ABSTRACT
THE reader is now, I hope, convinced that Hamlet is a good play, if he needed convincing; but I have not written at this length only to convince him. I have wished to deal with two kinds of criticism which seem to me perverse though common; and to examine Hamlet in detail as being an important document for all who would understand the nature, not only of dramatic art, but of all art. When Mr. Robertson says that Hamlet is to be understood only in terms of some earlier play, I would answer—“Then it cannot be worth understanding”; and Mr. Eliot implies that it is not worth understanding, when he says that it is most certainly an artistic failure. To him I am provoked to reply—“But it is one of the documents from which we may learn what artistic success is.” To deny that is to ignore the facts of art for a theory which will land you at last on some desert absurdity—as that Coriolanus is a better play than Hamlet.
