The Success of Hamlet

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The Success of Hamlet

Is this Shakespearean tragedy Hamlet as successful a play as some critics say? Wherein lies the success? Is the protagonist the prime reason for the continuing success?

J. Dover Wilson in “What Happens in Hamlet” attributes much of the success of the drama to the characterization of the prince:

Finally, this compound of overwhelmingly convincing humanity and psychological contradiction is the greatest of Shakespeare’s legacies to the men of his own quality. No ‘part’ in the whole repertory of dramatic literature is so certain of success with almost any audience, and is yet open to such a remarkable variety of interpretation. There are as many Hamlets as there are actors who play him; and Bernhardt has proved that even a woman can score a success. (101)

Could the enduring reputation of Hamlet be attributed to the “ultimate form” in which the Bard of Avon expressed his ideas? Robert B. Heilman says so in “The Role We Give Shakespeare”:

It is the way of venerable texts whose authenticity has impressed itself on the human imagination: he has said many things in what seems an ultimate form, and he is a fountainhead of quotation and universal center of allusion. “A rose by any other name” comes to the mouth as readily as “Pride goeth before a fall,” and seems no less wise. [. . .] The Ophelia-Laertes relationship is strongly felt near the end of Goethe’s Faust, Part I, and the Hamlet-Gertrude-Claudius triangle echoes throughout Chekhov’s Sea Gull (24-25).

This play is ranked by many as the very greatest ever written. Cumberland Clark in “The Supernatural in Hamlet” gives the consensus regarding Hamlet that exists among literary critics of today:

At least six or seven years pass after the writing of Midsummer Night’s Dream before we find Shakespeare engaged on Hamlet, the second of the great plays with an important Supernatural element, and, in the opinion of many, the greatest tragedy ever penned. (99)

There is no more exalted ranking than the above. Richard A. Lanham in the essay “Superposed Plays” maintains that no other English tragedy has generated the literary comment which this play has produced: “Hamlet is one of the great tragedies. It has generated more comment than any other written document in English literature, one would guess, reverent, serious comment on it as a serious play” (91).

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