ABSTRACT
J. M. Robertson's essay on Hamlet together with Mr. Eliot's essay ('Hamlet and His Problems'), which was apparently inspired by a reading of Robertson, may be taken as typical of the objections which many critics make to the play: they cannot find that it has any unity, or intellectual consistency, as a whole. The view that 'the essential emotion of the play is the feeling of a son toward a guilty mother' is a drastic reduction of the play as Shakespeare wrote it. Hamlet's feeling toward his guilty mother is certainly essential, but not more essential than his dismay at the loss of a father. It has been well established by now that the Elizabethan 'double plot', at its best, is more than a device for resting the audience. The main action of Hamlet may be described as the attempt to find and destroy the hidden 'imposthume' which is poisoning the life of Claudius' Denmark.
