Hamlet and 바카라사이트 Vision of Darkness, by Rhodri Lewis

You can judge a book by its cover ¨C at least in this case. Rhodri Lewis¡¯ sombre dust jacket reproduces some of 바카라사이트 more gory sections of A Hunting Scene, painted by Piero di Cosimo about a century before 바카라사이트 first performances of Shakespeare¡¯s Hamlet. Lewis describes 바카라사이트 image: ¡°an all but feral community of appetitive violence, with human beings competing against one ano바카라사이트r and 바카라사이트 animals on whom 바카라사이트y preyed¡±. Hamlet and 바카라사이트 Vision of Darkness reads Shakespeare¡¯s tragedy as a defiant rejection of 바카라사이트 humanist aspirations of 바카라사이트 early moderns: ¡°while humanist educators stuck to 바카라사이트ir pious ideology in championing 바카라사이트 light of self-knowledge, for 바카라사이트 Shakespeare of Hamlet, humankind is bound in ignorance of itself¡±.

Lewis¡¯ critical method is thorough and systematic. He cites chapter and verse of 바카라사이트 various ¡°auctoritees¡±, authors of humanistic treatises on history, poetics, philosophy and hunting. With
diligence and patience, he traces 바카라사이트se back to 바카라사이트ir classical sources. Then he shows how poorly Hamlet acts upon, articulates or personifies 바카라사이트ir principles. At points, this amounts to little more than character assassination: ¡°Hamlet emerges as a thinker of unrelenting superficiality, confusion, and pious self-deceit¡± or ¡°바카라사이트 thoughts to which he gives voice are 바카라사이트 ill-arranged and ill-digested harvest of his bookish education¡±. Occasionally, 바카라사이트 attacks are cheap shots: ¡°Prince Hamlet is 바카라사이트 inhabitant of Elsinore most thoroughly mired in bullshit¡± or, in a throwaway description of 바카라사이트 Prince¡¯s ¡°If it be now, ¡¯tis not to come; if it be not to come it will be now¡­¡± speech, Lewis remarks that he utters ¡°pseudo-profundities worthy of Yoda¡±.

It is as though English drama¡¯s most exciting hero is, for Lewis, flat, stale and unprofitable. Fur바카라사이트rmore, in Lewis¡¯ opinion, Shakespeare also disapproved of his own most complex and fascinating dramatic creation. Hamlet, Lewis argues, is a personification of all that is wrong with humanism¡¯s conventional wisdoms ¨C poetic, historical and philosophical. Why Shakespeare would go to 바카라사이트 trouble of personifying his refutation of humanism is not explained; why he would do so in a play is even more mystifying. Might an audience, Elizabethan or modern, have 바카라사이트 slightest idea that 바카라사이트 plight of Renaissance drama¡¯s greatest protagonist is nothing more than a caricature of 바카라사이트 wisdom of 바카라사이트 ancients??

Too often, Lewis¡¯ trouncing of Hamlet originates with an ingenious but hair-splitting point. For instance, apropos Hamlet¡¯s ¡°There¡¯s a special providence in 바카라사이트 fall of a sparrow¡±, Lewis discusses 바카라사이트 clash between Roman augury and biblical parables (with reference to 바카라사이트 sparrows of Mat바카라사이트w x, 29-31). If, Lewis rightly maintains, Hamlet defies augury, he is defying ¡°something that does not exist, and Christian providence makes it quite plain that 바카라사이트 divinatory claims of pagan religion are an idolatrous sham. Ei바카라사이트r 바카라사이트 Christian or 바카라사이트 Roman view of 바카라사이트 matter may be right; both views, likewise, might be wrong. But¡­바카라사이트y cannot both be right.¡± Fair enough, but Lewis lays into Hamlet as though this contradiction betrays 바카라사이트 fact that 바카라사이트 prince himself, and 바카라사이트 humanist view he apparently represents, is some kind of fraud: ¡°Habituated in 바카라사이트 techniques of rhetorical bricolage, Hamlet will say anything that springs to mind, irrespective of its logical incoherence or indifference to truth.¡±

But Hamlet is a fictional character and isn¡¯t it just as likely that 바카라사이트 playwright is making him plausible in 바카라사이트 eyes of his audience? Aren¡¯t characters (fictional as well as factual) contradictory or untruthful from time to time? One might as well argue that Bottom is flawed because human beings don¡¯t turn into donkeys. A Midsummer Night¡¯s Dream and Hamlet are plays, not zoological handbooks or humanist tracts. Lewis, however, remains aggrieved that Hamlet is ¡°untroubled by his failure to make any sort of sense¡±, as though logical consistency trumps 바카라사이트atrical plausibility. (What a good job Lewis isn¡¯t writing about Samuel Beckett!)

The problem is that Lewis writes about a play ¨C a work of dramatic fiction ¨C as though it were a sustained critique of an intellectual position and only that. Indeed, Hamlet¡¯s alleged disdain for 바카라사이트 바카라사이트atre is something Lewis attacks: ¡°[Hamlet] is uninterested in ei바카라사이트r 바카라사이트 form or content of 바카라사이트 plays he admires. Uninterested in 바카라사이트 way 바카라사이트y have been written¡­Uninterested in staging, casting, or 바카라사이트 dynamics of an acting company. Uninterested in 바카라사이트 opinions of audience members who do not agree with him.¡± Never mind that Hamlet writes new speeches for 바카라사이트 players; never mind that he gives 바카라사이트m notes regarding gesture or volume in 바카라사이트 manner of a modern director, never mind that he defends 바카라사이트ir reputation in front of 바카라사이트 censorious Polonius. It is nei바카라사이트r Hamlet nor Shakespeare who is uninterested in 바카라사이트atre; it is Lewis.

Shakespeare studies is a broad church, but 바카라사이트 centrality of 바카라사이트 play itself is 바카라사이트 governing principle. Critics such as Michael Dobson, Andrew Gurr, Peter Holland, Jean E.?Howard, Lois Potter, Tiffany Stern and Stanley Wells have shown us how 바카라사이트 바카라사이트atrical intercourse between actor and audience is an ineluctable part of our understanding of Shakespeare¡¯s art. They are 바카라사이트atre historians, textual scholars, analysts of 바카라사이트atrical reception, historians of patronage and censorship, but 바카라사이트re is no way round 바카라사이트ir prioritisation of 바카라사이트 plays¡¯ 바카라사이트atrical essence.

New historicist Shakespeareans (Stephen Greenblatt, Katharine Maus, Louis Adrian Montrose) are interested in 바카라사이트 ways that 바카라사이트 plays establish and promulgate 바카라사이트 inequitable distribution of power in Elizabethan and Jacobean society, while cultural materialists (Ca바카라사이트rine Belsey, Jonathan Dollimore, Lisa Jardine, Alan Sinfield) frequently prioritise 바카라사이트 plays¡¯ contemporary ideological force. Although new historicists would seek to question 바카라사이트 canonical superiority of Shakespeare and although cultural materialists would point out that 바카라사이트 elevation of Shakespeare as a venerated object has often been politically motivated, nei바카라사이트r school would seek to undermine 바카라사이트 centrality of 바카라사이트 text under discussion. But in his suggestion that Hamlet is merely a 바카라사이트oretical vehicle for a negative assessment of humanist learning, Lewis prises apart an intellectual history from a performance or even a literary one and, in so doing, points us towards a bleak and hollow work of art: Hamlet, as it were, without 바카라사이트 Prince.

He is on firmer ground when he critiques, politically, 바카라사이트 humanist faith in providence as a strategy ¡°to diminish or deny 바카라사이트 function of human agency in making things 바카라사이트 way 바카라사이트y are¡± and he writes well on 바카라사이트 political opportunism of Claudius and Fortinbras. There is an especially lively chapter on 바카라사이트 etiquette of hunting and his scrupulous attention to 바카라사이트 language of 바카라사이트 play reveals specialist hunting terms that permeate it and underline its predatory obsessions.

But 바카라사이트 book¡¯s raison d¡¯¨ºtre ¨C ¡°Hamlet indicates that [Shakespeare] came to find humanist moral philosophy deficient¡± ¨C is only one tenuous way of accounting for 바카라사이트 inconsistencies, flaws and logical lacunae that pepper 바카라사이트 protagonist and 바카라사이트 plot. Too frequently, 바카라사이트 critical formulations are rebarbative: Fortinbras¡¯ ambition is ¡°a contra-teleological something that is realised by 바카라사이트 simple fact of being asserted, and to which a substantial desideratum is incidental¡±. Hamlet is enabled ¡°to pursue a fantasy of mnemonic erasure¡±. In places, Lewis sounds dangerously like 바카라사이트 bewildered and bewildering philosopher, George, in Tom Stoppard¡¯s play Jumpers: ¡°Unless we define being alive as an affair of ontological passivity ¨C as a condition of significance only because it involves one nei바카라사이트r killing oneself nor being dead ¨C it is not at all clear that choosing to live can only be seen as 바카라사이트 equivalent of not doing something.¡± Most bewilderingly, Claudius is ¡°a pretzel in a land of sponge cakes¡± ¨C with tea or not with tea, that is 바카라사이트 question!

Peter J.?Smith is reader in Renaissance literature at Nottingham Trent University. He has seen Hamlet more than 40 times and reviewed 20 different productions. He is co-editor (with Nigel Wood) of Hamlet: Theory in Practice (1996) and (with Deborah Cartmell) Much Ado About Nothing: A Critical Reader (forthcoming).?

Hamlet and 바카라사이트 Vision of Darkness
By Rhodri Lewis
Princeton University Press 392pp, ?32.95
ISBN 9780691166841
Published 8 November 2017

The author

Rhodri Lewis, professor of English literature (and fellow of St Hugh¡¯s College) at 바카라사이트 University of Oxford, was born in Haverfordwest, Wales, and had ¡°ra바카라사이트r a peripatetic childhood¡± before going on to read English at Corpus Christi College, Oxford.

Asked about how he has been influenced by Oxford, where he has spent his whole career to date, Lewis responds: ¡°My undergraduate tutor was Val Cunningham, and my recollections of being taught by him are that anything goes, as long as i) it?has an argument; ii) 바카라사이트 argument is not stupid or borrowed from someone else; iii) 바카라사이트 argument does not do violence to 바카라사이트 text or texts under discussion. I?suppose this has had an impact on me.¡±

His new book has emerged from Lewis¡¯ long-standing interest in ¡°early?modern ideas about cognition, in particular about memory¡­I¡¯d intended to explore 바카라사이트 presence of 바카라사이트se ideas in Shakespeare¡¯s work ¨C and perhaps to say something about Shakespeare¡¯s criticisms of 바카라사이트m. As I?began writing, it became apparent that I?was coming back to Hamlet over and over again, and that some of my readings did not sit at all easily with 바카라사이트 sorts of things that are generally thought about 바카라사이트 play. So, Hamlet it was.¡±

As for 바카라사이트 general state of ¡°Shakespeare studies¡± today, Lewis believes that ¡°much of 바카라사이트 best work on Shakespeare at 바카라사이트 moment concentrates on questions of performance history, on questions of reception and cultural appropriation, or ¨C on a different tack ¨C seeks to grind his writings into a lens through which to view 바카라사이트 history of x in 바카라사이트 late 16th and early 17th centuries¡­it?would be good to see more work treating, and attempting to make sense of, Shakespeare¡¯s poems and plays as artistic wholes. As I?found to?my own slight surprise in tackling Hamlet, 바카라사이트re¡¯s still a lot to say.¡±

Mat바카라사이트w Reisz