J. Dover Wilson - What Happens in Hamlet

On the appearance of this, the last of three studies of

It would be tedious to catalogue here the innumerable books on Hamlet to which I, like most other students of the play, stand indebted. Two, however, must be named. I belong to the generation which, having lived for thirty years with Dr Bradley Shakespearean Tragedy, find it difficult to look at Hamlet except through his eyes. It is the fashion in younger circles, I am told, to decry it; and it is, I suppose, inevitable that, with our growing appreciation of Shakespeare's craft on its theatrical side, Dr Bradley's general attitude towards the plays should become a little outmoded. I have myself made bold to criticise him here and there; for if one had nothing new to say, why write upon Hamlet at all? But many of the new views have been caught from critical outposts which he first established; and the farther I went in my exploration, the more careful I was to scrutinise every clue he had left behind on his. Above all, I am persuaded that on the side of character his patient insight has never before been equalled and is never likely to be surpassed.

The other book, an edition of Hamlet ( Houghton Mifflin Company, 1929) with an elaborate commentary by Professor

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J. Q. Adams of the Folger Shakespeare Library, Washington, came to my hands too late for me to make more than casual use of it. Very different in outlook from Dr Bradley, and sometimes voicing opinions from which I find myself in almost violent disagreement, Professor Adams is equipped with the full panoply of modern Elizabethan scholarship, anticipates me at several points, and has undoubtedly given us the most original commentary on Hamlet of our time, which when it comes to be better known in England is likely to provoke much discussion.

A few brief passages in the following book have already appeared in the Notes and Introduction to my edition of Hamlet ( "The New Shakespeare") and in the monograph entitled The Manuscript of Shakespeare's Hamlet which preceded it. Quotations from and references to Hamlet are taken from my edition.

As its title implies, this study is mainly concerned with matters of plot and dramatic technique. It makes no pretence to furnish an aesthetic interpretation of the play as a whole, though I hope it may do something to ease the path of future interpreters, whether in the study or on the stage.

I am indebted to Mrs Murrie for help with the proofs and the General Index.

J. D. W.

June, 1935

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