Your review of Hamlet at Guildford’s Holy Trinity Church (9 February) says “Shakespeare gives a variety of … reasons for young Hamlet’s inability to avenge” his father’s murder. No he doesn’t. Hamlet is not unable to stab Claudius. He wants to make sure the ghost’s story is true (hence the performance of The Mousetrap), and he doesn’t want Claudius to die while praying (and in a state of grace). Thereafter, his fatal flaw, like that of other Shakespearean protagonists, is rashness (stabbing the wrong man in his haste).
As to the “usual complication” of whether Hamlet is really mad, or is pretending to be, he is neither. Who says that Hamlet is mad? Polonius, who, too stupid and pompous to understand his witty remarks, thinks they don’t make sense, and Claudius, who clearly doesn’t want anyone to take Hamlet seriously.
Hamlet really isn’t the mysterious and complicated play that it is made out to be. But in the past century or so, these and other notions (such as Hamlet’s Oedipal attraction to his mother) have unfortunately been taken as fact by readers, playgoers, directors, teachers, critics and actors. The late American critic Bernard Grebanier dealt with the myths around the play in his definitive book The Heart of Hamlet. I have not known anyone to read it and disagree.
Rhoda Koenig
London
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