interpreted as residing in difficulties produced by the external situation is Hamlet's own attitude toward his task. He never behaves as a man confronted with a straight-forward task, in which there are merely external difficulties to overcome. If this had been the case surely he would from the first have confided in Horatio and his other friends who so implicitly believed in him, and would deliberately have set to work with them to formulate plans by means of which these obstacles might be overcome. Instead of this he never makes any serious attempt to deal with the external situation, and indeed throughout the play makes no concrete reference to it as such, even in the significant prayer scene when he had every opportunity for disclosing the reasons for his non- action. There is therefore no escape from the conclusion that so far as the external situation is concerned the task was a possible one.
If Hamlet is a man capable of action, and the task is one capable of achievement, what then can be the reason that he does not execute it? Critics who have realised the inadequacy of the above-mentioned hypotheses have been hard pressed to answer this question. Some, struck by Klein's suggestion that the task is not really what it is generally supposed to be, have offered novel interpretations of it. Thus Mauerhof[1] maintains that the Ghost's command to Hamlet was not to kill the king but to put an end to the life of depravity his mother was still leading, and that Hamlet's problem was how to do this without tarnishing her fair name. Dietrich[2] put forward the singular view that Hamlet's task was to restore to Fortinbras the lands that had been unjustly filched from the latter' s father. When straits such as these are reached it is no wonder that many competent critics have taken refuge in the conclusion that the tragedy is in its essence inexplicable, incongruous and incoherent. This view, first sustained in 1846 by Rapp,[3] has been developed by a number of writers, including Rümelin[4], Benedix[5], Von Friefen[6], and many others. The causes of the dramatic imperfection of the play have been variously stated, by Dowden[7] as a conscious interpolation by Shakspere of some secret, by Reichel[8] as the defacement by an
- ↑ Mauerhof: Ueber Hamlet, 1882.
- ↑ Dietrich: Hamlet, der Konstabel der Vorsehung; eine Skakespeare-Studie, 1883.
- ↑ Rapp: Shakespeare's Schauspiele iibersetzt und erlautert. Bd. VIII, 1846.
- ↑ Rümelin: Shakespeare-Studien, 1866.
- ↑ Benedix: Die Shakespearomanie, 1873.
- ↑ Von Friefen: Briefe iiber Shakespeare's Hamlet, 1864.
- ↑ Dowden: Shakespeare; his development in his works, 1875.
- ↑ Reichel: Shakespeare-Litteratur, 1887.
