Jan Kott's Shakespeare, Our Contemporary (1964) was a landmark in Shakespeare criticism that continues to resonate. Its central idea is that Shakespeare's work is more relevant, in many ways, to our time than to his own. I happen to agree. His view of Hamlet is particularly interesting in the way that he sees it as a work primarily concerned with politics and the nature of power. For him, the backdrop of wars past and present, the atmosphere of intrigue and treachery, and the constant surveillance of the three young central characters (Hamlet, Laertes, and Ophelia) create a play that is primarily concerned with life in a police state. Seen from this perspective, many puzzling aspects of the action make more sense - for example, Hamlet's soliloquies are the only times when he can speak freely, but he's not communicating with anyone and he knows it. This redoubles his frustration. Even his interests in the humanities have no outlet: the play-within-the-play that he helps to direct is put on for explicitly political purposes. Kott also points out that even casual conversation in the play is dominated by politics. I hadn't previously noticed the extent to which this is true.

Also, the character of Claudius is revealed more fully in this light: he has committed murder to gain power, but once he gets it, he realizes that it's not what he imagined. Virtually every move that he makes in the play is tempered with his concern for how it will be viewed by others. Even the king is controlled by political concern.