Prince of self-pity

T S. Eliot thought Hamlet an ‘artistic failure’, Shakespeare being unable to reconcile the theme of the old revenge tragedy on which the work is based with the conception of the character of Hamlet himself. One may agree with this while still finding the play compelling; indeed the most puzzling of the tragedies.

The revenge theme is admittedly tiresome and the reasons for postponing the act of vengeance both unconvincing and boring. We can accept the ghost only as a convenient theatrical convention. No doubt Elizabethan audiences saw it differently. Belief in ghosts was then common, and one wonders to what extent Shakespeare shared it. Banquo’s ghost appears only to Macbeth and is invisible to the other dinner-guests; invisible to Lady Macbeth also. So the ghost scene in that play is psychologically convincing. It’s different in Hamlet. Francisco, Bernardo and Horatio all see the ghost, though it refuses to speak to them; subsequently speaking only to Hamlet himself.