Murder will speak

The author of the first Hamlet and the real-life assassination of the Duke of Urbino

An article in the Times Literary Supplement (December 15, 2023) by Dennis McCarthy and June Schlueter presents fascinating details of a real-life Italian assassination that inspired Hamlet’s play-within-a-play, The Murder of Gonzago. These details first came to light in the 1555 travel journal of Sir Thomas North, which was [transcribed and] published by McCarthy and Schlueter in 2021 and titled Thomas North’s 1555 Travel Journal: From Italy to Shakespeare (Farleigh Dickinson University Press, 2021).

The article begins:

“The play’s the thing,” Hamlet famously says, “wherein I’ll catch the conscience of the king.” The play he has in mind, of course, is “The Murder of Gonzago,” a tale of regicide in which a king is killed by his nephew, who pours poison in his ear while he sleeps.