[4] The real exposition--for _Hamlet_
differs from the other tragedies in requiring an exposition--comes in
the great speech of the Ghost in Scene V. The contrast between this
speech and Horatio's lecture in the first scene, exemplifies the
difference between a dramatized and an undramatized exposition. The
crisis, as we now learn, began months or years before the rise of the
curtain. It began when Claudius inveigled the affections of Gertrude;
and it would have been possible for the poet to have started from this
point, and shown us in action all that he in fact conveys to us by way
of narration. His reason for choosing the latter course is abundantly
obvious.[5] Hamlet the Younger was to be the protagonist: the interest
of the play was to centre in his mental processes. To have awakened our
interest in Hamlet the Elder would, therefore, have been a superfluity
and an irrelevance. Moreover (to say nothing of the fact that the Ghost
was doubtless a popular figure in the old play, and demanded by the
public) it was highly desirable that Hamlet's knowledge of the usurper's
crime should come to him from a supernatural witness, who could not be
cross-questioned or called upon to give material proof.
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