‘Hamlet’ and the Power of Words

Summary

If the first law of literary and dramatic criticism is that the approach to a work should be determined by the nature of that work, then I take courage from the fact that Hamlet is a play in which, in scene after scene, fools tend to rush in where angels fear to tread. That such fools also tend to come to a bad end - to be stabbed behind the arras or summarily executed in England,' not shriving-time allowed' - I prefer at this point not to consider.

The area into which I propose to rush is the language of Hamlet,. The method of entry is eclectic. If there is any timeliness about the rush it is that - just as ten years or so ago King Lear was Our Contemporary - Hamlet is now coming to the fore as one of the inhabitants of No Man's Land. A recent book on Shakespeare's Tragic Alphabet speaks of the play being about 'a world where words and gestures have become largely meaningless', and even as long as twenty-five years ago an article on 'The Word in Hamlet’began by drawing attention to 'the intensely critical, almost disillusionist, attitude of the play towards language itself'.