Kierkegaard and Shakespeare

Abstract

URING THE last year of his life Kierkegaard was asked by his niece, Henrietta Lund, if he too had been deeply affected by Hamlet. Yes, indeed, Kierkegaard replied, for me it is an entirely different thing. That you cannot understand now-. Someday, perhaps, you will understand it.1 In exploring the full implications of this conversation, we shall find that Kierkegaard was influenced by Shakespeare in three important aspects-his personal life, his psychology, and his aesthetics. In his personal life, he not only identified himself with several of Shakespeare's characters, but even with Shakespeare himself; in his psychology, he found convincing examples in Shakespeare's plays for certain categories of existence, and in his aesthetics, he was greatly influenced by Shakespeare in arriving at his unique conception of tragedy. In recent discussions of Kierkegaard and Shakespeare, critics have been concerned, perhaps too exclusively, with citing parallels between Hamlet's character and situation and Kierkegaard's.2 They have remarked upon Kierkegaard's impossible Ophelia-like relationship with Regina Olsen, which was sullied by Kierkegaard's discovery in 1835 of his parents' premarital illicitness.3 They have noted Kierke-