Esprit de corps: The Uses and Abuses of Shakespeare in Renaissance Man

Abstract

"One recognizes the superiority o f the Greek man
and the Renaissance man—but one would like to have them
without the causes and conditions that made them
possible." —Nietzsche, The Will to Power 882

The ending of Hamlet brings the advent of soldiers and the triumph of the military ethos in more than one sense: as the soldier Fortinbras takes over, reestablishing a sense of normality in the Danish court, he insists on giving the dead prince a military burial, thereby retrospectively transforming his story into one of heroism.