Hamlet In Brief

This week's brief post is largely from F.E. Halliday.  His essay entitled "The Poetry of Shakespeare's Plays" is one of the entries in Hamlet:  Enter Critic, cited numerous times in the blog (see 7/29/13 and others).  It is not Halliday's discussion of the poetry that is the topic here; rather it is a statement that appears early in the excerpt.  It is only three sentences in length, although one is a glorious run-on.  For me, it summarizes well why many people, myself included, find Hamlet to be so worthwhile.

"Hamlet is the great landmark in Shakespeare's progress, standing like a rock, conspicuous and unmistakably defined, exactly in the middle of his career.  In sheer bulk it is much the biggest of the plays; the hero is the most famous in all literature, partly because we all tend to identify ourselves with him, partly because in Hamlet we seem to come closest to Shakespeare himself; the imagery is distinctive both in form and content; it is the first of the series of great tragedies; and it is the first play in which Shakespeare's mature style is clearly revealed.  All his previous work was, in a sense, a preparation for Hamlet; no other subject had made such demands, and it is as though Shakespeare, feeling himself at last equal to the task, decided that the time had come to show the world what he really could do."