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PAGE 110
JONES
It is instructive to note that neither of them shew any sign of
inhibition in the performance of this task, and that with neither
is any reference made to his mother. In Hamlet, on the other
hand, in whom "repressed" love for the mother is even more
powerful than "repressed" hostility towards the father, inhi-
bition appears; this is because the stronger complex is stimu-
lated by the fact that the object of revenge owes his guilt to
the desire to win the mother.
The important subject of the actual mode of origin of myths
and legends, and the relation of them to infantile fantasies,
will not here be considered,1 as our interest in the topic is sec-
ondary to the main one of the play of Hamlet as given to us
by Shakspere. Enough perhaps has been said of the compara-
tive mythology of the Hamlet legend to shew that in it are to
be found ample indications of the working of all forms of in-
cestuous fantasy. We may summarise the foregoing consid-
erations of this part of the subject by saying that the main
theme of this story is a highly elaborated and distorted account
of a boy's love for his mother and consequent jealousy of and
hostility towards his father; the allied one in which the sister
and brother respectively play the same part as the mother and
father in the main theme is also told, though with secondary
interest.
Last of all in this connection may be mentioned on account
of its general psychological interest a matter which has pro-
voked much discussion, namely Hamlet's so-called "simulation
of madness."2 The traits in Hamlet's behaviour thus desig-
nated are brought to expression by Shakspere in such a re-
fined and subtle way as to be not very transpicuous unless one
studies them in the original saga. In the play Hamlet's feign-
ing mainly takes the form of fine irony, and serves the purpose
of enabling him to express contempt and hostility in an indirect
and disguised form (indirekte Darstellung). His conversations
with Polonius beautifully illustrate the mechanism. The irony
in the play is a transmutation of the still more concealed mode
of expression adopted in the saga, where the hero's audience
commonly fails to apprehend his meaning. Of this, Saxo
Grammaticus writes,3 "He was loth to be thought prone to
lying about any matter, and wished to be held a stranger to false-
hood; and accordingly he mingled craft and candour in such wise
that, though his words did not lack truth, yet there was nothing
to betoken the truth and betray how far his keeness went." Here
Hamlet plainly adopts his curious behaviour in order to further his
scheme of revenge, to which, as we shall presently note, he had
1Those interested in this subject are referred to the writings of
Freud, Abraham, Rank and Riklin.
2My attention was kindly called to this point by a personal com-
munication from Professor Freud.
3Quoted after Loening: Op. cit., S. 249.
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