ABSTRACT
The interdigitations relate insert with main play, Hamlet with Pyrrhus – who, as Harold Jenkins comments, is identified with the types of both violent murderer and heroic avenger. The naturalism has led critics of Hamlet to debate why Claudius took no alarm earlier, during the dumb-show. Hamlet has usefully been discussed as a revenge play in other respects; so that it may help to look at its structure from the same viewpoint. But the internal double structure of Hamlet has nothing to do with the business of following up popular success. The elder Hamlet is certainly contrasted at length by Hamlet with the ‘cutpurse of the empire and the rule’, the ‘king of shreds and patches’ – not only in terms of legality but of kingly qualities. We may say, then, that the double structure of Hamlet accords with its complex presentation of duty.
