Certain New Elucidations of Shakespeare 6i 



That's delicious. The world has waited half-a-dozen genera- 

 tions to hear that said in just that way. Nothing is harder than 

 to distinguish imagined conditions of heroism, normalized to us 

 b}' way of Robinson Crusoe and stories of Indian wars, from 

 what one faces in the predicaments and restrictions of real life. 

 This paragraph, taken to heart, should alter the whole course of 

 Hamlet criticism. 



Following now the running analysis of the play, which Quiller- 

 Couch presently begins, we are stopped by an observation of his 

 on the second scene. Quoting 11. 3—14, in which Claudius at- 

 tempts to shed an atmosphere of commonplace over his accession, 

 and his hurried marriage with the widowed queen, the author 

 comments thus : 



[What he does not explain, by the way — and what the commentators 

 conspire with him and with Shakespeare to overlook — is the small diffi- 

 culty that, Hamlet's father deceased, Hamlet should ipso facto have inher- 

 ited the throne. From the commentators, discreetly silent over this hitch 

 in the workmanship, I turn to Charles Lamb, who, of course, noted it, but 

 slides it over; telling us in his tale of the play merely that Claudius took 

 the crown ' to the exclusion of young Hamlet, the son of the buried 

 king and lawful successor to the throne.' But this will not quite do. 

 Hamlet is not 'young Hamlet': for in the gravyard scene his age is accu- 

 rately made out to be thirty. Unless some strange law of succession be 

 hinted at in the line describing Hamlet's mother as 



The imperial jointress of this warlike state, 



» 



there is a flaw of construction here.] 



But, Shakespeare overlooking this trifle, Hamlet does not seem to mind 

 or indeed to think about it first or last. ... 



Of course, if the throne of Denmark had been actually usurped, 

 Hamlet young or not would have thought very much about it, and 

 Shakespeare's Tudor-Stuart audiences would have expected him 

 not only to think, but to take measures of some sort concerning 

 it. In fact, if Hamlet had been veritably robbed of the crown, 

 the play must perforce have taken an altered shape, and a dif- 

 ferent or at least another motive, besides revenge, have been 

 woven into the plot. 



It might be enough to say, concerning the ' flaw of construc- 

 tion,' that Shakespeare is merely following here the Hystorie of 



163 



