"King Lear" and the Displacement of "Hamlet"

Abstract

If we were to arrange a pecking order of Shakespeare's plays on basis of what critics have said about them, either Hamlet or King Lear would come out on top. It is true, of course, that whenever one of these plays has been in ascendancy, other has always had its supporters. However, there seems no doubt that Hamlet, as a central point of reference in Shakespeare's work, had a long period of dominance, roughly between 1800 and 1960, and that since then King Lear has displaced it.1 From period when John Keble could praise Hamlet as the noblest and of Shakespeare's tragedies to John Dover Wilson's description of it as the of all popular dramas,2 this play held a special importance and significance in European culture. association with Hamlet of word greatest by Keble and Dover Wilson now looks odd, since we have become accustomed in recent years to open pages of critical works and read such statements as The tragedy of Lear, deservedly celebrated among dramas of Shakespeare, is commonly regarded as his achievement.3 In this essay I offer a preliminary investigation of reasons why each play has had a period of dominance; I also briefly consider some implications of such an investigation for understanding nature of massive output of critical writings relating to two plays. When Coleridge wittily summed up his brilliant account of Hamlet by describing him as eternally resolving to do, yet doing nothing but resolve, he initiated a nineteenth-century concern with Hamlet as a figure who seemed to reflect his interpreters, though not many recognized this as clearly as Coleridge did when he added,I have a smack of Hamlet myself.4 Like Goethe's version of irresolute prince, Coleridge's image of a man incapacitated for action by a surplus of mental activity links readily with later variant versions of Hamlet