In Shakespeare’s most famous play, Ophelia calls Hamlet “the glass of fashion and the mould of form,” and so he has been at least since the Romantic era, the model of a poetic soul in search of meaning, a “modern” man assailed by and confronting the cosmos. And yet one great scholar, expounding Hamlet from the medieval standpoint that probably was still normative in Elizabethan times, has said “Our ‘hero’ is not a very attractive character at the outset, and there is no reason to think that Shakespeare wished to make him so.” Where between two such widely disparate interpretations—if anywhere—can the “real” Hamlet be said to lie? This course will attempt to answer such a question through a close reading of key passages. Shakespeare’s language, his incomparable poetry will also be a constant focus.
((William Guy - Monday - Zoom))
