Hamlet (Vol. 44) | Arthur Kirsch (essay date 1981)
Arthur Kirsch (essay date 1981)
SOURCE: "Chapter II: Hamlet" in The Passions of Shakespeare's Tragic Heroes, University Press of Virginia, 1990, pp. 21-43.
[In the following essay, originally published in 1981, Kirsch argues that the source of Hamlet's anxiety is not repressed fantasy; rather, it is situated within the reality of the play's events. Kirsch also reviews Freud's distinction between melancholy and mourning, and examines Hamlet's experience with grief]
Hamlet is a revenge play, and judging by the number of performances, parodies, and editions of The Spanish Tragedy alone, the genre enjoyed an extraordinary popularity on the Elizabethan stage. Part of the reason for that popularity is the theatrical power of the revenge motif itself The quest for vengeance satisfies an audience's most primitive wishes for intrigue and violence. "The Tragic Auditory," as Charles Lamb once remarked, "wants blood,"1...
[The entire page is 9294 words long]
Navigate
