Philosophy and the Puzzles of Hamlet: A Study of Shakespeare's Method

297 Pages·2014·5.506 MB·English

by  Leon Harold Craig

Philosophy and the Puzzles of Hamlet
Also by Leon Harold Craig
The War Lover: A Study of Plato’s Republic
Of Philosophers and Kings:
Political Philosophy in Shakespeare’s Macbeth and King Lear
The Platonian Leviathan
Philosophy and the Puzzles

of Hamlet
A Study of Shakespeare’s Method
Leon Harold Craig
NEW YORK • LONDON • NEW DELHI • SYDNEY
Bloomsbury Academic
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First published 2014
© Leon Harold Craig, 2014
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or
transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical,
including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or
retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers.
No responsibility for loss caused to any individual or organization acting
on or refraining from action as a result of the material in this publication
can be accepted by Bloomsbury or the author.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Craig, Leon Harold.
Philosophy and the puzzles of Hamlet : a study of Shakespeare’s method / by Leon Craig.
pages cm
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-62892-047-5 (hardback : alk. paper) 1. Shakespeare, William,
1564–1616. Hamlet. 2. Shakespeare, William, 1564–1616–Political and
social views. 3. Shakespeare, William, 1564–1616–Philosophy. 4. Politics and
literature–Great Britain–History–17th century. 5. Politics in literature. I. Title.
PR2807.C69 2014
822.3’3–dc23
2014000530
eISBN: 978-1-6289-2049-9
Typeset by Newgen Knowledge Works (P) Ltd., Chennai, India
To the memory of my father

Contents

Acknowledgements viii
Prologue 1
1 Horatio and the Pirates 17
2 Whichever Way the Wind Blows 49
3 The Theatre of Reality 77
4 ‘Why, What a King Is This!’ 107
5 Hamlet’s English Madness 137
Epilogue 189
Notes 195
List of Works Cited 271
Index of Names 277
Acknowledgements

This book reflects over a third century of studying and teaching Shakespeare’s
plays in the same manner as I have Plato’s dialogues. Needless to add, my
understanding of these texts owes much to the many gifted students, both
graduate and undergraduate, with whom I shared so many gratifying classes
and seminars. With respect to this commentary on Hamlet, however, I have
more specific debts. To Thomas Pangle and Timothy Burns, whose enthusiasm
for it was encouraging. Two of the anonymous assessors for Bloomsbury made
numerous helpful suggestions for its improvement; I appreciate their efforts,
and especially their strong endorsements for its publication. Sue Colberg,
book-designer extraordinaire, provided (as usual) a beautifully fitting cover. An
earlier version of a part of Chapter 5 was presented at James Madison College
of Michigan State University, likewise a part of an earlier version of Chapter 1
at the Claremont Institute; I profited from the comments and questions on both
occasions. I owe a special thanks to my editor, Ally Jane Grossan, and to the
entire Bloomsbury production staff, for the accommodating manner in which
they dealt with my manuscript.
As always, my greatest debt is to my wife, partner and best friend for some
four-plus decades; as all our mutual friends know, I’d be lost without her.
The Greeks, a certain scholar has told me, considered that myths are the
activities of the Daemons, and that the Daemons shape our characters and our
lives. I have often had the fancy that there is some one Myth for every man,
which, if we but knew it, would make us understand all he did and thought.
Shakespeare’s Myth, it may be, describes a wise man who was blind from very
wisdom, and an empty man who thrust him from his place, and saw all that
could be seen from very emptiness. It is the story of Hamlet, who saw too great
issues everywhere to play the trivial game of life, and of Fortinbras, who came
from fighting battles about ‘a little patch of ground’ so poor that one of his
Captains would not give ‘six ducats’ to ‘farm it’, and who was yet acclaimed by
Hamlet and by all as the only befitting King.
W. B. Yeats, Ideas of Good and Evil
I return to Hamlet as one participates in a Mystery – to regain vitality after
descending into the depths, to skirt madness with its hero, to find release
from anguish with its heroine in her hebephrenia, to slough disillusion with a
treacherous world onto a scapegoat who carries the burden to his destruction.
I also return to sun in the lines that light the world in beauty, to absorb
nurture from genius beyond envy, and to delight in discovery with each
rereading. . . . I listen in awe, because here, so much that psychoanalysts
have laboriously learned from patients flows in measured profusion – as if
the Muses had whispered in the poet’s ear all that Apollo’s Pythoness had
learned from her countless suppliants. I also return to Hamlet because of an
apprehension that within its elusive ambiguities lies a key that could lead to
the secret wellsprings of the human dilemma.
Theodore Lidz, Hamlet’s Enemy