Hamlet as the Complete Man :: Shakespeare Hamlet

Hamlet as the Complete Man Tragedy, Shakespeare had come to see when he was piece of writing Hamlet, is a kind of consecration of the common elements of mans moral life. Shakespeare introduces the common man in Hamlet not for what we are apt to think of as his commonness only for this strange power however you care to name it that he possesses-we have used art, or virtue, or we might have borrowed from Henry James the exclusive vision of decency. In Tragedy there is no longer a Chorus moving round the altar of a god but if Proust is right the spectators are still participants in a supernatural ceremony. Perhaps I may put the aspect of Tragedy I wish to keep beforehand you more clearly by drawing on Professor Harbages study of Shakespeares ideal man. Collecting the approving references he finds that this ideal man is soldierly, scholarly, and honest. If these men take care to lack the larger idealism that is so common and abundant in our own generation, there is no su spicion that Shakespeares men will fail to gage with their own skin their apparently modest programs. As Professor Harbage says All soldierly, scholarly, honest men are potential martyrs -you can substitute for martyrs tragic figures. Of that Shakespearian type Hamlet is the ideal. Shakespeare had before him in Saxo and Belleforest what was presented as an ideal type. This type Shakespeare transformed. To what may be called the instinctive wisdom of antiquity and her heroic passions, represented so impressively by Hamlets father, Shakespeare has united the meditative wisdom of later ages in Hamlet himself. There is no surrender of the old pieties, and the idea of the drama comes from the tinge of new circum1stances upon the old forms of feeling and estimation there is a conflict between new exigencies and old pieties, that have somehow to be reconciled. The play dramatizes the incessant struggle to which all civilization that is genuine is doomed. To live up to its o wn ideals it has to place itself at a disadvantage with the cunning and treacherous. The problem Mr. Chandler (1) sets his hero is continuously complicated in Hamlet-to be humane without loss of toughness. The hero must touch both extremes without one he is just brutal, lacking the other he is merely wet.