Hamlet Without Hamlet Book

I give the book four stars because after you read it you'll understand the play better than you did before you started it, and you'll enjoy the journey. The book however attempts to erase the numerous intractable problems the play has generated since the Restoration by going back to the time of innocence before the Restoration--a time when these problems didn't exist, when they were not seen, not recognized as problems. I cannot go along with this thesis. It may be that the problem of interpretation we today feel so keenly would have surprised Shakespeare. I doubt that, but I don't deny the possibility. The problem of Hamlet's delay (the biggest interpretive problem of the play) remains a problem of the play however. It is also a problem IN the play and for no less a character than Hamlet himself. De Grazia, to promote her thesis, has to strip the play down to the one issue of thwarted ambition. But she cannot provide any compelling reason why, among all the competing central issues of the play THIS on should get our focus, leaving me to think that her reason is simply that this is the one that if accepted would best advance her reading. I don't buy it.

Nonetheless, the scholarship of this book is among the best I've seen in any extended treatment of Shakespeare. Her narrative of this history of Hamlet interpretation is invaluable, as is her catalog of interpretations for Hamlet's delay. De Grazia is a brilliant scholar. If you are interested in Hamlet, you have to read this book.