A design for Hamlet

Abstract

In this account of Hamlet I am concerned to shift attention from Hamlet himself to the larger conflicts and issues that now seem important to me in shaping the action. It is almost impossible to comment on a drama without treating the characters as if they were human beings acting in full autonomy, and it would be rather absurd to preface every remark by noting that the characters only exist as we produce them from Shakespeare's words on the page. Furthermore, as critics have shown over and over again, the characters and the play take on a life of their own in relation to the world of the critic, a life that Shakespeare could not have imagined. But all we have to work from is the text as printed in the Quartos and Folio, and the aim of the analysis of the dramatic action that follows here is to bring out what for convenience I call Shakespeare's artistry as it can now be reconstructed from that text. In other words my aim is to bring out the ways in which the play may be seen as shaped and patterned, through the conflicts generated between characters and the working out of the larger issues raised.