ABSTRACT
Salvador De Madariaga, a Spaniard by birth, has written most of his books in English. He has held several important appointments on the League of Nations, and has been decorated by countries as far apart as China and Peru, Mexico and Czechoslovakia. With this background of race and experience it is not to be expected that he should write of Hamlet in spirit of his English academic colleagues, and though it would be misleading to liken him to a rogue elephant in their midst, he may perhaps be likened to a rogue sheep. The fact that Professor Madariaga’s description of Hamlet would help the police to an arrest much more quickly than Goethe’s or Coleridge’s does not, however, explain the presence among Shakespeare’s plays of Borgian day-dream. Professor Madariaga feels no need of any explanation. A poet to him is a would-be man of action who finds his highest satisfaction in imagining the deeds of violence he dares not commit.
