Shakespeare source study in the age of Google: revisiting Greenblatt's elephants and Horatio's ground

Shakespeare source study in the age of Google: revisiting Greenblatt's elephants and Horatio's ground

This chapter considers how the new approaches can be used to examine the phrase with which some scholars might have once imagined the door to source study to be slammed shut. It offers two case studies focused on the sources of Hamlet to demonstrate the possibilities and pitfalls of these new approaches to William Shakespeare "sources" and "source study" while discussing their methodological implications. The chapter argues that an approach driven by a desire to identify a single source text tends to ignore the company that writers keep: the human element must not be forgotten. It suggests that perhaps with only a slight sense of irony, that the proliferation of searchable information on the internet allows us to gauge a better sense of this human element. The chapter considers the rich array of sources for the name of Amleth, pointing to a long history of potential source relationships preceding that between Hamlet and one or another Amleth tale.

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