the play an elaborate defence of Protestantism, Rio[1] and Spanier[2] on the contrary a defence of Roman Catholicism. Stedefeld[3] regards it as a protest against the scepticism of Montaigne, Feis[4] as one against his mysticism and bigotry. A writer under the name of Mercade[5] maintains that the play is an allegorical philosophy of history; Hamlet is the spirit of truth-seeking which realises itself historically as progress, Claudius is the type of evil and error, Ophelia is the Church, Polonius its Absolutism and Tradition, the Ghost is the ideal voice of Christianity, Fortinbras is Liberty, and so on. Many writers, including Plumptre[6] and Silberschlag,[7] have read the play as a satire on Mary, Queen of Scots, and her marriage with Bothwell after the murder of Darnley, while Elze,[8] Isaac,[9] and others have found in it a relation to the Earl of Essex's domestic history. Such hypotheses overlook the great characteristic of all Shakspere's works, namely the absence in them of any conscious tendencies, allegorical or otherwise. In his capacity to describe human conduct directly as he observed it, and without any reference to the past or future evolution of motive, lay at the same time his strength and his weakness. In a more conscious age than his or ours Shakspere's works would necessarily lose much of their interest.
The most important hypotheses that have been put forward are sub- varieties of three main points of view. The first of these sees the difficulty in the performance of the task in Hamlet's temperament, which is not suited to effective action of any kind; the second sees it in the nature of the task, which is such as to be almost impossible of performance by any one; and the third in some special feature in the nature of the task which renders it peculiarly difficult or repugnant to Hamlet.
The first of these views, which would trace the inhibition
- ↑ Rio: Shakespeare, 1864.
- ↑ Spanier: Der "Papist" Shakespeare im Hamlet, 1890.
- ↑ Stedefeld: Hamlet, ein Tendenzdrama Sheakespeare's gegen die skeptische und kosmopolitische Weltanschauung des M. de Montaigne, 1871.
- ↑ Feis: Shakspere and Montaigne, 1884. The importance of Montaigne's influence on Shakspere, as shewn in Hamlet, was first remarked by Sterling (London and Westminster Review, 1838, p. 321), and has been clearly pointed out by J. M. Robertson in his book, Montaigne and Shakspere, 1897.
- ↑ Mercade: Hamlet; or Shakespeare's Philosophy of History, 1875.
- ↑ Plumptre: Observations on Hamlet, being an attempt to prove that Shakespeare designed his tragedie as an indirect censure on Mary, Queen of Scots, 1796.
- ↑ Silberschlag: Shakespeare's Hamlet. Morgenblatt, 1860, Nr. 46,
- ↑ Elze: Shakespeare's Jahrbuch, Bd. III.
- ↑ Isaac: Shakespeare's Jahrbuch, Bd. XVI.
