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Replies | Post Reply | Shakespeare Queries From Genuinely Interested Students 4.2.97: Top | Help
I really don't see a conflict between the view I've expressed of Hamlet's conflict and your view of Denmark as being in the throes of a fever necessitating purgation. Several levels of interpretation are possible, and one doesn't necessarily obviate the other. For the play to have some universal meaning, we must be able to see the theme as transcending the temporal situation depicted by the plot. If we accept the theme of reality vs. illusion, then we have to grant that Hamlet's caught between two conflicting perspectives: the view of the state of affairs that exists only in his mind and the true state of affairs; his reconciliation of this conflict is the crux of the play, since the play does center on his character. The system obviously is corrupt and needs purgation, but had Hamlet been able to reconcile his illusion of all-pervading corruption with the reality that innocent victims are caught in the web of corruption, then he might've been able to act in time to purge the state without the sacrifice of those victims, including Ophelia, his mother, and himself. It is the narcissistic love/hate conflict, a state of emotional absorption that blinds one to certain realities or distorts them out of all proportion, that drives Hamlet to initiate the chain of events that leads to the true tragedy: the destruction of the innocent along with the guilty.Posted by Mak on April 20, 1997 at 03:54:49
In Reply to "Horatio and Hamlet" posted by A C Bradley on April 17, 1997 at 10:11:09
Replies | Post Reply | Shakespeare Queries From Genuinely Interested Students 4.2.97: Top | Help