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Hamlet: The prince or the poem?
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- GenresEssays
16 pages, Unknown Binding
First published April 22, 1942
About the author
C.S. Lewis
1,114 books48.9k followersLibrarian Note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.
Clive Staples Lewis was one of the intellectual giants of the twentieth century and arguably one of the most influential writers of his day. He was a Fellow and Tutor in English Literature at Oxford University until 1954. He was unanimously elected to the Chair of Medieval and Renaissance Literature at Cambridge University, a position he held until his retirement. He wrote more than thirty books, allowing him to reach a vast audience, and his works continue to attract thousands of new readers every year. His most distinguished and popular accomplishments include Mere Christianity, Out of the Silent Planet, The Great Divorce, The Screwtape Letters, and the universally acknowledged classics The Chronicles of Narnia. To date, the Narnia books have sold over 100 million copies and been transformed into three major motion pictures.
Lewis was married to poet Joy Davidman.
W.H. Lewis was his elder brother]
Clive Staples Lewis was one of the intellectual giants of the twentieth century and arguably one of the most influential writers of his day. He was a Fellow and Tutor in English Literature at Oxford University until 1954. He was unanimously elected to the Chair of Medieval and Renaissance Literature at Cambridge University, a position he held until his retirement. He wrote more than thirty books, allowing him to reach a vast audience, and his works continue to attract thousands of new readers every year. His most distinguished and popular accomplishments include Mere Christianity, Out of the Silent Planet, The Great Divorce, The Screwtape Letters, and the universally acknowledged classics The Chronicles of Narnia. To date, the Narnia books have sold over 100 million copies and been transformed into three major motion pictures.
Lewis was married to poet Joy Davidman.
W.H. Lewis was his elder brother]
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
January 5, 2016
Lewis begins his lecture by claiming that his aim is not to examine what other critics have before him, but to consider why the critics have failed to agree about the procrastination exhibited by the character of Hamlet. He first outlines the three different camps:
1. Those who think the play “bad” and that there are no motivations to explain Hamlet’s actions
2. Those who believe he did not delay and acted with as much alacrity as was possible.
3. Those who believe he did procrastinate and explain his paralysis through his psychology.
Next, he asks you to suspend all knowledge of the play, as if “you had no independent knowledge of the thing being criticized," and proceeds to examine each view.
In the first case, if Hamlet is indeed a failure, we waste our time investigating why his actions were delayed. Yet, if this failure were indeed a reality, why does Hamlet touch us so? Why does it echo with "the sense of vast dignities and strange sorrows and teased 'with thoughts beyond the reaches of our souls'"? If Hamlet is failure, then perhaps failure is better than success, and such a verdict could never be rendered with less certainty.
With regard to point two, the opponent to this view is Hamlet himself. He declares that he is a procrastinator, a cowardly soul who wavers with indecision. The ghost, for the most part, is in agreement.
The last point seems to be the most logical, yet why then, in all three camps, does the play appear to hold each in thrall, enchanting the very critics who criticize it? Does the mystery and magical appeal of the play have little to do with Hamlet's actual character, but instead is due to something entirely different?
Lewis brings to light Aristotle's definition of tragedy, which is an imitation not of men, but of action and life and happiness and misery, yet "action" by ancient standards means "situation." Instead of always attempting to delineate a character, one should first "surrender oneself to the poetry and the situation." It is through poetry and situation, and for their sake, that the characters exist.
For Lewis, the ghost does not merely tell of the murder of Hamlet's father. Instead, the ghost and Hamlet are inseparable, and indeed the spectre is different from most vile ghosts in Elizabethan drama; this ghost is willfully ambiguous. Its presence lends an enigmatic uneasiness to the play, filling Hamlet's, and even other character's, minds with doubt and uncertainty. " ..... the appearance of the spectre means a breaking down of the walls of the world and the germination of thoughts that cannot be thought; chaos is come again."
The subject of Hamlet is death. Lewis does not base the theme on the numerous deaths of the characters, rather the situations they find themselves contemplating. We read it in the ghost, in the line of "melting flesh", in the relection of suicide, in the graveyard, the skull ........ As we read Hamlet, we cannot escape it, which gives the play its quality of obscurity and apprehension. There are other elements to the play, but there is always this groping toward the final end and questions about the destiny of the soul or body.
Hamlet's vacillations do not balance on his fear of dying, but instead a fear of being dead.
"Any serious attention to the state of being dead, unless it is limited by some definite religious or anti-religious doctrine, must, I suppose, paralyse the will by introducing infinite uncertainties and rendering all motives inadequate. Being dead is the unknown x in our sum. Unless you ignore it or else give it a value, you can get no answer."
Yet Lewis says that Shakespeare's own text does not confirm his theory, nor has Shakespeare given "us data for any for any portrait of the kind critics have tried to draw." We enjoy Hamlet's speeches "because they describe so well a certain spiritual region through which most of us have passed and anyone in his circumstances might be expected to pass, rather than because of our concern to understand how and why this particular man entered it". And, in fact, Hamlet is an Everyman. He is a hero yet also a "haunted man --- man with his mind on the frontier of two worlds, man unable either quite to reject or quite to admit the supernatural, man struggling to get something done as man has struggled from the beginning, yet incapable of achievement because of his inability to understand either himself or his fellows or the real quality of the universe which has produced him."
The critics have never doubted the greatness or mystery of the play, but they simply put it in the wrong place, "in Hamlet's motives rather than in that darkness which enwraps Hamlet and the whole tragedy and all who read and watch it." It is the mystery of the human condition.
Lewis ends by acknowledging the weakness of his theory, only because his type of criticism does not have centuries of vocabulary to support it, as does the other type of criticisms. Yet he wishes that Hamlet could be played as "a dishevelled man whose words make us at once think of loneliness and doubt and dread, of waste and dust and emptiness, and from whose hands, or from our own, we feel the richness of heaven and earth and the comfort of human affection slipping away." Perhaps his views are childish, yet children remember the details of stories. So, is Lewis a literary child?
"On the contrary, I claim that only those adults who have retained, with whatever additions and enrichments, their first childish response to poetry unimpaired, can be said to have grown up."
1. Those who think the play “bad” and that there are no motivations to explain Hamlet’s actions
2. Those who believe he did not delay and acted with as much alacrity as was possible.
3. Those who believe he did procrastinate and explain his paralysis through his psychology.
Next, he asks you to suspend all knowledge of the play, as if “you had no independent knowledge of the thing being criticized," and proceeds to examine each view.
In the first case, if Hamlet is indeed a failure, we waste our time investigating why his actions were delayed. Yet, if this failure were indeed a reality, why does Hamlet touch us so? Why does it echo with "the sense of vast dignities and strange sorrows and teased 'with thoughts beyond the reaches of our souls'"? If Hamlet is failure, then perhaps failure is better than success, and such a verdict could never be rendered with less certainty.
With regard to point two, the opponent to this view is Hamlet himself. He declares that he is a procrastinator, a cowardly soul who wavers with indecision. The ghost, for the most part, is in agreement.
The last point seems to be the most logical, yet why then, in all three camps, does the play appear to hold each in thrall, enchanting the very critics who criticize it? Does the mystery and magical appeal of the play have little to do with Hamlet's actual character, but instead is due to something entirely different?
Lewis brings to light Aristotle's definition of tragedy, which is an imitation not of men, but of action and life and happiness and misery, yet "action" by ancient standards means "situation." Instead of always attempting to delineate a character, one should first "surrender oneself to the poetry and the situation." It is through poetry and situation, and for their sake, that the characters exist.
For Lewis, the ghost does not merely tell of the murder of Hamlet's father. Instead, the ghost and Hamlet are inseparable, and indeed the spectre is different from most vile ghosts in Elizabethan drama; this ghost is willfully ambiguous. Its presence lends an enigmatic uneasiness to the play, filling Hamlet's, and even other character's, minds with doubt and uncertainty. " ..... the appearance of the spectre means a breaking down of the walls of the world and the germination of thoughts that cannot be thought; chaos is come again."
The subject of Hamlet is death. Lewis does not base the theme on the numerous deaths of the characters, rather the situations they find themselves contemplating. We read it in the ghost, in the line of "melting flesh", in the relection of suicide, in the graveyard, the skull ........ As we read Hamlet, we cannot escape it, which gives the play its quality of obscurity and apprehension. There are other elements to the play, but there is always this groping toward the final end and questions about the destiny of the soul or body.
Hamlet's vacillations do not balance on his fear of dying, but instead a fear of being dead.
"Any serious attention to the state of being dead, unless it is limited by some definite religious or anti-religious doctrine, must, I suppose, paralyse the will by introducing infinite uncertainties and rendering all motives inadequate. Being dead is the unknown x in our sum. Unless you ignore it or else give it a value, you can get no answer."
Yet Lewis says that Shakespeare's own text does not confirm his theory, nor has Shakespeare given "us data for any for any portrait of the kind critics have tried to draw." We enjoy Hamlet's speeches "because they describe so well a certain spiritual region through which most of us have passed and anyone in his circumstances might be expected to pass, rather than because of our concern to understand how and why this particular man entered it". And, in fact, Hamlet is an Everyman. He is a hero yet also a "haunted man --- man with his mind on the frontier of two worlds, man unable either quite to reject or quite to admit the supernatural, man struggling to get something done as man has struggled from the beginning, yet incapable of achievement because of his inability to understand either himself or his fellows or the real quality of the universe which has produced him."
The critics have never doubted the greatness or mystery of the play, but they simply put it in the wrong place, "in Hamlet's motives rather than in that darkness which enwraps Hamlet and the whole tragedy and all who read and watch it." It is the mystery of the human condition.
Lewis ends by acknowledging the weakness of his theory, only because his type of criticism does not have centuries of vocabulary to support it, as does the other type of criticisms. Yet he wishes that Hamlet could be played as "a dishevelled man whose words make us at once think of loneliness and doubt and dread, of waste and dust and emptiness, and from whose hands, or from our own, we feel the richness of heaven and earth and the comfort of human affection slipping away." Perhaps his views are childish, yet children remember the details of stories. So, is Lewis a literary child?
"On the contrary, I claim that only those adults who have retained, with whatever additions and enrichments, their first childish response to poetry unimpaired, can be said to have grown up."
March 22, 2024
The essay is available to read online: https://archive.org/details/modernsha...
Thank you so very much Cleo for the recommendation!
My review for Hamlet: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
(Apologies for the review as long as the essay, beforehand. But it was just so insightful! … you may skip my review but do read the quotes!)
C.S. Lewis's essay, "Hamlet: The Prince or the Poet," is a captivating exploration that challenges traditional interpretations of Shakespeare's enigmatic protagonist. Lewis dismantles the notion of Hamlet as a hero solely defined by indecisiveness.
Lewis begins by highlighting the critical divide. Some see Hamlet as a decisive hero, delayed by external events. Others view him as inherently flawed, even melancholic. Lewis points out that the play itself contradicts the "decisive Hamlet" theory. Hamlet explicitly confesses his indecisiveness, and the ghost seems to concur. This leaves us, Lewis argues, with two unsatisfactory options: those who find the play bad and those who see its merit solely in Hamlet's character (while fundamentally disagreeing on what that character is).
Some critics, such as Hallam, Sievers, Raleigh, and Clutton Brock, trace the weakness to the shock inflicted upon Hamlet by the events which precede, and immediately follow, the opening of the play; others regard it as a more permanent condition; some extend it to actual insanity, others reduce it to an almost amiable flaw in a noble nature. This third group, which boasts the names of Richardson, Goethe, Coleridge, Schlegel, and Hazlitt, can still, I take it, claim to represent the central and, as it were, orthodox line of Hamlet criticism.
If we now return to the real situation, the same reactions appear reasonable. There is, indeed, this difference, that the critics who admit no delay and no indecision in Hamlet have an opponent with whom the corresponding critics of the picture were not embarrassed. The picture did not answer back. But Hamlet does. He pronounces himself a procrastinator, an undecided man, even a coward: and the ghost in part agrees with him. This, coupled with the more general difficulties of their position, appears to me to be fatal to their view. If so, we are left with those who think the play bad and those who agree in thinking it good and in placing its goodness almost wholly in the character of the hero, while disagreeing as to what that character is. Surely the devil's advocates are in a very strong position.
Lewis then makes a crucial point: the ghost is integral to the play's essence. It's not just about revenge; Hamlet is tasked by a ghostly apparition. This fundamentally alters the play from a simple revenge drama. The supernatural element, Lewis argues, is inseparable from Hamlet - as essential as the witches are to Macbeth. Without the ghost and its chilling introduction, the play takes on a completely different character.
As soon as I find anyone treating the ghost merely as the means whereby Hamlet learns of his father's murder-as soon as a critic leaves us with the impression that some other method of disclosure (the finding of a letter or a conversation with a servant) would have done very nearly as well-I part company with that critic. After that, he may be as learned and sensitive as you please; but his outlook on literature is so remote from mine that he can teach me nothing. Hamlet for me is no more separable from his ghost than Macbeth from his witches, Una from her lion, or Dick Whittington from his cat. The Hamlet formula, so to speak, is not 'a man who has to avenge his father' but 'a man who has been given a task by a ghost'. Everything else about him is less important than that. If the play did not begin with the cold and darkness and sickening suspense of the ghost scenes it would be a radically different play.
Further emphasizing the play's thematic core, Lewis delves into the concept of death. Unlike other Shakespearean tragedies where death is final, Hamlet is obsessed with the "afterlife," questioning the soul's fate and the very meaning of existence. This constant "groping" and existential uncertainty permeate the play's atmosphere, affecting not just Hamlet but all the characters.
The Hamlet formula, so to speak, is not 'a man who has to avenge his father' but 'a man who has been given a task by a ghost'. Everything else about him is less important than that. If the play did not begin with the cold and darkness and sickening suspense of the ghost scenes it would be a radically different play. … The sense in which death is the subject of Hamlet will become apparent if we compare it with other plays. Macbeth has commerce with Hell, but at the very outset of his career dismisses all thought of the life to come. For Brutus and Othello, suicide in the high tragic manner is escape and climax. For Lear death is deliverance. For Romeo Antony, poignant loss. For all these, as for their author while he writes and the audience while they watch, death is the end: it is almost the frame of the picture. They think of dying: no one thinks, in these plays, of being dead. In Hamlet we are kept thinking about it all the time, whether in terms of the soul's destiny or of the body's. Purgatory, Hell, Heaven, the wounded name, the rights - or wrongs - of Ophelia's burial, and the staying-power of a tanner's corpse: and beyond this, beyond all Christian and all Pagan maps of the hereafter, comes a curious groping and tapping of thoughts, about 'what dreams may come'. It is this that gives to the whole play its quality of darkness and of misgiving. Of course there is much else in the play: but nearly always, the same groping. The characters are all watching one another, forming theories about one another, listening, contriving, full of anxiety. The world of Hamlet is a world where one has lost one's way. The Prince also has no doubt lost his, and we can tell the precise moment at which he finds it again. 'Not a whit. We defy augury. There’s a special providence in the fall of a sparrow. If it be now, ’tis not to come: if it be not to come, it will be now: if it be not now, yet it will come: the readiness is all: since no man has aught of what he leaves, what is’t to leave betimes?’
Lewis then tackles Hamlet's much-debated hesitation. He proposes that it stems from a fear of "being dead," not simply dying. This psychological insight offers a compelling explanation for Hamlet's existential angst.
If I wanted to make one more addition to the gallery of Hamlet's portraits I should trace his hesitation to the fear of death; not to a physical fear of dying, but a fear of being dead. And I think I should get on quite comfortably.
Does the mere fact that a young man, literally haunted, dispossessed, and lacking friends, should feel thus, tell us anything remarkable? Let me put my question in another way. If instead of the speeches he actually utters about the firmament and man in his scene with Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Hamlet had merely said, 'I don't seem to enjoy things the way I used to.' and talked in that fashion throughout, should we find him interesting? I think the answer is 'Not very.' It may be replied that if he talked commonplace prose he would reveal his character less vividly. I am not so sure. He would certainly have revealed something less vividly; but would that something be himself? It seems to me that 'this majestical roof' and What a piece of work is a man' give me primarily an impression not of the sort of person he must be to lose the estimation of things but of the things themselves and their great value; and that I should be able to discern, though with very faint interest, the same condition of loss in a personage who was quite unable so to put before me what he was losing. And I do not think it true to reply that he would be a different character if he spoke less poetically. This point is often misunderstood. We sometimes speak as if the characters in whose mouths Shakespeare puts great poetry were poets: in the sense that Shakespeare was depicting men of poetical genius.
I trust that my conception is now becoming clear. I believe that we read Hamlet's speeches with interest chiefly because they describe so well a certain spiritual region through which most of us have passed and anyone in his circumstances might be expected to pass, rather than because of our concern to understand how and why this particular man entered it.
Finally, Lewis arrives at his central argument. He suggests that Hamlet's eloquent soliloquies are not simply expressions of his unique character, but rather profound contemplations on the human condition. We find Hamlet's words captivating because they resonate with universal experiences of loss, grief, and existential questioning. The play's power lies not in dissecting Hamlet's specific motivations but in exploring these profound human themes through his experiences. Lewis concludes by emphasizing the play's inherent mystery. Critics have made mistakes, he argues, by focusing on Hamlet's psychology rather than the play's overarching sense of the unknown. "Hamlet," Lewis asserts, "is a mysterious play in the sense of being a play about mystery." It confronts us with the vast unknown, the existential darkness that surrounds us all.
’Such fellows as I' does not mean 'such fellows as Goethe's Hamlet, or Coleridge's Hamlet, or any Hamlet': it means men-creatures shapen in sin and conceived in iniquity-and the vast, empty visions of them 'crawling between earth and heaven' is what really counts and really carries the burden of the play.
Perhaps I should rather say that it would miss as much if our behaviour when we are actually reading were not wiser than our criticism in cold blood. The critics, or most of them, have at any rate kept constantly before us the knowledge that in this play there is greatness and mystery. They were never entirely wrong. Their error, in my view, was to put the mystery in the wrong place in Hamlet's motives rather than in that darkness which enwraps Hamlet and the whole tragedy and all who read or watch it. It is a mysterious play in the sense of being a play about mystery.
Lewis offers a refreshingly unconventional take on Hamlet. He steers the focus away from the prince's internal struggles and motivations, and instead, highlights the play's exploration of profound existential themes: mortality, the unknown, and the human condition itself. While acknowledging the complexity of Hamlet's character, Lewis elevates the play's significance to a universal exploration of the human condition in the face of death and the unknown.
Thank you so very much Cleo for the recommendation!
My review for Hamlet: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
(Apologies for the review as long as the essay, beforehand. But it was just so insightful! … you may skip my review but do read the quotes!)
C.S. Lewis's essay, "Hamlet: The Prince or the Poet," is a captivating exploration that challenges traditional interpretations of Shakespeare's enigmatic protagonist. Lewis dismantles the notion of Hamlet as a hero solely defined by indecisiveness.
Lewis begins by highlighting the critical divide. Some see Hamlet as a decisive hero, delayed by external events. Others view him as inherently flawed, even melancholic. Lewis points out that the play itself contradicts the "decisive Hamlet" theory. Hamlet explicitly confesses his indecisiveness, and the ghost seems to concur. This leaves us, Lewis argues, with two unsatisfactory options: those who find the play bad and those who see its merit solely in Hamlet's character (while fundamentally disagreeing on what that character is).
Some critics, such as Hallam, Sievers, Raleigh, and Clutton Brock, trace the weakness to the shock inflicted upon Hamlet by the events which precede, and immediately follow, the opening of the play; others regard it as a more permanent condition; some extend it to actual insanity, others reduce it to an almost amiable flaw in a noble nature. This third group, which boasts the names of Richardson, Goethe, Coleridge, Schlegel, and Hazlitt, can still, I take it, claim to represent the central and, as it were, orthodox line of Hamlet criticism.
If we now return to the real situation, the same reactions appear reasonable. There is, indeed, this difference, that the critics who admit no delay and no indecision in Hamlet have an opponent with whom the corresponding critics of the picture were not embarrassed. The picture did not answer back. But Hamlet does. He pronounces himself a procrastinator, an undecided man, even a coward: and the ghost in part agrees with him. This, coupled with the more general difficulties of their position, appears to me to be fatal to their view. If so, we are left with those who think the play bad and those who agree in thinking it good and in placing its goodness almost wholly in the character of the hero, while disagreeing as to what that character is. Surely the devil's advocates are in a very strong position.
Lewis then makes a crucial point: the ghost is integral to the play's essence. It's not just about revenge; Hamlet is tasked by a ghostly apparition. This fundamentally alters the play from a simple revenge drama. The supernatural element, Lewis argues, is inseparable from Hamlet - as essential as the witches are to Macbeth. Without the ghost and its chilling introduction, the play takes on a completely different character.
As soon as I find anyone treating the ghost merely as the means whereby Hamlet learns of his father's murder-as soon as a critic leaves us with the impression that some other method of disclosure (the finding of a letter or a conversation with a servant) would have done very nearly as well-I part company with that critic. After that, he may be as learned and sensitive as you please; but his outlook on literature is so remote from mine that he can teach me nothing. Hamlet for me is no more separable from his ghost than Macbeth from his witches, Una from her lion, or Dick Whittington from his cat. The Hamlet formula, so to speak, is not 'a man who has to avenge his father' but 'a man who has been given a task by a ghost'. Everything else about him is less important than that. If the play did not begin with the cold and darkness and sickening suspense of the ghost scenes it would be a radically different play.
Further emphasizing the play's thematic core, Lewis delves into the concept of death. Unlike other Shakespearean tragedies where death is final, Hamlet is obsessed with the "afterlife," questioning the soul's fate and the very meaning of existence. This constant "groping" and existential uncertainty permeate the play's atmosphere, affecting not just Hamlet but all the characters.
The Hamlet formula, so to speak, is not 'a man who has to avenge his father' but 'a man who has been given a task by a ghost'. Everything else about him is less important than that. If the play did not begin with the cold and darkness and sickening suspense of the ghost scenes it would be a radically different play. … The sense in which death is the subject of Hamlet will become apparent if we compare it with other plays. Macbeth has commerce with Hell, but at the very outset of his career dismisses all thought of the life to come. For Brutus and Othello, suicide in the high tragic manner is escape and climax. For Lear death is deliverance. For Romeo Antony, poignant loss. For all these, as for their author while he writes and the audience while they watch, death is the end: it is almost the frame of the picture. They think of dying: no one thinks, in these plays, of being dead. In Hamlet we are kept thinking about it all the time, whether in terms of the soul's destiny or of the body's. Purgatory, Hell, Heaven, the wounded name, the rights - or wrongs - of Ophelia's burial, and the staying-power of a tanner's corpse: and beyond this, beyond all Christian and all Pagan maps of the hereafter, comes a curious groping and tapping of thoughts, about 'what dreams may come'. It is this that gives to the whole play its quality of darkness and of misgiving. Of course there is much else in the play: but nearly always, the same groping. The characters are all watching one another, forming theories about one another, listening, contriving, full of anxiety. The world of Hamlet is a world where one has lost one's way. The Prince also has no doubt lost his, and we can tell the precise moment at which he finds it again. 'Not a whit. We defy augury. There’s a special providence in the fall of a sparrow. If it be now, ’tis not to come: if it be not to come, it will be now: if it be not now, yet it will come: the readiness is all: since no man has aught of what he leaves, what is’t to leave betimes?’
Lewis then tackles Hamlet's much-debated hesitation. He proposes that it stems from a fear of "being dead," not simply dying. This psychological insight offers a compelling explanation for Hamlet's existential angst.
If I wanted to make one more addition to the gallery of Hamlet's portraits I should trace his hesitation to the fear of death; not to a physical fear of dying, but a fear of being dead. And I think I should get on quite comfortably.
Does the mere fact that a young man, literally haunted, dispossessed, and lacking friends, should feel thus, tell us anything remarkable? Let me put my question in another way. If instead of the speeches he actually utters about the firmament and man in his scene with Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Hamlet had merely said, 'I don't seem to enjoy things the way I used to.' and talked in that fashion throughout, should we find him interesting? I think the answer is 'Not very.' It may be replied that if he talked commonplace prose he would reveal his character less vividly. I am not so sure. He would certainly have revealed something less vividly; but would that something be himself? It seems to me that 'this majestical roof' and What a piece of work is a man' give me primarily an impression not of the sort of person he must be to lose the estimation of things but of the things themselves and their great value; and that I should be able to discern, though with very faint interest, the same condition of loss in a personage who was quite unable so to put before me what he was losing. And I do not think it true to reply that he would be a different character if he spoke less poetically. This point is often misunderstood. We sometimes speak as if the characters in whose mouths Shakespeare puts great poetry were poets: in the sense that Shakespeare was depicting men of poetical genius.
I trust that my conception is now becoming clear. I believe that we read Hamlet's speeches with interest chiefly because they describe so well a certain spiritual region through which most of us have passed and anyone in his circumstances might be expected to pass, rather than because of our concern to understand how and why this particular man entered it.
Finally, Lewis arrives at his central argument. He suggests that Hamlet's eloquent soliloquies are not simply expressions of his unique character, but rather profound contemplations on the human condition. We find Hamlet's words captivating because they resonate with universal experiences of loss, grief, and existential questioning. The play's power lies not in dissecting Hamlet's specific motivations but in exploring these profound human themes through his experiences. Lewis concludes by emphasizing the play's inherent mystery. Critics have made mistakes, he argues, by focusing on Hamlet's psychology rather than the play's overarching sense of the unknown. "Hamlet," Lewis asserts, "is a mysterious play in the sense of being a play about mystery." It confronts us with the vast unknown, the existential darkness that surrounds us all.
’Such fellows as I' does not mean 'such fellows as Goethe's Hamlet, or Coleridge's Hamlet, or any Hamlet': it means men-creatures shapen in sin and conceived in iniquity-and the vast, empty visions of them 'crawling between earth and heaven' is what really counts and really carries the burden of the play.
Perhaps I should rather say that it would miss as much if our behaviour when we are actually reading were not wiser than our criticism in cold blood. The critics, or most of them, have at any rate kept constantly before us the knowledge that in this play there is greatness and mystery. They were never entirely wrong. Their error, in my view, was to put the mystery in the wrong place in Hamlet's motives rather than in that darkness which enwraps Hamlet and the whole tragedy and all who read or watch it. It is a mysterious play in the sense of being a play about mystery.
Lewis offers a refreshingly unconventional take on Hamlet. He steers the focus away from the prince's internal struggles and motivations, and instead, highlights the play's exploration of profound existential themes: mortality, the unknown, and the human condition itself. While acknowledging the complexity of Hamlet's character, Lewis elevates the play's significance to a universal exploration of the human condition in the face of death and the unknown.
October 9, 2020
A nice critique of the critics of Shakespeare's Hamlet and their various arguments as to what is wrong with the play.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews