Shakespeare: A Diversity of Doctrine

REVIEWS SHAKESPEARE: A DIVERSITY OF DOCTRINE R. S. KNox The theoretic justification of the labours of critics and scholars on Shakespeare's drama is, presumably, that our enjoyment of the plays may thereby be enriched with' a fuller understanding. In ignorance of Coleridge or Bradley or a hundred others, we may draw, ,each in his capacity, our share of pleasure from the plays, but for the deeper vision we must submit to the guidance of those more sensitive minds. Moreover, Shakespeare may be for all time but he was also of an age, and until we are aware of the peculiar medium for, which , his art was designed and the contemporary conditions from which it issued , we can never know it ,in its {ulness. What knowledge the researching scholar has gained he hands to the critic; and they march side by side, a band of truth-seekers, intent for our benefit on plucking out the heart of Shakespeare's mystery. That is the theory. In fact neither the past history of Shakespeare studies nor their present state can be held to realize ~his ideal cooperation ; and, in his search for guidance, the layman may be sorely perplexed. , He will have his choice of many masters, all guaranteeing the only true solution; but, rightly giving his fealty to none, ,he will patiently listen and turn hack to himself and Shakespeare. The history of recent Hamlet criticism affords a good sample of this diversity of doctrine. Some fifteen years ago Bradley"s imaginative analysis of the play, with its exhibition of Shakespeare's caref~l art and' of the fine psychological coherence in the hero's character, held the field. But a reaction s'et in. The historical and realist critics had been at work. Despising the romantiC mood of acceptance, they boldly doubted whether all in the play was as it should be, or insisted on a reconsideration of the very nature of Shakespeare's art. It is orily fair to discriminate between the findings of those critics, but for some at least the main conclusion was that Hamlet, "full of gorgeous poetry and profound flashes of insight, is dramatically a thing 'of shreds and patches, that Shakespeare was, as usual, adapting an old play for his company, ~n the way of husiness, that the crudity of the original plot and 249 THE UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO QUARTERLY characters made it impossible for him to carry through his revision wit)lOut leaving loose ends and inconsistencies in many places, and th~t in particular the mystery of Hamlet's character may be simply explained as a failure to fuse completely the old material with the new." Even Mr. T. S. EEot lent his pontifical authority to this view: "So far from being Shakespeare's masterpiece, the play is most certainly an artistic failure:~ , . It is in opposition to this verdict that Professor Dover Wilson has written his latest book, What Happens in Hamlet, the title of which states precisely what he sets out to'demonstrate.1 He agrees with the historical critics that the play is fuUof obscurities; "but when they go on to explain these as (relics of an old play' or as due to the stubbornness of Shakespeare's material, without stopping to enquire whether what seems obscure may not conceal some 'necessary point of the play' which they have failed to grasp, they sin against a primary canon of criticism." , Indeed, we have hitherto been blind to the extraordinary care with. 'which the play is built, to its delicate dramatic filigree; and, by analysing . the structure and clarifying.Shakespeare's intentions on point after point, Professor Dover Wilson sheds, he believes, new light on the play's meaning. He holds that the usurpation motive and Hamlet's ambitious designs, as Claudius sees them, have not hitherto been sufficiently stressed, with the result that the relations between the two men have been misconstrued. He would remind us of the heinous nature of Gertrude's sin, both incest and adultery. From his knowledge of Elizabethan spiritua1ism, a field neglected by the historical critics, he would show a new subtlety in Shakespeare's treatment of the Ghost. While Marcellus and Bernardo typify...