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PAGE 83
EXPLANATION OF HAMLET'S MYSTERY
and Christian views, which forbade the indulging of this
instinctive desire. This hypothesis has been much developed
of late years, most extensively by Liebau,1 Mézières,2 Gerth,3
Baumgart,4 and Robertson,5 on moral, ethical and religious
lines. Kohler6 ingeniously transferred the conflict to the
sphere of jurisprudence, maintaining that Hamlet was in
advance of his time in recognizing the superiority of legal
punishment to private revenge, and was thus a fighter in the
van of progress. This special pleading has been effectually
refuted by Loening7 and Fuld,8 and is contradicted by all his-
torical considerations. Finally Schipper9 and, more recently,
Gelber10 have suggested that the conflict was a purely intellec-
tual one, in that Hamlet was unable to satisfy himself of the
adequacy or reliability of the Ghost's evidence.
The obvious question that one puts to the upholders of any
of the above hypotheses is: why did Hamlet in his mono-
logues give us no indication of the nature of the conflict in his
mind? As we shall presently see, he gave several excuses for
his hesitancy, but never once did he hint at any doubt about
what his duty was in the matter. He was always clear about
enough about what he ought to do; the conflict in his mind
ranged about the question why he couldn't bring himself to
do it. If Hamlet had at any time been asked whether it was
right for him to kill his uncle, or whether he definitely in-
tended to do so, no one can seriously doubt what his instant
answer would have been. Throughout the play we see his
mind irrevocably made up as to the necessity of a given course
of action, which he fully accepts as being his bounden duty;
indeed, he would have resented the mere insinuation of doubt
on this point as an untrue slur on his filial piety. Ulrici,
Baumgart and Kohler try to meet this difficulty by assuming
that the ethical objection to personal revenge was never clearly
1Liebau: Studien über William Shakespeares Trauerspiel Hamlet.
Date not stated.
2Mézières: Shakspeare, ses oeuvres et ses critiques, 1860.
3Gerth: Op. cit.
4Baumgart: Op. cit.
5Robertson: Montaigne and Shakspere, 1879, p. 129.
6Kohler: Shakespeare vor dem Forum der Jurisprudenz, 1883,
and Zur Lehre von der Blutrache, 1885. Sell also Zeitschr. f. ver-
gleichende Rechtswissenschaft, Bd. V, S. 330.
7Loening: Zeitschrift für die gesmate Strafrechtswissenschaft,
Bd. V, S. 191.
8Fuld: Shakespeare und die Blutrache. Dramaturgische Blätter
und Bühnen-Rundschau, 1888, Nr. 44.
9Schipper: Shakespeare's Hamlet; aesthetische Erläuterung des
Hamlet, etc., 1862.
10Gelber: Shakespeare'sche Probleme, Plan und Einheit im Hamlet,
1891.
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