and Christian views, which forbade the indulging of this instinctive desire. This hypothesis has been much developed of late years, most extensively by Liebau,[1] Mezieres,[2] Gerth,[3] Batimgart,[4] and Robertson,[5] on moral, ethical and religious lines. Kohler[6] ingeniously transferred the conflict to the sphere of jurisprudence, maintaining that Hamlet was in advance of his time in recognising the superiority of legal punishment to private revenge, and was thus a fighter in the van of progress. This special pleading has been effectually refuted by Loening[7] and Fuld,[8] and is contradicted by all historical considerations. Finally Schipper[9] and, more recently, Gelber[10] have suggested that the conflict was a purely intellectual one, in that Hamlet was unable to satisfy himself of the adequacy or reliability of the Ghost's evidence.
The obvious question that one puts to the upholders of any of the above hypotheses is: why did Hamlet in his monologues give us no indication of the nature of the conflict in his mind? As we shall presently see, he gave several excuses for his hesitancy, but never once did he hint at any doubt about what his duty was in the matter. He was always clear enough about what he ought to do; the conflict in his mind ranged about the question why he could n't bring himself to do it. If Hamlet had at any time been asked whether it was right for him to kill his uncle, or whether he definitely intended to do so, no one can seriously doubt what his instant answer would have been. Throughout the play we see his mind irrevocably made up as to the necessity of a given course of action, which he fully accepts as being his bounden duty; indeed, he would have resented the mere insinuation of doubt on this point as an untrue slur on his filial piety. Ulrici, Baumgart and Kohler try to meet this difficulty by assuming that the ethical objection to personal revenge was never clearly
- ↑ Liebau: Studien über William Shakespeares Trauerspiel Hamlet. Date not stated.
- ↑ Mézières: Shakspeare, ses oeuvres et ses critiques, 1860.
- ↑ Gerth: Op. cit.
- ↑ Baumgart: Op. cit.
- ↑ Robertson: Montaigne and Shakspere, 1897, p. 129.
- ↑ Kohler: Shakespeare vor dem Forum der Jurisprudenz, 1883, and Zur Lehre von der Blutrache, 1885. See also Zeitschr. f. vergleichende Rechtswissenschaft, Bd. V, S. 330.
- ↑ Loening: Zeitschrift für die gesamte Strafrechtswissenschaft, Bd. V, S. 191.
- ↑ Fuld: Shakespeare und die Blutrache. Dramaturgische Blätter und Bühnen-Rundschau, 1888, Nr. 44.
- ↑ Schipper: Shakespeare's Hamlet; æsthetische Erläuterung des Hamlet, etc., 1862.
- ↑ Gelber: Shakespeare' sche Probleme, Plan und Binheit im Hamlet. 1891.
