Hamlet (Vol. 35) | C. P. Aichinger (essay date 1968)
C. P. Aichinger (essay date 1968)
SOURCE: "Hamlet and the Modern Dilemma," in Culture, Vol. XXIX, No. 2, June, 1968, pp. 142-49.
[Here, Aichinger remarks that Hamlet's character is not afflicted by a tragic flaw, as many commentators have contended, but rather faces a dilemma similar to those posed in the twentieth-century Theater of the Absurd.]
It seems that the underlying concept of almost all Hamlet criticism is that Hamlet suffers from a tragic flaw in his character—something akin to Oedipus' quick temper, Othello's jealousy, or Lear's senile vanity, which causes him to make the classic "mistake in judgment" that will lead to his downfall. It is true that one is able to detect such a flaw in the characters of many of Shakespeare's tragic heroes, but the fact that an idea is generally applicable should not lead us into the mistake of trying to apply it universally in cases where it manifestly does not fit. Hamlet...
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