POINT OUT THE MOST RELEVANT CRITICAL APPROACHES TO HAMLET FROM THE EIGHTEENTH TO THE

FIRST HALF OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY

In his general observations on Hamlet in his edition to the plays of Shakespeare in 1765, Samuel Johnson
admires the variety of the play, with its abundant events and its mixture of amusement and grandeur. To
him, the richness of the play also lies in its numerous characters and their different types of speech and ways
of life. As a clear contrast to later criticism concerned about Hamlet’s mental state, Johnson considers
Hamlet’s pretended madness as a mere cause of merriment and does not understand the reason why he is
feigning to be insane. The critic considers that “he does nothing which he might not have done with the
reputation of sanity”. He points out Hamlet’s role as a mere instrument and not agent in the play since the
king’s final death is not a result of Hamlet’s actions and indicates his inability to carry out the Ghost’s
command. He considers Hamlet’s attitude towards Ophelia as “rudeness”, which seems to be useless and
wanton cruelty”. He also calls attention to the absence of poetical justice in the play. That is, he considers
that Ophelia’s death, whom he describes as “the young, the beautiful, the harmless, and the pious”,
diminishes the mirth that would have provoked Claudius’s death, which was expected by the spectator
instead.

In his Lectures and Notes on Shakespeare (1818), S. T. Coleridge brings up the theme of the incongruity of
Hamlet’s conduct and character. Coleridge attacks the idea that such irregularities result from Shakespeare’s
fluctuating and unpredictable genius. Coleridge tries to demonstrate that Hamlet’s character “may be traced
to Shakespeare’s deep and accurate science in mental philosophy”. He considers that Hamlet’s mental
process can be compared to the functioning of a human mind. Coleridge considers that a healthy mind must
have a balance between the mental contact with external objects and mental introspection, what he calls the
contemplative faculty. If an individual’s mind inclines towards mere meditation, this will result in an
incapacity to act. Hamlet’s problem is that such mental equilibrium does not exist. He is immersed in his own
thoughts and his mind does not centre on outer perceptions. This intellectual activity is reflected in Hamlet’s
soliloquies where we can see a man obsessed with his inner world, isolated from the external one and,
accordingly, unable to act.

In Shakespearean Tragedy (1904), A. C. Bradley begins his analysis of Hamlet by opposing certain previous
critical ideas on one of the central problems of the play: Hamlet’s delay to revenge his father’s death. First,
Bradley rejects the theories that claim that he does not act because of external difficulties (courtiers,
bodyguards...). According to Bradley there are numerous pieces of textual evidence that show us that these
are not the reasons why Hamlet does not act. Second, he does not agree with those theories that consider
that the hero’s reason for not acting is based on moral scruple or conscience. He does not accept the
sentimental view of Hamlet. Bradley sets against the Schlegel- Coleridge theory that views Hamlet as a
tragedy of thought, of reflection. Though Bradley considers that this theory is based on a close reading of the
play and that it shows real aspects of Hamlet, it fails to find the real reason of his irresolution. For Coleridge
the motive is the hero’s melancholy. Bradley applies psychological realism to the study of Hamlet and
analyses his personality as if he were offering a psychological diagnose of a real human being. Bradley
observes in Hamlet certain traits that, under stress, could develop into melancholy. His extreme sorrow does
not come from his father’s death or his loss of the crown. Bradley considers that the real shock comes from
the knowledge of his mother’s adultery. The critic indicates that after the realisation of his mother’s nature,
any man of a great sensibility, an out-of-the-ordinary intellectual genius, psychologically weakened after his
father’s death and traditionally closely attached to his mother as Hamlet, would immerse himself, as a
necessary consequence into utter melancholy. Bradley constantly thinks of Hamlet as a real human being
with natural reactions. In his analysis, Bradley follows the humanist belief in a transcendental, universal and
common essence in all human beings. He even states that Hamlet’s fascination lies in the fact that his story is
the symbol of “a tragic mystery inherent in human nature”. Bradley makes clear that melancholy in Hamlet is
not synonymous of madness. In fact, he never shows signs of insanity when he is alone or with Horatio. His
melancholy is reflected in Hamlet’s bad temper, self-absorption, obduracy, insensibility to his enemies’ fates
and to his loved one’s feelings, his aversion to life and everything in it, his self-detestation, his yearning for
death, and his impassivity. Consequently, his indifference translates itself into inaction. This idleness is
increased by a constant reflection, also product of his melancholy, on the task he has to carry out and on the
reasons why he procrastinates. As a conclusion to his analysis, Bradley states that, from the psychological
point of view, Hamlet’s melancholy “is the centre of tragedy, and to omit it from consideration or to
underrate its intensity is to make Shakespeare’s story unintelligible”. But from a tragic point of view, Bradley
considers that Hamlet’s melancholy would have aroused little interest if he had not presented the
intellectual genius that the Schlegel-Coleridge theory stressed.

In 1919, T. S. Eliot wrote a brief essay on Hamlet in which he considered that “far from being Shakespeare’s
masterpiece, the play is most certainly an artistic failure”. Apart from mentioning what he considers
“superfluous and inconsistent scenes” and a variable versification, he believes that the main dramatic flaw of
the play is that Hamlet’s emotions do not find what he calls an “objective correlative”. That is, a “set of
objects, a situation, a chain of events which shall be the formula of that particular emotion”. Eliot considers
that Hamlet is controlled by an emotion, mainly provoked by his feelings towards his guilty mother that
cannot be expressed “because it is in excess of the facts as they appear”. Hamlet, according to Eliot, cannot
understand his feelings, cannot express them and consequently cannot take any action. Eliot’s essay has also
a psychological touch since he judges that the fact that the play shows an incapacity to express in words and
actions what Hamlet feels is a reflection of Shakespeare’s inner conflicts.

George Wilson Knight’s essay “The Embassy of Death” in his work The Wheel of Fire (1930) was one of the
most important examinations of Hamlet in the first half of the twentieth century. Wilson Knight finds in
Hamlet, a play that he considers “baffling and difficult in its totality”, a clear contrast between a “pale, black-
robed Hamlet, mourning” and the “gay glitter of the court, silhouetted against brilliance, robustness, health,
and happiness”. Knight describes Hamlet’s soul as sick and considers that this sickness is produced not only
from his father’s death, the knowledge of his mother’s adultery or his loss of the crown. He believes that
Ophelia, Hamlet’s only remaining contact with life, could have saved him. Knight contends that, though
Hamlet’s grief evidently results from various causes, his extreme suffering lies in what Polonius calls
“neglected love”. Throughout his essay, Knight points out Hamlet’s cynicism, his bitterness, his
disillusionment, his indifference, his inaction, his coarse humour, his self-hatred, his wicked pleasure in
others’ suffering, his denial of love, which he identifies with sex and uncleanness, his pessimistic view of life
as a prison and of everything around him as corrupt, his disgust at the human physical body, his obsession
with the decay of flesh and the deceit of physical and spiritual beauty and his horror at death and eternity.
Knight then declares that death is the central theme of the play. It is present in physical terms in the play,
but above all, Knight considers that death is mainly in Hamlet’s mind and spirit. By stressing Hamlet’s
sickness, Knight intends, as many other critics had tried to do before him, to “pluck out the heart of his
mystery”. The most striking element in Knight’s analysis is the fact that he considers Claudius as one of the
positive elements of Denmark, in obvious opposition to what Hamlet represents in the play. For Knight,
Hamlet is “an element of evil in the state of Denmark”. The Ghost is considered by him as a demon, as “the
devil of the knowledge of death, which possesses Hamlet and drives him from misery and pain to increasing
bitterness, cynicism, murder and madness”. But though Knight clearly inclines to represent Hamlet as evil
and Claudius, and the rest of the kingdom , as the image of goodness and stability, he has to accept that no
matter how much we may like the rest of characters in the play, it is Hamlet who is right. He has discovered
the truth of humanity, not just of Denmark. That is, he has seen that hypocrisy, deceit and cruelty are
behind apparent benevolence and he has discovered that death and decay are the ends that reach
everybody, from king to beggar. This discovery makes him the only conflicting element of the play, the only
obstacle to happiness in Denmark.

One of the most complete and important analyses of Hamlet is Dover Wilson’s What Happens in Hamlet
(1935). Wilson offers in this book a careful analysis of all the dramatic elements in the play and a detailed
exposition of the background of certain Elizabethan beliefs necessary to understand some aspects of the
play. In a section of his book called “The heart of the mystery”, Wilson rejects the ideas of those critics that
had applied psychological realism such as Bradley and had analysed Hamlet’s suffering is provoked “by the
burden which fate lays upon his shoulders” and indicates that critics should centre on the text and should
not make up a hero’s life out of it. Shakespeare was not thinking in psychoanalytical terms, he was not
dealing with childhood traumas and Hamlet should be analysed, not as a real human being, but as a
character in the play. We are facing art and dramatic illusion, which have completely different parameters
than the ones in real life. Wilson observes how, despite the fact that Hamlet’s mind could appear as
damaged, its grandeur remains intact. He acknowledges the fact that for many critics this could represent a
contradiction, however, “we are not moving in the realm of logic”, he argues. Shakespeare’s task was not to
create a psychologically balanced being. It was to give shape to a being able to provoke such wonder and
emotion in the spectators that would at the same time accept such being as entirely human. Wilson alleges
that Shakespeare does not let us see the truth of Hamlet’s madness. And one of the devices of the playwright
uses in order to impede us from knowing where Hamlet’s mental health ends and insanity begins in his “antic
disposition”. Wilson also alludes to the question of Elizabethan notion of melancholy. Wilson has a curious
theory that links Hamlet’s nature with the personality of the “brilliant, melancholy and ill-fate Earl of Essex”.
Essex died on the scaffold six or twelve months before Hamlet was first performed on stage. Wilson argues
that this theory would explain the mystery surrounding the image of the prince of Hamlet. He affirms that if
the Elizabethan spectator had recognised in Hamlet traits of Essex they would have understood the question
of the protagonist’s mystery. However, Wilson acknowledges that his theory merely offers the historical
origin of Hamlet’s mystery since the real nature of such a mystery is dramatically constructed. We must
never forget Hamlet is a tragedy and not historical fact.