Hamlet's Moment

A particularly appealing feature of Kiséry's writing is his generous sign posting and cross-referencing, which skillfully guide the readers' attention to subtle details and connections. Despite the occasional lengthy sentences, Kiséry's book is written in a lively, often entertaining, sometimes even ironic, but always lucid academic prose. ... For anyone who is interested in early modern political thought and practice, print and manuscript culture, and, above all, drama, it is worth following Kiséry on his journey with these ambassadors. * Hungarian Journal of English and American Studies *
A provocative monograph from which one learns much * Nick Myers, Cahier 'Elisabé thains: A journal of English Renaissance Studies *
a painstakingly researched study of something that is incredibly hard to say something new about: Renaissance drama and politics. But Kiséry does it ... Hamlet's Moment shows through a series of detailed case studies -- all of which display a sophisticated knowledge of book history, intellectual history, and literary form -- how Renaissance drama around 1600 familiarized English audiences with the emergent notion of politics as a profession. * Kevin Curran, Studies in English Literature 1500-1900 *
Hamlet's Moment is, in the best sense, a densely contextualist account of the nature and function of drama's political discourse at the turn of the seventeenth century. Acutely attentive to the most recent scholarship in early modern political history, this intellectually ambitious book sets out to "link social, intellectual, and literary history by examining the circulation of knowledge in print and manuscript, in professional and fictional forms" and to attend "to the interest in, and utility of, this circulation in a particular historical moment" (22-3). That moment, Kiséry argues, was characterized by a new interest in the drama of statecraft, one that offered an entirely novel understanding of politics specifically as a profession (4; 1)...In sum, this book makes an important contribution to both literary and historical studies and proves that we really did need another book about Hamlet. * Dympna Callaghan, Shakespeare Jahrbuch *
meticulous reference to notebooks, diaries, and annotations of the play's original audience ... he also shows that Hamlet itself depicts and explores a shift in the perspective on politics from one generation to another. * Bart van Es, Times Literary Supplement *
This is a book that readers will want to ponder carefully, both for its meticulous organization of detail and for its intelligent and judicious critical synthesis of important elements of a current interdisciplinary debate in Early Modern Studies. * John Drakakis, Modern Language Review *