of misrule” tradition. The scholarly format also gave the opportunity to expand greatly on various issues, and cite even more interesting sources.

Shaxicon meets Shaxican. More than a decade after Donald Foster started talking about his Shaxicon lexical database, it still hasn't been published. Spurred by Gabriel Egan’s attempts to reproduce that database, Steve Roth has taken Gabriel's “Shaxican” project to the point that its results can be compared to Foster’s analysis of the parts that Shakespeare perhaps played. Details on Gabriel’s site, www.totus.org.

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Readers’ Comments

“I am thoroughly enjoying your book. It is clear, refreshing, often original, and frequently offering insights that volumes of scholarship have failed to express with clarity.” —Graduate student

“I must tell you, your book has added so much to my enjoyment of watching Hamlet. Addicted though I admit to being, I'm finding I'm getting a lot more out of it these days. I almost fell over when I got to the 38 days Julius Caesar spent with his pirates. Actually, all of it was fascinating!” —Shakespeare director

“The book is set up so ordinary people can follow it clearly and still feel smart: those short sections make it highly readable and tremendously clear. It's great to have such a literary book be so readable and enjoyable, and not at all dry. Your voice comes through at all times. I love that! I've never thought that intelligence or thoughtfulness should be dry and dull and this is definitely not either of those. This is sleuthing at its finest!
It was tremendously enjoyable and enlightening. Let me know when I can read your next book.” —Omnibibliovore

“Delightfully illuminating and thought-provoking.” —Shakespeare scholar

“It is, in my opinion, very well written, and also (speaking as a non-scholarly reader), very interesting and enjoyable.” —Systems analyst

“This book has gone in my ‘I wonder if I will ever finish this because I keep going over it’ list. I am savoring every word. The writing is so personal. I feel like a comrade being let in on a good joke or maybe even voyeuring a privileged meeting.
Also, this is a real ‘living book’—the kind the Internet is supposed encourage but never does. Plus, there's the links. Oh yes. While they make a living hell tying me to my computer, I cannot give them up. As much as I love the smell and touch of a book made of a thick, hand-pressed acid-free paper rimmed with maroon leather, binding would only imprison this writing. Worse, each time I think of printing it out, I stop myself ... but what of the links? I can't do it. I would lose another living piece of this living document.” —Director of marketing

“Your book is like a detective story for Shakespeare fans—an interesting and engaging tale of discovery for the everyday reader. And it’s great writing!” —Marketing director, regional book publisher