It’s not an idiom from English. The phrase as it is originated in Chinese, though its spirit came from Tsarist Russia.
To the uninitiated, the phrase “there are a thousand Hamlets in a thousand people’s eyes (一千个人眼中有一千个哈姆雷特)” was popularised by the standardised Year 5Chinese primary school curriculum (《语文五年级上册教师教学用书》（人民教育出版社2011年版）). The phrase intends to be a statement about individual artistic interpretations, how different audience to Hamlet may have their own interpretations of the tale about the Danish prince.
http://ThePaper.cn did a proper investigation (语录侦探 | 一千个人眼中有一千个哈姆雷特). It found that its earliest mention came from an essay by Zhu Guangqian first published in 1957 (《哲学研究》1957年第四期).
- Zhu Guangqian in 1933
The essay mentioned “thousand Hamlet” in a quote, and the investigation pointed to the earlier reference as probably that of Vissarion Belinsky’s three-phase interpretation of Hamlet in 1838:
“Reading Shakespeare’s drama shows that each person is a legitimate artistic subject, however low he stands in the social hierarchy and even in humanity as such” (Response to The Muscovite Journal; see: Complete Works, vol. 10, 1956, p. 242).
- Vissarion Belinsky
A more complete review of Belinsky’s interpretation of Hamlet can be found in the article Shakespeare in Russia by N. V. Zakarov.
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It’s not an idiom from English. The phrase as it is originated in Chinese, though its spirit came from Tsarist Russia.
To the uninitiated, the phrase “there are a thousand Hamlets in a thousand people’s eyes (一千个人眼中有一千个哈姆雷特)” was popularised by the standardised Year 5Chinese primary school curriculum (《语文五年级上册教师教学用书》（人民教育出版社2011年版）). The phrase intends to be a statement about individual artistic interpretations, how different audience to Hamlet may have their own interpretations of the tale about the Danish prince.
http://ThePaper.cn did a proper investigation (语录侦探 | 一千个人眼中有一千个哈姆雷特). It found that its earliest mention came from an essay by Zhu Guangqian first published in 1957 (《哲学研究》1957年第四期).
- Zhu Guangqian in 1933
The essay mentioned “thousand Hamlet” in a quote, and the investigation pointed to the earlier reference as probably that of Vissarion Belinsky’s three-phase interpretation of Hamlet in 1838:
“Reading Shakespeare’s drama shows that each person is a legitimate artistic subject, however low he stands in the social hierarchy and even in humanity as such” (Response to The Muscovite Journal; see: Complete Works, vol. 10, 1956, p. 242).
- Vissarion Belinsky
A more complete review of Belinsky’s interpretation of Hamlet can be found in the article Shakespeare in Russia by N. V. Zakarov.
Actually there's always someone who likes to teach others and tell you what to do, in every place I've worked before and work now, even though they're not my bosses.
