In all commentating upon Shakespeare there has been a radical error never yet mentioned. It is the error of attempting to expound his characters – to account for their actions – to reconcile his inconsistencies – not as if they were to coinage of a human brain, but [as] if they had been actual existencies upon earth. We talk of Hamlet the man, instead of Hamlet the dramatis persona – of Hamlet that God, in place of Hamlet that Shakespeare, created. If Hamlet had really lived, and if the tragedy were an accurate reco5d of his deeds, from this record (with some trouble) we might, it is true, reconcile his inconsistencies, and settle to our satisfaction his true character. But the task becomes the purest absurdity when we deal only with a phantom. It is not (then) the inconsistencies of the acting man which we have as a subject of discussion – (although we proceed as if it were, and thus inevitably err,) but the whims and vacillations – the conflicting energies and indolences of the poet. It seems to us little less than a miracle that this obvious point should have been overlooked.

While on this topic, we may as well offer an ill-considered opinion of our own as to the intention of the poet in the delineation of the Dane. It must have been well known to Shakespeare that a leading feature in certain more intense classes of intoxication (from whatever cause) is an almost irresistible impulse to counterfeit a further degree of excitement than actually exists. Analogy would lead any thoughtful person to suspect the same impulse of madness – when beyond doubt, it is manifest. This Shakespeare felt – not thought. He felt it through his marvelous power of identification with humanity at large – the ultimate source of his magical influence upon mankind. He wrote of Hamlet as if Hamlet he were; and having, in the first instance, imagined his hero excited to partial insanity by the disclosures of the ghost – he (the poet) felt that it was natural he should be impelled to exaggerate the insanity.

Edgar Allan Poe (1809 - 1849) was born in Boston, Massachusetts, of actor parents. He was educated partly in England.  He published his first book of poems in 1827.  his subsequent career included a period in the American army and then as a journalist.  He achieved literary success with his short stories and alter poetry.  The fragment on Hamlet reproduced here comes from a section called "Marginalia" in the Works of Edgar Allan Poe, ed. John H. Ingram, Edinburgh, 1875, iii, 469-70.

c.2000
Alexander Pogrebinsky II
lxhamlet@hotmail.com Hamlet