In Shakespeare's powerful drama of destiny and revenge, Hamlet, the troubled prince of Denmark, must overcome his own self-doubt and avenge the murder of his father. This invaluable new study guide to one of Shakespeare's greatest plays contains a selection of the finest criticism through the centuries on Hamlet . Students will also benefit from the additional features included in this volume, such as an introduction by Harold Bloom, an accessible summary, analysis of key passages, a comprehensive list of characters, a biography of Shakespeare, and more. Hamlet By Harold Bloom Chelsea House Publications Copyright © 2007 Harold Bloom All right reserved. ISBN: 9780791095928 Chapter One INFERRING HAMLET Hamlet is part of Shakespeare's revenge upon revengetragedy, and is of no genre. Of all poems, itis the most unlimited. As a meditation upon humanfragility in confrontation with death, it competes onlywith the world's scriptures. Contrary, doubtless, to Shakespeare's intention, Hamlet has become the center of a secular scripture. It isscarcely conceivable that Shakespeare could have anticipatedhow universal the play has proved to be. Ringedround it are summits of Western literature: the Iliad ,the Aeneid, The Divine Comedy, The Canterbury Tales,King Lear, Macbeth, Don Quixote, Paradise Lost, War andPeace, The Brothers Karamazov, Leaves of Grass, Moby-Dick,In Search of Lost Time , among others. Except forShakespeare's, no dramas are included. Aeschylus andSophocles, Caldersn and Racine are not secular, while Isuggest the paradox that Dante, Milton, and Dostoevskyare secular, despite their professions of piety. Hamlet's obsessions are not necessarily Shakespeare's,though playwright and prince share an intensetheatricality and a distrust of motives. Shakespeare is inthe play not as Hamlet, but as the Ghost and as the FirstPlayer (Player King), roles he evidently acted. Of theGhost, we are certain from the start that he indeed isKing Hamlet's spirit, escaped from the afterlife to enlisthis son to revenge: If thou didst ever thy dear father love- [I.v.23] The spirit does not speak of any love for his son, whowould appear to have been rather a neglected child.When not bashing enemies, the late warrior-king kepthis hands upon Queen Gertrude, a sexual magnet. Thegraveyard scene (V.i) allows us to infer that the princefound father and mother in Yorick, the royal jester: He hath bore me on his back a thousand times, and now-how abhorred in my imagination it is-my gorge rises at it. Here hung those lips that I have kissed I know not how oft. [V.i.185-89] Hamlet is his own Falstaff (as Harold Goddard remarked)because Yorick, "a fellow of infinite jest, ofmost excellent fancy," raised him until the prince wasseven. The Grave-digger, the only personage in theplay witty enough to hold his own with Hamlet, tells usthat Yorick's skull has been in the earth twenty-threeyears, and that it is thirty years since Hamlet's birth. Yetwho would take the prince of the first four acts, a studentat the University of Wittenberg (a German Protestantinstitution, famous for Martin Luther), as havingreached thirty? Like his college chums, the unfortunateRosencrantz and Guildenstern, Hamlet can be no olderthan about twenty at the start, and the lapsed time representedin the tragedy cannot be more than eight weeks,at the most. Shakespeare, wonderfully careless on mattersof time and space, wanted a preternaturally maturedHamlet for Act V. Though we speak of act and scene divisions, andlater in this little book I will center upon the final act,these are not Shakespeare's divisions, since all his playswere performed straight through, without intermissions,at the Globe Theatre. The uncut Hamlet , in our moderneditions, which brings together all verified texts, runs tonearly four thousand lines, twice the length of Macbeth.Hamlet is Shakespeare's longest play, and the prince'srole (at about fifteen hundred lines) is similarly unique.Only if you run the two parts of Henry IV together (aswe should) can you find a Shakespearean equivalent,with Falstaff's role as massive, though unlike Hamlet mysublime prototype speaks prose only-the best prose inthe language, except perhaps for Hamlet's. The Tragical Historie of Hamlet, Prince of Denmarke stands apart among Shakespeare's thirty-eight plays,quite aside from its universal fame. Its length and varietyare matched by its experimentalism. After four centuries, Hamlet remains our world's most advanced drama,imitated but scarcely transcended by Ibsen, Chekhov,Pirandello, and Beckett. You cannot get beyond Hamlet ,which establishes the limits of theatricality, just as Hamlethimself is a frontier of consciousness yet to be passed. Ithink it wise to confront both the play and the princewith awe and wonder, because they know more than wedo. I have been willing to call such a stance Bardolatry,which seems to me only another name for authentic responseto Shakespeare. How should w