Critical Analysis

The literary critique of Hamlet by Margreta De Grazia is very negative. She argues that Hamlet is a new character “type.” Unlike the regular medieval character in a tragedy such as a solider, king, villain, etc., she says that Hamlet is a “thinker.” She praises Shakespeare for creating a very good plot with lots of points for action, but criticizes him for all of Hamlet’s inaction. Tragedy is a representation of action, yet Hamlet always passes up the opportunity for action in order think. She says, “It’s as if Shakespeare thought, I'll put him in a really tight spot, give him 'the cue for passion,' and then have him 'do nothing.’” She also realizes that Hamlet is in the perfect situation for action. His father is killed, he is the heir to his father’s kingdom; but his uncle, who murdered his father, stole it from him. This is a flawless plot that could produce massive amounts of action, yet the only real action occurs in the very last scene. She also says, “What Shakespeare did, then, is contrive the most insufferable plot imaginable just so his protagonist could then slight it.” This means the play had a crazy plot, but it’s as if Shakespeare creates a play well below the possibility.

            Grazia’s critical analysis is very detailed and accurate. I also found myself frustrated by all of Hamlet’s inaction. I do realize that Hamlet’s inaction is his major flaw, but I think it goes too far. Hamlet is pictured as a very smart, intelligible character. We see this in many of his actions like the play “The Mouse Trap.” Despite all of his intelligence, he never once takes advantage of an opportunity. The reader would think that eventually Hamlet would realize he had passed up too many opportunities and just kill Claudius, but he never does.  An example of Hamlet’s inaction is when he finds Claudius praying. Instead of seizing the opportunity and killing him, he instead waits because he is fearful of sending Claudius to heaven. We even find out that Claudius knows he has no chance and his prayer means nothing.

            I also agree with Garzia that Hamlet’s flaw of inaction occurs too much. The plot is very good, but the story line is weak. Hamlet could have been a much better story if it had been a hero’s story. If it stayed a tragedy it needs, much more action or a better story line. Hamlet’s flaw dominates the entire story making him seem stupid even though he is supposedly very smart. In every scene I kept thinking “This is a perfect opportunity for Hamlet to just kill Claudius.” Instead, the story drags on and on, creating a tragedy in five scenes that should have taken two. Many critics praise Shakespeare for Hamlet, but Grazia and I are confused why it is so popular. The critical analysis of Margreta De Grazia is very insightful and offers a unique perspective on the play.

                   

 Hamlet Criticism

Margreta De Grazia

1. Imagine Shakespeare saying to himself:

     'In this tragedy I want a character who above all else THINKS. But can thinking possibly be staged? Now if tragedy is a representation of an action, what action might a man play to indicate to an audience that he is thinking? How can 'that within' be given show? What mirror can reflect 'the pale cast of thought'? Now I've inherited from the middle ages a whole roster of character types: avengers, clowns, courtiers, kings, lovers, madmen, malcontents, scholars, soldiers, villains . . . but no thinker. Nor are the ancients of my little-Latin-and-less-Greek of any help; they were interested only in outer conflict, not the inner affair of thought. Clearly something new is required -- an action by which to dramatize thinking, when there is no action for thinking. But that's it! I'll stage my thinker not in action but in inaction. I'll put him in a really tight spot, give him 'the cue for passion,' and then have him 'do nothing.' Instead of a tragedy of action, I'll have tragedy of inaction -- a tragedy of thought!

     'But will they get it? When they see my character not acting, will they say to themselves, 'Oh, he is not doing anything: therefore, he must be thinking.' Maybe I'd better give them a hint as to what's going on in his head. I'll have him on stage telling another character that he is thinking. But no, that's dialogue. I'll have him on stage telling the audience that he is thinking. But that's an aside. I'll put him on stage silent. But that's a dumbshow. But suppose he were on stage alone AND talking -- to no one but himself ? Giving voice to his thoughts? And if I have him thinking aloud early on and then again and again and again, they'll realize that thinking with him is an ongoing process. What he is doing when thinking aloud is what he is doing all the time, but silently. Maybe not everyone will get it at first, maybe only 'the wiser sort,' so it will be 'caviar to the general,' at first anyway. But in time -- they will get it. The performance of thought -- as inaction -- as DELAY.'

    2. And it did take time for even 'the wiser sort' to figure out that the play was about a man who thinks.1 In fact, it took over two hundred years before Coleridge famously connected Hamlet's disposition to think with hisindisposition to act, or in his words, Hamlet's 'intellectual activity' to his 'aversion to action' (2.55). And that, for him, is the point of the play, the 'universal' it dramatizes: that a man prone to thinking is incapable of acting, and proportionally: the more the thinks, the less he acts. Here is how Coleridge imagined Shakespeare plotting out his play:

The poet places [Hamlet] in the most stimulating circumstances that a human being can be placed in. He is the heir-apparent of a throne: his father dies suspiciously; his mother excluded her son from his throne by marrying his uncle. This is not enough; but the Ghost of the murdered father is introduced to assure the son that he was put to death by his own brother. What is the effect upon the son? -- instant action and pursuit of revenge? No: endless reasoning and hesitating. . . . (54)

What Shakespeare did, then, is contrive the most insufferable plot imaginable just so his protagonist could then slight it. Coleridge also slights it: he never again mentions plot in his scattered but abundant comments onHamlet. And why should he? What happens in the play has no bearing on Hamlet's character. His disposition to thought -- his 'ratiocinative meditativeness' (72)-- predates the play; indeed, it appears to be congenital, having issued from the 'germ' of his character (80). Programmed by that inborn germ to do what he does (or does not), he is entirely self-determining. No need to bother with acting, reacting, or interacting; possessing 'a world within' himself' (55, 62, 69; 'a man living in meditation,' 59), Hamlet is complete unto himself. It is around 1800 that the saying, 'Like Hamlet without the Prince' -- becomes current. Take away the character and precious little remains. The inverse, however, is not true: take away the play, and the prince remains perfectly intact. Hamlet has come to possess all the free-standing self-sufficiency of an icon. In any English-speaking context, the image of a young man looking at a skull evokes Hamlet thinking: thought thinking itself. Without ties to plot, Hamlet is a character [person] in his own right, ready to go anywhere and indeed he does turn up in unlikely places -- always delaying, that is -- thinking.

    3. Extricated from plot, Hamlet is free to move out of not only his dramatic fiction but his historical period as well. His autonomy qualifies him to step out of his own 1600 and into the present of 1800, then of 1900, and then of 2000. It is around 1800 that Hamlet starts to appear ahead of his time, more in keeping with the advancing present than with Shakespeare's own receding past. Hamlet in 1800 looks like Coleridge ('I have a smack of Hamlet myself'2), a resemblance Hazlitt extends, 'It is we who are Hamlet,' marveling at the 'prophetic truth' that enabled Shakespeare to see so far into the future (2.14). England's close counterparts in Germany are making similar claims, hailing Hamlet as 'epoch-making' (2.163), providing 'a mirror of our present state as if this work had first been written in our own day.'3 Emerson identifies his entire nineteenth century with Hamlet: 'its speculative genius is a sort of living Hamlet,' and his times ('the age of Introversion') cannot see beyond Hamlet's thought, 'His mind is the horizon beyond which at present we do not see.'4 At the turn of the century, George Brandes notes that Hamlet will always be at the vanishing point of our perception, 'Hamlet, in virtue of his creator's marvelous power of rising above his time . . . has a range of significance which we, on the threshold of the twentieth century, can foresee no limit.'

    4. What we have after 1800, then, is a long tradition of finding the most recent modern understanding of consciousness in the answer to the question 'Why does Hamlet delay?' The answer -- whether philosophical, psychological, or psychoanalytic -- provides Hamlet with the psychic processes that make him appear modern.5 New (and newer still) psychological explanations repeatedly emerge to account for the symptom of delay.6Hamlet's epochal interiority, then, is produced in answer to the question of his delay. And it is constantly being reconfigured in light of more avant-garde understandings of subjectivity. It is the question, then, that makes the play modern, and that keeps it so; for the modern by definition must always look up-to-date, or better yet, just ahead of its time. Hamlet's psyche has proven phenomenally receptive to new theories, accommodating reams of them for 200 years now. In no small part the appeal of the approach lies in the simplicity of its hermeneutic format: its fill-in-the-blank structure. 'Why does Hamlet delay?' 'He delays because of _ _ _ _,' and -- eureka! -- you have the answer to Hamlet's character which is also the key to the entire play (for the play is his character), as well as a new way of constituting the emergence of the modern period that in turn guarantees its fresh relevance. High returns, to be sure, but it is still surprising to find even our most sophisticated current readings returning to the 'question of questions,' as if no reading could be valid unless it provided, however incidentally, an explanation for Hamlet's delay.7