Hamlet: Uses of Interpretation in the Play
Many consider Shakespeare's "Hamlet" to be the most problematic play ever written (Croxford pp). Leslie Croxford writes in his article, "The Uses of Interpretation in Hamlet" for a 2004 issue of Alif: Journal of Comparative Poetics, that the play presents inconsistencies that arise from the "variousness" of its medieval and Renaissance sources, from discrepancies between printed version of the drama, and from a host of unresolved thematic and psychological problems, such as the famous question of why Hamlet delays his revenge (Croxford pp). Thus, there are endless interpretations of the play (Croxford pp). T.S. Eliot called Hamlet "the 'Mona Lisa' of literature," and it is true, for no other work has presented more uncertain meanings (Croxford pp). In giving interpretation such significance, Shakespeare had to develop previous versions of the story, thus, when one considers the issue of interpretation in the play, one is also examining a prime example of how tests undergo alteration from period to period (Croxford pp). There are two specific influences on the metamorphosis of Hamlet: "the intellectual climate in which it was written and the nature of the sixteenth-century political world," and together they put at the au
Eliot believed that the "guilt of a mother' could not be handled the same way in which Shakespeare handled "the suspicion of Othello, the infatuation of Antony, or the pride of Coriolanus," for then the subject might have expanded into a tragedy like these, "intelligible, self-complete, in the sunlight" (Eliot pp). Had left the flushing in her galled eyes, According to Eliot, Hamlet, like the sonnets, is filled with "stuff" that the writer could not drag to light, contemplate, or manipulate into art (Eliot pp). And as one searches for this feeling, one finds it, as in the sonnets, "very difficult to localize" (Eliot pp). It cannot be pointed to in the speeches, and upon examination of the two famous soliloquies, one sees the versification of Shakespeare (Eliot pp). According to Eliot, Shakespeare's Hamlet is not found in the action or in any of the quotations, but in an 'unmistakable tone" (Eliot pp). Ere yet the salt of most unrighteous tears She married:- O, most wicked speed, to post With such dexterity to incestuous sheets! O God! a beast that wants discourse of reason, New characters appear in continual succession, demonstrating various forms of life and particular modes of conversation (Johnson pp). Johnson remarks that Hamlet's 'pretend madness' causes much mirth, while the mournful distraction of Ophelia fills the heart with tenderness (Johnson pp). Moreover, every character produces the effect intended, from the "apparition that in the first act chills the blood with horror, to the fop in the last, that exposes affectation to just contempt" (Johnson pp). For the most part, the action is in continual progression, however, there are some scenes, according to Johnson, that neither forward, nor retard it (Johnson pp). There appears to be no adequate cause of Hamlet's feigned madness, for he does nothing that he might not have done
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Approximate Word count = 1271
Approximate Pages = 5 (250 words per page double spaced)
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