Who was Hamlet?

So as I may have mentioned earlier, Joyce sets up a rather interesting conversation in this episode (Scylla and Charybdis) on the Shakespeare play Hamlet, specifically on the identity of Hamlet. The character Stephen Dedalus wonders aloud as to the many coincidences between Shakespeare and Hamlet, including thoughts on the implications of the relationship between Shakespeare’s only son Hamnet (who died at age eleven) and the fictional character in the play who almost bears the same name. Apparently, such explorations of the life of Shakespeare and their influences on his works were all the rage back then (and maybe they still are). This got me to thinking about the nature of Art again and the nature of the divisions between reality and fiction that an artist builds into their work. Is it worthwhile to try and understand everything about the creator of a work of Art in order to gain insight into the work itself? Or, should it stand entirely on it’s own, free of context, an encapsulated package of meaning? The answer is probably both of course, and, for what it’s worth, it seems to me that when you find something that appeals so strongly to your heart and soul as all great art should do, it is only natural to try and delve as deeply into it as you can in search of what makes it tick.