Oct 16, 2008

Hamlet | Analysis of Three Critical Works on Hamlet

In this essay, the author discusses three eminent Shakespearean critics' works: E.M.W. Tillyard's classification of Hamlet as a problem play, C.S. Lewis's "Hamlet—The Prince or the Poem?", and John Dover Wilson's explication of the relationship between Hamlet and Ophelia.

I. ANALYSIS OF E.M.W. TILLYARD'S CLASSIFICATION OF HAMLET AS A PROBLEM PLAY

The initial chapter of E. M. W. Tillyard's Shakespeare's Problem Plays concerns Hamlet which is usually considered to be a tragedy rather than a problem play. Tillyard uses three vaguely defined processes inherent in tragedy to accomplish this distinction between Hamlet and the remainder of Shakespeare's tragedies. A tragedy, according to Tillyard, is primarily concerned with suffering, and the critic is willing to allow that in this sense Hamlet conforms to the genre. He...