Page 51 - Hamlet: The Cambridge Dover Wilson Shakespeare

xfor H A M L E T

There are the contemporary allusions already referred
to, which I have attempted to deal with in the notes as
they arise, and of which here no more need be said.
There is a special group of hitherto misunderstood
passages, connected with the fencing-match in the last
scene, the details of which I hope have now been made
clear by the aid of contemporary books upon sword-play
and through conversation with modern practitioners of
the art, among whom I am particularly indebted to
1
Mr Evan John, actor, scholar and swordsman . More
formidable than all the rest is the failure of criticism to
grapple with the question of what actually happens in
the play scene by scene. The interpretation of some of
the passages mentioned in the list at the beginning of this
section depends upon the solution of such problems; and
in order that my notes may be understood I must now
briefly consider the matter in general terms.

For the most part, the dramatic criticism of Hamlet
during the past hundred and fifty years has been—rather
wearisomely—revolving about the problem of Hamlet's
character. That way lies psycho-analysis, and Dr Ejnest
Jones, president of the British Psycho-analytical Society,
has duly obliged with the latest diagnosis of the Prince
2
of Denmark's soul . A fundamental misconception
1
I have discussed the fencing-match at greater length
than the notes below will allow in the introduction to a
reprint of Silver's Paradoxes of Defence (1599), issued by
the Shakespeare Association in 1933. Cf. also Time's
Literary Supplement, Jan. n , 18, 2$, 193.4.
2
Essays in Applied Psycho-analysis, 1923. In impugning
psycho-analysis as an instrument of dramatic criticism,
I cast of course no reflexion upon its therapeutic virtues, for
which I entertain considerable respect. Moreover, Dr
Jones's essay, which is a development of Bradley, or rather